My brain still doesn’t want to shut up. Perhaps it’s because I’ve had so few of these moments over the last couple of months, moments where I have him here beside me but he’s not distracting me with his words and looks and his touch or his thrusts but instead he is silent and sleeping and looking content, his hand isn’t scratching over his stubble covered jaw, I am actually getting the chance to study him and consider all what I feel for him. Then I get that panicky feeling in my chest again but this is a different kind of panicky. I am happy to admit and live with the fact that I love him beyond measure, I do wonder why though, in such a short space of time that has come to be the case?
I loved Jason passionately, from the very beginning I would get butterflies every time I thought about or saw him and then as the years went on, it was still there, when his key went in the door at night, when I answered the phone and it was him calling me unexpectedly, I would still get butterflies as I always did, I’m not even sure when it started to change. I know with mobile phones things were different, if we had an argument the night before and he called, I could choose whether or not I wanted to speak to him and then as the boys got older I could decide whether or not I wanted to be home when he got in if we had fought that morning or the night before and then it had eventually changed so much that I didn’t actually want to be there when he came through the door, ever, I didn’t want to speak with him on the phone. I deliberately ignored 90% of his calls and only answered if I really had to. For the past few years he made my belly flip more from fear than from love or passion, or any kind of desire but none of that was my fault, he, Jason had caused that, I would have loved him till my dying day if he hadn’t of become so violent and aggressive towards me, even when he apologised and begged my forgiveness, it eventually meant nothing to me, I had heard it all before, I knew the pattern, he would lash out at me either verbally or physically, or both, then he would be sorry and we would cry and have the best sex ever and all would be good and calm and happy for a few months and then there would be a gradual build up again, weeks of me not being able to do anything right, weeks of him arguing with me over the smallest thing and me being me, always had to make things worse by coming back with a smart answer, despite knowing what the likely outcome was going to be, I still had to open my smart mouth and give back as good as I got, verbally that is, physically I could never match him, but then gradually, I stopped fighting back, I stopped wanting to, I no longer cared about his spiteful words, I no longer cared about the backhanders, the throat squeezing, the hair pulling, I didn’t care about him and I certainly didn’t care about me and for about a year, I just let it go on, I lost myself, I stopped being me and just accepted the situation.
I have no idea why, I have never been shy in coming forward, I grew up in a house as one of four kids, where you had to shout to be heard, I moved to the other side of the world and was picked on at school for being the new kid with the funny accent, I was always short for my age, then my boobs grew and grew and I had red hair, all of these events had made me the object of name calling and sarcastic comments, in return, making me an expert at the quick witted comeback and not scared of standing up to anyone! But that side of my personality went, he wore it away, he ground me down and for almost a year I let him.
Then one day at the end of last summer, after enjoying a lovely dinner out with Jemma and Max, we came home, laughing and joking, him telling me what he wanted to do to me once he got me to bed, but first we decided to sit outside and enjoy a night cap and because I put cubed ice into his Baileys and not crushed, he completely flipped, what had been a perfect evening was now ruined because of his vicious tongue telling me how useless I was, that if I couldn’t get something as simple as the right kind of ice in his drink after all these years, then what was the point? I remember his words so clearly. “Why the fuck do I bother with you Lauren? You used to be so perfect, now you can’t even make me a drink without getting it wrong, everything about you has gone to shit. Fuck off to bed; I can’t stand to look at you. And forget any ideas you might have had about me fucking you later because it won’t be happening, you repulse me, your saggy tits and that fucking ugly stretched marked gut of yours just don’t turn me on.”