He was what I thought I deserved in a guy. Oh, and my mother hated him.
In a late coming attempt at a bit of rebellion, I started dating some guy I had known from a seasonal job I had held. He wasn't a great guy, nothing special to look at either, but none of that was important.
I would come home from work at night and he would be gone. Out with some people, most likely girls, at some bar. He would come home and either pass out on the bed or force me to have sex with him, I assumed that it was normal. He never hit me, but would scream, threaten, and terrorize me in other ways.
Often he would drive us out into the country and threaten to leave me on the side of the road, miles and miles from anywhere. It was psychological warfare, something I hadn't encountered before. He also owned several guns, mostly shotguns and other larger items, but he also had a revolver that was kept under his side of the bed. After some time, I convinced him to take me to the firing range and teach me to shoot.
I was only with him about six months or so, but I quickly learned how to anticipate his moods and how to avoid conflict. He kept me very isolated, not permitting me to speak to anyone he didn't know. I had no cell phone and he checked the phone bill each month. If I arrived home late, he would meet me at the door with a barrage of questions.
He began to drink more and more. Dragging me out of bed when he came home to complete bizarre tasks that he thought I should have done for him earlier in the day. He became more and more irrational. One night near the end, I awoke on the couch to his sour beer breath inches from my face as he hiss how much of a worthless piece of shit I was. How no one wanted me and he was going to just solve the problem once and for all. As I sat up, I realised that the revolver had been moved from under the bed to the coffee table mere feet away. It wasn't the first time he had made any sort of general threat with one of the guns, but it was the first time he'd done so drunk.
All I could keep thinking was that after everything else, this was how it was going to end. Instead, he dragged me to the bed and forced himslef upon me while my mind wandered off like it usually did, blocking his actions out by thinking of a better place, somewhere warm with palm trees. I knew that usually when he was done he passed out and then I could go move the gun till morning. As I always did, I checked to see whether he had been coherent enough to load it and discovered that that night, he had.
The next morning, I left.
