Leaving
It is believed that when one turns eighteen years old, you’ll find your soul mate. That you will find the other half of your soul, someone who will love you unconditionally and selflessly. Someone who will lift you up with love and understanding.
What they don’t tell you about is what happens when yours isn’t like that. What happens when the one who’s supposed to love you above all else, is the one hurting you? When the only time that they’ll touch you is to inflict you pain?
John and I meet at a bar, when I was 19 and he was 20. The connection was instant, it was everything everyone had told me. The sparks, the pull towards one another. It was perfect. We were instantly drawn to one another. His eyes, those blue eyes that reminded me of a perfect summer day with clear blue skies, they seemed to light up when they met my brown ones.
Everything was absolutely perfect at first. John was attentive and kind, he always wanted to be with me. Looking back, that should have been my first warning sign. It’s common for Soul mates who have just met to want to spend as much time together, to get to know each other, to be in the same room... And it seemed like John was like that to everyone else (and to me) , it was cute. But he would get so angry when I couldn’t see him for a day, no matter the reason. And as the days turned into months if I wasn’t with him, I was at work, he made me feel so guilty when I saw someone else, and that’s how I stopped slowly seeing my family, friends, I even stopped talking to my coworkers so they wouldn’t invite me for drinks after work. After six months he had managed to completely isolate me, and I let him.
I let him because I was too blind and naïve to notice what he was doing, and so was everyone around me. The are close to none cases of mates hurting each other, so no one knows to look for the signs, because no one in the right mind can understand how or why you would let your chance at real happiness go.
John’s ‘reason’ was alcohol. Shocker, we met at a bar. Had I gotten there 30 minutes later he would have already been passed out drunk or hooking up with a random girl, but he never stopped doing that. He wasn’t really an alcoholic, he wouldn’t be drunk all day, house a mess, he would drink mostly on the weekends, but when he did drink, it transformed him into another human. Gone was the sweet caring man who was supposed to protect me, and out came the monster to play.
Everything was a problem, the way I talked the may I dressed, how people looked at me. Any and every mistake was inspected under a microscope. It didn’t matter that the glass broke after he shoved me against the table, or that the blood got on the carpet when he broke my nose. No, everything was my fault. It always was.
I couldn’t find someone willing to help me, I was just told to deal with it and help him, because HE was sick and HE needed help and I was supposed to be his soulmate and love him unconditionally, even if that meant killing me.
That’s why I had to be very careful and precisely plan my every move. I couldn’t just wake up one day and leave, he had complete control over my life. He knew exactly where I had to be and with whom at every hour of the day, he even had almost complete control of my bank accounts, luckily I still had my credit card for groceries and emergencies. So over the next eight months I made small withdrawals of money, excusing it as money for car repairs, or medicine, or more groceries at a new place where I couldn’t use my card.
It was surprisingly easy. As I had never had a reason to lie to him...why would I start now. So everything I said he completely believed, without any doubt or question.I will admit that at times it was a bit infuriating just how easy I could lie to him, and how he simply believed me, how it made me realise that he never truly cared about me if he thought I was paying attention to him and doing as I was told. It hurt knowing that if I hadn’t been so blinded by him and what he was supposed to be, I could have been free a long time ago.
When I left, it didn’t hurt like people said it would, it wasn’t...scary. Yes, there was a bit of fear that he would find out and stop me, but I was so confident in my plan and for the first time in a long time I was so confident in myself that there was no place for doubt of fear. I only felt proud and ready.
