Stuck together (teacherxstudent)

Chapter 25

Ms. Porters POV

When I was just a child I didn't have it easy. Growing up with parents who were fighting day in day out was draining and confusing for such a young girl. I never really understood why they were fighting all the time. I didn't understand why they were yelling at each-other when I was in bed at night. I thought mom and dad were supposed to love each-other? Was this part of love, the screaming and yelling?

I was 6 when I first saw my dad hit my mom. I remember quietly watching them through the door that was left slightly opened. I always thought it was bad to hit someone. They teach you that you shouldn't be violent towards other people. It's bad. Why was dad hitting mom? Is that part of love?

As I grew older the abuse towards my mom got worse and my dad stopped trying to hide it. Being subjected to abuse my whole life altered the way I looked at love. I grew up in a place where I was taught that love is painful. Love is violence.

As a teenager I got my first boyfriend. I was 15 and he was 16. We were young but he showed me the purest form of love I had ever known. He was kind, sweet and loving. I couldn't quite understand why that was, I had never thought a relationship could look like that. It felt good to be loved, but it was conflicting with the way I had known love. I eventually broke up with him, not quite knowing how to properly love someone.

When I moved out at my parents home and moved away to college a whole new world opened for me. My parents were no longer around and I met people that were very different from anything I knew. It shaped me into a new person, one that learned that love shouldn't hurt and that I deserve to love and be loved.

So I dated. I dated a lot. I dated men and women and I took in all the love I could get. Sometimes it felt like I was dating to feel the love I hadn't yet felt before, but it never quite felt the hole that was still visibly there.

When I was 24 I met this charming man named George. He was kind of a bad boy in every way possible and I was immediately attracted to him. I was self aware and I realized I was attracted to him for all the wrong reasons but I was young and I couldn't help it. I couldn't care enough yet to see that he was going to lead me down a very dark road.

We had fun, he was nice. He seemed to be a sweet man hidden away under his charming and smug appearance. He was gentle, caring. He remembered my favorite foods and would cook them for me. He'd remember my coffee order and would come home with exactly the things I liked. He was attentive and he made me feel loved. I had thought he filled that hole that no one else seemed to be able to fill.

That was until one day he started acting different. He didn't bring me home my coffee anymore. He only cooked things he liked. He didn't listen to the things I told him. He didn't look at me the same anymore. He started to be verbally more aggressive, like I had upset him by just existing.

And then he hit me and ever since then his eyes reminded me of my fathers and I was reminded again that maybe love was pain. Maybe love was violence.

At first I stood up against the abuse. I fought back. I tried to fix whatever was so broken between us that he felt like abuse was the answer. I would look at my friends and their relationship and they were always so perfect. Just like we first were. I wondered where I went wrong. I knew love wasn't supposed to be like this, I had learned that by now. I had unlearned the toxic association I had with love. Where did I go wrong?

I stood up to him until one day I couldn't anymore. I wanted to leave, but where was I supposed to go? Back home to a father who was the grown up version of George? To my mom who had never left his side?

I was stuck and confused. George would be nice the other day and horrible the next. Maybe this was part of everything. Maybe this is the way it should be? I was filled with sadness. I had become my sadness.