Relaxing on my couch with my dog at my side, I’m browsing a “RuPaul’s Drag Race” forum when my daughter messages me:
Mom idk what to do
What is up
I’m expecting a cooking question. But she says,
I feel very stuck and i’m not happy here anymore
but i feel like i can’t leave
Why do you feel you can’t leave
Lucy’s in Brooklyn, a continent away from me. She dropped out of college after the lonely pandemic freshman experience: online lectures, dining hall meals served in styrofoam containers to go, and a lonely dorm with social distancing protocols. She took a job, saved up, then traveled around Europe for months. After coming home to San Francisco for Christmas, she went to New York, intending a short stay before going back to Europe until her savings ran out, but soon she told me, “I can’t imagine leaving Brooklyn.” She stayed in a hostel for free in exchange for doing some work, then managed to crash with a distant relative, and when that relative finally asked her to leave, she moved in with a “friend” who was later revealed to be Eric, a recently college grad working part-time for his well-to-do father.
Normally reserved and highly private, she lets out a burst of typed emotion:
Because of eric because i’m unhappy with him and shouldn’t have committed to him, he is so different from me and i think he’s a sociopath. i tried to break up with him a couple times but he talked me out of it. and if we fight i either get anxious and make everything better, or i just feel so helpless i give up and disengage, so nothing ever changes. it’s my fault but i don’t know. i don’t feel strong enough to get out and i am scared that idk what will happen. and it’s easier just to stay and wait for things to improve even though it makes me unhappy. he didn’t want me to leave which is why i stayed in new york at all. but i should have been stronger then, cuz now i feel in too deep and i’m not happy anymore, when he is bored he does things to aggravate me cuz he thinks it’s funny when i am mad and yelling. can get by if i just ignore stuff he does and keep everything to myself, and every day feels the same 🙁
I am still and quiet and focused; the only thing in the world right now is my daughter Lucy.
Sweetheart, you cannot stay in a relationship like that. it’s unhealthy. the fact that he thinks it’s funny when you’re mad is deeply disturbing
Do you want one of us to come or do you feel you can leave
I am scared cuz i don’t know how he will react
That’s why it is probably better not to tell him you’re leaving permanently
Leaving is a scary time
I love you so much. Please be safe and leave.
“ANTON!” I shout. No response. “ANTON!” Eventually my husband appears. “It’s Lucy.” I hand him my laptop. “Read from here down,” I say, pointing. He looks at me quizzically and takes the computer. His expression, which I describe as “resting serial killer face”, doesn’t change, but he carries the laptop over to the other couch and sits down, leaning very close to the screen because he came down without his computer glasses or reading glasses. After a while, he stands up and looms over me.
“I don’t get why she doesn’t just leave,” Anton says.
“It’s not that easy! It never is.”
He regards me with the uncomprehending stare of a six-foot tall, cis, heterosexual white man, who has previously confided in me, “I really enjoy having all this privilege.”
“Remember how long it took Mary to leave?” A friend was in an abusive marriage, enduring black eyes and busted lips and humiliation for years.
“Keep me posted,” Anton says. “I’m not going to say anything, because I’m not supposed to know. She didn’t tell me.”
Do you want your dad to come get you?
Seriously. I say him because he’s more intimidating.
If it were the old me, I’d book a flight and get ready for anything to happen, but I’ve been a very unintimidating, low-energy invalid since I contracted long covid.
All night I fret. In the morning, there’s nothing from Lucy. When I’m not thinking about Lucy, I’m remembering when I was her age. I was also far from home, studying abroad in Spain. The boyfriend I had then was a lot like Lucy’s. Both were gifted athletes: my ex played soccer professionally, Lucy’s boyfriend was a college football star. We each tried to break up with these boyfriends multiple times but they talked us out of it. They came from wealthy families and had the advantages of money.
I can’t stop thinking about something I’ve managed to keep out of my mind for decades: the night my boyfriend became angry when he was unable to ‘come’ after taking I don’t know what. For literally hours he kept joylessly using my body, swearing in frustration at his inability to finish. Eventually I gave up asking, pleading, and struggling. I waited for it to end, staring at the ceiling or at a wall, trying not to be in my body. When he fell asleep, I pulled myself together to leave, but he woke up and laughed as he pulled me back into the bed and pushed back into me. It was dawn before I managed to sneak out, and I leaned against the elevator wall, exhausted. I went home, showered, changed clothes, and walked to class, my zombie body moving while my brain replayed images from the night before. Then, like a jump scare in a bad horror movie, I saw my boyfriend sitting on a low wall in front of my school. I recoiled, skittering away, as he hopped down and came towards me. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to come,” he said. He looked at me. “I raped you. I’m so sorry.”
The fact that he used the R word — “I can’t believe I raped you” he said several times, shaking his head– disarmed me. I believed him when he talked about his remorse. I ignored the fact that we talked more about his pain than mine. I didn’t tell anyone what happened. A large part of how I held myself out to the world was being a feminist and highly independent, and I thought being a rape victim who kept dating the man who’d done it would destroy my image. I was embarrassed.
Weeks later, he got aggressive again with me, and this time I could see a sadistic joy on his face. This time I told my good friend Roberta what happened. Roberta was a very intense graduate student from New Jersey, and she was not going to hear of this happening again. To my great relief, she didn’t change her opinion of me, just of him. “He’s dead to us,” she said repeatedly. “What is he? Dead.”
After days of texting with me, Lucy finally bought a ticket home, but it’s a roundtrip ticket. I know my own experiences may be over-influencing how I react, and I need to be careful not to make assumptions. But what I want is to be her Roberta. “He’s dead to us,” I will say. “What is he? Dead.”
***
***
The ManifestStation publishes content on various social media platforms many have sworn off. We do so for one reason: our understanding of the power of words. Our content is about what it means to be human, to be flawed, to be empathetic. In refusing to silence our writers on any platform, we also refuse to give in to those who would create an echo chamber of division, derision, and hate. Continue to follow us where you feel most comfortable, and we will continue to put the writing we believe in into the world.
***
Our friends at Corporeal Writing are reinventing the writing workshop one body at a time.
Check out their current online labs, and tell them we sent you!
***
Inaction is not an option,
Silence is not a response
Check out our Resources and Readings
