I recently started talking to some of my friends that I really haven't heard from for a while. One of the girls and I used to be really close when I lived in SI and we used to talk all the time. One of the things that came up in conversation was some of the statistics I've heard about abusive relationships and rape. Being the woman's studies person/feminist that I am and since I practically converted her we somehow always bring up stuff like this.
It seems like for the longest time people come to me for advice. I really wish I knew why. I don't mind but most of my friends are older than me so I guess I thought I'd end up going to them for advice but yeah that doesn't happen. When I need help I usually go to either my mother or my boyfriend.
Anyway, God knows why we don't talk about happy things but we usually talk about woman's rights and things like that. I spent 5 years in an abusive relationship before I got out. I didn't even really make the decision to leave, the police report I filed really brought things to light. But I'm only 20 and 5 years is a decent sized chunk of my life. I was kind of disappointed with myself but there is no was to justify bruises around your neck... I've tried and my mother didn't buy it... especially not in the summer. It took me a long time to talk about it but once I got it out I felt better and kind of worse at the same time. As soon as I talked about it 3/4 of my female friends talked to me about their experiences with rape/abuse. I warned my friends about guys like this when I was in high school when I was dating one myself. And I was cheated on about a million times, it's another reason why I don't believe in "breaks" in a relationship. But anyway, my ex still calls once in a while and I feel bad for his girlfriend because I've talked her and I know she has it much worse then I ever did.
The rape and domestic violence statistics are embarrassing but I know from first hand experience how difficult it is to get out. That's something I'd definitely like to dissect and find out why. Now that I'm in college more and more of my friends come out and tell me about their experience with this. As bad as it was for me I got really lucky, I didn't get pregnant even though that was his plan when I was 15 and I moved on with my life. I hope people (both men and woman) that go through this really get some help. I've done so much research about what happened to me, I read countless blogs and research articles to find a way to justify or find reason for all of this but obviously it's not possible. I was supposed to go to college to NJ and I actually enrolled and got accepted and less than a month before the semester started I told my mother I couldn't do it because my ex would be so close. I think I made the right choice, I love SB and I like living in LI.
I hope anyone that's going through anything like this finds someone to talk to. I was lucky I'm very close to my mother but even she didn't know about anything for over 4 of the years and even now she doesn't know most of what happened. Now I really don't mind sharing what I went through and what's really sad is that is that not only does my ex want to "start over" and thinks we can (when I heard his current girlfriend is either pregnant or just had a baby and he almost went to jail earlier this year), but he thinks what he did was okay and I did something to deserve that. Now I have a requirement for dating a guy, he can't do anything like that and I think that's pretty sad. It should be implied and expected that he wouldn't, I shouldn't have to hope he won't do anything like that.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/13801-teen-dating-violence/
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