Sharp and Inviting All At Once
By: Hannah Mae
Tags: Domestic Violence, Memoir, Creative Writing, Creative Non Fiction

You leapt up from the chair like an animal

Your grip around my neck was light at first, just vaguely threatening as you screamed

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP into my face.

Do you understand?

I need you to be quiet

Your grip tightening with the end of every sentence.

I am silent, ridged. Frozen.

Do you hear me?

I just need you to shut the fuck up

Your grip is firm now,

I can still breathe, though.

I’m glad I can’t remember what your eyes looked like

I’m a monster

I’m a monster

You are screaming at yourself now

I consider my options, as I lie on the floor of the bathroom, gripping Jackson

I had scooped him up and rushed towards my deliverance in the aftermath: A locked door.

Sweat gathers behind my knees as I sit cross-legged on the grey bathmat, catching my breath, intently listening for you upstairs in the loft.

You had let me go, quickly

With a firm, but flippant “Got it?”

My breathing had really only been fully constricted for a few seconds

Enough to feel the panic though

And now I can hear your sobs as you walk down the stairs and through the hallway towards me

Your heavy footsteps turning the corner.

My knees scrape the linoleum as I take a deep breath and nudge out from behind the bathroom door, closing it behind me to keep Jackson safe

You are in the fetal position in the corner of the room tucked next to the nightstand

I rush around the bed to you

And this is how most of our violence ends

Sharp and inviting all at once

With me rocking you, cooing, comforting

Stroking your hair

Yes, I know you love me

Yes, I know you are sorry

Lying with you on the floor

I have an urge to say I’m sorry, to apologize for pushing the issue, for overwhelming you; when I knew that it spiked your anxiety, especially if you had been drinking. Exclusively when you had been drinking. This was a product of alcoholism, a disease, I had an obligation to help you. You weren’t fully responsible for these actions. I would be the one who stuck beside you.

I preferred thinking of you in this way.

I preferred thinking of the way your smile would flash over at me, while we were walking in the fall in Old Town, leaves crunching underneath us on a sidewalk that meandered through the neighborhoods; filled with aging houses bursting with college students. Faded Tibetan flags dancing in the wind.

Your perfect teeth belied the horrors you would eventually spit out at me

Cunt

Slut

That same mouth I would daydream a split second later about on my neck.

There was no way a normal couple could get through this, to survive the insults we hurled at each other, the literal blood, sweat, and tears. We were in a warzone of our own making, and relished it. We had both said and done such awful things, how could we ever look at another partner in the face without embarrassment and shame.

You had become a sick, twisted version of yourself, and I had born witness to it. Forever changed by what we knew we were capable of. We were no longer fit for a conventional relationship. Flirting and first dates and seemed juvenile and trite now. The basement parties and beer pong, fumbling gropes in the dark. The mediocre dinners made by earnest boys surrounded by roommates. How could the early stages of anything new live up to the heady intoxication and pull of what waited for me back at your apartment. The darkness, your enveloping acceptance, our little games, the possibility of you fucking up my night? This toxic complexity pulled me under again and again and again.

No one else could ever never know these dark parts like you do.

This violent intimacy was going to be my undoing, and I eagerly surrendered.

A real victim wouldn’t.

The dramatics were just theater for underneath it all was real. This is what people wrote about. This is how it’s supposed to be, to feel alive and excited and happy and a little…scared. The fear was the backdrop that has kept us going for so long, but also unintentionally propelled us until we were out of control and led to nights like these.

And as you tuck your head under my chin, I eye the gun safe underneath the bed: looming, beckoning.

Knowing that inside the contents might be for me one day.

And fully willing to ruin myself for you.

Your shoulders shake as I whisper,

“I love you”

I eventually catch you pressing the heavy, cold metal into your temple.

We agree we need to sleep apart tonight, but I stare at the white ceiling for hours. I eventually decide that I would be able to monitor you better if I’m right next to you, because I can feel your anger with my eyes closed now. I climb back into bed, patting next to me inviting Jackson up, trying to heave my weight as much as possible so you would stir and notice me, but you don’t. I turn my back and spoon my corgi, his contented sigh pushing against my stomach. I try to match my breathing to his but he breathes too fast and I get dizzy. I press my face into his head, smelling his fur, tears rolling down past his ears.