Mari Nakamitsu
26 April 2011
Creative Non-Fiction
J. Shimabukuro
Undecided
It’s something that has been bothering me for a while, more than just the daily struggles of being irritated that I experience most of the time. I hear her voice, echoed through the glass of my drink. When I think of her, which has become increasingly often lately, silence falls enough for the clink of the ice melting to indicate the passage of time. We have known each other for eight years and been through a lot. Surely most of our time spent together was seemingly the most difficult portion of our lives, learning to deal with ourselves and discovering who we are, though never finding it until afterward. I have discovered this now. I wish I could share it with her, I wish she could understand. (THESIS) Those who have difficult paths, choose their lives to remain difficult (THESIS). I saw her a week after my birthday, she came to drop off my present.
During those early years, when we first met, I thought she was kind of strange to be honest. Not necessarily in a bad way, I just thought that she was a little immature and excitable. Like it or not, we somehow ended up together in a lot of our classes. She was never in my homeroom, our last names were too far apart. My other best friend at the time was chipping away at me because of her mental illness. Although I knew she could not help but lie all the time, I was wearing thin of being lied to my face about everything, no matter how little. Eventually our relationship became neglected and we both left it unattended. It was ok with me though, because I had already found this new friend. Over the years we bonded and she always seemed to have some kind of problem. I always stuck it out with her and I always made sure to be there for her no matter what. During this time and to this day, for the most part, my problems stay my own and I am very much fine with that. She was there for my minor difficulties that I experienced and I was there for all of her difficulties. Whenever she had a problem, I always knew the right things to say to make her feel better or to help her solve her problems. I chose to figure out my problems for myself for the most part and I do not regret anything. Perhaps it was good for me to have figured out things for myself.
Sometimes I wonder what went wrong. Although she did have some issues, I was always there for her even when her own family wasn’t. Everything I thought she did would wear off with maturity, like most, but somehow it hasn’t. Perhaps her psychological issues are more deeply rooted than I thought. By now, I thought, all of this would fade away as she grew into herself. But everything just kept getting worse. She was always crazy for boys, she always had a crush on someone. I could never talk to her about those kinds of things because I was never really interested in boys or love or dating or anything like that. It may sound strange but until I met my boyfriend, I thought that I was asexual and had no interest in men or women or relationships at all. Perhaps I thought this because no one ever liked me and I was sure that I was just really ugly, therefore I concluded that I should be asexual and that I was. Mostly, she struggled with those feelings and that was the source of her problems, even today. It was freshman year I think, the first guy she went out with. He was a friend of our other friend. I did not like him especially; he was kind of a jerk. He turned out to be a jerk too. They dated on and off for a few months, he was not very nice to her at all. She just could not let him go so easily though, I never understood why, he had no redeeming qualities so I always thought she would dump him, but she never did. Little did I know that this first boyfriend was going to be very mild from what was to come after we graduated.
Over the years of high school the boys she dated became worse and worse. She only dated one boy that was nice. This guy broke up with her because she was cutting herself and he told her that he could not help her and be with her when she is like that, he told her he would always care for her and be her friend but could not date her right now. By him doing that I knew that he was smart and kind and was the only person that was “good” for her. After him she “dated” someone even worse than all the others. It was senior year. I put quotes around dated, because she was the “other woman”. He had a girlfriend whom he had cheated on with other women besides my friend. I don’t think that she ever admitted that she was the other woman, she always refers to him as her “ex” even though they never technically dated. After she gathered the courage to not see him anymore (after his girlfriend found out about her) because of her guilt, she stated that she should be single for a while. I agreed with her since she started dating she just went through one relationship after another.
Next thing I knew, literally like the next week or so, she asked me if she should go out with this other guy that she met. He sounded fishy, but I told her she should go on one date with him to see if he was nice and if she liked him. I found out from her later that people who knew him and also knew her warned her about dating him because he was a mean, violent person. She reveled in the fact that he was this kind of person who people warned her about. I am not sure if she thought that he just had a “bad boy” reputation and was really the sensitive type like in stories or what she thought was great about this idea. When I heard this I told her that I did not think dating him was a good idea, but like always she blew off my advice as well as the advice of the other friends she had around her. I figured she would get over this relationship eventually like she had the last one and all the others, I thought it would just take a while like her other relationship ending had. This relationship is still going on to this day.
He began isolating her and telling her that everything in her life was stupid and insignificant. He told her that her friends are stupid and the things she thought and liked were stupid. Of course knowing this I became concerned and wondered why she could not see the things that I saw. I devoted a lot of time to researching abusive relationships. Everything that he did added up and coincided with abusive relationships including the high and low points in their relationship. Now, I understand that in every relationship there are rough patches, there are higher and lower points. However this was different, the high and low points were extreme and frequent, one could even calculate when the high and low points were going to be, like every few months or so. I researched the cycle of abuse and what abusers say and do. Everything that I learned about was true about their relationship. He would manipulate her into blaming herself or to making excuses for the way he behaved. He would hit her and then cry to her about how sorry he was. This made me sick. Especially when I knew it was her choice to keep taking him back. Even now as I type, I get angry, my stomach twisting into knots. She makes me upset for staying with him and not seeing what he’s doing and he makes me angry for hurting her. I try not to think about it, but she is my best friend after all. For the past year and a half I have tried talking to her about this as many different ways as I can, but to no avail.
I never thought that I would witness abuse or in a way be a part of it. It feels like being involved with a drug addict. I know how that feels like and the feeling is similar. He has stopped hitting her (as far as I know) but he is still controlling her and being psychologically abusive, but she thinks her relationship is getting “so much better”. It hurts me, depresses me, and makes me feel helpless and confused. What am I supposed to do? Tell someone? I have no answers. I’ve talked about it with her other friends and everyone else feels the same. No one knows what to do because it’s not that she wants to get out of the relationship and cannot, she chooses and wants to stay. She doesn’t understand what he’s doing to her and why the rest of us feel the way we do. I am undecided.
