Intersection

The path is so beautiful today
Standing on your shoulders, I feel so tall
Sometimes the end seems so far away
My feet get tired and I have to crawl
They say I'm stronger for my past
But I'm blind to meaning
A path is just a path
It ends with slumber at every evening
And I'm confused by this fork in the road
So I take a step back in sorrow
Rest your eyes or heavy your load
Which path do I follow?
I'm straddling this intersection
Wavering with the changes in the wind
Either way is imperfection
Either way is lose and win

Boyfriend

I started dating Ben in May of 2011. Originally, he had gone to prom with one of my best friends. A month later, we were dating. Ben lived with a strict Mormon couple and was having a hard time with it, so my parents allowed him to move in to our extra room. Things went well for a few months, but started to get weird. Ben proposed to me after three months, and I said yes. I was blind to who he really was and I was blind to how I really felt.

            During our relationship, I struggled with telling him no. I had told him in the very beginning that I was waiting until I was married to have sex, and he said that he respected that. He didn’t. Almost every night, he came into my room when I was sleeping and lay down beside me. Sometimes I woke up but pretended that I was asleep, hoping he would go away. Instead, he rubbed my legs and kissed me.

            In November, Zach came to Ellensburg to have coffee with me. We got to talking about Ben. I tried to hide the fact that I felt so stuck. In a moment of silence, Zach sighed.

            “What?” I asked.

            He looked at me with concern, “I need to say something and I hope you won’t be angry.”

            “Okay…”

            “I know you pretty well, now…” Zach paused, “I really don’t think that you want to marry Ben.”

            I looked at him, surprised, “Why?”

            “You don’t seem happy. You’re smiling, but you’re not happy with him. I think that he was a broken person when you met him and you are someone that likes to take care of people. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I just think that you may have gotten your priorities mixed up. So in taking care of him, I think that you fooled yourself into thinking that you love him and want to marry him. Am I right?”

            I looked down at the table and traced the pattern on it as I thought about it for a minute. I wasn’t angry. As far as I know, I’ve never been angry at Zach. He’s always told me the truth and I’ve always trusted him with my life.

            I looked up at Zach and tried not to cry, “You’re right.”

            I finally understood why my stomach churned at the thought of marrying him. I really didn’t want to.

            When I broke up with Ben, he was crushed. He would come in to my room to sob and tell me that he couldn’t see a life without me. He would lie on my bed and try to feel me up. When I kicked him out, he cried harder and apologized profusely. He told me that he was going to kill himself because he didn’t have a life if he didn’t have me.

And then he got even creepier. Every time I would leave the house, he would text me every 5-10 minutes about how I was doing, where I was, who I was with. Annoyed, I told him that I would talk to him when I got home. He would text me again anyway.

When I finally told him that he couldn’t come into my room anymore, he got really upset and couldn’t understand why. So instead of coming in, he would stand at my doorway and ask me why I broke up with him. No matter how many times I told him that I just didn’t want to be with him, it was never a good enough answer.

Then one night, when Ben was trying lay in my bed with me and I finally got him to leave, I jumped out of my window to get away and go somewhere with a friend. Apparently he saw me walking toward her car and he panicked. My dad called me a few minutes after I left, “Uh, where are you?”

“I’m hanging out with Selena, why?”

“Ben is freaking out. I heard something in the house, so I got up and found Ben searching through cupboards and slamming doors and running through the house looking for you.”
            “Uh, that’s creepy. I’m just out with Selena.”
            I guess that was the last straw for my parents, because they kicked him out. Ben decided that he would go to the west side and try to live a hobo’s life. While he was gone, he texted me every few minutes, telling me exactly what he was doing, how much he missed me, and how much it sucked to be a hobo. He wouldn’t leave me alone.

So I changed my number, blocked him on Facebook, and went to a victim advocate place to tell my story.

My brother Micah and my sister Anna accompanied me to court. Katie, my advocate, sat next to me and reassured me that everything would be okay. Ben walked into the courtroom, trying his best to look confident. He wore black slacks, a white shirt, a red tie, and carried a briefcase. Everyone else in the room wore casual clothing.

“Someone has watched way too much TV.” Anna joked.

I laughed. He did look ridiculous.

When we were called up by the judge, Katie and I stood and walked up to the stand. The judge asked Ben if he would be willing to sign the protection order and not contact me for a year.

Ben spoke, “yes, your honor. But I want to say a few things first.”

“Okay…” the judge looked annoyed.

“First of all, I did not go into her room without her permission. Second of all, that night that she said I was frantically searching through the house…I was only doing that because I was afraid that she was going to hurt herself. And last, I never, ever tried to have sex with her.”

I wanted to scream at him, but I stayed silent. I didn’t care much about the lies he told, I just wanted the protection order signed so I would be rid of him.

We left the court with a signed protection order. I was free of Ben for a whole year.