Unbound by Juva
Photo by RF._.studio for Pexels
TW: Discussion of physical and emotional abuse
Plopped into the bottom of the journal’s lined pages was text that had been printed, cut, and glued into the empty space. What had happened was too painful, too brutal, and too long to write a second time. I’d emailed my therapist pages of this text, describing in painstaking detail what happened the day my boyfriend tracked me down near the school library and forced me into his car.
Winter bled into spring that day and the trees were barren and brave. He told me he would be waiting for me at my apartment. So, I went to the library instead. Just as I was crossing the street, I felt the halt of his car brakes, rubber gripping asphalt. He’d found me. He demanded I get into his car. I owed him money, he said, and together we were going to figure out exactly how much.
I typed out that day’s events to my therapist using too many words with too many details: we sped past the big Virginia trees; the traffic lights conspired against me, never turning red and allowing me the chance to escape; I still couldn’t decide whether the seatbelt strapping me in was a safety or a hindrance; I regretted never having learned how to unlock the door from the inside after the latch broke a few months earlier.
I filled the screen with text, transforming the white space into a busy mass of words. I wanted to draw the day’s events from my flesh and drop them into my therapist’s lap. To make them hers. I imagined this meticulous exercise would excise the painful memories from my head and my heart. My frenzied fingers worked their way across the keyboard, chipped nails clattering on plastic keys.
I offered to go to the ATM, to get some cash, but he refused. He wanted to take something from me, but it wasn’t money. His eyes turned another color then, and those brown eyes that once shone for me fell sinister and still. When we reached the stairs of my small, brick apartment building, he demanded my keys. When I refused, he snatched my handbag from my shoulder. The bag was my favorite, genuine leather and brown, with leopard print lining and metal hardware. It was the first expensive thing I owned. He snapped the strap and sent the contents sailing into the street. I was a dam released. My words flowing, overflowing, pouring, tumbling over bridges and stones, knocking down trees and boulders, and rushing over rocks and riverbanks.
Before it was done, I knelt in the dirt and with dry, papery hands picked through the tree leaves searching for my scattered belongings – my phone, my wallet, a pair of gold earrings. He surveyed me from his great height scanning the ground for my keys. In the next moment he was yanking me up the stairs. I stumbled over my feet. I twisted my ankle on the concrete. I cleaved onto the black metal railing and wrapped myself around it. The quick frightened glances of a blonde student walking through the parking lot, looking, but trying not to see made their way to me. My boyfriend plucked me from my anchor and dragged me out of the view of onlookers.
I never said a word. We were two of too few Black students at that white university. So, I had tried to contain the situation and stop it from spilling out into the open. I was defiant but measured. Stern in my refusal, but quiet in my delivery.
“Why are you so calm?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you?” We both saw the cop car approaching. He left, and I pulled my keys from their hiding spot, ran up the stairs, and opened my door. On the other side of the door, I dissolved into an unyielding flood of tears, gasping and spilling out onto the clean parquet floors.
The therapist’s name was Erin. Her light brown hair was cropped short, and her frame was steady and strong. Her presence assured the world she was a capable woman, not fragile like the therapist before her. There was a plainness to her. She wore a blank expression, but I could see she was open to accepting, and momentarily holding, my pain. It was Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but I wasn’t sure it was working. I had the feeling of trying to get somewhere, but I wasn’t sure I was. It wasn’t that I had just been terrorized by my boyfriend, or that I was frustrated with my life, or disappointed with my progress in therapy. I just wasn’t sure I was capable of making the types of changes I needed to. I liked Erin because she was simple and straightforward, not complicated like me. At times, I found this type of simplicity in people suspicious. But I also wanted to wear it. To try it on and pretend it was mine. To be simple and plain and tell my boyfriend, uncomplicatedly, that it was over. If only I could pour my pain into the pages of my journal, then, I too, could become blank, expressionless, and plain. I was desperate to distill my pain into something small, contained, and easy to swallow.
Neat rows of text filled the computer screen. I was finished, but I wasn’t satisfied. I walked toward my bedroom and picked up the smooth brown leather-bound journal. I turned towards the computer. Blocks and blocks of unbroken text crowded the screen. I printed the email, cut out my words, and glued them into the blank pages of my journal.
A well of emotions surged inside of me. They pooled at my ankles, rose to my hips, and invaded my chest. They choked me at the throat threatening to overwhelm and drown me. The plain, lined journal paper was simple, but the text I had cut and pasted into it was not. It was stuck right on top of the simple thing, and it stood out.
Juva
Juva is a new and emerging storyteller. Her writing explores topics of race, mental health, queerness, and navigating womanhood. She is an Emotional Support Human for one orange cat who falls apart every time she goes upstairs. In her free time she enjoys singing poorly and learning to fly.
Image credit: @mrmucyo