These days, I barely remember the good part of him. Only the bad. One particular occurrence has been ringing in my head for days now, we had a fight and he said “well two wrongs don’t make a right, you should have counseled me when I did something bad rather than getting revenge”. Ah okunrin! I don’t even remember what we were fighting about but I still remember that statement. But why was he so incapable of being accountable for his actions? Why was his action not the problem, but my reaction was. Two wrongs don’t make a right? Honey, one wrong don’t make a right either.
I’ve been trying not to think of him, and failing. He disrupts my thoughts during the day and invades my dreams at night. He has acted so many roles in my dreams that he deserves a Grammy’s. Still, it’s surprising how he’s always good in my dreams. Could it be…that my subconscious is playing tricks, determined to see him as an angel, a saviour when he was in fact Lucifer reincarnated.
I do wonder how he is. If he’s happy. Cause I’m not. It comes like a thief in the night, the memories, the realization dawns slowly. Abuse is a funny thing. I was talking to a friend about some of the things he did to me, and my friend said “I’m so sorry you were abused” and I said to my friend “What do you mean ‘abused’?”. I laughed it off but when I got home, I thought about it deeply. Was I abused? Was the abuse covered by a blanket of faux protection? Was he aware of what he was doing?
That’s another question we must ask, dear reader, is an abusive person still abusive if they frankly have no idea what they are doing and it is all coming from a place of love? Can you fault them for it? Can you fault a child for doing a bad thing with no prior knowledge of good and evil? Can you blame a child who in his mind was doing something good but it got botched?
Manipulation was one of his many talents, he did it so brilliantly, he would have you thinking it was your idea. And oh the gaslighting, worthy of a mention..if I had a dollar for everytime I heard “your memory sucks, I never did that”..I’d have a lot of dollars basically. And the insecurity, not about our relationship, no. About himself. Although it did spill into our relationship.
It is amazing to see how he was so mature at other things, his business was going on amazingly, he was becoming the man of his dreams. Yet, he was a child, insecure, petty, immature. I remember one time he made a grammatical blunder and I laughed and corrected him, he broke up with me the next day. He maintained that he was right even after we googled it. He insulted me, told me I didn’t know everything and that no one likes a smarty pants. He insinuated that I insulted him, and I denied that, I told him I did laugh because it was funny and that if it was me, I would expect him to laugh to, cause that’s what I want in a relationship. Then he said, well maybe we shouldn’t be in a relationship, maybe you should be with someone who can speak good English for you. I said okay.
He came back two days later, on his knees. Begging. Figurative knees. Taking back all he had said. That always confounded me, cause why bother saying it if you’re still going to ask me to forget it? He did that a lot. Saying something and taking it back. Hurting me like no other has managed to, and no other would get to. You see dear reader, I have closed off my heart to humans, thrown away the key as they say.
Ah, I remember that night, there was a major fight on twitter between a feminist and a misogynist. I was in no way involved, yet, my man brought the matter to me. Telling me to talk to my gender, and that women can never be equal to men. That’s not how God meant it to be. He said men will always be superior and that the only thing we as women can do is to placate the men, and try to reason with them. I am literally quoting his exact words. I should have ran. Instead, I apologized for the actions of my fellow feminists. I said I would talk to them. The absolute ghetto.
I think I know why I didn’t run. And why a lot of women don’t run. How do you go about defining good and evil? They come together. He was good. Most of the time, he was great. He made me feel safe, protected me, took care of me..well of course, there was a time I suggested things we could do in our relationship and he said he believed I had time to think of inconsequential things like that because I was jobless..but I digress. He was kind, and generous, and he was so helpful. He put me in every one of his future plans, which was nice. He was a good person. I can’t deny that. He really was. Or is. But sometimes good people do bad things, frequently.
Don’t be fooled. I did bad things too. And I knew exactly what I was doing. But in my defence, it was fun.