Testaments - Number Eighteen

(Erin from The State I Am In brings us today's Testament. It discusses how good relationships can turn ugly very quickly. And how sometimes getting out is the best thing. As a reminder, if you're interested in participating, please e-mail me!)

We met 4 weeks before I was set to leave for college. Our first date consisted of going to Steak ‘n’ Shake and then making out in his car. By the time I was loading up the car to drive downstate, I’d lost my virginity and he’d told me he loved me. It was my first serious relationship and I was drunk on love. It was exhilarating.

Lucky for me, he was going to the same university I was. Well, at the time I thought it was lucky, but hindsight and all, you know? I guess I just gave away the ending. No, this is not a happy story, but it’s an important one in the grand scheme of my life.

Things were good for the first couple of months, although my relationship was making things tricky in other areas of my life. I wasn’t acting like myself. I blew off Freshman Convocation to hang out with my boyfriend. My relationship with my roommate was tense enough without a boyfriend in the picture. I ended up moving out of my dorm room and into a room of my own.

Except it wasn’t really my own room. He was there all the time. Once I moved into the new dorm room, I don’t think he spent a single night in his room for the rest of the year. The cohabitating was all right, but there were a lot of major inconveniences for me. For example, my dorm wasn’t coed. So, he couldn’t go to the bathroom on my floor, and I had to escort him everywhere. At night, we had to go down to the basement so he could do his nightly bathroom routine. This included, and excuse me for being crude, his nightly dump – which lasted about 45 minutes. Every night, I got to hang out outside the men’s room for an hour just waiting for him to finish up. Looking back on it now, it seems really pathetic.

It wasn’t just my room that wasn’t my own; my whole life became intertwined with his. I had no friends that weren’t his friends. I didn’t go anywhere – with the exception of my classes – by myself. It was my job to make sure he got his homework done. We ate where he wanted to eat, watched the movies he wanted to watch. He ran the show, and I was just along for the ride.

We fought all the time. Big, crazy, emotional fights that usually left me struggling to catch my breath. I was depressed, but it never occurred to me that this relationship might be the reason.

We were still together when I started my junior year of college. No more dorm rooms, though. Now we had apartments within a block of each other. I still never spent any time alone. Really nothing had changed in the two years since we had started dating, except that I felt a desperate urge to keep this relationship together. I developed the notion that if we got married, everything would be fine. Of course, he wouldn’t ask. I got the whole “someday” routine. It made me cranky and overly emotional.

Things started to change shortly into my junior year, though. I had a car at school now so that I could get a job off campus. I eventually started working at Borders. My class schedule was such that I was able to put in a full 4 days a week at the bookstore. It meant we spent a lot of time apart. It meant I started to develop friendships of my own. I started to realize that the world didn’t revolve around him. I was starting to become my own person again.

As I started to gain my independence, I noticed changes in him as well. He wanted all of my free time for himself. He was irritable and rude to my new friends. I was embarrassed to introduce him to people.

After work one night, I went to the mall with a couple of my friends. I had to call and ask permission to be home late. After the mall, we were hungry, so we went to a bar to have some snacks and drinks. Then we decided to head over to one friend’s house to watch a movie. I didn’t get home until 1 in the morning. I called him from my apartment and said I was home and going to bed. He was pissed for days, but I was starting to see myself in a whole new light. Who was this girl that had to call her boyfriend to ask permission to hang out with her friends?

I came back to campus after Christmas about a week before school started up. I had to work. He stayed home. It was so liberating to be at school without being under his thumb all the time. I don’t think I consciously knew that I wanted to end the relationship, but I managed to do it anyhow.

I slept with my neighbor. Yup. I know. It was totally slutty, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I slept with my neighbor and then called the boyfriend up to tell him what I’d done. He drove down immediately and was a complete basket case. He told me that I’d broken his heart. The sad thing was, I didn’t believe him. He didn’t love me; he’d just grown accustomed to having me in his life.

I told him I needed time to be alone. I wanted two whole weeks with no phone calls, no contact. He called constantly, crazed. He logged into my e-mail account and read e-mail I sent to friends about what I was going through. He showed up at my apartment with flowers and stuffed animals. He refused to give me space. It was intense and scary.

Unfortunately, things got worse before they got better. He was determined to keep me from being happy, or at least from hanging out with anyone else. After spending the night at a friend’s house, I drove home to shower before work. I parked my car and hurried down the block back home. Thirty minutes later, I went back out to my car only to find that my tires had been slashed. He had called me the night before demanding to know where I was. I hadn’t answered the phone. He could see my parking space from his window. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

I spiraled into a deep depression. It was hard for me to get out of bed. I cried all the time. I was barely eating. My health and my grades were suffering. It wasn’t that I wanted to get back together; I just didn’t know how to be on my own anymore. I didn’t even know who I was.

I started seeing a counselor. She was a perfect fit for me. She listened and let me cry, but also encouraged me to start trying things on my own. I braved the grocery store alone for the first time in years. I went to a movie by myself. It was scary, but I slowly started to pull myself out of my depression. I started to discover who I really was.

That relationship sucked. In some ways, I wish it had never happened. I should never have gone to college with a boyfriend. I should never have let myself get so lost in my relationship. However, that relationship helped make me who I am today. It helped me learn to be myself and to love myself. I learned what love shouldn’t feel like, and I learned how not to be in my next relationship.

While I sometimes wish I hadn’t had to waste so many years of my life in a toxic relationship, this story has a happy ending. It wasn’t long after that relationship ended that I met my husband. We’ve been married for four years now. I couldn’t ask for a better partner. With my husband, I’ve found the relationship I’d always looked for. We support each other as individuals and work together as partners. He makes me the best Erin I can be, and I try to do the same for him.