Chapter 7 The Orange Curtains #4
It can take more than coming face-to-face with death to get out of a traumatic relationship.
It’s not rare for a woman in my situation to stay even when she had the chance to leave.
Society often judges women for staying in bad relationships, but it’s not as easy as all that.
I’ve lived it. It can feel impossible to break free of these kinds of relationships right up until the moment it’s not impossible.
But for the terrible, seemingly endless stretch during which we stay, or leave and then return, perceptions are warped, feelings subsumed, and fleeing can be harder than staying because remaining in a pain that one feels comfortable in can be easier than facing the disaster of a relationship that’s over.
More than all that, I think I was still so terrified, in fear for my life.
But there’s another truth: I was allured by the craziness in him. I guess I’ll never know the full truth of who he was.
There’s a certain chaos that casts a shadow over all the relationships I’ve had.
Not that they were all like this guy; it’s just that they were lost souls who I thought I could fix.
Over and over, I’ve picked men who didn’t treat me very well because I lacked the kind of self-worth that denies such men any kind of sway or power.
All too often a small voice in me agreed with them that I wasn’t worth the love I craved.
I stayed longer than I should have, and damage begat damage begat damage, until now here I am, lesions pulsing on my brain like broken stoplights.
No one should shame a woman for staying in a terrible situation like the one I faced. Because when we’re in it, we really don’t know what to do. We’re scared.
There should be no shame in staying—please: we are already too hard on ourselves—but there is no survival in it either.
After the real end, through the years he would send me mixtapes of music, things he’d painted from memory, even champagne bottle corks from bottles we had drunk together. It felt like he was always trying to get at me, to remind me he was still around.
In early 1993, a young actor right out of college by the name of David Boreanaz made his first credited appearance on TV in Married…
with Children. He played Kelly’s love interest on an episode called “Movie Show.” I met him first thing that workweek.
David and I quickly became friends—he was funny and kind and we would pass our lunchtimes together.
When, on Thursday of that week, yet again something happened with my boyfriend, I called David, even though I’d known him for only four days.
“I can’t be alone in my house,” I said, and David showed up at the log cabin to keep me company.
David made me feel safe in my house, and a few days later, he and I started a thing.
We dated for a few months, and even though it didn’t last, he helped me eventually leave.
I adore David for that. Thinking back, I can’t say enough how much I appreciated him for being the reason I was finally able to get back to normal.
After my time with David ended, I went from relationship to relationship, as if being with someone was insurance against going back to that terrible boyfriend. With enough time apart, I felt his hold on me wane, until finally it was done. I haven’t heard from him in decades.
With him finally gone from my life for good, I sold the log cabin.
I couldn’t deal with the memories of being there anymore.
The place was filled with his ghost and what he did to me: the lighter thrown, the blood spilled, the tequila forced down my throat, the nights he’d disappear into his film studio, which he’d set up in our guesthouse, and stay there till five in the morning, leaving me alone and wondering who this man in my house really was.
Living there became too painful. The vibes were wrong; the slip-and-slide gang had mostly moved on, but the wisteria still bloomed and does to this day, its roots so strong, its blossoms so beautiful—a reminder and a symbol of my resilience.
But the entire property also felt small and claustrophobic, and the eighty steps from the street felt like eight hundred some days.
So on the back of the success of Married… with Children and the movies I’d made, I bought myself a house farther up on Lookout Mountain, secluded and beautiful. It has a gate, and security, and a koi pond, and when you look out, all you can see are trees.
I still live in that house. With my daughter, and my chimes, my fireplace, and my nag champa… and with these memories, swirling around my bed at night, ghostly and perverse, and I’m wondering where everyone is, wondering what I did wrong, what I did to deserve what happened to me.
I don’t know if this experience gave me strength.
I only know that in the subsequent years, I found a calmness and a serenity.
Perhaps I would have gotten there eventually, regardless of whether this had happened to me.
I don’t know if I can say that there was a big lesson from all of it, except that it happened, and perhaps by sharing it, someone else might be able to escape more quickly than I did, or else perhaps they might be able to listen more closely to the voice that tells them when something is terribly wrong.
I certainly learned to listen to my heart, to my gut. And ever since I haven’t been controlled by anything or anyone.
I’m way too important. My opinions matter.
I am stronger, resilient, like that wisteria. What I went through brought me knowledge, a knowledge born out of being angry and scared.
In the years after all this, I found my footing, but I had to be constantly vigilant about how it screwed me up when it came to relationships.
I wasn’t looking for just any man, not looking for a father figure.
I was looking for an equal. Before, I would attract guys who I could control, or who controlled me.
I was forever trying to please, please these men who seemed so unsettled in themselves.
I also learned not to sell myself short. I learned to have some respect for myself. If men I dated didn’t see that, then they were the ones who needed a new perspective, not me.
Finally, I could see.
I haven’t seen that boyfriend since. It was as if a ghost, an Amityville horror, washed up at the door of my beautiful cabin, a house that’s long since been demolished and replaced with a monstrosity, its new owners unaware, I imagine, that once not so long ago a bunch of dickheads partied their asses off in all the zestful stupidity of a long-gone youth.