Lines

My best friend does not know I'm dating someone. 

Granted, she lives in London, but this is still unusual for us. I try not to think about what it means, why I haven't said anything to her. I also try not to think about what means that my roommates don't know I'm seeing someone, that I won't introduce him to any of my friends, that we only see one another after long nights out when my house is empty. That every time we do see one another I feel awful when he leaves. That sometimes when he's angry and yelling it frightens me. And how often he's angry and yelling.

I try not to think about it.

I need some comfort but he's screening my calls. I never expected to be this person. The woman who keeps calling back. Who leaves angry and sad voicemails. The type of woman who hears Ain't Too Proud to Beg in her head on a regular basis. The kind of woman who regularly recognizes the pleading note in her voice, and who sometimes thinks I don't love you and who recognizes this is not how we're supposed to treat one another, but who just can't stop calling back.

It is one of what feels like a thousand fights. One of the late Friday nights after an angry voicemail has sparked off angry texts from him and apologies from me until suddenly he's there and screaming on a street corner and I'm trying to walk away.

It feels like we have done this a thousand times. It feels like we will always do this.

It ends the way it always ends. I'm crying in public, something I hate, and he conjures up a cab and just wants to make sure I get home safely. And in the cab it's his turn. He starts to plead with me. You're crazy. It's not like that. I promise. You're crazy. That's stupid. Why would you think that? And when we get to my house, softly, I'm sorry. 

That's all it takes, I guess, because I don't know whose hands are whose and which of us is pulling the other up the staircase. And in a few minutes in the dark I hear I told you that you were crazy and I wonder how we ended up here, again.  

After he's gone (he never stays), I will say These are the shitty things we do to one another. It helps, a little, to draw lines around what just happened, to make it both of our fault. Saying these are the shitty things we do to one another splits the fault. Some of it belongs to him, but I'm sure most of it is mine.

These are the shitty things we do to one another. 

 I will say it again and again and again until the sun comes up.

***

My Mother is Concerned.

We're on vacation as a family for the first time in years, and I'm in a particularly bad mood. Something on television the night before set me off, and I can't seem to pull it back together. I'm driving her to the grocery store and she's listening to the lyrics to a song I've restarted twice since we've been in the car together. She asks, tentatively, "What is this song about?"

I don't mean my voice to have a hard, bitter edge to it.

"The shitty things men do to women."

She's quiet, I'm quiet, and the album plays to the next track. When she speaks her voice is softer than I'm used to hearing. 

"You know not all men to shitty things to women, right Kelly Marie?" 

I want to be able to tell her yes.

***

I put lines around the relationship. I mark its beginning and where it went wrong and after the fight on the corner or the one at my house or the one I leave a party to have over the phone I say This is the end. I'm putting a line here. This is enough. 

Even after I've said enough, enough hurting one another, enough of doing shitty things to one another, enough tearing one another to shreds, I still leave voicemails. We still text and fight. I still cry, frequently, and he still comes over and whispers in the dark You're crazy. You're crazy. You're crazy. And I feel crazy. For the first time in my life, I feel like there is something deeply wrong with me.

I draw lines around it. I try not to think about it.

When he leaves (because he never stays) I wonder what will need to happen for it to finally be enough.

***

Even with years of retrospection, I take blame for things that weren't my fault. I say here are the shitty things we did to one another. Because saying here are the shitty things you did to me is too hard, too painful. It is too true to say you hurt me. Intentionally. Deliberately. And with great satisfaction. You hurt me and you loved it.

So I draw lines around it. Because it is too big to process.  And I think that I've drawn the lines successfully until I wake up screaming nonononononononono from a nightmare. I think those lines are keeping things in place until I try to ask someone out and am relieved when he says no so that I won't have to worry about drawing the lines in the right spot this time.

I realize this isn't staying behind the lines. And that I am so tired of redrawing those lines.

You hurt me.