Shhh…. I have a secret

It started when I was living with Curt. He was extremely physically, sexually, emotionally, and verbally abusive.

It didn’t start out that way.

In the beginning, he was sweet and understanding. His temper rarely showed.

I thought I was lucky: He knew about my ex, Bobby. He knew about the cheating (and eventual announcement that there was a baby, although Bobby always swore that it (she) wasn’t his, that he only married Angel because her parents kicked her out and it was the ‘right’ thing to do.

He swore he would never cheat on me. I honestly doubt that he ever did.

He also swore that he was a virgin the first time that we had sex. However, that became a question later after talking to his older sis. (Yeah, another long story that didn’t end well.)

Oddly, it was the first time we had sex that I saw the shadows the first time.

We were out at his stepfather’s house, way up the river. It was a fairly secluded house. No one lived there anymore. His stepfather had recently died. It was a weird house. He stepfather had been a dentist and had a dental chair and all of the basic equipment to do the job in his office.

The house was too quiet- except for the creaking and other misc. sounds that happened. Yes, it felt haunted.

We went into his old bedroom and proceeded to have sex. Typical first time for a guy that has no idea what he was doing.

I tried to lead him as best I could, but I was distracted by the sounds I kept hearing—sounds that really should not have been there.

I kept catching glimpses of…. something. No clear sighting, just shadows.

And that is how I started to think of them. However, the longer I saw them the more defined they became, and the oiler that they started to feel. They also radiated more and more malice as time wore on.

Side note: Another odd thing happened at the house. I took off a football jersey that I was wearing and placed it on the chair in the room. I never saw it again. It was just gone when I went to get dressed. I still wonder what happened to it. It was a jersey that Lee had given me. It was just a practice jersey, but it was one of the few things I had left from our relationship. I was very fond of that shirt, and I was heartbroken when I discovered it was missing. When it turned up missing, I was bewildered, not to mention scared. Where did it go? We were the only ones in the house, and I got up to get dressed first, so it’s not like he could have hidden it. It was just…. Gone.

We moved in together. With a couple of friends, we rented a house. Everything seemed to be fine for the first few months. Then we got in the fight that the farmer stopped after he broke my string of pearls.

Later, he threw a plate at me. It was supposed to be unbreakable. My great Aunt had gifted me with an entire set, that had been in the family awhile, when I first moved out. Not only did it break, it shattered.

Luckily, it hit the wall behind me. (He missed me.) It was a mess to clean up. Glass shards for days.

And it scared the crap out of me.

Of course, he was apologetic and promised that it would never happen again. It did, just not with something that could easily break.

We went to visit his mother during the week of Christmas. We were going to be moving in a few days so I could start college. Naturally, we couldn’t fight while we were in her house. No, we took the car and went out into the countryside and parked near a set of train tracks.

That night was the first time that he hit me.

He was still mad at me when we got back to his mom’s. He excused us and we went to bed. Once there, well, I could say that he forced me, but I guess I instinctively knew that sex would calm him down. And it did, to a point.

Then he found a new way to hurt me. Unprepared, very much forced, dry anal sex. On my stomach, with warnings not to scream, or he would really hurt me. At the time, I had no idea HOW he could hurt me more, but I knew he would. That was the first time I had ever had anal sex. Not the last, he demanded it whenever he was mad, after forcing me to take him in my mouth until I was gagging and breathless. Repeatedly.

Always apologetic and sorry afterwards, swearing it would never happen again.

I all ways stayed simply because I didn’t know what else to do. “I made my bed, so I had to Lie in it.”

Shortly after, we moved out and left for Gresham so that I could attend the community college there. It had an incredible jazz program.

The apartment complex that we moved into (no student housing) was name “Ash Mountain Adult Housing”. However, there was graffiti on the sign that added an “SL” in front of the name, making it “Slash Mountain…”

We learned later that there had been several murders and suicides in the complex in the last few years. It was obvious in the first apartment that they showed us. The vibes were so bad that I didn’t even get more than a few steps inside when I noped out. It was then that they told us someone had died in that apartment.

Later, we discovered that the apartment had been the site of a particularly bloody murder. They had to recarpet and even replace some of the drywall completely. Even now, it makes me feel uneasy when I think about it.

We lived for a semester in the apartment complex. I went to school- discovered that Jazz theory is different from regular music theory, the type I had been trained in since the age of 8.

He ‘got a job’ selling pictures to hotel/motels/offices etc.

He was not good at it, which increased his episodic anger issues. And the ‘rape’, which people will argue it wasn’t rape because I stayed.

Anytime someone says ‘no’ and the act continues, it is in fact rape.

He started to beat me. Oh, he always made sure that the bruises wouldn’t be seen. At the few time they did, well, the stage makeup I learned came in handy.

At the end of March we moved back to our home area. Got a new house, jobs, etc. He went back to playing in his band. Work? I honestly do not remember him working.

For my birthday, my folks paid for me to go to “The Diet Center” (no longer exists) and paid for me to do their program. It was very successful. I lost enough that guys started looking at me, talking to me. He noticed. I did not flirt or respond in any way that could be misconstrued. He, however, was sure I was cheating on him.

The beatings got worse. I soon learned that it was easiest to calm him down my undressing, offering myself for what ever he wanted to do. It got the beatings over faster,

This is when I really started to really see the shadows a lot.

I was even dreaming about them. They were always reaching for me.

I think I knew that if I let them get to close, I would be dead.

Things kept on the same, except I stopped dieting. It was easier to be fat, than to be beaten every time he thought I was cheating. Not that being fat stopped him, it just gave him a different reason.

Being overweight was a shield. That was something that was repeatedly beat into be. Unfortunately, I was still an impressionable teen and that lesson took. Decades later, I’m still fighting, it every damn day.

I don’t know how long things would have continued it my dad hadn’t talked to be when I was home doing laundry one day. That was the day when he finally asked me about things he had noticed. The day I broke down and told him everything (except about the shadows, those are still my secret).

I confessed that I felt trapped and wanted more than anything to get away, to go to school.

Next day I was packed and on my way to school, 300 miles from him, and home.

I was so lucky I got away from him.

I just wish the shadows had stayed with him, and not with me.