Moving Day

It was over. All the arguing over the wedding plans were for nothing; we were finished. After living together for over a year and after completely changing myself and everything about me to fit his needs he ended things with a simple text.

I hadn’t told anybody how badly he treated me, beat my dog, and kept cheating on me until after it was over. I was afraid that they would force me to end it if I did. But in the end, it was all him; he ended it. No one could believe the stories I told them afterwards. And I hadn’t even told them everything. I probably never will.

After a few awkward weeks of living together post break up, I finally found a roommate to move in with. I told him I was moving Saturday and asked if he could get his father’s truck to help me. But my family convinced me that since he was getting more and more violent it would be best for me if he didn’t know where I was moving. So, I was going to move a day early while he was at work.

The little bit of stuff I had was packed. My mom and a friend with a truck came over to help me move. As they carried my dresser drawers and boxes to the truck, I stood in the kitchen thinking about that morning. I knew it would be the last time I ever saw him, so before he left, I asked for a hug. He gave me a big one and said that he would bring home something special and a bottle of wine for our last dinner together.

So, I stood there in the small kitchen just staring at the yellow tiled floor. How was it possible that he could have hurt me so much, yet somehow I felt like I was betraying him? He was horrible to me while we were together. So why was he being so sweet afterwards?

The entire time that we lived together he treated me like a verbal punching bag. His favorite place to scream at me was in the car, I guess because I couldn’t get away. Once he gave me a ride to a job interview that was about twenty-five minutes away and he screamed at me the entire way. When we got there, I went in and as I was waiting to be seen, instead of going over my resume and mentally preparing myself for the interview like I should have been doing, all I could focus on was not crying. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. The interview didn’t even last more than a few minutes, which he was very upset about when I came back out.

One time that the neighbors called the cops because of his screaming we weren’t even fighting; he was just complaining about his day, very loudly. After the cop left, he just kept laughing and making jokes because I lied to her about my weight.

He also loved to take his anger out on my dog. One night when we were in the bedroom, he beat her so badly she lost control and peed on him; and then he really lost it. After hitting her some more he kicked her down the stairs.

Besides his anger, the biggest problem in that relationship was the fact that there were four people in it: me, him, his mom, and Jackie. And to be honest, his mom was more of a problem than Jackie was. She was just far too involved in our lives and it was like she wanted to do everything for him. He was thirty years old and she was still buying his underwear and almost all his other clothes. When a mother is still buying underwear for her adult son like that it is a sign of serious issues. But it wasn’t just that, it was if she was jealous of me.

I walked into the living room and looked at the chair he had recently broke. He was mad about something small and picked up the chair, then he started banging it on the floor while screaming at me.

I stood there for a moment, then the panic kicked in. -What if he came home early? What would happen if he showed up in the middle of me sneaking out? Would he finally hit me like I knew he had been wanting to for months? Would my mom throw a hammer through his sixty-inch TV? Would I throw a hammer at his head?

I checked the house to make sure we got all my things out. Then I sat my keys on the table. Next to them I sat the tacky key shaped necklace with both of our birth stones on it that he gave me for my birthday. Then I grabbed my dog and got in my mom’s car. I was drunk with emotion and don’t think I will ever be able to completely figure out how I felt that day. All I knew was that it was over, it was moving day.