doormat

Most people would describe me as assertive, but if I’m intimidating at all it’s only because I can’t deal with pretending I’m OK with things that aren’t OK, and would much rather voice this even if it means ruffling the odd feather. Fuck feathers, let’s just be honest and stand up for ourselves or others, right? Being strong willed is certainly not something I’ve always been, and when I contemplate some previous situations I’ve been in, it’s kind of crazy that I’ve gotten to the point that I can confidently describe myself as such. I find it fascinating how long it can sometimes take to find strength through adversity, but this only gives me the certainty that all future hardships will eventually reveal their silver (gold) lining. By sharing this story I’m hoping to highlight the contrast between my former and current self, and the notion that what you were has no bearing on what you will become.

Back to 2004

It’s 4am on a Sunday and I’m driving down the long gravel driveway to Jason’s garage where I know he, my boyfriend and their friends will be working. I’m smoking probably my 20th cigarette of the morning with the windows rolled up because it’s cold wearing a slutty-cop uniform with fishnet stockings, even though it’s October. The lights are on in the garage as they always are regardless of the time, the boys will be in there taking things apart and putting them back together pointlessly, listening to the The Eminem Show and chanting get back on that fuckin runway HOE in unison. I pull up outside and park next to a Prelude with a smashed windscreen, adjusting my slutty-cop hat and taking a nervous breath as I get out of the car. Paranoid, they’ve heard the car approach and are silhouetted in the light from the open roller door, still holding their tools. It’s the usual assortment of Jason’s friends who’s names I don’t know and don’t really matter. ‘What the fuck is she wearing?’ Jason asks my boyfriend angrily, who laughs, knowing that he demanded I wear this but calling me a stupid bitch for freaking them out for no reason. They hate pigs. The darkness fails to hide my embarrassment as I stammer an awkward apology, and they relax. ‘You’re a stupid bitch, but you’re sexy’ Jason laughs and they turn to head back inside, no longer interested in me or my stupid outfit.

I follow hesitantly and hang around inside while everyone smokes, the only girl as usual, taking my turn, cold sweat now soaking through the underarms of my costume and feeling more and more ridiculous as my boyfriend pays me no attention other than to smoke my cigarettes, which are rapidly dwindling. I give up trying to get his attention, less bothered by his indifference now that I’m high, and curl up on an old car seat to draw in my usual notepad; sad little girls with big bleeding eyes and grim reapers, my pencil going over and over the same lines until the entire pad is engraved with deep marks, while The Eminem Show plays on repeat and the boys work away at their projects intently as if they have meaning. I’ve heard Superman twice and drawn an array of depressing characters when I decide to go up to the house to see Jason’s girlfriend Eileen, who is naturally my friend by default because that’s just how it works. He gives me a vague grunt of consent when I ask permission (necessary) without turning away from the mess of wires and tools in front of him.

The first signs of daylight are starting to creep across the sky as I cautiously navigate my way through the junkyard of cars in varying stages of disrepair. Eileen is sitting in the kitchen which is ablaze with light, rolling a cigarette at the table and drinking a milky instant coffee, smiling hesitantly when she sees me and offering to make me one. She never comes out to the garage and I don’t really know if she works or what she does all day, how old she is or really anything about her besides the fact she smokes Port Royal. We make polite, girlfriend-in-law small talk as we smoke and hold our chipped mugs close as the cool early morning air seeps into the house. Eileen’s face is sunken and pale; her thin body hunched in her over-sized Russel Athletic hoodie. She drinks her coffee with dull eyes as I chat and smoke, either ignoring or not noticing the fact I’m dressed like a stripper. I ask politely how things are with Jason, and she shrugs ‘he’s crazy’ as she lights another cigarette from her first and elaborates: ‘Did you see his car outside, the one with the smashed windscreen?’ I nod. ‘He did that, he was that dark over some shit.’ He smashed his own windscreen? I’m not overly surprised, familiar with the level of psychotic and uncontrollable rage that the drugs provoke. ‘Yea, with a hammer. I went off at him, and he fuckin knocked me down and kicked me in the head.” She pulls back the hood of her sweatshirt and her limp blonde hair to reveal several large scabs on her scalp. I ask what happened, feeling numb and sick. ‘I told you, he fuckin kicked me. Knocked me down and kicked me in the head with his steel caps on. While the boys watched.’

The boys. I didn’t want to ask her who she meant because I know she means my boyfriend. He would have loved it, the same way he loved seeing the terror in my face when he smashed a glass sliding door last week in some trivial rage, the way he loved hurting animals and talked about hurting people he hated. Can you call someone? I ask lamely, like, I dunno, social welfare…the cops… I trail off as she interrupts derisively with: ‘The fuck are they gonna do ? Plus he’ll just get worse. Get out while you still can, cuz that’ll be you next..’ she starts rolling another cigarette from the pouch on the table while I shiver in my fishnets and combat boots, now realizing what Jason meant just hours ago when he handed me the glass pipe and made some cryptic comment about keeping my mouth shut, and feeling like the world’s biggest piece of shit because I know that I will.

I don’t know why she told me, she knew I’d go home with the guy who’d watched her get beaten up and done nothing, as I was cut from the same cloth as her, or whatever it is they call the stuff doormats are made out of. I never told anyone, I didn’t help, I didn’t do anything. I honestly don’t think she expected me to either, she just needed to push some of the shit off of herself and onto someone else, and I happened to be there. I basically just shelved it with all the other not-my-problem problems which, at 18 years old, was literally everything that didn’t affect me directly. I’m not saying that’s OK or that being young and stupid is an excuse for putting your head in the fucking sand, I’m just being honest about the person that I used to be, and that no one in their right mind would have described me as strong willed or assertive. I didn't have the balls to stand up for myself, let alone anyone else.

I’d like to think that now, with a decade and a half of ball-growth later, I would, but I guess it’s easy to say that in hindsight, and to be unable to comprehend how someone could fail to act in that situation, or for that matter stay in a relationship where they were treated so badly. Sadly, whether physical abuse is involved or not, people everywhere put up with an epic level of shit behavior and often feel that they deserve it, but without even knowing anything about Eileen, I know that she didn’t. Despite the fact that most of the shit situations I’ve been in have been mostly due to my own stupidity, I get it, and I get why walking away is so fucking hard sometimes. The devil you know can be more appealing than the one you don’t, but honestly these days I’ll take the unknown over a familiar fuckwit any day. It’s only been recently though that I feel I’ve reached this turning point, and whilst I can be opinionated, assertive, and yeah…intimidating, I can’t imagine a situation now where I’d let someone wipe their steel caps on me or someone I care about again.

If you feel trapped in a relationship that is fucking you up, know that you are not a burden and that it is more than OK to reach out and to ask for help. If it’s me you reach out to know that I’m no longer the teenage idiot who swept this shit under the rug. Domestic violence and spousal abuse in whatever form it takes is everyone’s fucking problem.