An Attack
by Amber Averay
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I don’t want your pity. I don’t need it. She hurt me, and I let her. I thought it was love. I thought she meant it when she said it was an accident.
We met at a party held by mutual friends. You know how it goes: boy meets girl, boy falls in love, girl is so petite and sweet and doll-like, girl moves in, girl…
Well, let’s say that I fell for her, hard. She was so small, five feet to my six-two, and seemed so dainty that she stirred my protective instincts and I wanted nothing more than to defend her and shield her from the violence of the world. She had a ready smile, a sparkling personality, and a musical laugh.
Our relationship moved quickly, and within a few weeks she was living with me. And I didn’t notice the small things, at first. Each time someone phoned me she would lavish me with attention to distract me. She would call me when I was at work, or with friends – because she missed me, I laughed fondly, not seeing the pity in the faces of those I worked or played with. Then she started texting me frequently, because she loved me and wanted to know I was OK.
So this is what true love is like, I’d thought wondrously, unable to believe this caring soul was mine to adore.
But after a while friends stopped calling, and family stopped visiting – I wouldn’t find out til later that, when they did attempt contact, she would block them at the door or dismiss their calls. She told me she’d not seen or heard from anybody.
Soon they stopped trying.
Then she began with the concern about my weight, my health, slipping little zingers in – ‘Darling, you’re so handsome that nobody notices the little belly you’re growing!’ Things like that. Small, inconsequential words that would build into something more vicious with each day until she was berating me for my ugliness, spitting how she hated my flabby arms, she loathed going anywhere with me.
I quit my job. I couldn’t bear to have people see me fall so far from what I’d been. I’d become a lump, and agreed with her that I needed to just be with the one who loved me as I was – faults and all.
I cried. I swore I’d be better. I ran in the back yard. I ate healthily. When she tried to serve me pizza as a treat for doing so well, I couldn’t bring myself to succumb. She shoved the slice in my face, melted cheese burning my face.
Then she started throwing things at me. Verbal abuse, and physical. I couldn’t speak for fear of upsetting her. I couldn’t do anything she didn’t want me to do. She broke a glass over my head. Pushed me down the stairs. Burned me with her cigarette.
It doesn’t sound much, but the violence progressed, and three years later I was a hollow shell of myself. I’d lost who I was.
Why didn’t I defend myself? I was brought up not to hit women. Only cowards did that. And if I reported her, who would believe such a tiny creature as she could terrorise a huge guy like myself? People would laugh. They would mock. They would belittle.
But one day – one day I snapped. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. But she was going to leave me. She was planning to take that vivacity and that energy and pour it onto someone else. I had been with her for years – how could I be without her now?
She’d laughed at me, sneering that she deserved better than I’d ever been. I was a loser, a nothing.
So I hit her. ‘A NOTHING?’ I roared, swinging again. ‘A LOSER!’ My fists ploughed into her face until she was a pulpy red mess, and still I smashed with fists, feet, words. ‘I GAVE EVERYTHING TO YOU! I LOVED YOU!’
By the time I was finished, my hands were cut to the bone – my front drenched in blood. She was dead. My love, my darling, and I’d killed her.
Don’t pity me. I had that love for a long time, and now it will remain mine. Only mine. I have the memories. They keep me sane.
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