Love Is a Strategy, It Was All I Could Do

He threw the mattress off the third floor balcony. It landed on the front lawn. I couldn’t stop him. He pushed me hard. I went through the wall. I couldn’t stop him. Time moved quickly. He threw the furniture around the room. Time slowed down unbearably. I tried to change the outcome. I argued with him, pleaded. It was like we were under water. We were caught in an unstoppable flood. Everything was blurred and incoherent. Everything just was and we could not believe that it was.

I was not a battered woman, an abuse victim; those were not the things I was. I was in love. Love was like syrup, like a hot stove

I kept touching, a destination at which I could not arrive. Love was a staircase, a smashed guitar, the look on his face. I was not his victim. He was not my abuser. He couldn’t be. He twisted my limbs. He cut off my breath. He called me names, made me cry. I couldn’t stop him.

I sat in a small room with a police officer. I swore to tell the truth and I told it. A camera recorded my words but the words could not convey. The story could not be told. The crushing love I betrayed by saying, no it cannot be done. I was terrified, exhausted, I didn’t know what to do. I told because I didn’t want to die.

Grief is a slow process. There is no hurrying it. I was surprised because it didn’t hurt so much. After he was gone, I felt okay. I felt numb. I felt fine. It was over. I’d survived. He was gone and I could admit it. That was an abusive relationship. I was a survivor of what they call domestic violence. I didn’t cry. I didn’t think about it. I just said he put me through the drywall and that was that.

Four months gone and I was at the end of another bottle, at the end of my rope. I had lost all my friends, I had lost my shoes. I was in a valley somewhere bleeding into the grass. He called me names.

I couldn’t stop him. But then it hit me like a pile of bricks, an

avalanche, if only I had just been good. If only I had been better. If only I had loved him right. He wouldn’t have hurt me. He wouldn’t have left me. I loved him. He was in jail and I was alone.

Years passed, bottles added up, experience in courtrooms and police stations turned my story into a worn out repetition. Yes he did.

He got on top of me. Wouldn’t let me move. Wouldn’t let me breathe. It was like this. For this long. They asked me a million questions and made a million suggestions and I tried not to look at him in the courtroom. I had to hide, bury, deny my love.

Because no one would believe me if they knew the truth. No one would believe he had done these things if I admitted I still loved

him too.

I loved my abuser. I loved him so much and I hope I never love anyone like that again. All I want is to love like that again. I loved him when he kicked my legs out from under me. I loved him when he kicked me in the stomach while I lay on the floor. I loved him while he slept in my bed at night, when he rode off on his bicycle, when we cooked meals together. I loved his smile, his hands, his voice. I loved him fiercely and he almost killed me and I loved him still. I loved him in the courtroom while I told the jury he raped me and I knew that nothing could make sense again.

In my therapist’s office I cried and cried. I told her I loved him.

She said I was experiencing attachment to my abuser. I said he made me better. She said he was grooming me. My heart sunk because I could not deny our love. I couldn’t believe he didn’t love me. It was the love that made it worth it. It was the love that soothed the obliterating pain. I had to love him. Why else would I stay? How else could I make everything okay?

He called me a slut. He screamed in my face. He asked me if I knew who I was fucking with. He chased me on his bike. He cut the

doorbell off the front of the house. He stole my phone and keys.

He cried in my arms. He said he was sorry. He swore he loved me. He loved me so much it drove him fucking crazy. I felt like I was disappearing. I knew I could never let him go. I belonged to him so he belonged to me. He hurt me. He loved me. I loved him and I still loved him even after.

My love was how I survived. It kept me alive. It was a strategy.

My grief was the devastating loss of that fantasy, the loss of that love, and the facing up to the reality of what happened to me. It was no grand love affair. It was no unbelievable, maddening love that no

one could possibly understand. It was no chaotic, unrelenting,

passionate, possessive love. It was violence. My boyfriend was

extremely abusive to me. I couldn’t stop him. It was not safe to leave. I faced the prospect of my death, the betrayal of my trust, the degradation of my spirit, the violation of my body and the terror of violence. And so I loved him. I loved him so it made sense.

With a heart overflowing, aching with the pain of an unbearable

love, I took a shoebox taped shut out into a field in the dead of a witnessing night. That shoebox held the lie, two photo albums which proudly displayed the happiness of our unbelievable love. On my hands and knees I dug a hole in the dirt; under the certain moon I dug a grave. I was devastated. My heart kicked and screamed. I wouldn’t believe. I couldn’t believe. And I loved him. Fiercely.

Endlessly. It was the only thing I knew. I put the box in the earth.

I buried our love. Alone, in the night, I cried the tears I could never cry. I started the process of letting it die.