The Mistake

What is a mistake for you? Is it a thing you did unintentionally? Or is it something you do, that is actually completely normal for yourself?

August 15 - Eleven months, sixteen days

Ann is seen by her boyfriend laughing with a guy called Mark. He is a new guy from her workplace. On that day she forgot that Connor's truck broke down and that he will be waiting for her at the place where she works. She says, "He has seen me laugh and push Mark, the new guy. [...] I know what he is thinking, I know where his mind is going. [...] He's steaming. I know the fear he has of losing me overpowers everything else, even his common sense."

She knows that he wont believe her no matter what she says. He will just replay a story over in his mind that is far from the truth. 

And I wonder, how can anyone do something like this? Why can't the other person be happy without you? Laughing, Smiling, these are all natural you do it life. Who are you to get mad, when you know this person is having fun without you?

Ann wonders why she doesn't have friends. Why no one talks to her. She knows its her own doing. It's her fears that something will happen and she'll say the wrong things to the wrong people, and they will interfere somehow.

Ann acts like how anyone would, in a domestic violent relationship.  I myself was afraid to be seen with people. With anybody. I rather sit in a corner doing nothing and talking to nobody, rather than to be seen with people and later getting it from my boyfriend. At the beginning, I was a girl with many friends. I laugh alot, I smiled alot and I sang alot. These were taken away from me by my boyfriend. Everything I loved. When I did smile or laughed, I got screamed and scolded at  by him. I always wondered who told him that. Who was so cruel to tell my boyfriend whether I was happy or not. After alot scoldings, I started to isolate myself. From my friends, classmate and family. I wasn't given the permission to smile nor laugh. Everyone I once knew became Strangers.

I was afraid like Ann. I was afraid that if I do talk to someone, will they tell him what I said? Will they tell him how I reacted? You may think I am overreacting, but if you there, and you heard at least half the things my Ex boyfriend knew, you would have been amazed. 

Once I was scolded because I went to the bathroom in school, and I didn't tell him, which was considered for him, as a waste of opportunity to see each other.

After Ann finishes her work, she walks with Connor towards her car. She's afraid. She says, "I know what this silence means, all I can do is wait for it to explode." She feels claustrophobic and she is considering running. She's in denial. "Maybe this time he'll talk to me. He's getting a little better [...] maybe this time he will understand." 

That's when he grabs her wrist and squeezes hard. "It's always too much, too intense, too everything."

I know this feeling too well. After being seen by somebody, he comes up to me. At the beginning, he never touch me in public. He always waited until we were alone in a confined room. The waiting was the worst. To know what was going to happen when we were alone. At the beginning I tried talking to him. Telling him that what I did was not wrong and explaining to him what I was thinking at that time. I either got a reply to "shut up" or just nothing. Once we were alone, I was belittled so badly. I was called names. I was then pushed around until I fell. I would have gotten up on my feet and he would either crush my wrist or my arms. It usually left a mark, but it was mostly cold season at that time so I could mostly hide them. That was the beginning. 

After a few months, he would let out his anger in public. Screaming and shoving me around. In school I would start crying knowing he was angry. Hiding myself in the bathroom, only going out when I hear the bell ring. When I was crying, he would stop me by punching my in my stomach, making me not able to breath nor cry. 

After a while, I became immune to all of it. I hardly smiled, laughed or cry. I was just a robot.

Connor shoved Ann to the floor. He was spitting bad words to her, being cruel. She considers herself as lucky, as he let out his anger to the wall and not to her. But she is trembling with fear. After the fight, Connor understands that what he did was wrong. He apologizes, begs for forgiveness and pretended it never happened. She wishes that he would return to be like how they first met. But she knows that he wont. And this scar is from a love that has gone wrong. Sadly no one but herself can see it.

My story has a different ending. He never felt remorse. Not a single bit. We never spoke of it. But I know he never felt any sign of remorse at all. None.

Ann asks a very important question, A question that I asked myself everyday. "Why does he get to be two different people, and I only get to be myself, the one who is here to take what he has to give, and who is here to pick up the pieces afterwards."

It's too bad I didn't keep any pieces for myself

Monster

noun

1. a large, ugly, and frightening imaginary creature.
2. a thing of extraordinary or daunting size.

verb

1. criticize or reprimand severely.

August 23 - Eleven months, twenty-four day

Connor describes his own father as a Monster. Ann finally sees the monster being unleashed, when Connor's father destroys the porch, he himself and his wife built the month before. Connor's mother, Nancy, is crying and begging her husband, Jack to stop. Ann doesn't understand how she is capable to do that, because she is afraid of him.
Connor's mother has nothing left. She is invisible and her eyes are empty. She is not yet fifty, but she has gray hair and deep lines in her face, and there is a sadness about her that never leaves. Nancy is haunted by her life.
Ann is afraid that by looking into Nancy's eyes she will see herself.

Being Invisible is a choice. By being invisible you learn to be quiet and not to react. Because those who choose to be invisible, do it because they are afraid. They are afraid that by being visible, they will be even more exposed to the horrifying world that they are in right now. By saying or doing something wrong, a mistake , can trigger something, which can cause the bomb to ignite.
Those people who decide to be invisible lose alot in life. They feel empty, which makes their eyes look dull and deserted. By feeling empty you lose sense of life and you start to become best friends with the only thing you know, sadness.
To continue surviving in this world you call "Home", you must make alot of sacrifices. Firstly putting the other person needs in front of yours.
That is the right thinking, but you should never just think about them and forget about yourself.
That is a thing I needed to understand myself. I never understood why I must take care of myself. I only thought about him. Always. He took this for his advantage and used it against me. He used his mind games to manipulate me in thinking if I don't do it,  I don't love him. I always wanted to prove him wrong. That made me lose the Battle I never knew I was fighting in.

The moral of the story is: "Never just put your significant other before yourself. As you are as important as them."

The story continues after the fight at Connor's parents house

Ann is in her bed with Connor. She stares at the mosaic heart she made for Connor. The heart is a metaphor. The glass shards symbolises Ann. Each of the piece is another piece of herself she gave to Connor.
There are small pieces and big ones. The glass aren't all perfect. They have edges, splitters, rough edges but also smooth ones.
This is the way a person should be. Nobody is perfect. By being imperfect, you become perfect. Ironic right?
By putting all the imperfections together you get a heart that is whole. It is never perfect but so beautiful and pure.
To bad she didn't keep any pieces for herself.


I gave him everything I had. But he hated me for my imperfections. He wanted me to be perfect. I had to be as perfect as those princesses in the fairytale books. But that's not me. I am not perfect. I am weird at times, when I am happy, I dance and sing. When I am sad, I cry and talk about the problems  I have. But with him, I wasn't allowed to do so. I was not allowed to be happy without him. And i was not allowed to cry. At all.

Ann wonders whether Connor realizes what the heart stands for. I wonder whether he did too.

Connor promises Ann that he will never let anyone hurt her, especially not his own father. Ann knows that Jack, Connor's father don't hurt her through his own hands, but through the hands of Connor. She says that inside of Connor's monster mind, lays a helpless little kid that is stuck inside.

Me knowing that in the mind of my ex boyfriend lays also a young child who is helpless and clueless.
His past affects the way he thought at that time. He was hurt by his own mother. Betrayed at a young age. Sadden because of this. I am not here to mock him. I want to forgive him.
John Greens book "Looking for Alaska" deals with a topic that got me thinking for a while. "How do you escape the labyrinth of suffering? The only way out is by forgiving."

I am trying to forgive him even though he did things to me I will never be able to forget, that's the reason why I won't name him. He knows who he is, but you dont need to know.

Ann has surrendered and waved her white flag. So have I.
How about you? Would you have done the same?

Introduction

Hello!

Firstly I would like to introduce myself. My name is Vanessa. I am a girl of 18 years. I have gone through things, that not many 18 year olds have. I would like would to share with you my experience. The biggest lesson, I have learned in my 18 years of living.

But instead of just writing my experience, I wanted to try out something new. I got this book called, "But I love him" by Amanda Grace.

'But I love him' is about a girl called Ann. She was a smiling, straight-A- student and track star was friends and a future. Until she met a haunted young man named Conner. Only she can heal his emotional scars, while only he can make her feel so loved - and needed. The perfect relationship she had with him was long gone. The man she first fell in love with disappeared, as just one mistake could trigger Connor's rage, a senseless storm of cruel words and violence damaging everything - and everyone - in its path.

The book deals with emotional and physical abuse. The kind of abuse no one in life should ever experience. No matter if it's a child-abuse, bullying at school or even at a workplace, Abuse is the worse thing you could do to anybody.


So lets start shall we? 

August 30 - One year

Ann describes the Aftermath of the fight. She says "My chest is hallow and empty, as if he ripped out my heart and took it with him when he left [...] All i feel is pain"
What I want to say about this is, that my Ex boyfriend made me feel like I was nothing. My chest was empty, my thoughts were empty and my heart, it felt nothing but pain. Feeling pain is one of the worst feeling you can feel. But quoting John Greens book "The fault in our stars" , he says: ''Thats the thing about pain. It demands to be felt."
There are different degrees of pain:

1. Pain caused by losing someone you know/ loved
2. Pain caused by emotional stress
3. Pain caused by physical stress
4. Pain caused by a heartbreak or a lost love

but the worst type of pain is:
   
     5. Pain caused by someone you love

As you can see pain will always be there. It can be disguised and it might hit you when you least expect it.

After the fight, Ann sits alone in the darkness, hoping the world would leave well enough alone and we could find peace. She understands that, No one can protect her because she pushed them all away. She lost everything, she gave him everything but he gave her nothing back in return. She knows she lost herself.
I myself did the same mistake. I loved that guy alot. Because of that love, it blinded me. It blinded my actions, my thinking and the worst thing of all, my heart. I gave him everything I had. I gave up my friends, my hobbys, even my family. We thought "its us against the world" but I never expected the world to be against me.
Being with him, I longed for the love I dearly seeked for. The love that was never there to begin with. The foolish youngness of my youth, thinking finding true love is the most important thing you must find. I was foolish, I know that now, but telling the 16 year old Vanessa what stupid thing she is doing, you wouldn't have gotten far.
Ann lost herself, I myself, lost myself. How could we be so foolish to not believe in the greater good?