An Unexpected Discovery

When I first moved to Kingston and met Trevor, he was a dream come true. He was attractive and had smiling, blue eyes and a charming, crooked grin. But most importantly, out of all the girls around me at the time, his eyes were only on me. It was a story of the fairytale prince falling in love with the inconsequential peasant girl. And with that romantic ideal guiding me, I was both blinded and smitten.

As a teenager I would drift between social circles, without a group of my own. I had the clichéd vices that most teens have (those, at least, who are on the outside looking in)— I was overly sensitive to criticism, skeptical of advice, envious of those who were naturally popular, and, topping the list, absolutely everything was personal. These vices were both my shield and my blindfold, yet I understood them—Knowledge is power. If speaking my mind against peers who demanded conformity made me smarter than them, then it also made me superior, and I couldn’t be hurt. Never mind that I knew very little, or that I spent more time worrying about the appearance of indifference rather than actually being indifferent: the truth was that I was terribly lonely.

Nobody likes to be alone. Society and family are part of our lifestyle as human beings. We are not solitary creatures and most of us would stagnate in isolation, remaining shadows of our potential. It is certainly possible to be alone and be happy—self-reflection is a part of evolution after all—but it is not easy, and it is not for most people. I was not without friends in high school; but often, even in my regular circle, I was the outsider. I was accepted, but not really included. I would read, I would watch, and I would write. My ideas were my own, and writing was my escape, where I could be—and do—whatever I wanted. And yet, when I had my little epiphanies and quandaries, whether about people or about life, there was never anyone there to share them with. It was in high school that I first discovered this desire to be understood, to meet someone who would know the real me, without judgment or prejudice.

I first met Trevor two years after high school. My failed attempt at college—the result of a wrong career choice—left me feeling like a ship’s captain, adrift at sea without a compass. I had no direction and no goals beyond earning enough money to support my writing ambitions, and so I moved to a neighboring city. The distance took me away from the impatient frustration in my parents’ eyes and offered a sense of freedom I’d never tasted before.

When I arrived in Kingston there was Trevor, smiling as though he’d been waiting for me. He was, as I said, a dream come true, for here was exactly what I’d been looking for. The nightmare of it never dawned until much later; it took two years of life experience to realize what would be so obvious further down the road.

First love is a strange thing, a confounding mixture of childhood daydreams, hopes, desires and truth. You get swept up in how it’s supposed to go and ignore all the discomforts and uncertainties of its reality. I lost my conviction, believing that the contradictions between my expectations and what was really happening were my own fault. He was older, more experienced, so I set aside my ideals in trust of his confidence. He seemed so certain that things had to be a specific way that I never questioned him. How could I question that smile when I truly believed that he loved me and wanted nothing but the best for our relationship? All I knew of love was what I’d learned from media: in 'happily ever after' movies and romance novels. And though Trevor absorbed everything I gave, and thrived on my attentions and sacrifices, I never questioned the little I got in return.

When the police started looking for him, I did not doubt for a second that the accusations of abuse were false. I understood they were the result of a petty ex-girlfriend trying to get back at him for leaving her. I became terrified that this strange girl’s anger would take away the first person who wanted me; terrified that I would be alone again. So I hid Trevor, using my money and friends to keep him from going to jail for something I believed he did not do.

I ignored my friends’ advice, ignored my own inner doubts, and believed no one understood Trevor the way I did. I gave him the faith I’d have wanted someone to give me. I was living a story: this was how love was supposed to be and these challenges would only bring us closer together. (Never mind that I no longer worked on my own writing, or that my future and dreams were nothing next to his problems.) I had to get him someplace else in order to give us both a chance at a future. And so we bought a car for a hundred and seventy-five dollars and drove across the country from southern Ontario to British Columbia.

The trip was amazing to me, and I glowed as my mind was stimulated by the rugged wilderness and lakes of northern Ontario, the brilliant sunsets and colors of the prairies, and especially the towering majesty of the Rocky Mountains. Vast landscapes have always been a muse for me, even before I was able to physically visit them. The idea of wide, untouched spaces offering so much to explore, was like an aphrodisiac. I would get pulled into pictures and books, my mind expanding on what little I could see and filling in the blanks with my own imagination. All of this inspired a million possibilities, a reminder of something grander than what I knew. Yet I could never share this with Trevor. He did not seem to understand what I was feeling when I looked upon these things and wrote in my notebook and he snickered at my clumsily-expressed thoughts. His derision made me doubt my own meditations.

The abuse started shortly after we arrived in Vancouver. As I assume most abusive relationships begin, ours started with vice-like grips and occasional punches in places where the bruises did not show. Of course he was apologetic and sorry; of course he cried and begged forgiveness, and, of course, I forgave him. It’s easy to appreciate stress, and it’s easy to forgive the lashing out that results from it. It was also easy to understand one’s regular failures and constant moving when we could not afford rent or life in Vancouver. By the time we ended up back in Calgary, (no car, no money, and no contacts), we were sleeping and eating in shelters, surrounded by the homeless who’d given up on life and had settled into a routine of poverty.

I cried a lot—usually in secret—for if Trevor were to sense I was unhappy he would take it as an insult to his ability to care for me. But the life there was so different from what I’d known growing up. I’d never been successful, but I’d always paid my bills and had a home for security and foundation. I could not understand why, with all the shelters and councilors offering help and advice, we could not manage to get out of the sleazy hotels and homeless kitchens.

I worked what temp jobs I could, but Trevor’s stress and emotional issues rarely allowed him to keep a job more than a couple days. As our situation remained destitute his insecurities brought out a jealous streak that I never knew existed outside of wicked stories and dramatic after-school specials. Much of what I believed to be limited to fiction—a writer’s tactic to develop his main character—was now playing out around me in full brutality.

And yet, despite knowing how silly it was, my hair stayed in a restrictive bun, makeup was a thing of the past, and I was never allowed to speak with other men. This cost me countless jobs. I was no longer the bold girl eager for a debate and thrilled with each new adventure. I was tired. There were dark circles under my eyes and I had little desire to raise my gaze up from the ground. I gradually realized, when I dared look up, that the people in the city were starting to look through me the way I once looked through those who begged for change on the sidewalks. I was a faceless fact of life, easy to bypass and easier to ignore.

It was a worse loneliness than the confusion and awkwardness of high school.

I could not identify what it was about me that warranted so much rage and violence from Trevor—everything I did was for him, to help his confidence, to help him understand, to hide his flaws from others and himself. When I realized it was my education that was a threat to him, I finally began to look at things from a new perspective. I’d ignored my writing for so long that it wasn’t until I tried to escape into reading books, in order to avoid the cruelty of my situation, that I discovered Trevor would not allow it. This small sanctuary I’d found was too much for his restlessness, and he would grow angry that I was neglecting his needs, either emotionally or physically. It was months longer before I realized that he could barely read and write enough to get by on his own, so apt was he at hiding it. I’d heard of illiteracy in adults, but it was never something real to me because reading was something I picked up naturally and had enjoyed since I was a child.

It also began to occur to me that perhaps this was why he never joined me in my reveries on life and people. He was intimidated by my ideas and learning. My philosophies were things he could not grasp and, rather than appear ignorant—especially to me—he would get angry, or insult the books or my ideas, calling them a “waste of time”. It was this dawning realization that was a turning point for me: the understanding that I was not as inferior, naïve or inexperienced as he wanted me to believe. It was, I came to realize, the knowledge that I was smarter than him that made him so desperate to control me.

Trevor took me further and further away from friends and family, and the further he separated me from those who would recognize or prevent what was happening, the worse it got. A year and a half into this relationship he brought me to a tiny village nearly an hour’s drive from any help or support. I was beat up daily, and it was so inevitable a fact that I no longer tried to understand what brought the beatings on. It could be something as simple as telling him he was being foolish about a petty detail, or he might think I enjoyed a movie too much because I was fantasizing about the male lead—it was all irrelevant. The beatings were not even about me, they were about him. As necessary to him as the need to have me tell him repeatedly how much I loved him. I finally understood that he loathed himself, loathed his life, and the only thing he had any control over was me.

The irony of it did not strike me until much later: that I’d fought so hard to preserve this relationship because I was afraid of being alone, and yet all the while I was incredibly alone. It was worse than the fumbling isolation of high school, and much worse than when I felt like I was captaining a rudderless ship after college (at least then I had an open ocean of choices around of me). Now, the only future I saw for myself was trying to avoid Trevor’s displeasure, hiding the fact that I took birth control so I would never have his child, and praying that he would not hurt me to the point where he would let me die rather than take me to a hospital and admit he was an abuser. I was nothing to Trevor besides a symbol of his dominance, and the fact that I never even respected myself enough to know my own worth sickened me. I had honestly believed he was better than me, the best that I could find. I was a pathetic cliché, telling obvious lies to explain the bruises, and the knowing looks were humiliating.

I left Trevor shortly after that. I wish I could say that it was strong defiance that drove me. That I boldly told him I was leaving and walked out the door with my head held high. In truth, it was almost two months of sneaking around to hide the few items I would need, learning how to drive our standard vehicle, and forcing myself to show Trevor, with faked conviction, that I loved him, even though I’d begun to despise him. I was terrified that everything would give me away, my expressions, my actions, anything, but he was so certain of his dominance and of my weakness that he did not believe I was capable of leaving him. I hated myself for this, despite the fact that it made it easier to get away. Did I really think so little of myself that even someone as horrible as Trevor thought I was a fool, unworthy of even the smallest bit of notice?

I left in the morning while he was still in bed, thinking I was going to work. I took what I could salvage from my last pay-cheque and drove away, heart-pounding that he would come running after me. I did not run to my parents, nor did I run to a shelter, though both would have taken me in and offered condolences and support. I did not feel like I needed the help—I just needed an opportunity. I took our dog with me and rented a small room in a town just outside of Calgary. I managed to keep the car and found a job working the midnight shift in a processing plant. For the first time in my life I really was completely alone, and I was overjoyed at the notion.

People have sometimes asked me, if I could change anything about my life, would I? It’s been years and Trevor is still the first thought that comes to my mind with that question. I lost two years of my life to his abuse and derision, two years that I will never gain back. But would I change that if I could? I don’t think so. I would certainly not recommend abuse as a life-learning tool for adolescents, but I cannot deny that I would not be the person I am today if not for my experience. I would not have discovered this strength within myself and the sort of person I want to be; that I am still striving to be.

My time with Trevor taught me that, no matter how trials can dominate your entire life there is so much more available to you if you have the will to learn from your experiences and move forward. Even if it is not readily apparent, there are options available, though they may not always come in the form you expect. As trite as it sounds, we can always fumble our way back to that ocean of choices, as long as we choose to see them for the opportunity they are.