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[Jan. 31st, 2012|05:17 pm]
alexie!
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I'm posting this here because I know there's little chance anyone will read it, and even if they do, no one on here will judge me.
I'm going through the most emotionally draining and emotionally beautiful time of my entire life, simultaneously. UPDATE: The past year of my life has been an absolute whirlwind, and I can't even believe it myself after typing all this out.
Just got off the phone with the ADMINISTRATOR for Hope Scholarship for the entirety of the state of Georgia. I've been trying to get ahold of someone at the top for weeks, and I broke down. I kept it cool for 20 minutes while I explained to her my entire situation, the year spent as a joint enrollment student, in which I earned all As and didn't attend high school at all, the fact that this doesn't count towards my GPA for eligibility for the scholarship, the fact that my parents make too much money for me to get any financial aid apart from this, but that I cannot file independently because I will lose my healthcare plan, and I literally needed that last year to keep my sanity, and then it got to the real shit... I broke down. I couldn't hold it in anymore. After months of being told it isn't my fault, things like this happen, women go through this all the time and I didn't do anything to deserve it, I am being punished for falling when I've received a blow right to the chest.
I was raped. And no one has any clue how difficult it's been for me to actually recognize this.
Last year, at a party, and my friends were right there when the guy gave me my first drink. They drove the dude, and a very intoxicated me, back to my apartment. He was an acquaintance of my older brother, a friend of his friends, a person I idiotically thought I could trust. I woke up the next morning, with him naked watching TV in my bed, with no recollection of the night before.
Two days later I ran, crying hysterically, to my ex boyfriend's house. A guy who had already hit me twice, had cheated on me, and told me I had to lose weight to keep him from doing it again. A guy who I loved with my entire heart for so long, and dedicated so much time to. A guy I worked for months to support. He popped a Xanax in my mouth and held me while I cried myself to sleep. He whispered in my ear that he loved me, while probably shoving condoms used with other girls under his bare mattress on the floor of "his" apartment. He came back to my apartment to stay with me the following night, and the next two months after that. We drank together, we forgot together. And for a while it was good, despite having to lie to my parents every time his name was uttered in conversation. I hid it well, even from my best friend of ten years, who at the time was building a new friendship with the girl he had left me for previously. That friend is another story entirely, but I won't go into that now. Suffice it to say she had just as much of a negative impact on my current situation. Her constant judgment, criticism, and subsequent accusal of me lying about my rape, broke me in ways I didn't know I could be broken.
So I stayed with him. I thought he loved me, and he heard me tell him every day I loved him. He was there when I got home from work, and we never had to have sex, and he told me I was beautiful and that he didn't mean what he had said. We just held each other every night. He cried about the girl he loved, which wasn't me, and I cried about the boy I loved, and told him it wasn't him. I skipped a month of school. Got high every day, multiple times a day. And worked to earn the money to put that green on the table, for both of us. His drinking progressively got worse, as it always did, and one night, while blacked out, he hit me again.
I remember his face, puffing in a fit of rage, his eyes still squinting with sleep, as he held me down on the floor. He told me not to "fuck with him," and that if I did I would "regret it." The next day he denied any memory of this. Apologized, just like always. Then his friend came to stay with us from out of town.
We (my boyfriend and I) included him (we'll call him Dick) in our drinking for 3 days, and on the third day my boyfriend passed out in my room after consuming half a handle of Jack Daniels by himself. Dick and I talked very late into the night. We talked about our dreams, our beliefs, our goals. He cried about his parents, I cried about my boyfriend. Finally, I told him about the night, a few nights before, my boyfriend had hit me. He didn't believe me. He was awestruck. I told him everything, every time my boyfriend had gotten so intoxicated he'd wet the bed (with me in it), every time he had come home black-out drunk and broken everything in his path, every time he had pushed me and hit me, the names he had called me, the cheating, everything. Dick told me I deserved better, that he was seeing a new side of his friend he never saw coming, but that he'd seen signs of it before, with other girls. He told me to dump him.
My boyfriend came stumbling out of my room with a look of absolute rage. He had been listening, to at least he last part of the conversation. He began packing his things, crying the entire time, and he left with just a few words, "Fuck both of you. I hope you get what you deserve." I learned later he thought I was cheating on him with Dick, he was rather paranoid from the drinking.
Dick and I didn't sleep that night. We went to my friend's house, afraid of the rage of my drunken boyfriend, and a few hours later our phones were blowing up with calls from him. We ignored them until I got a text that he was in my apartment. He had broken in, stolen a handle of tequila, and by the time we got back there had finished the whole thing. We ran inside with all the doors locked and called the police, and he was charged with breaking and entering, assault, lurking and prowling, and other serious charges. He went away for a few months.
In that time, Dick and I got really close, but I was still neglecting my school work and falling deeper and deeper into a depression. Dick moved in, and we started dating, but we never made anything official.
Fast forward to two months later. Dick lost his mind from using meth, ecstasy, acid, and alcohol, and I had to kick him out. The ex got let out of jail with a slap on the wrist. I had moved down to Atlanta with some old friends to get away and was going to therapy after threatening to end my life to my mother, who had no clue about most of what had happened except for the break in by my ex. Got a restraining order from my ex, and took a much needed break from life. No job, no school, just me, and my dog, and some hippie friends, in a little house in the city. It was fun for a little while. We partied and drank and sang and smoked and I read and watched movies day in and day out. Looked for jobs a couple days a week, but I never really took it seriously. I was burnt out.
I'd go up to Marietta every couple of days to hang with friends, have dinner with my parents, and hang with my step brother, who had become one of my closest friends over the summer. And then I started talking to Matt.
Matt was a guy I knew of in high school, but didn't really meet until a year or so after high school. One night, at a party at my parents' house, he stayed after everyone else to listen to me blabber on (intoxicated) about the last few months of my life. He just sat and listened, giving some input here and there. We started hanging out more, and had long conversations over text about practically everything. Both of us are pretty shy when it comes to the whole dating thing, so the process was a slow one, but we'd have nights here and there where'd we just talk until the sun came up about our lives. We had both experienced our hearts being stomped on, and ups and downs that surprised us when we actually verbalized them to each other. He made me feel normal. He made me feel beautiful. I loved him immediately, to be honest, but I held back. I knew a relationship was seemingly the last thing I needed after all of that.
But I couldn't help myself. I moved back home, enrolled back at school, found a job and a new place to move into, and fell in love with the first man who has ever given me that feeling everyone talks about in movies - he makes me feel whole. I'm still hurting, repairing, rebuilding, but his love is like medicine for my soul. I make things so difficult sometimes. It's just hard to believe it's all real sometimes. It's hard to believe he isn't a fake sometimes. He loves me. It's the first time I've ever said that and believed it.
We've now been together for about 5 months, and we're living together (controversial, I know), and we're happy so who the fuck cares what anyone thinks, right? We have a lot of relationship obstacles because of the past year, mostly due to my emotional issues, but he lets me cry, he holds me, he makes me feel beautiful and smart and talented. He helps me grow.
My grandmother (well, okay let me clarify, my brother and sister's biological grandmother) passed away in December, and it was a tough experience for me to get through. My big brother, who I've been close with throughout my teen years, moved to Arizona for law school over a year ago, and that's been tough too. I ended my 10 year friendship with my "best friend." Looking back, 2011 was a fucking roller coaster. But I'm alive. I'm here. And I'm rebuilding it. Or at least I'm trying.
Right now, I've lost HOPE Scholarship funding for school, based on my first 2 C's of my entire academic career. Due to the fact that my freshman GPA, as previously explained, isn't factored in. My mom, who makes a pretty good income, is helping cover my schooling, but I've taken out loans here and there and this debt really terrifies me and I'm not sure why. I'm not being viewed as an individual in this situation (from the school and HOPE's viewpoints), and I'm being punished for trying (from my viewpoint). I just wish there was some way I could get my story out there. Kids shouldn't be destined for a life of indentured servitude because they chose to pursue a college education. They shouldn't be cast out of the higher education system due to an unforeseen personal tragedy. They should be given second chances and room to grow and learn. They should be seen as a human being and not a government expense. Things NEED to change! And I won't stop until they do.
I'm getting my fucking PhD. JUST YOU WATCH, GEORGIA! I'm getting my PhD, and then I'm writing a fucking book about how little you helped me to do that, about all I had to do to drag my ass to the top. I'm not fixed, but I'm not broken. I will live, and I will do this. Just watch me. |
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