The Courage to Look

The search for pleasure after a violent relationship

Cold leaked through my shirt and my body melted into the wall behind me. I felt the small of my back tingle as he lifted up the loose fabric of my shirt, exposing my skin to the cold plaster. His hands crept up my hips and past my waist, finally landing on the soft fabric of my bra. I focused my attention on the rough wall behind me, trying to mentally distance myself from the weight of his body against mine.

So much for taking things slow.

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth where his teeth ripped into my lips. As it coated my tongue, I tried not to think about the pain and instead focused on the tips of my fingers.

Left pinky. Right pinky. 

Left ring finger. Right ring finger. 

Left middle. Right middle. 

Left index. Right index. 

I ignored his sharp teeth on my lips and his body grinding against mine. For a moment, my mind was miles away from the two of us. Just press each finger against the wall. Slowly work your way inward. But he kept going. His hand snaked along my chest, reaching up to encircle my throat. Despite my desperate gasps for air, his fingers only pressed harder on my windpipe. I felt my body go numb with panic as my heart pounded in my chest. I froze, disregarding any futile attempts at hiding my paralysis and wondering if this is how a rabbit feels when it crouches down to hide from a circling hawk. I should have said something. I could have told him to stop—but I didn’t. I abandoned all logic and just stood there, praying the moment would pass as his eagerness betrayed itself in a hard mass against my thigh. I closed my eyes, wincing as his grip around my throat clenched tighter with each successive thrust. I held myself still while he finished, and after he was done, I remained stuck against the wall as he pushed himself away from me. I fought back tears as we said goodnight. Those could wait until he was gone. 

How do you document a relationship? 

When I walked home that night, I felt damaged. Did he even know? How could he? If he relayed his version of our time together, I’m not sure it would align with what I had experienced over the months we were dating. I don’t know if he would even recognize himself in my account. I’ve come to accept the fact that he’ll never really understand how I felt, or what he did to me. But I don’t want to document this relationship to send a message or assign blame. I’m left alone, sifting through the countless memories we shared for my own sake, to answer the questions he left with me that still haven’t gone away. Some days they retreat to the back of my mind, only to come crashing back days later, demanding answers. What happened? How did I ignore a long chain of red flags? Why did I dismiss my fear and let that night, and so many more like it, come to define the way I experience and conceptualize sex? Could I have known where this relationship would take me? 

He said this type of sex was something he needed. He said it was like a hamburger: if he was hungry, he couldn’t be a good boyfriend to me. By letting him take care of his urges, I was really helping myself. He said that his ex had been okay with it. He said that she understood. So how could it be that bad? How was I supposed to know what was bad, anyway? No one else had ever treated me like this, but then again, I’d never been in a relationship. Maybe this was how people avoid getting bored with having just one partner for months on end. 

I don’t know if I ever believed the stories he told me, the explanations he weaved together in an effort to appeal to my logic. I tried to convince myself that this was working for me; it made him happy, so I should be happy, too. But on some level, I knew I wasn’t okay. No matter how hard I tried to rationalize my fears away, suppressing my concerns with the explanations he provided, my body screamed out to tell me I wasn’t safe. 

After that night in the basement, he didn’t even need to touch me for anxiety to flood my system. I felt tension build up whenever we were alone together, like electricity that charges the air just before a thunderstorm. That energy had once been an invigorating force—an inexplicable high only he could give me. At first, I couldn’t ask for more. Passion prevented gentle sensuality; desire made us rough in our haste to consume each other. I loved the rawness of it all. The excitement of a new relationship left my stomach churning, my heart racing, and my mind preoccupied with the next time our bodies would collide. But after that night in the basement, my attraction toward him was tainted with fear.

The shift was gradual, small moments of discomfort building on one another. Maybe everything would have been different if I had only spoken up. I didn’t want to see a problem, though. I wanted to keep playing out this fantasy without addressing the uncertainty rising up in my chest. I wanted to stay lost in his eyes, holding onto the thrill of falling in love through my rose-tinted glasses. I could brush each concern aside, but they were never truly gone. Doubt gnawed at the back of my mind, and unrest tainted every touch. A small part of my brain vigilantly kept lookout, painfully aware of my vulnerability.

Over the months we dated, I came to expect the unexpected. I knew that there would be no warning before he tried a new instrument of control. I knew that if I expressed any reluctance, he would be heartbroken, taking my hesitation as a sign of rejection. I learned to desensitize myself, to transport my mind somewhere else while he handled my body as if it were a tough piece of clay. Looking back, it feels like it all happened to another woman, like I’m reading someone else’s story—except for the disgust that fills me when I write about it. My skin crawls with the inexplicable desire for a steaming hot shower to burn off whatever remnants of him may still cling to me.

He put his hand over my mouth without a word of notice. No matter how hard I struggled and bit, his hand remained clamped over the only defense I had—my voice. He gripped my throat, leaving me desperate for air. He pinned my arms down and took control of my body. His legs wrapped around mine and kept me in place no matter how hard I fought. Each move felt like a ploy for control—I was stuck in an endless power struggle, defeated before I had an opportunity to protest. As the relationship developed, so did the surprises. The handcuffs came first, and I lost my ability to tap out. My fingers strained to hit the bedframe and catch his attention when my oxygen-deprived brain begged for air. Sometimes he would notice. Sometimes he wouldn’t. I never complained, even when I had to hide the bruises that flowered across my neck. His pocket knife would hover over my body, a threat that managed to paralyze me in an instant. My mind would race through the inevitable accident, the slip of a hand that could maim me. I was gagged and blindfolded and left without any way to communicate with him when, for the first time, I felt what it was like to be hit with a riding crop. I simply had to wait out the pain while I felt purple ink flow into my breasts, my arms, my thighs, and my waist—a promise of the bruises I would discover the next day. 

How can one person be responsible when communication becomes impossible? I was unsure of how far he would go; he left it as an unspoken, one-sided understanding between us. He never asked permission, he never checked in, but I never confronted him about it either. I didn’t tell him to stop. I didn’t tell him what scared me. Instead, I just gave up before he’d even begun.   

Every day he reached out in desperation to see me. Every day he spent hours claiming each and every inch of my skin. Every day he would take priority as I blew off friends, sleep, and meetings to spend time with him. I sought space as desperately as he sought my body, trying to reclaim my treasured solitude in stolen moments, hiding from the invasion that was creeping into every corner of my life. Space was a foreign concept to him—he took it as a sign of dwindling affection, a problem that needed to be fixed. He was an inescapable presence that haunted my room, my phone, my email, draining what little energy I had left. He engulfed every aspect of my life, and I was suffocated; I couldn’t turn him away without seeing pain and disbelief in his eyes, even when I reassured him of my unwavering affection. How could I turn him away? He needed me. I had come to dread the precipitating text, the scheduled “Come by after class,” but my feet would still carry me to his room. I felt like I was fading into his dirty sheets, watching my own skin meld with the patterned fabric. I had to breathe, if only for a moment.

“Can we not do anything this week?”

“Sure.”

 I decided a few days apart would be long enough for me to disentangle myself and reemerge a full person—but I wasn’t comfortable being alone anymore. My relationships with my friends seemed hollow. I didn’t care about my classwork, and my confidence had become inextricably tied to him. The moment I started to reassemble myself, I felt drawn back to the same lifeless sheets. It was an addiction. I knew that every word we exchanged and every touch we shared was slowly killing me—yet I couldn’t get by without them. My identity had been stripped away. Each time his body loomed over mine, his glassy eyes looking straight through me like I was nothing more than a glorified sex toy, I lost part of myself. The only person left to qualify this bag of skin, meat, and bones as human was him. He was all I had left to define myself. Yet even in my desperate need for him, I’m not sure it was ever truly love. 

I was drawn back to his bed two days later by the magnetic force of my own dependency. 

One strap of my revealing black dress held firmly onto my shoulder while its torn-away twin hung limply against my side, in mourning of the fissure that separated it from my skin. Beneath the dress, he had torn my lace underwear apart, and now he struggled to hold me down long enough to take advantage of the opening he’d created. I’d given him permission to rip the dress, but as he threw me off the bed and pinned me to the ground, I wondered how things had escalated so quickly. While he readjusted, I bolted up and rushed for the door, terrified, but my scalp screamed with agony as he yanked a fistful of hair and threw me back onto my stomach. My eyes were level with the grimy wooden planks on the floor and my cheek made intimate contact with the dust bunnies that lived beside my bed. I didn’t hold back as I fought to get up—scratching, kicking, and punching as I attempted to remove his body from mine. I begged him to stop. I don’t know why he kept going. He heard me—did he think I was playing along? I had no safe word to use, no way to tap out. My legs were strong enough to grant me a few moments of freedom as I desperately tried to recover my autonomy. I was barely able to get to my feet before I was reunited with the dust. Panic enveloped every other emotion, welling up inside my mind as he finally overpowered and took advantage of my exhausted, empty shell of a body. Was this what I had wanted? It must have been, otherwise I would have done something more to stop it. Why couldn’t I stop it? 

Afterwards, he seemed so happy with me. I only ever wanted to make him happy. For a moment, the look in his eyes went soft, and I felt like a person again. I wanted to soak in his approval and share in his happiness, but I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Can I punch you?”

His eyes widened with surprise at the request. “I guess?”

After everything that had just happened, he must have thought I was harmless. Fueled by the little power he had granted me, I swung my right fist into his arm, exposing the pent up fear, anger, and frustration that had infected my body—the disease he’d cultivated in me for over a year.

“Ow! That was hard.” He seemed mildly taken aback as he cradled his left shoulder. “What was that for?”

“Sorry,” the response jumped from my lips automatically as I returned to my detached state. “Just needed to get some energy out. I’m going to take a shower.”

The steaming water washed off the dust bunnies, while I practiced moving the muscles around the corners of my mouth to see if I could still smile. What a wonderful birthday present.   

I didn’t want to see him after that living fever dream. When I did, I was repulsed by every detail of his body, his facial expressions, his mannerisms. But the drug-like desire was still there. Our relationship left a hole in my life that only he could fill. I was insatiable—I craved his presence even when I feared him, even when he hurt me, even when I knew it was toxic. I needed him. Not for his mind or his body or his soul, but just for his ability to lend my life meaning. The fear I felt towards him was outweighed by my fear of floating adrift without a tether. No matter what problems we may have had, he was familiar—stable. For once in my life, I felt that somebody truly loved me. He would never abandon me. He would always be there, and giving him my body was the best way to ensure that he would stay. He could have whatever he wanted from me, just so long as he didn’t leave me. He had already taught me that I was nothing without him, and I’m a good student. I learned the lesson by heart. 

How did I come to be the neurotic one? Needy. Clingy. The emotional girl I had worked so hard to distance myself from. Why did I beg for him to stay when, not long ago, I would close my eyes and pray for him to leave? I knew the only way I could escape was to remove myself from him, and yet that was the one thing I simply could not do. I would try to break up with him: I would walk out of his room having called it off—self-assured and determined to reclaim my life—only to fall back at his feet a few days later, apologies tumbling out of my mouth. How could I leave him when he still owned my soul? When he took me back, I felt just as miserable and neurotic, but at least I wasn’t alone. 

Until I was. Thoroughly and utterly alone. At first, I was filled with restlessness as I thought of what he might be doing, if he was okay, if he was still thinking of me. I hadn’t really let him go. His ghost haunted the crevices of my life, emerging from any small reminder of our time together—but I was finally free to struggle and suffer on my own. Free to collect the broken shards he had left behind, free to pull myself together, and free to stand up on my own two feet. I have so many questions left to explore: What does it mean to be alone? What will a healthy relationship look like for me? How do I talk to people about what happened? I still don’t know how to answer those questions. At times I’m overwhelmed by loss, or yearn for the stability I thought he could’ve given me. 

But I also find peace as I become reacquainted with myself. I missed the independent, stubborn, strong-willed woman I was before him and will be after him. I missed being comfortable in my own skin. I missed having my own voice. I never belonged to him, so I have nothing to take back. It’s simply time to discover what was always there, waiting inside me for the moment I had the courage to look.

Relaxed, I closed my eyes and focused on how I felt, abandoning all my insecurities as my mind tuned in to my body. My entire being was flushed with a feeling of shock as my skin tingled with the same sensation that comes from transitioning between blistering hot water to snow. My legs spasmed uncontrollably, the muscles beneath my waist clenched and my body shook. Everything released as my eyes fluttered back for a moment before I sat forward and said, to no one in particular, “That was it.” 

I had bought this little pink device to discover my body on my own terms. He had never asked me what I liked, and I had never questioned it myself. Now that he was gone, perhaps it was time to find out. I was on a quest to discover what sex could be when I wasn’t trying to bend my will to his demands. I never would have guessed that I could actually enjoy my body. Who knew this didn’t have to hurt and tear and bruise? Who knew this didn’t have to leave me feeling empty and hollow and in tears? My little pink friend won’t fix all my problems—there is no fast track to rebuilding my identity after a toxic, codependent relationship. Yet, as I step into the shower, I feel more like myself than I ever have before. My addictive need for him, for his ability to define me, has dissipated. I get dressed and start one more beautiful day, alone.

By Anonymous

Art by Patil Khakhamian

 Body Issue | February 2020