Did I mention that Curt was a musician? A drummer to be exact. Did he have talent? Frankly, yes. He played with a band in town as both their drummer and one of the lead singers. My sister idolized him. Thus a large part of my problem.
Lil sis is three years younger than I am and she, like me, is a musician. At the time she played guitar and sang. She was pretty good, (and got much better). Curt told her that she could play with his band (when they did gigs that weren’t in bars.) Anyway… Lil sis adored Curt and I was embarrassed and afraid to tell anyone what he was doing to me. I wanted her to think good of me, as her big sister, I didn’t want to admit that I was wrong in something that I was doing. Plus there was the whole previously mentioned “you made your bed, so lie in it” thing.
I also had this stupid issue with making someone else look bad, no matter how much they deserved it or how true it was. (I still do, but it is getting better).
So what am I driving at here? Simple I didn’t want to kill my sisters dreams, oh and Curt told me that if I ever left, he would go after lil sis and he would slowly kill her- after he raped her. Yes, I believed he could and would do it. I was terrified. So, as any good big sister, I chose to stay and protect her. Stupid, I know, but family is important to me.
At some point, Curt’s younger sister told me that he might have some anger issues and that they started after a school trip. She went on to explain that during an ‘unofficial’ class camp out, late that night/early the next morning, she and her boyfriend found Curt wandering naked and confused in the woods behind the camping area. She said that apparently what had happened was someone slipped him a drug in a drink that basically made him unable to resist anything that happened. (Ecstasy? Or something on that line?) Then he was brutally raped and humiliated. However, they were never sure by whom or exactly what happened, and never had enough proof to go to the authorities.
So, this is why he might have anger issues and why at times he might seem to black out and do things he later didn’t remember.
She told me this one night after witnessing a fight that we had. Of course the argument was purely verbal, since there was witnesses..
Now I had a reason. Big whoop. He was still beating the crap out of me. Not to mention the continuous rape. And yes, damn it! It is rape when you are forced to perform a sexual act in order to stop or lessen physical acts of violence on your person. And just because we were living together, doesn’t mean that he had the ‘right’ to full use of my body! Neither does marriage. Rape is rape.
Period.
So, I was afraid to leave because is left lil sis vulnerable. I was becoming afraid to stay because I truly felt that eventually he would kill me in a fit of rage. Sure he might feel bad about it later, but what good would that do me?
I started to have nightmares. In them I was constantly being watched and hunted by a dark presence that I could feel. It felt oily and what I would imagine pure evil intent feels like. At first it was just in my dreams. Slowly, I started to feel it when I was awake. Then I started to catch glimpses out of the corner of my eyes of shadows that shouldn’t be there. (Think the shadow things in “Ghost” way before that movie came out). From there I started to actually see the shadow and could feel it reaching for me, wide awake, in broad daylight whenever I was alone.
I was to the point where I was barely holding it together.
By now, Curt had me isolated from all of my friends. I was not allowed to leave the house without him unless there was a specific place I was going, and a very specific time I would be back. I was allowed to go to work, of course, after all with out my job he would be broke. I never talked to guys anymore for fear that he would somehow know. That was a painful lesson that I learned, (but I learned it well!)
One day, I was at my parents house, doing laundry again. For some reason he wasn’t with me this time. I was folding clothes and watching “Fame“. My best friend had just left for her sophomore year of college. I was tired, sore and depressed. My pop came in and I said something about wishing my high school had been like that. Somehow, we ended up talking about my former college plans and everything came out.
I didn’t go ‘home’ that night. I called Curt’s sister and she and her husband came over and I told her I was leaving and why. I also told her that she was going to need to keep an eye on him because he had threatened to kill himself when I told him. During our conversation I discovered that she knew. She knew what had been going on for almost a year and had never said anything about it! She knew he had been beating me. She knew about the rapes. I thought that she was my friend.
Well, she might have been, but blood is thicker that friendship. That was a hard lesson too.
My pop pulled some strings and made a bunch of phone calls. I found myself at college, with my friends, all the way across the state, a couple of days later.
I told lil sis to stay away from him, but I never really told her why until several months later. He tried once to get her into his car, but she wisely decided not to.
I told my roommates that if he came to the apartment not to leave me alone with him. They knew I was afraid, but just a bare sketch of why. They all promised not to. In the end when he actually did show up, the only roommate that was home, let him in and left, ‘to give us some privacy’.
Stupid bitch.
However, we had a friend that lived next door. He knew that I was afraid of… something or someone. He told the house in the corner of the apartment lot, which just happened to house a good share of the football team (no frats allowed in town. Generations ago, the land for the school had been ‘gifted’ with the understanding that the town would remain dry. Which meant no frats or sororities on campus or in town. As if that stopped the parties!). They were all good guys and were also aware of the issue.
Luckily, David was home and saw what had happened. He wisely ran and got a few members of the football team, and Curt was escorted out.
I had nightmares for days.
I can not stand that roommate to this day.
Shhh.... I have a secret 
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