After Her Love

4. Behind these hazel eyes

Iiris' PoV

I stared down into my coffee which had cooled down a while ago. This morning was no different to any other - I woke up, made breakfast for myself and Rauli, got yelled because I either burnt the toasts or poured too much milk into his coffee, felt like I was worth of nothing, cried in a bathroom until he had left and now I was here, moving the spoon in circles in my mug, hoping that this movement would somehow fix all the problems. And it has been like this for pretty much two years now. You could ask why I didn't just leave but the ugly truth is that you can't. You are stuck. The idea of leaving ticks in my head daily but I have no courage to bring that plan alive. It just is not that easy. If I left, I'd be constantly thinking what if he finds me? What if he fucks up my life even more? And I'd lie if I said there were no good times. There was... When he realized that he had crossed the line, he apologized and was probably the most loving man on earth. But we all know that was exactly how the circle of violence works.

To minimize the time I spent at home, I took on a lot of different jobs. That's how I had an excuse to stay away from home. Rauli of course was not overly happy about it, but I lied to him that it was all because of the money and that way we could save more and get our own place in the future. So far we have been living from one rental to another and I was the one who had to deal with the payments. Sometimes he paid the half but usually it was me, so working in different places, having more income, was my excuse to stay away from him.

As said, he could be a very loving man.. But at his worst it was hell on earth. Mental and physical abuse from day to day... He never hit me on my face because that way people would notice that there was something wrong. I could never wear a t-shirt if I had bruises on my arms, but his favorite place to hit were my legs. I had bruises on them often. As soon as the old ones were about to heal, he made sure I got some new ones. I could take the pain. It would hurt a while but it passed. I was so used to it anyway. But what hurt the most was the mental abuse that I had to deal with every day. He was a control freak. I had to be at home right after work, the only friend I could meet was his sister but I could never tell her that her brother had turned into a monster who had to know every little detail of my day. Why the hell did I ever fall in love with a guy like him? Because he wasn't like that when we first met six years ago. I had just turned 18, partying hard, spending time with my friends and then one night, I met him. He was my friend's brother but I hadn't met him before because he lived in another city. That night he was also visiting her sister and we clicked quite fast. He seemed to be a great guy. He had traveled a lot although he was only 22 at that time, four years older than me. It was interesting to listen to his travel stories, learn something new from the different cultures. I wanted a life like that... And I had it for the first years with him. He had a good job and I didn't have a low income either. But it all changed after he lost his job. It was tragic to him... But it was tragic for me too. Since that moment, it was all my fault...But at the end of the day... I still loved him.

I poured the cold coffee away and went to get my hair and makeup done. The view in the mirror was sad and pale, and my brown eyes were slightly red because of crying. I hated this situation I was in. Deep inside Rauli was such a great guy and I missed that side of him. When we had better days I loved each and every moment of it but I hated what he had become. Because it had lasted for so long already I had learnt to hide my feelings from him. Seeing my cry made him even more mad. In his opinion I looked so terrible while crying and crying won't fix his problems. True, it won't. But neither won't the abuse.

To cover my pale skin, I put on a good amount of makeup and tried to get myself into work mode. The mornings were always the hardest for me because I had to leave my home life behind and pretend to live a normal life. Mostly I managed well. While working with kids and evenings at the bar, I pretty much managed to push all the bad things aside but as soon as I returned home, I was back under his controlling behavior. So I was more than happy to close the door and make my way to the youth center which was not too far from home, so I decided to walk there today. Once I got out of the building, I put my airpods on and selected the one song that has been with me the past year, Kelly Clarkson's Behind these hazel eyes. The lyrics were more or less about my life but it gave me so much power for the day. It gave me strength to go on and it reminded me that I could be strong. I could be strong if I chose to be. But I needed time for that. I wasn't that strong yet to leave him. I needed something that would give me the last push to finally get free from Rauli and move on, no matter how much I really loved him... I couldn't do this to myself anymore. I could not ruin my whole life because of what he does. I kill myself like that. Or he kills me.