The Whisperer.
It took me a long time to realize that I experienced abuse from someone I loved. Even now I still find it easy to argue with myself. I think that’s why I’m sharing this. Not to feel validated, but because I think it’s easy for a lot of people to do that. Make excuses. Give it a new title so that's not what it is. If I don’t label something as “abuse” I can just say it was a bad experience and not deal with it. Push it aside because you still feel lucky that things were never that bad.
I have my fair share of stories from my past. Of incidents that make me wonder what kind of person I was to have such a past. I’m a woman who’s only been with other women. There have been those parties where a guy wants to be the one to “make me see the light.” I’ve been in a relationship where the woman I once loved held a knife to her wrist saying she would kill herself if I refused to love her anymore. I could share a lot of things with you, but instead I want to share just this one…
I’m your average woman. The gay-girl-next-door-type. No one would use the word sexy to describe me. That’s not pity. That’s just who I am. Glasses. Freckles. Always lacking where most women want cushion and overly cushioned where most women want none. Growing up gay was… interesting to me. I was that kid who was gay before I knew the meaning of the word. But I knew what I wanted. And my self-assurance led me to older women who also knew what they wanted, so I thought. I fell in love with a woman who I thought loved me.
She didn’t. But they say “love is blind” right? And god I loved her. It was that young love that puts you on top of the world. I wondered how I was able to be with someone so amazing. Until things got physical. And then things got confusing.
“You know, no one else would love these little tits, but I do.”
“You know, not many people would be with a fat girl, but I can’t get enough of you.”
She made me feel on cloud nine with her touch, but her words? Fucking gutted me. Made every possible insecurity about myself more real than it’d ever been. She never hit me. She never said yes when I said no. But her words did such damage to me that it’s followed me in the pit of my stomach since the first whisper. So many were whispers and the feeling of her breath tickling my ear as she cut me open is to this day something that bothers me. I feel ridiculous admitting that. Should I admit that at all? Whispers in my ear don’t do anything for me because they remind me of her. Wait… not her. They remind me of the things she said. Beyond that… they remind me of the way I felt after that things she said.
I’ve been put down by strangers before. I’ve been called plenty of things in my life. But how can someone claim their love for me and then cut me down with words in one breath? Each time like a knife across my skin that no one could see or feel but me.
“You should lose weight, but I don’t want you thinking you can do better than me.”
Most of the things I remember are so sexually explicit I don’t even want to say them. I still feel ashamed to say them. That’s the power they hold over me. The power that I lie to myself about. Saying the memory doesn’t hold anything over me. It was so long ago. How could it?
But it does. It’s lessened over time. I’m in a loving and happy relationship with the woman I plan to grow old with. But I can remember the first time we had sex. I can remember the first time I had sex with anyone. Whether that time was the only time or whether that time was the first of many. It always, always started with whispers in my head.
“Stomach and thighs, but no tits and ass.”
“…fat pussy no dick would want anyway. You’re lucky you want a woman.”
I berate myself over staying with The Whisperer for so long. Young and dumb, I suppose. It was easy for me to believe her. To tell myself she was right so the pain had to be worth it. That pain? That pain is never worth it. No pain should be worth anything to someone who genuinely cares about you. Because that? That’s abuse.
