Don't Tell Me I Can't

Don’t Tell Me I Can’t

God, I can’t stand the thought of living at home with my dad anymore. He’s such a narcissist and over bearing and I am twenty three years old. I don’t know why I hate his personality really, since Ive known him my whole life as my dad. What was my normal as a child is not okay with me now and I’m not sure it ever will be. Not that it ever was.

So, instead of going back home, I ask my sister if I can stay with her, and I do.

I figured I’ll be home just for the summer and then head back up to college. She has a small apartment but since it’s always been her and I, we get along as good as most closely aged siblings. We do manage to have fun even when we have our tiffs. I’ll get a job waiting tables and make a little money to have when I’m at school.

Once I have started working, and getting into a routine, I meet this guy at work. He sees ok, and I’m lonely, so I agreed to go out with him. It was an entertaining enough time so we go on a few more sates and then just keep on seeing each other.

In hindsight, I’m not sure why. He was completely not my type and had little education to speak of. We really didn’t have much in common.

Be that as it may, there we were, a few weeks into this relationship, when I decide to pay my mom a visit. I told her I had a guy I was seeing and I’d like to bring him over and she was fine with it. So I introduced him to her. She didn’t seem very happy to see me, and that was weird since I had not seen her in a few months. I managed to overlook it and made pleasant conversation anyway. I missed her all the time we were apart.

It was, all in all, a nice visit. She engaged my boyfriend in conversation and he was fairly adept at answering curious parental questioning. I felt it was going well.

A couple of hours later, as we prepared to leave, my boyfriend went out to the car to give me a minute alone with mom to say goodbye. I grabbed her and gave her a big hug and I was ready to say goodbye, when she said something that shocked me. Mom let me hug her and then told me to never bring that man into her house again. I was floored.

My mom was never the type to make judgments or shocking comments like this but she did, and it unnerved me. I looked into her eyes and asked her why. She only replied that he was not for me and that I should think about that. She never did say why she said that to me that day, and I will never know what she thought she knew or understood about someone from a couple hour visit.

In some small way, I was a little angry that she would judge him without knowing him. She never did that and really, never inserted herself into our decisions.

I put it out of my head and went about my days or the next couple weeks. I continued to see my boyfriend and I was getting used to him and I kind of liked how he made me feel.

The day came when dad met this man too. I don’t know what possessed me to introduce my dad to this man, but then again, isn’t that what you do when you’re dating and getting somewhat serious?

This visit turned out just as I expected. My dad disliked him right out of the gate. Dad was cold and indifferent and didn’t even try to mask his disdain. In fact, dad barely spoke to the man I had been dating now for a couple months. It was a short visit to say the least.

A few more weeks passed and I was preparing to head back up to the university, when news of some murders on or near our campus hit the media. The girl that had been killed, lived in the apartment complex next to mine, and all I could think was that it could have been me. I did the only thing I believed I could do, which was to take a semester off and not go back to school. I’d go back in the winter session.

It turns out, that that was the worst decision of my life, and yet it was by far really not the worst.

I had not planned on staying home for a semester, so I had some things to accomplish. I needed to get up to my apartment and place all my belongings in storage, and I needed to find a place to live while I took this hiatus.

I could not stay with my sister long term. Her place was just a one bedroom, and while fine for a short stint, not large enough for two sisters to share. I looked into apartment rentals, but they wanted yearly leases and large deposits. I was beginning to get frustrated when my boyfriend said I could stay with him and his roommate. It was a good suggestion and since the last thing I wanted to do was go home to dad, I took it.

From this point forward, my life was a disaster. Money issues, communication issues, differences of drive, were all part of the daily dealings with living with a man that had little prospects for a good future, and I was blind to it all.

On one such occasion, when I needed some assistance from my dad, he said he would help me but that I would have to leave “that guy”. If I did, he would help me. Dad’s help always had a deal attached to it. After that, I didn’t ask again.

We toughed it out and eventually, one of his family members did help us. Crisis averted. Time and time again we would have close calls like this and time and time again his family would help, mine would not. Well we would show my family!

My significant other and I continued to live together for months. Ideas and thoughts of college left my brain entirely and I had no plans to go back. This made my family increasingly angry, if you can imagine.

I thought I was in love and that is the perspective I was coming from. My mom and dad and even my sister, began to hate my man with a passion. It made me stand my ground all the more. I knew best for me. This was my life, so I would make my choices.

Well, the day came that my partner and I decided to get married. Yes decided was the correct term because there was no formal proposal. It seemed like the next progression of things and we went in full steam.

I went to let my family know what we were up to, and once again was shocked by the reception. And I was alone. My sister told me she didn’t like my boyfriend much and thought I was making a bad choice. My dad on the other hand, absolutely forbade me to marry him. Forbade. As if he had a say in what I did as an adult. He sure didn’t!

I did what anyone would do in this situation. I doubled down. I defiantly and purposefully did what they didn’t want to me to prove I could make better decisions than they could for me. That kind of thing never does wrong. Right? Right.

I married this man. The wedding was nice enough, but we had no honeymoon. It was okay though, because the honeymoon was over shortly after the vows were exchanged.

My now husband changed. He was lazy, How did I not see that before? He was a slob and wanted to be taken care of almost like he was a child. He was aggressive and often brutal and would not take no for an answer. My husband was an idiot and in no way intelligent and I found I had very little to talk to him about. We were not the same. I sucked it up thought and ignored the symptoms of what this man was from the start.

For six years, I endured his treatment. I endured his beer guzzling and pot smoking friends. I endured him. He became more and more uninterested in working and at some point stopped working. He had “hurt his back” and now could not work.

And here I was, now working two jobs to pay the bills. Oh and I dismissed it as, the marriage was a partnership where two people support each other through thick and thin. Problem was it was always thick or thin.

Thick in the heat of calamity, and thin wearing on my every nerve and emotion. His constant pushy and aggressive intimacy needs, fueled and perpetuated by his love of porn, kept getting worse. It was to the point that I hated being with him at all in that way. But I am stubborn to a fault. And I again dug in.

It all came to a head one day, when we were in a heated argument about those needs of his and his laziness, that he lifted his had to hit me. And that was it. I was done.

I packed up my bags one day and left for Colorado and didn’t look back. I had suffered through six long years of abuse, incompatibility, dumbing myself down for a man that was definitely not the one for me. And I did all of it to show my family that I was right about my resolve. I had wasted six years, left school, and been through hell because I would not accept the counsel of others that could see what I could not.

It’s the forest for the trees, adage. I could not see it while I was in the midst of it and because I hated my dad or mom telling me what to do.

Twenty years later, I would come to realize that I was in denial that anyone could know better than I who and what was good for me. I should have listened or at the very least considered listening. I didn’t and that little bit of stubborn defiance cost me time and self worth.