Most people look back on their first love fondly. Some people even long for them, or at least wonder what they are up to. I don’t, in fact, I wish I had never met him. I hadn’t thought of him in a long time, but then I added a coworker to my Instagram and worried about what he would see. I didn’t have to scroll very far to see them. There were a lot of them, but I suppose that happens when you stay with someone for as long as I stayed with him. There were pictures of us smiling at the camera, pictures of us with the dogs, and a picture of him holding SpongeBob. I thought that I might feel something upon seeing his face again. Maybe it would make me sick, or perhaps I would long for the good times. Instead, something unexpected happened. I looked at my ex as if I was seeing him for the first time. When we broke up people told me that I could have done better, but I always thought they were saying it to be kind. This time I saw what my friends saw. I could do better, and it was because of the way he’d treated me.

I found myself thinking back to the first time he’d hit me. I was in the living room, applying for jobs on my computer while he spoke to his father on the phone. He came over to me when he hung up, but there was something different about him. He wasn’t standing as straight as he usually did. I opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong, but I never got the chance to.

“So, my dad said he’s throwing you out if you don’t get a job,” he said. My heart dropped, as I stared up at the man I loved and wondered if I’d made a mistake.

“I’ve been trying to get a job,” I said. I did my best to fight back tears, but I felt them rolling down my cheeks anyway. I left behind a good job to move in with him, so I was beyond hurt. “So, I could be homeless soon?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell your dad that I was looking for a job?” He didn’t answer me, but I could see the frustration in his body language. I never thought of him as a violent person, so I wasn’t afraid of him. He tried to pull me into a hug, but I resisted. He admitted that he’d lied to me. It was the first of many times he would go on to lie to me. He said his father hadn’t threatened me, he’d made it up because I wasn’t finding a job fast enough. This was the first of many times that he’d lie to me (I later found out that a cosigner can’t evict you from an apartment). I wiped my tears away and told him something about the lying. He cursed and slapped my leg, and that’s when I became inconsolable. The man who I loved enough to leave everything behind for had just put his hands on me in a way that wasn’t loving.

I remember repeating, “You hit me, I can’t believe you hit me!” He denied hitting me and pulled me into a hug. I tried to push him away, but I was too weak. I wanted to throw up. I cried until my cheeks were red and puffy, but I knew I was going to forgive him. I could already feel myself excusing his actions as a ‘tap on the leg’. I wasn’t injured, so why should a tap on the leg ruin our relationship? He asked me if I wanted to go a therapist to improve our relationship, but I told him that it wasn’t necessary. I thought seeking help that soon into our relationship meant that we were doomed. Looking back now, I wonder if it would have mattered if we would have gone. I sent him to Walmart because I wanted to be alone, and he came back with a stuffed animal. I couldn’t believe that he thought a stuffed animal would fix everything, and I even told him so. He claimed that the stuffed animal reminded him of me and he had to get it. I’m not sure why I accepted this, I think I just wanted to be done fighting. I stayed with him for about eight months after that, but our relationship had changed. I wish I had just ended it when he hit me.