Your Father Was Right

I have a story to tell, but it starts in the middle.

You may not know much about me, maybe you do, either way most of you don’t know that at one point I was engaged to a man who was much older than me. He was trans FTM and former law enforcement. Retired, 27 years in sex crimes, which is ironic. You’ll find out why shortly.

We were together for less than a year, engaged in less than two weeks and in a different house in a different state in less than 3 months.

The way he groomed me was masterful and before I knew it, I was out of my dream job, my dream apartment with a ring on my finger, in a huge house in Tennessee with a man that I barely knew. It wasn’t long before I was cut off from all contact with family. I was given an allowance, wasn’t allowed to work and was followed into the bathroom, not having a moment to myself.

He raped me regularly. Usually in the mornings. I would wake up to him being inside of me and it was horrendous. Our arguments were abhorrent and the things he said to me have stuck with me for years.

That’s where the story comes in.

I am watching a show right now, on my couch. I’m simultaneously doing work, and every once in a while, I look up to see my cat sleeping. All curled up and safe. That is what i am now,
safe.

I say this to soften the blow of the violence and pain of the story I am about to tell. To assure anyone, even myself, that i am ok now. There is safety surrounding me, even as I take all of us to this moment.

Back to the show… in this scene there is a girl no older than 25. She is in the car with her father and tells him in the flattest and most void of ways that she doesn’t want to feel dead anymore. She used to see signs, would find peace in small things and would feel even the smallest bits of joy every once in a while. She looks out the window of the parked car and says “maybe if I do this, I won’t feel dead anymore”

When she says “do this” she is talking about committing a murder. Her father murders rich people for money, and she is an accomplice. It hasn’t been revealed what her part in the crime is. I think that’s for a reason. I think it’s to emphasize how empty…How small she is even in the largest of circumstances.

That’s how I felt. That’s what resonated. Her face. her words. her idea. Not a longing to “feel”, but rather an idea she had. Because as it stood, she was in fact small and meaningless.

Her father replies “your mother was right, you are fucking crazy”

This moment, the one where she was looking out the window and suggested plainly that maybe killing someone would make her feel ‘not so dead’, brought me back to a very specific moment with G. my ex.

Gibran was his name. Everyone called him G.

After several months, G allowed for me to wait tables. He would show up at the restaurant regularly to watch me. When I would get home from a late shift, he would slam me for talking to a table for too long… flirting with whoever. Sometimes, he would force himself on me. I flattened myself in those moments. I had choices not to, but that’s what I did.

The part that I wanted to start at, skips forward a few months. (I guess I did have something to say before I got here.)

We had a wedding. It was a “fake wedding” because I refused to sign any marriage papers. Smart choice on my end. The wedding was beautiful. I had a blush dress that I absolutely adored. I don’t remember much of the actual wedding day though, I had taken so many pills that the only parts I remember come back to me through photos of that night.

We had a honeymoon. 1 week in Miami and 1 week on a cruise. The cruise is where I wanted to start. He bought me a black dress. One that was tight and short. Skimpy and thin.

Cruise ships are cold and I am anemic. I remember every night him forcing me to wear it. Not letting me put anything over it. Me shivering constantly and looking at other people longing for anything they had. They had clothes on, were warm, and together. I was nothing to anyone.

We had an excursion. On a boat on one of the islands. I don’t remember which one. We got into a massive argument prior to the ship docking. I don’t remember what it was about, but I can tell you that during these arguments, I played a very little role. It was simply, typically just me taking a lashing for something I had no idea I did.
We got off the ship and I walked to a curb and sat down. I cried and he came over to me, bent down and whispered in my ear “your father was right, I never should have married you.” and walked off.

He walked towards the excursion boat. I waited there, on the curb for a moment, having to quickly decide what my next move would be. Staying there on the curb, running after him onto the boat, or getting back on the ship. I chose the boat.

I went on that excursion. I swam in the water with him reaching out my hand underwater as we swam next to one another. I wanted to hold his hand. To make peace.
We swam and held hands. I felt sick. helpless. Desperate and yet relieved. It was fucking terrible.

About 15 minutes later, we swam back to the boat with the rest of the people on the excursion. He was relatively far from me. As we swam, not 10 feet from the boat itself, I felt a bite. A hard bite. Then another. Then another. I was in pain as I yelled out “something bit me!!!” He told me I was being dramatic and swam off…

Sea lice. That was what was happening. Thousands of little bugs in the ocean were biting me. Just me. There was no one else around. I got back on the boat with welts all over my body as the crew dumped vinegar on me. Apparently that’s supposed to help in some way.

Spent the rest of the cruise in that little black dress, with sea lice welts, being raped regularly and having to pretend that it was all ok.

And yet out of all of it, my new life in Tennessee, the hell of that cruise, the life I no longer recognized, repeated rapes, being screamed at, cut off from my family, regular violence and being a stranger to the world around me… a whisper is what mattered most.

To this day, I have no idea what my father said to him.

I know I have always been a a lot to handle and while I’d like to believe that it is impossible that my father didn’t say that to him, I can’t. I actually do believe that my father said something to him. Maybe not that specifically, but he warned him in some way.

I have never forgotten that moment. There have been many in my short time with G which I am tempted to list in numerical order right now with no context. I want to do this for no other reason but for you, the reader to understand just how easy it is to be swept into an abusive relationship. It happened so quickly, quietly, loudly, and methodically. I can’t remember one good moment. Truly. In most cases, even in the most abusive of relationships, family or otherwise, I can list at least a handful of good moments. Moments that I treasure or even feel guilty about. Not with him though. Not with G.

“your father was right”

Maybe my father was right in whatever he told G privately at some point. Either way, I want to get across that what stands out most for me is just how flat and small I felt on that curb, knowing full well that there was nothing worse that could have been said or done to me in that very moment.

Those words, they flattened me. They took the last bit of life I had, and suddenly, I stopped envying, or wanting anything beyond that moment. Anything at all.

The only thing I did have left was power in the smallest of ways simply in accepting that there was no fight left. Not for him, and not for me.