I
was like any other average ninth-grader. I was active in sports, had my circle of friends and got good grades. Until the day I was introduced to him. There was something in his eyes that attracted me. Somehow I thought that he needed me, just as much as I needed to be loved. After flirting for months, we finally became a couple. We were together every single moment from that day on. Slowly, day-by-day, my family and friends saw me changing. I was in love.
After about two months, however, he started to try to control me and even raise his voice to me. I told myself it was okay because he really did love me. The first time he ever hurt me, we were skiing with friends and had lost each other. When he found me, he said it was my fault. He proceeded to push me and call me nasty names, while people just stared at us. I ran into the bathroom with my best friend and cried my eyes out. The next thing I knew, he was in the bathroom hugging me, overflowing with kisses and saying how sorry he was. So I forgave him and put that day in the back of my mind.
Things did not go back to normal, though. He became possessive and jealous. He made rules stating I could no longer wear my hair down, wear shorts in the summer-time or have any sign of another boy in my room. If another boy even glanced at me in school, he would yell at me. My grades dropped, I lost my ambition for sports, I started losing my friends, and my family became my worst enemy. I didn’t want to listen to what they thought about my relationship or how much I had changed. I cried every single night. He would yell at me or blame me for everything. A couple of times, I tried hurting myself because I felt I wasn’t good enough for him and that there wasn’t any other reason to be alive. I tried to justify his rude actions by believing they showed how much he cared about me. As a ninth-grader, it made me feel important to be in love and have a boyfriend.
My parents tried taking me to psychologist and talked to all my teachers about my relationship. I started skipping school. The violence escalated. He tried to choke me on - several occasions, and once he tried to break my arm because his brother looked at me in my swimsuit. I felt hopeless and depressed. He had so much control over my mind that I could not accept anyone else’s opinion of him. I told myself that they just didn’t understand how much he loved me. He only did what he did because he cared.
The physical abuse continued to get worse. He forced me to do sexual things with him. He also hit, choked and pushed me down. He tried drowning me once. Fortunately, I escaped from him before he had the chance to get me under the water. He also cut my wrists because his life was in the dumps. This went on for nine months.
Finally, my parents took me on a trip for a week. While I was on vacation, he cheated on me, and I built up enough courage to break up with him. One night I lay in bed and thought of everything he had done to me. It was clear what I had to do.
I spent the last two weeks of summer break trying to get my old friends back before returning to school. When I went back to school, he was in my gym class. I was nice to him because I still feared him. When I got up the nerve to tell him that it was over for good, he went psycho, pushed me to the ground and kicked me several times. Nobody came to help me. The next day, I discovered an eight-inch bruise on my leg.
It took me three days to show the bruise to my parents. To my surprise, after everything I had put them through, they helped me. They took me straight to the police station to file charges. I wanted to just let it go, but I was also determined that this should not and could not happen to anyone he “loved” in the future. At home, I continued to receive threatening phone calls from him saying that he was going to kill me. He told my parents that he would do it if he got the chance.
My court experience took over a year and was horribly painful. I found out that he had a violent past and that it wasn’t the first time that he had abuse charges brought against him. I was never notified about the final court hearing, so it happened without me and, to my knowledge, nothing severe happened to him. The justice system let me down, but I chose to go on with my life.
I am very lucky to be where I am today. I am nineteen years old, and I have grown and healed a lot. It took me over three years to tell my parents everything that he did to me. My parents and I are very close now. The healing process may continue for years to come, but I decide to share my story with other young teens, hoping to help prevent this from happening to anybody else. I do not wake up every day hating him. I feel bad for him, and I know he needs help, wherever he is. I have learned to live my life to the fullest and to cherish the people I truly love.
- Jenny Deyo