For me, a long and tragic story.
I’d just moved to Tucson from Asheville, NC. This was about 10 years ago. I was working as a waitress and living in an apartment with a roommate. I was in my mid 20’s, freshly divorced, with a hot body and a naivete that today I can’t even comprehend.
I met Travis at the bar in the neighborhood. Travis was soooo cute, especially in a white t-shirt and jeans. He was extremely charismatic, hilariously funny, and knew someone everywhere we went. He had a lot of friends, a nice family, a good job, and said all the right things. He could be so sweet it would bring tears to my eyes. Travis seemed like the man I’d been looking for my whole life, he was my soulmate!
A few months into the relationship, my roommate had noticed that Travis may have some anger issues. I was completely oblivious- I loved Travis and he could do no wrong. My name was not on the lease, so after “we” moved to a new apartment together (with Travis and I doing all the work, in July, in Tucson, I might add), she decided she didn’t really want me as a roommate. So Travis and I moved in together. Things were coming together nicely, I thought.
Immediately I began to notice that Travis drank more than I was comfortable with. And he seemed to go into these black moods when drinking. Then Travis began to want to hurt me when he was mad, which was getting more and more frequent. Me being no fool, I wasn’t about to stand there and let him hurt me, so I’d run. Many’s the night Travis would chase me down the street. Fortunately, my feet could fly back then, and he never did catch me. By the time I’d come home, he’d be sorry, I’d be wonderful again, and we’d make up.
Then one night while drinking, Travis reached his flash point without warning, reached down and grabbed my foot, and bit it. Hard. This was the turning point for me. I could no longer live in my denial and faced the ugly truth that Travis was NOT the charming, charismatic, funny hero I’d thought. Travis was an abusive drunk, and I had to leave. So I did. But it broke my heart in a way I’d never experienced before or since.
I then began dating Travis’s neighbor, that I’d met and hung out with some while I’d lived with Travis. At first I dated him out of some twisted sense of revenge, Travis had to see me with someone else, ha! But then I slowly began to forget about Travis and the neighbor treated me like a queen. My heart began to heal, and while I didn’t fall in love with the neighbor, it was a nice diversion and we became very good friends, and more. Travis didn’t like this too much, but except for a couple of drunken occasions of him banging on the door late at night and not being let in, he pretty much left us alone. I dated the neighbor for a couple of years, and now several years later, that man is my best friend. The last time I spoke to Travis, he had called the neighbor, I answered the phone. He asked for the neighbor, I said he wasn’t there, and he said to “tell him I called.” I didn’t recognize his voice, and asked who it was. “It’s Travis”, he sounded hurt. “Okay, I’ll tell him, bye.”
A couple years later, I got a message on my answering machine in the middle of the night. A drunken Travis, mumbling something about “goodbye forever”. I found out the next day that Travis had asked his girlfriend to marry him. I do feel a sense of satisfaction that Travis must have held a torch for me for a long time, for much longer than I held his. Ha!
Now, all these years later, I’m grateful to Travis. He taught me, in a relatively mild way, that abusive men are to be avoided. No matter how charming, how sweet, how funny, how popular… no one is worth being treated like crap and feeling like crap. I learned that it’s okay to be alone, that I can take care of myself, and that loving someone doesn’t change them.
Who, and under what circumstances, broke your heart the most?
