I hate to show that I’ve lost control cause I keep going right back to the one thing that I need to walk away from. –Christina Aguilera, Walk Away

Maybe it’s because of my educational background, maybe it’s because of my relatively neurotic nature, or maybe it’s because I have this incessant fear of missing out on things but I have a really hard time walking away from people. I sort of feel like, no matter what the situation, everyone is hanging out without me. I get this constant troublesome feeling that everyone is off having the time of their lives and I’m somehow not included in the excitement, for whatever reason. I start to worry that if I don’t give all of myself to someone, if I don’t go out of my way to prove that they’re important to me, I’m going to lose them forever. I’m concerned that if I get invited out repeatedly and chose not to take the bait, regardless of how legitimate my reasons are for not attending, I’m losing out on something colossal. When I was in college and I really didn’t feel up to going to school, I would worry about how my friends were getting along without me. Did they even miss me or care that I was gone? Were they angry at me because I had chosen to sleep in instead of sit through anxiety inducing Tampa traffic? Did they think I was a garbage student for working so hard to get into the School of Social Work at a relatively prestigious school just to skip a day when I was too tired or hungover?!

I have this chronic syndrome that I’ve seen affect other children of Italian parents: it’s the guilt. And that guilt leaves me absolutely riddled with anxiety. I’m always worried about who I’m offending, who is upset with me, and what I’m missing out on. No matter what the situation, whether it’s having a glass of red wine at an arty little bar or going to the Venue to see DJ Pauly D, I’m convinced it’s the chance of a lifetime. And if I can’t go, I think about it for way longer than I should. You can’t walk away from anything or just let things go; think about all the great things you could be missing! What if something really drastic happens and you miss out on your last chance to spend quality time with someone? The feeling is terribly overwhelming.

And to be honest, when it comes to forgiveness and letting people back in, I have this mentality that nobody is perfect. I’m certainly not and as such, I can’t really dictate how people should and should not act. I can’t point my finger and demand that people just do what I deem is appropriate because that’s not life. And it isn’t fair. And with this mentality comes the tendency to be relentlessly forgiving, to refuse to give up on people, and to let them charm their way back into my life because I feel that if I don’t, I’m the one missing out. The acronym “FOMO” exists for a reason, friends. It was invented by hipsters who make their money off of Instagram for people like me. It was devised for this exact situation. 

To be fair, I find that in most cases, I’ve made the correct decision. Whether or not these proverbial individuals decided to screw me over after the fact is on them; at least I know that I gave myself the chance to do what I believed was right. If I extended the lifeline for the sake of positivity or the worry that I might miss out on the chance to say what I needed to say just to get reminded that I’m too good to people, that I absolve too easily, and that I care too much then it is what it is. And quite frankly, I’m the one that’s better for it. If my only crime is being too kind-hearted and compassionate, I’m okay with it. I’ve been called far worse by people I like a lot less. 

But sometimes, this tendency to double back and make sure that I’ve said all I needed to say, to ensure that I’ve exhausted every effort to repair a relationship that I believe is important to me, and to guarantee that I’ve given ample attempts for the other person to either take the line or sink it can create bigger problems for me. In some relationships, it would seem, going the extra mile isn’t what’s needed, it isn’t what’s right, and it’s absolutely not what’s best for me. In certain situations, in particular, I went way too far out on a limb for the other person and I allowed them to just kick me around like a deflated soccer ball. In these cases, I wasn’t just being too understanding. I wasn’t simply trying to give them the chance I thought I would want if the situation were reversed, the chance to prove themselves. I wasn’t attempting to make them realize how much I really cared for them, despite how frequently they tried disprove it. 

I was refusing to walk away. And maybe it was because I was scared and I thought that I loved them too much to just throw my hands up and let go. Maybe it was because I thought that everyone else had given up on them and they had just expected me to do the same so I had to prove myself better. Maybe it was because I thought second, third and fourth chances were something that should be handed out to everyone, no matter what the circumstance. Or maybe, more realistically, it was because I just didn’t know how. Walking away from something or someone that had been in my life for so long, no matter how detrimental, was terrifying. I couldn’t even begin to understand it. 

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories. –Haruki Murakami

When I was young, I was with a man who was a little bit older than me. I remember when we were on the outskirts of getting together, I always sort of looked up to him because I viewed him as such a mature individual. (The notion seems laughable to me now but that’s neither here nor there.) Outwardly, he had his shit together. He was well on his way to becoming a paid firefighter and all the guys he worked with always complimented his work ethic. They felt safe with him because he was competent. They enjoyed working with him because he carried his own weight. They were all impressed with him because he was the youngest guy there and almost certainly one of the most knowledgeable. 

And you know, to put a positive spin on all of this, I can’t take that away from him. He always took his job very seriously, even when he wasn’t using it as a tool to boast other people’s opinions of him. He worked very, very hard every single day and when someone needed their shift covered, he would drop whatever plans he had to help out and cover it. And it wasn’t because he wanted people to have a high opinion of him, although he had an extremely high sense of self-importance. He did it because it was important to him. He did it because he cared about the house and all the men and women who worked there. He did it because I think that he really did want to help people somewhere deep down in his black, scary heart. The fire department and his crew were genuinely that important to him. 

To be honest, I think they were his first loves. Everything else, myself included, just seemed to fall away. The rest of us, well, we just weren’t nearly as important. 

But to be completely fair, for his limited good qualities, he had a lot of really terrible ones. Aside from his inexhaustible work ethic and incessant inability to work every day to be a better firefighter, I quite honestly can’t think of any other good things to say about him. Good thing that isn’t my mission today. Because I would have failed.

He was perpetually violent, impulsive and a pathological liar to nearly everyone but most especially me. I guess that quite frankly, he just thought he was better than me and maybe more deserving of a higher caliber girlfriend. The truth was that I don’t believe I was ever the girl he wanted; I was just the best available at the time. And the more I got to know him, the further I got into the relationship, the more I was essentially forced to relinquish my control.

We seemed to fight the most when he thought I was gaining some sort of independence. For example, when I had first moved in with him, I didn’t have a vehicle. I had left my parents’ home in a dramatic tirade and part of my punishment was to have my vehicle (which was legally their vehicle because I was only eighteen) repossessed by them. And although catching rides with his mother and his brother was becoming a burden on everyone, my ex-boyfriend was livid at the idea of me even mentioning buying my own vehicle. Although he would whine and moan about how his schedule was too insane for him to be responsible for taking me places (like work, for example), he flipped a shit when I called him and told him that I was coming home with a used Mustang. A used Mustang that I had bought on my own, without any help from him, because he would have never agreed to go to a dealership with me, never would have allowed me to advocate for myself and get my own transportation. I mean, if I couldn’t go anywhere without the help of his family and selected firefighter girlfriends, he could keep tabs on me. He could keep me pretty and proper in my little bird cage. A lady better seen and not heard. 

Another example was when I had excitedly told him that I had gotten approved for an apartment. I thought that this would all be acceptable to him because it would not only give him his own space (since I was living with him) but it would also give us space as a couple. Rather than spending our time together in his family home with his parents, brother and elderly grandmother, we would have a place of our own, so to speak, to get away to. A place where we would sit on the couch alone and not have our movie choices dictated by his dad. A place where I could cook dinner for him and not have to be concerned about whether or not that would be offensive to his mother, who cooked every single night, no matter how tired she was. A place where intimacy could occur without all the stupid stipulations that come along with living with other people. A place where we could argue peaceably and be able to understand each other, rather than having whisper fights because it was late, or causing a scene and getting the whole family involved. (I remember one time we were arguing and he wouldn’t let me pass; I kept saying that I just wanted to leave, that I was frustrated and the argument was going nowhere. He held his arm out in front of me so I couldn’t get through the doorway and screamed that I wasn’t going anywhere. It caused such a disruption that his mom came in and, probably extremely tired of hearing us fight because it was a daily occurrence, yelled nicely but over his voice, “If Katie wants to go, let her go.” And then it was like he had been caught. He had exhibited, all on his own, his tendency to act crazy and ferocious. So he put his hand down and he let me leave.)

I also thought that since I was living with a firefighter’s sister, it would have been okay for me to move out. But I guess, at that time, I should have known better. Because as much as he acted like he couldn’t stand me, he couldn’t stand to lose control even more. But despite all of this, I moved out anyway and although he wasn’t happy about it in the beginning, I think he eventually just got over it. Maybe he realized that it would be a lot easier for him to cheat on me if I wasn’t living in his house. Or maybe it finally hit him that my living in my own apartment kept me exactly where he wanted me: perched in that little bird cage. I was with him when he wanted me, but I was far enough away when he didn’t. Far enough to get some space (aka talk to other women), close enough to stalk when he got anxious about losing control. And my living with a firehouse ally just made his stalking that much easier. Mostly because she would just buzz him in… 

I didn’t give up, I walked away. I had enough of accepting actions that were less than I deserved. –Nikki Rowe

But before you all lean back from your computers, take a nice swig of your white wine or your Stella, and claim that this is yet another whiny shit show about how terrible my asshole ex-boyfriend was to me, let me go ahead and stop you right there. Go ahead and grab yourself another glass of Apothic White and let me goddamn finish. There is a point to all of this.

Because you see, for all of these really harmful, possessive attributes that he possessed, I struggled with whether or not to leave the relationship. For a bunch of reasons. As a Domestic Violence Advocate, as a professional in the field of social work, I would tell you that I didn’t leave because I was scared. I was scared of what he would do to me if I just walked away from the relationship. I was scared because he had a lot of community resources and friends in various civil service units (all his friends were cops and firefighters) and had told me once, when we had first gotten together, that he had a cop friend of his put some sort of flag out on his ex-girlfriend’s car. This “flag” was supposed to suggest cops pull her over and search the car for illegal substances. According to him, this would further incriminate her because her parents allegedly smoked marijuana and left paraphernalia in the car. “Wa-bam, she goes to jail!” he said excitedly with wild, blue eyes. Now, I can’t claim to know whether or not any of this is actually true but these are the sorts of threats he would make. Psychological warfare. 

Now that I’m older and I work with cops and child protection officers every day of my life, I know this is probably bullshit. I know that it was probably something he told me to impress me (although why he thought something like that would impress me, I’ll never know…) or something that he thought he could tell me to somehow get back to her. It was pretty clear that he used intimidation with both of us and with me, quite frankly, it worked. I can’t speak for the other girl in particular but she always was a little bit tougher than me, less willing to get riled or forgive. (He also told me that he was a member of the Fire Department Dive Club, which I later found out had been disbanded in like, the nineties. I later realized that this was just his cover to cheat on me. And while I would absolutely love to ramble on about pathological liars and how disgusting they are, y’all have got some decent white wine to drink.)

As a social worker, I can give you a giant list of reasons why I was scared of him. I can tell you he was violent, he was wild, he had an extremely short fuse that his mother blamed on a head injury he suffered when he was hit by a car as a child. I can tell you that he stalked me, that he showed up to my work (which was a childcare, full of children, by the way) and threatened my life, that he used my hide-a-key and walked into my apartment when I was sleeping, when I had company, or whenever he felt like just dropping in on me. I could tell you about the time he broke a chair over my car because he was so angry, about the time he ripped a purse off my shoulder and tore the bag almost completely in half, the contents of it spilling out into the street. I could tell you about the time he threw a fork at my head and thankfully missed, the little fork getting stuck in his mother’s kitchen window. I could label those as a list of reasons why I was scared, why I tried to pacify him rather than enrage him, why I tried to just placate him and do what he said rather than stand up for myself. I could fill the entire internet with events that took place while we were together.

It was a wild, wild relationship. It was my every day. And truth is so much stranger than fiction.

But while that played a huge role in the next few years of my life and I still, to this day, look over my shoulder, there was more to it than that. To be honest, and I know this is probably an abuser’s entire intention but, I was most afraid that I would regret leaving him. I kept teetering back and forth between staying with him to work it out and just walking away. Every day my feelings would change based on how kind or horrible to me he was. Sometimes I would get so angry that I didn’t really care if I was single my whole life (which is what he always told me would happen). Sometimes he made me so crazy that I just wanted to be rid of him, I wanted to just climb in my closet and drown out the sound. Sometimes I was convinced that I was done with men, that they were all so terrible; that maybe he was right and none of them would ever put up with me the way “he had”.

But other times, when he felt like acting like a person, I would start to regret even considering breaking up with him. I would get this panic in my chest and this pain in my stomach because despite the dysfunction, I couldn’t imagine myself without him. Despite how frequently we fought until I lost my voice or how I sometimes cried until I was physically ill, I couldn’t picture myself separate from him. It was terrifying to imagine my life without him, especially since I had worked so hard to morph into this little FemBot who was only set out to satiate him. 

I was only friends with firefighter girlfriends and sisters, save for a few of my own personal friends that I refused to give up. (All of which, he absolutely hated as he deemed them a “bad influence on me” and most of which, I spoke to in secret.) Everything social I did was with him and was usually firefighter incorporated: someone’s kid’s birthday party, someone’s retirement party, someone’s Christmas party, someone’s wedding. It was really difficult for me to see outside of myself, to see myself outside of his world because quite frankly, I no longer had one. I was no longer a confident woman independent of him; I was only an extension, an ancillary accessory. How could I ever walk away from him? I didn’t know how to live without this relationship. It seemed impossible. 

But sometimes I would ask myself, how much are you going to take? How long are you going to let him scream at you? How long are you going to scream back at him until you’re literally hoarse with rage? How many more times are you going to make up stories when the cops come out? How many more times are you going to let him put his behemoth hands on you because he didn’t like the outfit you wore or the person you brought up? How many times are you going to stay up all night in the dark, staring out your window because you’re too afraid to go to sleep? Sure you could move the hide-a-key but that fucking woman you live with will just tell him where the new location is. Actually, she’d probably just let him in! First loyalty is always to “the guys”, right? It didn’t matter that she saw how he treated me or had caught him in lies multiple times before I even came on scene. She was a firefighter sister and they all stuck together like blood relatives. 

Firemen and their loyalty. 

I knew I had to walk away. I knew what he was doing was not appropriate behavior for someone who allegedly loved me, much less someone who saved lives for a living. I mean, I am not being dramatic. I am not exaggerating. He is absolutely terrifying. I’ve been married seven years to someone who is pretty macho and street smart, someone who could easily protect me without even trying and my ex-boyfriend still scares the absolute shit out of me. Because I know the things that he’s capable of. People will do crazy things when they’re desperate, when they feel they’ve lost control.

Moral of the Crazy: But I didn’t come here to just ruin his reputation or spew out things that quite honestly, most people already know. I could call law enforcement and cry about all the things that happened, put together a sordid and beautiful book of memoirs meant to dissolve any future domestic violence between young, intimate couples. I could ramble on for days about my experience in hopes that I’ve reached even one person, stopped even one fist from going through the wall, kept one child out of a violent home. I could talk about how I recognized his emotions in his face, how I could actually see when his personality was changing. I could talk about how in my young age I never knew the options available to me, I never knew there were domestic violence advocates, people designated to stand beside you in court for moral support. I never had a safety plan or a “bug out” bag. I didn’t even know what those things were back then. 

All I knew how to do was run.

I guess this is all about letting go; it’s about moving on, about knowing when it’s right to just pack your shit and go. How do you know when things have changed, when you have changed and finally woken up to find you’re done being abused? How do you know when you’ve had enough? I mean, it’s not like your heart has some sort of gauge you can just double back and check when you get frustrated. How do you determine when you’ve had enough, when you’ve bit off more than you can chew, when you’re taking way more heat than you deserve? How do you look at someone you care about and honestly tell them you’re done, that you deserve better, that you’ve finally goddamn had enough? That even on your best day with him your life is just terrible?

The trouble for me is, I cling to people. I don’t want to let go of them, even when they’re awful to me. I think that maybe, given my willingness to forgive and feel a sense of concern about missing out on interpersonal relationships has provided me with this twisted inability to successfully walk away from people. I think a lot of it has to do with being wasteful. I don’t want to put all this effort into someone, really give them a part of myself, and then decide that I’m moving on. I mean, what’s the point in ever getting involved with anyone ever? This is why people have intimacy issues. Giving yourself to someone just to give up when things get hard? What bullshit, friends. Why even bother? Like, why love anyone ever? They’re all going to hurt you, right? Bob Marley would say yes, but you’ve just got to find the ones worth suffering for. #realtalk

At one point, somebody will walk away. That’s just how these things go. You know someone twenty years to find you never really knew them at all. You ever read The Lovely Bones? I don’t want to spoil it for you but once this married couple loses their child, it’s like all bets are off. The mother packs her shit and goes to work at a vineyard. Twenty years and three kids shot to shit. You know how she communicates with her kids? The kids that she carried in her womb for nine months? POSTCARDS. How do you just wake up one day and decide to walk away from your whole goddamn life? None of it makes sense to me!

Alright, I know. There are some things in this world that are not so black and white. The whole world is full of gray situations; relationships where there are all kinds of tricky arrangements, this coupon works on everything in the store but clearance items, and maybe sometimes, you like things that are super out of character for your personality. I get it. Life isn’t something that you can color by number. And maybe it is insensitive to compare a domestic violence situation to [a fictional] one where a parental unit loses their child to some whacked out serial murder.

And sure, I have walked away from some people in my life (like the aforementioned firefighter with the help of a domestic violence injunction) but to be fair, I struggled with it. I still struggle with it now. I mean, in this case, with this particular man, I don’t struggle anymore because I know what I deserve and I know he was just so terrible to me that I can’t even find the appropriate words to describe it. (My only genuine hope is that he is a lot nicer to the woman he’s with now than he ever was to me. That would make some of it alright.) But sometimes, in other cases, I have walked away because I felt like it was in my best interest. It wasn’t because I wanted to or because the people were dreadful to me. It was because it was probably the safest, most pragmatic choice. The best mode of self-preservation. 

But there would be times when I would still look back, where I would wonder if I had made the right choice. I would consider my options, all of them so plainly in a row, and I would think about how my life would be affected by each one of them. As a person incessantly lost inside her own head, I would wonder, where does the line end? As someone who genuinely cares for people, even those that take relentless advantage of me, even those that play head games with me and try to make me feel guilty for things which I have no control, walking away is so difficult. I have a really difficult time just letting go of people, just giving up on them. 

It's like people say, you know, you take the bad with the good. But how far do you take that? Twelve glasses of wine a day? Five extramarital affairs? Countless amounts of monies lost because you can’t control yourself in a casino? Two black eyes? A broken chair and a dented Mustang hood? One ripped Vera Bradley gifted to you for Christmas? Countless fits of rage? Endless little lies and incessant judgements?

It’s hard and to be honest, I don’t know the answer. I never did. These processes are always really long ones for me because I feel like people deserve the benefit of the doubt. But how many of those do you get? How many more chances do you give before you start looking like an idiot? How many more times before you realize you are worth so much more than you’re getting?

Knowing what you are worth is the hardest part, I think. Understanding that you don’t have to put up with anything you don’t want to is the deepest, biggest realization that I have ever personally come across. And realizing that in walking away you’re actually gaining something rather than losing something is absolutely astounding. 

I always try to do this thing with people where I reverse the situation. I always tell myself, “Well, if I was this person and the situation were flipped, I would want a second chance. Or at least a chance to say what I need to say.” And you know what? Maybe that’s true. Maybe reversing things is a good way to live, a good way to treat people. I mean, it’s certainly thoughtful. 

But at the same time, I have to realize that if the situation were really reversed, there are certain things I would never do. I would never put my hands on another person, I would never spit in their face, I would never [dangerously] stalk them and I would never speak derogatorily to them about their appearance, their family, or their job. I have to tell myself, if the situation were reversed, there would be no situation because I would never let this happen to someone I care about. Because I would know that the person I loved deserved the best I would have to offer. They would deserve my very best self.

Thinking about life on the other end is frightening but it really shouldn’t be. The thing is that those things that are so important, those things like your life, your independence, and your self-care? They give you anxiety because they’re important. I mean, if none of it mattered, there would be no reason to worry. If you had no desire to thrive, you would have nothing to be concerned about. 

Giving up on people is difficult and hurts. But I think the thing to really understand is that if you keep putting up with nonsense, if you allow someone to continually take advantage of you in any way, if you condone the abuse and lies they beat you with well, you’re really just giving up on yourself. 

And if you aren’t going to fight for you, then who will? 

Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself. –Deborah Reber