Part Five

So, the very end of the story. I hate this part of the story. There’s no way for me to justify the way I acted. It was one of the times in my life when I didn’t even understand why I was doing a lot of what I did. Sometimes I wonder if other people have those moments: where you’re just doing things and you don’t know what you’re gonna do next, it’s all instinct and impulse, and if anybody was to ask you why you did it, you wouldn’t have an answer. People became very frustrated with me during this period. People did ask me “Jen, what the hell did you do that for?” and I had no answer. “I don’t know why I did it.” People didn’t seem to believe me, but it was the truth. It’s still the truth. I could come up with some flimsy explanation, I guess. It’s easier just to tell you I honestly don’t know why I did a lot of this.

First comes the part where we actually broke up. There’s a third act twist here: I initiated the break up. Can you believe that? For all of five minutes in this mess I had a backbone.

He’d started telling people at school about that day in his crawlspace when he stuck his dick in my ass, even though I told him it hurt and I told him to stop, and he didn’t stop until he was good and ready to. It’s not like he used the r-word. But the way he told the story, it was clear this wasn’t consensual. I don’t know what to say; the world was a lot different back in 2007. I wasn’t there for any of the times he bragged about this, but from what Tara told me (Tara had really taken me under her wing-it wasn’t always men who wanted to save me from my own mess. Sometimes it was women. Tara was one of those women. One of the women who came at me with this energy like “Holy fuck, come here and let me help you, you absolute moron. Sit down and be calm before you hurt yourself.”) it went something like this:

“Finally got Jen to do anal.”

“How’d you talk her into it?”

“I didn’t. She’s like 80 pounds. I just fucking did it. It’s not like she could stop me.”

The school did catch wind of this. I don’t know which concerned student went to them. But there were several conversations in the office. It’s not like any of them used the r-word either. They wanted to make sure Joe and I stayed separated in school. I didn’t want to hear that Joe had done anything wrong. I didn’t like that everybody was talking about this. This is the part I usually leave out when I talk about this time. I told the school it didn’t happen. I think I usually leave this part out because it was just such an idiotic thing to do. And sometimes I tell this story like nobody tried to help me, because that’s sort of how it felt. That’s not true though. People tried to help me. I wouldn’t take anybody’s help. Sometimes I think of this time and I really feel like a victim, but the whole story is that adults got involved. Adults tried to help. I covered up. I made excuses. I did not cooperate.

Some of Joe’s friends started making fun of me for this. To this day, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why it makes any sense to make fun of someone for not being able to stop a guy from fucking you in the ass.

Some girls started making fun of me for this.

Macy’s boyfriend started making fun of me for this. He would follow me down the hallway and say the nastiest things to me. I didn’t say a word to him. I looked straight ahead and walked from one class to the other. Once Macy was with him and she hit him in the arm and yelled, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” At lunch the next day she said, “I’m sorry he’s being a dickhead. I talked to him, but he might not listen to me and stop. I don’t agree with him saying that stuff to you. I want you to know whatever he says, he’s a different person than me.” And I told her it was fine. She wasn’t responsible for what her boyfriend did.

Tara kept pulling me into the bathroom and lecturing me. She wasn’t the sort to skip class, but she skipped class with me once. We sat in the handicapped stall and she lectured me. Stand up for yourself. Drop him. This is getting out of hand.

And I said, “Why do you care?”

She sighed and said, “Stop. Just listen to me.”

There were always women like Tara that tried to get me to listen to them and I didn’t. Women like Carly. Women who could see what made me tick and tried to point it out to me. Who kept on and kept on patiently repeating to me that I was self-destructing, making a mess of myself and sometimes other people. What complicates this further-being so much of a messy idiot that people begrudgingly stop what they’re doing to come save you from your own stupidity-is that there’s another group of people who pretend they want to save you, and really they want you for something else. There were women like this too, but I didn’t meet the first one until I was 19, and I swear that woman almost got me to join a cult. A lot of weird shit happened and she wanted to “help” me so much. But her help often ended with me sobbing and apologizing for being so sinful and talking to her “spiritual mentor” on the phone, and this person said all kinds of weird things to me about God’s plan for me. I had just enough sense to realize this woman didn’t actually care about me, and like Joe, she wanted to hurt me, but also like Joe I don’t really know why.

There was one particularly bad day. Joe said mean things to me all day. We went to Blockbuster with one of his friends. He asked me what movie I wanted to get. I said that he could pick, that I didn’t care. I mean, he was the one paying. And there wasn’t anything I really felt like seeing anyway. He snapped at me that he really wished he had a more assertive girlfriend. “I’d love it if I had a girl who knew what they wanted.” And I was so tired of him at that point. I didn’t look at him and I said, “Maybe you should go find one then.”

In the car, his friend started to say something rude to me. I don’t remember why or what exactly he said. When the guy stopped himself, Joe encouraged him to keep going. “No, go ahead and tell her.” He encouraged his friend to say all kinds of mean things to me. The guy told me I was ugly and weird and annoying and Joe encouraged him to keep going.

And something clicked on that drive. This was awful. I hated being around him. He was so mean to me all the time. Being lonely was better than this.

When Joe and I went back to my house that night, I started up one of those “we need to talk” conversations. I was doing pretty well at first. I was breaking up with him. But then, somewhere along the way, Joe took hold of the conversation. And then he was the one breaking up with me and I was begging him not to leave me, telling him I loved him.

I cried a lot after he left.

But when I was done crying, I sat on the floor of my bedroom, scribbling on one of my school binders, and in that moment I felt relieved. I was so relieved. No more Joe. No more mean-ness. And Tara and Macy would be so proud.

Tara and Macy were so proud, but the relief didn’t last long, and here is where my head really popped off.

I can’t give you all of the details, because it’s all far too grisly. I’m way too stupid. I can’t admit to how stupid I am. But the TLDR is that I went nuts and started stalking him.

First, he amped up his talking shit about me, and since we weren’t dating anymore, the kids that thought it was funny my own boyfriend had been bullying me amped up their shit, following me in the hall, making fun of me for things that had happened between us. Macy attempted to put a stop to some of it, but in the end, it just wasn’t her fight and as much of a Queen Bee as she was, there wasn’t a lot she could have done without a significant time investment. She let me keep sitting at her table. None of them talked to me at lunch. They talked to me outside of school. Told me I’d done a good job breaking up with him. Told me to hang tight, Senior year would be over soon enough, and who really gave a fuck about some homeschooled weirdo anyway?

I stopped showering. I stopped wearing the grungy Hot Topic clothes I’d bought to make him happy. I stopped styling my shoulder-length hair and just piled it up on my head in clips. It looked horrible and I didn’t care.

There was one class, Civics, I came in one day and grabbed a desk at the back of the room and turned it to face the wall, and I sat there crying silently the whole class. I put the hood of my sweatshirt up. The teacher didn’t say anything to me.

At the end of class, I was walking to the door, my hood still up so people couldn’t see my red, blotchy face. It was against dress code, but the teacher didn’t tell me to put it down. There was a boy that, looking back, I think he was trying to be nice. But he was way too awkward for me to deal with that day.

“You’ve been crying,” he said way too loudly, and a bunch of other kids looked at me. “I thought maybe you were crying back there. Hey, don’t cry, I bet everything gets better soon.”

And I was so soo angry at him for calling attention to me.

“You shut the fuck up, you piece of shit!” I yelled at him. “Why would you say that? Why are you bothering me?”

He just gaped at me, totally taken aback.

“Never talk to me again or I’ll punch you in the balls,” I shouted. I could hear how crazy I sounded. I didn’t care.

He nodded and left the classroom.

The teacher looked like he wanted to say something to me. He didn’t though.

My grandparents tried to get me back to normal. There was one day, my grandmother dragged me through the house by my arm, shoved me in the bathroom and yelled “Jennifer, if you don’t get in there and bathe yourself, I’m going to drag you outside and hose you down.”

“Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll take a bath, if-“

“This isn’t let’s make a deal, no if.”

“Okay, but can I just bring my boombox in here. I want to play music.”

She said okay and I put on No Doubt’s ‘Return of Saturn.’ I listened to track one Ex-Girlfriend again and again.

The crazier I got, the more Joe laughed at me. Kids would come to me and tell me what he was saying, even though I told them I didn’t want to know. I told them I couldn’t handle it.

My grandfather took me for a long drive one afternoon. He tried to talk some sense into me. I didn’t want to talk to him. He and I hadn’t gotten along for years, not since the first time he hit my grandmother in front of me and my sisters. Not since I learned that had always been something that happened between them, they’d just always hidden it.

He lectured and lectured and lectured. He told me Joe was no good. Joe was weird. Joe had something off in his brain.

I don’t know why I did it, but I said to my grandfather, “He had sex with me one day, even though I told him to stop and told him he was hurting me.”

My grandfather was concerned at first. He was on my side at first. He asked me to tell him exactly what happened. It was embarrassing, but I did. i told him the whole thing. After keeping it all inside and denying it had happened, I told somebody.

But then my grandfather said, “You were in his house having sex with him? And he did this?”

“Yeah.”

He sighed and said, “You don’t have to act like a slut. Stuff like that happens when women act like sluts.”

“You’re calling me a slut?”

“I’m saying you’ve been acting like one. I love you. I don’t want anyone to hurt you. You go around acting that loose, men are bound to hurt you. Scumbags like Joe are bound to hurt you.”

And then I tried to talk about with my grandmother too, but she just shook her head and said, “Jennifer, sometimes I’m so sad for you and the things you do to yourself.”

I started calling Joe all the time. Showing up to his classes. Following him and watching him at work.

But something weird happened, and he started doing the same thing back to me. He would also call and hang up, and I’ll admit I imagine things sometimes, but we had caller ID and my grandparents saw it happening too. They wanted to go to the police and press harassment charges. Remember this was 2007. I didn’t have a cell phone yet. Barely anyone did. He called the house phone. He called and called and if anyone picked up, he hung up.

I talked my grandparents out of going to the police. They didn’t know I was doing the same thing. I was calling him too. I was walking down the sidewalk in front of his apartment after school. I was trailing behind him in the school hallway, and like I said, if I knew why I did any of it, I’d tell you.

And then one day, I stopped calling him and I stopped following him and I stopped making sure he knew I was watching him. I proceeded to attempt, well, about the shittiest suicide attempt I think the folks at the ER had ever seen. I barely needed a band-aid. But I did land myself in another in-patient stay.

I hadn’t been hospitalized since I was 14. I’d had a number of psych evaluations in the ER over the years. If I could give anyone a tip, never have a meltdown on a day when it’s snowing or a drinking holiday. That’s when the ER is packed and emotionally-unstable dramatic fucks get left to wait for hours, while the real medical situations are dealt with.

They put me in the children’s psych ward. Just like they did when I was 14.

I was 18, but since I was still in high school, they decided that was the best place for me. I didn’t want to talk to the kids. I talked to the employees. I tried flirting with one guy who was probably in his 20s. He yelled at me and they took all my privileges away.

I was there for quite a while. I wanted out. I hated it in there. They kept giving me drugs that made me too tired, but then wouldn’t let me sleep.

I told them I was going to sign myself out. They told me I couldn’t. I went to the desk at the very entrance to the unit. I grabbed the sign in clipboard. One of the doctors came out to talk to me. He was very serious. He didn’t tell me what would happen if I actually signed my name on the clipboard. He just said “there will be consequences.” I glared at him, grabbed a pen, and signed my name on the sign-out sheet. I walked over to the door, which, of course, was locked.

The doctor told me to wait there.

Two police officers came. One didn’t want to handcuff me at all. “It’s a suicide attempt. She’s a kid. Let’s just bring her down to the car.”

“We got to cuff her,” the other said.

They compromised. They put the handcuffs on, but let me keep my hands in front of me. They didn’t put my arms behind my back. The one who didn’t want to cuff me at all put them on me. When I sat in the back of the car looking down at my hands, it was like I was wearing two massive dangly bracelets. He hadn’t tightened them at all. I could have slipped my wrists right out of them if I wanted to. There was another woman in the back of the car and she was cuffed. She yelled the whole ride about the bugs the doctors put in her head and at one point slammed her head into the window a few times and the cops pulled over. She stopped on her own, so nothing else happened.

They brought me to another hospital. This was an adult ward.

Eventually I was released from that one, and I went back to school, and I went back to work at Wal-Mart. There were a lot of meetings that took place. Lots of them. Joe was warned to stay away from me. I was warned to stay away from him. And mostly, I did.

Well, until I met Nicki, but that comes a little later.