2003-09-28 @ 2:00 a.m. | Blast from the Past, Part 1

Song in my head: Angry Inch

Mood: bleary

Current book: same


I'm posting this from my old saturngirl diary - in its original form - because it was relevant to the entry I'm writing tonight. I originally wrote this in July 2001, right after I left the Louse, so if you've read this before, my aplogies. But I actually don't think I had many readers then.. :-)

This damn Louse stuff, just trying to work through it...

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The first time he hit me is something that I can barely remember in a way, like a hint of a dream from long ago. A dream about someone else.

The first time he hit me, I do remember, I had made dinner, maybe the dijon chicken that we both liked so much, the recipe that will always make me think of Hedwig and the Angry Inch because I watched the documentary on the DVD the first time I made it.

We may have had the chicken. I do know that we watched October Sky, and I liked it, and it made me cry a little bit, in a good way. I don't even know what month it was. It was after I moved in in November, and after Christmas, maybe? I honestly can't remember.

A little later, as we got ready for bed, I started to cry in not as good a way. I was stressed out. Feeling discouraged and down about my life. About work, about feeling overwhelmed with the work to do at home. I turned to him in bed wanting some encouragement and affection and support. I wanted him to hold me while I cried so I could feel better, reassured.

He wouldn't do it. He said that I was looking for something outside of myself when I needed to look inside myself. He said that he couldn't give me what I wanted from him. He said that I was draining him with my neediness.

(And as I write this there is the voice in the back of my head worrying that maybe I'm misrepresenting his words, and afraid of his anger at that.. not physically afraid, but anxious.)

I got angry and upset and cried even harder. I felt so abandoned. I didn't think that I was asking so much. It seemed to me that when you love someone, it's not a burden to hold them when they're crying.

I was sobbing and yelling at the same time, and got up to go sleep in the living room, because it hurt so much to lay next to him, aching, and have him unable or unwilling to respond to me. But I also didn't want to leave.

I know I sat on the bed, still sobbing and yelling about how rejected I felt. I think he said something about how much I was hurting him with my words.

Just now I remember that he then literally kicked me off the bed. As I've been thinking about this, trying to remember, I kept thinking to myself, "I know I wound up on the floor, on the pile of clothes and books and toys by the wall, but how did I get there?"

He kicked me, that's how I got there. And as I shrieked and screamed in pain and in utter disbelief, he got on top of me. I honestly have no idea if he was hitting me while he was on top of me.

All I remember is that he clamped his hand over my mouth. Probably to shut me up, but I was so stuffed up, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe. It wasn't like when you've got a cold and you can't breathe. It was like I couldn't pull air into my lungs no matter how hard I tried. I was terrified. It felt like what I think drowning might feel like.

Finally I bit his hand so hard he pulled away. This was maybe 30 seconds after he covered my mouth, tops. It felt so fucking good to bite him, it made me sick. It made me think of when I would hit my brother and it would be such a release and then I wanted to throw up after I hated myself so much for it.

I don't remember much else. I don't quite remember how it ended. I don't remember much of what he said. I do think it might have been that he was sorry for hurting me, but didn't I understand how much I hurt him emotionally? I know he said something like that the last time that he hit me. It blends together. Much of it is distinct, but much of it blends.

I remember apologizing for biting him. I think I was really apologizing for liking it so much.

I know I slept next to him and felt safe. The rage was over.

I know I woke up the next morning, still stunned. He was still angry at me.

I spent the day online looking at resources for domestic violence. I kept thinking it didn't sound like what happened between us. I kept thinking that it was a fight that got physical. It didn't feel like him attacking me.

It felt like a dream I dreamed about someone else, faded and unsure. It felt like it had been someone I didn't even know who hit me.

We met later after I got out of work and had dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant near the Cloisters. My treat, of course, because 95% of the time I paid. We walked around Cabrini High School and to a park and a playground overlooking the Hudson.

He held my hand and apologized and hugged and kissed me. This was the man I knew, comforting and loving me. This was what I knew, and we went back home. Everything was back to normal.

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I wrote that, and I feel nothing now. No anger, no grief, no outrage, no pain, nothing. It might as well have been fiction.

I don't know what to think about that.


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