Picking up from yesterday –
So, as we’ve covered, I didn’t need to respond!
Nonetheless, I said something dumb like, ‘Too bad. Whatever you’re doing is probably not as fun as doing me? 😉’ or whatever – something dumb like that.
And I thought I was at least sort of opening the door for flirting (give me some of that good ol’ normalcy in our banter, right?!), (and/or for telling me if there was some kind of issue for why he was backing away that I was unaware of). Like, I thought I was opening the door for some easy conversation.
But, I could also see how that could come off as kinda passive-aggressive instead of flirtatious (though I did not mean to start a fight!).
And I know I didn’t need to say that. But not for one single second did I think it would make the night turn the way it did.
He went off on me about how he didn’t have to justify his time to anyone, and how he would NOT have this conversation through text.
He could have calmly told me things had been weird, and he’d prefer to discuss it later. But no, he just laid into me about anything he could think of while I was sitting in this chair at the hair salon with all this foil on my head. He said he refused to have a conversation with me – and yet wouldn’t stop telling me all these things in anger/tearing me down/being so mad.
And I was profusely apologizing, and when things seemed calm for even a second, I tried to deescalate the situation with some jokes and some flirting. Hahaha, laugh laugh laugh. We’re okay now… Except no we’re not. He just would not stop his cavalcade of verbal anger.
I was crying tiny tears down my cheeks as inconspicuously as possible in the hair salon. I could see myself in the mirror – with stuff in my hair waiting on yet another step of my beautify-ing, thinking about how I had spent the *whole* day getting ready just for him, and he is talking to me like I am sub-human.
And I remember so, so very distinctly at the time thinking, “no one who cared about me even a liiiittle bit – no one who felt an ounce of respect for me – would ever (ever) talk to me like this. I understand that sometimes people get angry and raise their voice or whatever. But there’s a difference between just like ‘a little over the top but within the rhelm of normal angry’ and this – whatever this terrifying dehumanizing rage this was.”
[And I’m sorry because I don’t want to overplay this up. I know this was a fight over the phone. And obviously it doesn’t even come close to how bad some things in person were. (How could it? He doesn’t have the ability to physically harm me over the phone.) But knowing how bad things could get in person, I still found this phone call scary, and totally dehumanizing, and a memory which really stuck out to me – which is, I suppose, why we’re talking about it now.]
As I ran through that in my head right then, and through the night and for the next nights after, I just said so many times, “no one who cares about me would ever speak to me that way.” I knew that – I knew that as fact. But did I listen to that fact? I did not.
As he would not stop berating me, I finally told him that I hope he has a really good birthday, but I’m not sure I’d see him tonight, after this, after all. And he, of course, was furious. Oh, I’m “not even gonna come to his party now? Am I that spoiled that just because he doesn’t want to f*** me, I’m gonna pout in the corner and not go?”
I calmly told him it had absolutely nothing to do with that, but with the fact that the way he was speaking to me was completely unacceptable. And he didn’t hear me for a second. “I know there’s nothing else it could be. There’s no other reason.” And he stayed firm with that line, even though I told him it only had to do with how he was talking to me.
And we ended that conversation with him saying something like he couldn’t believe what a baby I was being, that if he wasn’t going to have sex with me I wouldn’t go to his party (which was so incredibly far from what was actually happening… [but you know how abusers manipulate situations to fit their narrative, sorry, I know that sounds clinical… I’m just sometimes giving context, even if just to help myself a little, and thanks for listening along the ride with me]).
And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.
[Or, you can read more in the sexual assault series.]