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The Man and the Girl (Part #1)

It started out like any other story, two people who thought the other to be quite attractive with mutual friends to set them up. Both having just gotten out of engagements they sought comfort int the embrace and company of one another. The first night they shared together they walked through the park in the neighborhood where they both lived, bonding over life stories and tragic events that happened to them in their youth as well as their recent adulthood. They walked for a while until they reached a fountain that the man had claimed “his” fountain. They sat and talked about everything they had been through, everything everyone had put them through, and everything they had put themselves through. Two people in their early twenties talking about how they had seen people kill themselves in front of them, about how the people that were supposed to be there for them from the beginning had abandoned them when they when they were still dependent upon them, how the people they were getting ready to dedicate their lives to had ripped their hearts out and crushed them without even without thinking about it. 

The girl talked about how the man that was supposed to show her how all other men were to treat her, used her, beat her, and told her she would never amount to anything. The girl talked of how she had been drugged and taken away from her fiends and had some man force himself on her and violate her in the worst way. She spoke of how she hid herself in her room for days at a time, with no food, no social interactions, no sleep. Her friends would have to bang on her door and force her to eat, force her to try and talk to them hoping it would make her feel better. They meant well but how could they ever understand, have two male best friends and the other a girl who grew up in a perfect life. How would they ever understand what it’s like to be raped, how was she to make them understand? To feel so useless and ashamed, barley able to look at herself because she did a lot of self blame for what happened. How could they ever understand that everywhere she looked she saw him, every time someone touched her she had a panic attack because of the flash backs to that night and what had happened. “How can I ever be the same?” She asked the man sitting next to her on the cold stone bench. She didn’t know but at the time he was asking himself the same thing.

The girl talked of how every man had turned out like the first one, only they were better at making her feel like it was her fault. Until she had found the man she thought was going to break the cycle. The man that showed her compassion and held her even though he didn’t understand what she was going through, she was wrapped around his finger and in time he used it against her. He would threaten to leave, accuse her of seeing another man, yell at her used at her for questioning him even though she meant no harm. She would cry for days and beg him to see reason, that all she wanted was to make him happy and to love him the way she thought he deserved. He bent and shaped her to his will and she only realized after it was too late. When she left it was like trying to peel gum off the sidewalk, half of her was ripped and in pieces while the other half clung to the sidewalk with desperate hope.

The man next to the girl was like her in the sense that he always put others first and himself last. He had loved her, his ex, you could see it on his face but it was eclipsed by the pain she had caused him in the manner by which she chose to leave. His best friend and his fiancé, and if them having an affair wasn’t bad enough it all happened while he was in the hospital after walking off a bridge during an episode. The man had sacrificed some of his beliefs to keep her by his side, you could see the shame of it dance across his face when he would mention it. He had given her everything and sacrificed important views in his life to keep her with him and she spat on everything. As he talked the girl on the bench quickly learned that he was accustomed to losing people he was close with in horrid ways. He had seen one of his close friends shoot himself in the head while they were at work, he didn’t talk about what really happened and the girl didn’t push to know because if anyone was to understand that there are some things better left unsaid it was she. His father had abandoned him at the airport when he was only ten and didn’t show up into his life until ten years later, the man explained that he now had a crippling fear of being abandoned and who could blame him. His father, the one meant to protect and love him had fled and left his child unprotected in a world where the defenseless are killed off. Still he cared so much about other people, he just wanted them to be happy but he wasn’t concerned with if he received any of this happiness. He deserved the world to be given to him and here he was struggling to put one foot in front of the other and to keep moving forward because of the cruelty other people had shown him. His own mind was against him along with the people that were supposed to be there for him and care for him.

She understood his agony, and in many ways felt what he was feeling; so she poured herself into him to help him feel loved and made sure he knew that he was a good person and that he didn’t deserve all the bad things that were happing to him. She didn’t care if at the end of all of this she had cared more about him than he had about her, she was more concerned with showing someone so wonderful that they were worth the love of someone else.

As the two walked back to their place of residence the conversation took a turn to the more lighthearted side of their lives; discussing family vacations, and embarrassing stories. While the two were walking across the bridge to cross a busy street the man stopped and picked up a white rose that had fallen, from where they didn’t know as there were no rose bushes near. He gave the girl the white rose as she made a joke in reference to Alice in Wonderland saying “maybe in their haste to paint the roses they dropped this one” they laughed and talk about Alice in Wonderland conspiracies until they reach her home where they bid each other good night.

The girl retreated to her room with the rose in hand. She made herself ready for bed and set the rose on her bedside table to keep the memory of this night fresh in her mind. It had been a long time since she was able to open up to someone about the pain of her past, and to have someone that could understand the pain she faced, and truly understand it was a blessing, she didn’t have to pretend to be okay all the time now. She would no longer have to lie as she often did to her family and friends to avoid making them uncomfortable because they honestly hadn’t cared how the girl had felt or they would have left her alone when she tried to take her life. She never understood how someone that cares about you could look you in the face and tell you everything is going to be okay when they have no idea what the pain is like. She wouldn’t have to hide the fact she didn’t sleep because of the terror that plagued her dreams night after night. As the girl laid her head down to finally sleep, she wept, out of pain from reliving what had happened, out of relief of finally speaking about it, and out of hope; hope that this man would be a friend she could bond with and help him and in turn she hoped that this would help her.

#partone blog firstpost sad depression rape metoo speak out