Shit Happiness

I need to rant a little. Rant about happiness and loneliness and how the two somehow got confused in my life. Don't worry, I'll tell the short version of the story. A little over a year ago I was so excited for what was about to happen. I had just broken up with my boyfriend who I was living with and decided to move in with my dad and brother until I was able to afford my own place again. I finally felt like things were going to be good again. That I was going to be happy. Well it's funny how happiness works. One thing I have noticed is how backwards happiness is, what I think might cause misery brings happiness and vice versa.

I was living the single life. I was living with close friends in the city and loving it. Even though the apartment was infested with mice it was the best two years of my life. We were walking distance to everything you could want, restaurants, great shops, bars, Starbucks, drug stores, the library and even a Blockbuster. I spent a lot of time walking. I was in love with the city. We were in a great location for festivals and took advantage of the festivals to throw parties. Oh, the parties. I miss the parties. Then one day I woke up with a boyfriend.

I wanted a boyfriend. My two roommates had boyfriends. I was single for a few years and thought that a boyfriend would be nice again. We all have regrets, one of mine is him. I would do anything to go back in time and not meet him. But I did meet him. We worked together at an ice rink on the weekends. We worked side by side together for about two years without ever really talking to one another. I never understood why he was so shy and quiet. Our job was to ensure the safety of the skaters on the ice. We skated around for a few hours every weekend, checking stamped hands, yelling at kids, breaking up fights and dealing with (sometimes horrific) injuries for two years together. So naturally, I was curious as to why this guy never said a word to me. I would try small talk and get short answers. I should have never tried. I should have known that maybe there was a reason why he never talked to me. But no, I kept pushing. Eventually I got him to talk to me. I was so relieved. It was nice to have someone to talk to out there. Plus, communication was key in that job and it was nice to know that I could communicate with him now without feeling awkward. We got to know one another over the weekends for a few months then things went terribly wrong one night...well, at the time I thought everything was perfect. The ice rink holds a huge party every year in February. It's the busiest night to work there and it's pretty much hell. Our shift ended, we unlaced our skates and joined the drunkards for some beer. We realized that we were the only sober adults and the party was coming to an end, so we left to buy beer and go back to my apartment. We played Wii with my roommates until they eventually disappeared into their bedrooms. So we were alone and drunk. I'll give you three guess about what happened next. I would trade just about anything for that night. To not buy the beer, to not invite him back to my apartment, to not play Wii bowling, to not let him pick "Boogie Nights" to watch, to not let him in my bedroom, to not let him in my bed, to not sleep with him. That one night was the start to everything. I thought it was the start to a new relationship and how great everything was going to be. I was wrong. So very wrong.

My best friend told me that she didn't like what was going on. I should have listened to her. If I close my eyes I can see me sitting on the blue couch, slightly crooked, facing her with the laptop balancing on my knees while I was looking at his Myspace page. She was sitting across from me on the other couch telling me that she didn't like him. That she couldn't see us working. I told her that I liked him. And then one morning we had the "what are we?" talk. I walked out of my bedroom that morning with a boyfriend and no clue to what I was in for over the next few years.

I blame him for us moving out of our apartment. Our lease was just about up and we had all boyfriends. They were all staying at our apartment and it was a little crowded at times. He told me that he wanted to move in with me. I had never lived with a boyfriend before and was excited. Once again, happiness disguised as misery. I thought it was great and I was so happy. So once that lease ended, we all went our separate ways. We got apartments with our boyfriends. I wonder all the time what would have happened if I told him that it was too soon and that I didn't want to move in with him. Would we still be at that apartment?

Him and I moved half a block away from my old apartment. It was a great little apartment...with no mice. I was so excited. Well, I did not know who I was dating until we moved in together. And I was stuck. I signed a lease. Not to mention that my hours at work were horrible. It got so bad at one point that I was only working two days a week. I couldn't afford my half of the expenses and had to rely on him to pay my half at times. Some things I found out once we started living together:

1. He was abused as a child. His mother should have had her husband arrested for the abuse he put him through. It was sad to listen to the stories of his dad abusing him.

2. While in the military, he was taught to never have (or especially show) feelings or emotions. I tried to talk with him about this a lot, but the military did a pretty good job at brainwashing him. It was pointless.

3. He had a serious addiction to porn which lead to so much more. It lead to him talking to about twenty women at a time online. He would have cyber sex with these women and try to meet them.

4. He was an angry drunk.

5. He never loved me.

Right before Christmas, the year we moved in, I read that he had been talking to a married woman, a mother of three, and that he had invited her over to our apartment. I can't even begin to explain what was going on to my mind and body after I read that. I don't know the words to describe what I felt. I broke up with him that night and we didn't speak for about a week. He kept writing me messages about how sorry he was and how much he loved me. I believed him. I actually believed him. I took him back. I made strict rules though for him to earn my trust back. I had to get software for my computer that was meant for parents to protect their children from the Internet. It was more a pain than anything because it would ask for a password for just about everything. So anytime he wanted to check his bank account online or check his email I had to punch in the password. Eventually I got lazy and I turned the software off. I also thought that I could trust him again. What I didn't know was that I could never trust him again in my life. As soon as I turned off the parental software, he went back to porn and women. This happened not once again, not twice again, not three times again...but many, many more times. I can't even remember how many times actually. The number is probably around thirty. Thirty...the number of times I caught him trying to cheat. It got to the point where I only told my best friend about the big things. No one really knew what was going on, the hell that I was living. I kept taking him back though. The fights were bad. Really bad. Small arguments about doing dishes would lead to fighting over who he had fucked. Things were not good.

As if that wasn't bad enough, pretty much every time he drank he hit me. He never punched me, he always had "an open hand", as he would say. Here's the thing though, if someone hits me...I'm going to hit them back. I don't care how much bigger or smaller you are than me. If you're an adult, I'm hitting you back. My disadvantage was that he was almost a full foot taller than me and weighed about 100lbs more than me. I think of all the times he hit me, I only once "won" the fight. It was my birthday. He spent the night following this girl at the bar. He said that he was helping my cousin try to get laid, but I watched them the entire night...my cousin was doing just fine with his new lady friend. My boyfriend was being a dick. We came back to the apartment and I told him not to come to bed. After hitting on a girl all night on my birthday, he was sleeping on the couch. He started mouthing off to me so I went to get a cup full of cold water and I threw it at him as he got comfortable on the couch. He was too drunk to even realize how wet he was and he fell asleep. About an hour later the bedroom door opened and he started stumbling in. A huge fight started (all this going on while we had my two cousins, his sister and her boyfriend spending the night). I told him he was not getting into bed. Here's were his size becomes his advantage. He crawled into bed and I was using all my strength to try and push him out. He hardly budged. In fact, he was laughing at me. I swear fire came out of my ears when he started laughing. It was like flashes of the night were going through my head. My birthday was a total disaster and it was because of him. I looked down at his face on the pillow, laughing at me, and I punched down right on his jaw. He finally got out of bed. He sprang out of bed actually. I didn't hit him hard, but it was enough to stun him. There was plenty of yelling and threatening. He spent the rest of the night in his car. That was the only time I was successful at fighting back.

He was so much bigger and stronger than me that it was hard to fight back. He always made sure to never do anything to leave a mark though...smart. Except for one day. It was St. Patrick's Day and he hit me so hard that my own tooth cut my lip open. It happened while I was trying to fight back. It was a nasty day. We went to a bar after the parade ended. I wanted a picture of us in our matching suspenders. As I went over to him to put my arm around him he punched me in the vagina. He thought it was hysterical. He said I was overreacting when I started to yell. We had now caused a scene in the bar. The whole bar was listening and watching us fight. I wanted to go home. He had the keys and refused to give them to me, he denied hitting me, I threw his beer all over him and stormed out. I sat on our front porch waiting for them to come home at some point. Not too much time passed until I saw him walking back. We started screaming at one another as soon as we were in range. He was pushing me and I was pushing him. I thought he had come back to apologize, but he said there was a line at the bar for the bathroom and he really had to pee. I thought I was going to actually lose it. I started taking off my St. Patty's gear while I was screaming at him for punching me in the vagina and then denying it to convince the bar that I made it all up. He kept telling me that I did make it up and that I was crazy, which he said a lot. He always said that I made everything up. If you hear that enough, you start to think that you are actually crazy. Emotional abuse is no joke, once it starts it takes a long time to go away. A long time. He kept saying it over and over again. I knew what he was doing and I couldn't listen to him anymore. He was in my face now, yelling at me. I kept begging him to stop saying that I made it up. He wouldn't. He got meaner and nastier. I went for the low blow, he was getting too close, he was drunk and he was insane. He stopped my fist before I hit him and he hit me. Think of someone putting their hand up to stop traffic, but with the force of a punch (open handed). He got me right on the mouth and I flew back on to the bed from the force of the hit. It really did feel like slow motion. I remember going back, feeling the fall and landing on the bed. I remember I saw the ceiling before I saw him start to leave the room. My mouth felt hot. I touched my lip and saw blood on my finger. He went back to the bar. I stayed in bed all day. I couldn't believe what was happening. That day I knew I was in an abusive relationship. I was physically and emotional abused. And I can honestly tell you that I don't know which one is worse. Emotional abuse makes you feel like you're worthless and like you're a prisoner. He didn't come back to the apartment for another seven hours or so. And when he came back, he brought a posse of people with him. He was throwing a party in our apartment, while I laid in our bed with a cut lip. His sister was supposed to be coming over later that night and I told her what had happened so she wasn't walking into the situation blind. When she got to our apartment I could hear her talking to him. She asked what happened. He told her that I made everything up, I threw beer at him and that I tried to punch him in the balls. She came in my room and talked to me. I told her what had happened, that he punched me, tried saying that it didn't happen, came back and when I tried to punch him in the sack he hit me. I showed her my lip and started crying. I told her that I didn't understand what was going on. Why would I make all that up? Why would I want anything like that to happen? She obviously believed me. She went out there and started talking to him again. He started yelling at her now, I could hear everything they were saying. He refused to apologize and told her that I could go fuck myself and that he didn't give a shit about me. She came in and before she could say anything I told her that I heard it all. She sat with me for a while and then I asked her to leave. I didn't want any of it to become her problem. I didn't want him to hit anyone else either. So I told her to go out there and just try to get them to go back to a bar and let him do whatever he wanted. She did. He fell asleep on the couch for a while that night, I never heard him come into the bedroom. I woke up the next morning and he was laying next to me. I started to think it was all a dream. Did I actually make it all up? He woke up a few minutes later and I pretended I was sleeping. It was too early to fight, plus I was confused. He got up to go to the bathroom and came back to bed. He put his arm around me and I shot up. He asked what was wrong. I just looked at him. To this day I don't know if he was lying or not, but he had no clue as to what had happened. It wouldn't be the first time that he blacked out. I had to sit there and explain to him what happened. I showed him my lip and he apologized, but of course he said he remembered nothing and that it sounded like I overreacted. I felt crazy.

Everyone asks me why I stayed with him. Why I didn't just leave. That's the tricky thing about emotional abuse. I have journal entries saying that I could never leave him because of how "fucked up in the head" I was. He had such control over me mentally. It's so scary. You feel trapped. You feel powerless. I felt like I couldn't lose him. And then one day I was free. My head had finally sorted things out. I could have left at any time, I was mad. I felt like a fool. We were at a Bills game. I suddenly realized that I had to leave. It hit me like a punch in the face. I had to leave. I had to leave. I don't remember much of the game. I don't even think I spoke to him. It was like I was in a catatonic state. I was there, but somewhere else. The football game was going on in front of me and my eyes were pointed in that direction but I didn't see a football game, I saw everything that had happened over the past two years. I saw all the fighting, all the disappointment, all the lying, all the manipulation. A few days later, election day, I broke up with him. We got rid of our apartment and I moved in with my dad and brother.

I was ready to be happy. I was sad to move out of the city and back to the suburbs, but I was so ready to be happy again. I couldn't wait. I guess I pictured life before him and I thought everything would just go back to that. It didn't. Everyone was so busy with their own lives. Everyone has a boyfriend or girlfriend now. Luckily, they have made good choices. But I am alone. Everyone has seemed to have grown up over the past couple years. How did I miss that? So here I am, a little over a year being single and still unhappy. I've never felt so alone in my life actually and I blame it all on him. I wouldn't be so lonely, I wouldn't be away from my friends, I could be happy. I'm pretty good at letting things roll off my shoulders and move on, but I just can't get happy. No matter how hard I try, I'm still...sad. Just sad. I miss my friends. I miss the parties. I miss the city. I miss having fun on the weekends. I do not miss him though. I am happy that I left him, but that seems to be the only thing I'm happy about with my life. This needs to change and I am working hard to change it. I try to hang out with friends but everyone is busy working, they're tired or they have plans already.

Happiness has been trying to break through to me too though. Arrangements have been made for me to rent my mom's house with a friend. It's all I've been thinking about. I can't wait to have someone to talk to. I spend 11 hours a day with a one-year-old, I come home to eat dinner and I usually smoke and/or drink myself to sleep and do it all over again. I have no one to talk to. No one to ask how my day was. No one to ask how their day was. The idea of living with a friend again has totally changed my mood. Something to care about. But then yesterday I found out that all of that may not happen. I'm back at square one. This information could have been useful months ago when I was looking at apartments and then stopped when I was offered the house. It's just a big let down. In February we might still be able to move in to the house, but it's a maybe. It went from a definite to a maybe. Brought down my good spirits pretty quickly. I won't lie, I want to give up a lot. Just let the misery and loneliness take over, but I'm still trying to find good. To find happiness. My happiness. If found, please return.

(and yes, that was the short story) :)