Thread by @NSQE

I don’t usually talk about myself. Not, like, serious stuff. But it’s 4 in the morning, I can’t sleep, and this story keeps coming back to me.

https://twitter.com/abc13houston/status/1025202123083075585

So let’s talk about my thing.

Yes, trigger warnings. Because that video was one. You'll see why. 1/16

When I was fifteen, I had that first love, the one that rocks your world. He died. This story isn’t about him. But the context is important. After he died, I wouldn’t really have a relationship for two years; I was still a mess. 2/16

When I did finally have another serious relationship, it was the end of my senior year in high school. This is /that/ story. Understand it in context: a teenager’s belief that if she was going to have a relationship after the loss of a first love, it had to work. 3/16

It started good. He was funny, I needed someone who made me laugh. But we’d fight — bitterly — over small things. I stopped a game of Zelda he was playing. Then I needed to be available on all my lunch breaks. Then I was spending too much time rehearsing for the play I was in. 4/

Then…I wasn’t interested in having sex (he'd been my first), so he just didn’t bother listening to the “no.”

Then, opening night of that play, he wanted to keep fighting with me while I was about to be on stage, so when I turned to walk away he threw me down a flight of stairs.

Then, when I ended a fight he was having with me over the phone, he drove over to my house. I locked the doors. He broke in so he could come at me in person.

My mother came home while he was shouting at me in my room; I got in trouble, but thank god she came home. 6/16

This culminated in a day where I was trying so hard to break up with him, trying to get out of all of what I still wouldn't admit was abuse, and I told him I was done, and I got in my car.

And he got in his.

And he chased me.

7/16

This is still my most frightening memory, all the years later: him chasing me at very uncomfortable speeds through the streets of the city where I grew up, me desperate to find a cop car, unable to, and knowing that soon I was going to run out of /city/.

8/16

And then I had to make a left turn. It was either make a left turn or head out into country roads. And the light was red.

And he jumped out of his car, jumped onto the hood of my car, and started pounding on the windshield, trying to break it. All I could do was scream.

9/16

And you guys, I went /back/ to him. Because I couldn’t not. Because where was I going to go. I was in high school. I was about to graduate. I couldn’t tell my parents. I couldn't tell my friends. I could barely even admit to myself that this relationship was a failure. 10/16

But mostly because I was supposed to be a strong and smart young woman, and strong girls didn’t get into relationships like this, so I was too humiliated to get out. So I went back, and then after our prom, he blew past my “no” again, and again, and again. 11/16

And when I finally managed to leave just before graduation, he blamed my gay best friend for seducing me away. Definitely wasn’t anything he did, right? 12/16

Anyway. So, a tiny few of the people on my TL were friends with me in high school. Most of you don’t know why I dropped out of everything at the end there. Hey, thirty years later, now you know. Hashtag-me-too.

13/16

It's past 5 now, and I don't really have a moral to this. Teach your sons. But teach yourselves, too: this happens. It happens to strong women. It happens to smart girls. It happens to women (and NBs, and men, I see you) who don't secretly love it /or deserve it/.

14/16

I just...keep thinking about the girl in that car in the gas station. She isn't me, it's not the same. But she's also trying to get away from a man who has decided he is entitled to her, and is raging because she won't make herself available to him.

15/16

And all the people who keep saying she must have done something to deserve it. That it couldn't possibly be just because she didn't give him her number. There must be more to the story.

Yeah. Fuck you all. You've never been under that windshield. I hope you never are.

16/16