The Color of Toxicity
This piece is made up of direct quotes from a IM conversation with the subject of this story, who for the sake of anonymity will be referred to as “Red.” His story is one of a toxic relationship: how he got into it, why he stayed, and how he ultimately got out of it. He was 19 and a half at the time. For the sake of anonymity, his current age will not be disclosed.
Individual sentences from the conversation have not been altered, except for the sake of correcting spelling, adding punctuation, and correcting other major typos. The order of words was not changed unless absolutely necessary. The order of some sentences has been altered for the sake of fluidity and literariness. No names are mentioned during this piece.
I often mention the first person I was with as a cautionary tale for others with low self-esteem and other issues like I have. I’m not sure I can really count it as a relationship since I was just the other guy. She had a long-term boyfriend who I believed she had been breaking up with when she got with me, but in fact I was just another rebound. They had a very toxic relationship and would frequently cheat on each other which I didn’t realize at the time.
She fit most of the mold for white trash and the stereotypes associated with that. A very abusive attitude, even to her children, very selfish, self-centered, extremely racist, among other things. When she found out that she was causing her boyfriend pain by being with me she just laughed her ass off for hours and thought it was hilarious. She cracked occasional joke that was entertaining, but frankly there was really nothing in her personality that was good, and I’m not exaggerating.
Even he was a horrible human being, which I guess was one thing she didn’t lie about, but she didn’t exactly admit that she was a horrible human being herself.
To be fair, I wasn’t exactly perfect myself. Then again, I had zero experience when it came to everything. Being a special person as an Asperger’s and depression and anxiety didn’t exactly make me a very viable thing for being in a relationship with.
They were and are probably still horrible human beings in general, but I was young and stupid and naive. To be honest I think the only reason I stayed in it for any period of times and days was because I didn’t think anybody else would have me. I thought that anybody who is willing to be with me couldn’t be all bad, but I was wrong.
It was an online thing where I talked to her, and then things got more intimate, as it were. I’ll be blunt, all of her promises of sex and every little thing I wanted to do certainly had an effect on wanting to meet her. She came out to me from Pittsburgh while I was outside of Schenectady. She spent about 3 weeks with me outside of Schenectady and then I lived with her for about 3-4 weeks in Pittsburgh with her mother and her stepfather. She also traveled with her two small children and I thought at the time if somebody had several children they couldn’t be that all bad, either. I felt a need to want to rescue them from an abusive situation … but I didn’t realize that that abuse was two-sided.
I thought it was one-sided, that he was just an abusive boyfriend that she was trying to get away from, and that I was helping her out, and I would be a better boyfriend. There’s a thing with me that I do want to rescue people in abusive situations, given the way I grew up and some of the people I know and some of my relatives. So I think that played a part of it as well.
I essentially had to be rescued from the situation by my family twice because I went out to Pittsburgh to be with her twice. I guess I wanted to help, but again, I had no experience prior to that with relationships or anything. I have been on maybe sort of two dates that really never went anywhere because my social skills suck.
At the same time my parents were divorced and my mother was already in the plans of moving to Oswego. I had a sister that wanted nothing to do with me and still thinks I’m a horrible little shit. And of course I had zero friends as well as tormentors even though I was trying. I had just gotten my GED and other stuff through special education. So I was very vulnerable because I felt abandoned.
The situation was also complicated by the fact that she found out she was pregnant and tried to pin it on me, but in fact was already pregnant which I didn’t realize. In my family if you knock somebody up, you do the honorable thing. Not necessarily marry them, but certainly try to be there and be a father and such. That’s certainly why I went to Pittsburgh a second time even after how she treated me the first time. She told me if I messed up or left or anything I would never see the kid that was supposed to be mine.
After I went to Oswego to be with my mother and our current roommate I still fell for the trap, and went back to Pittsburgh for several days to live with her and her boyfriend who she swore she was breaking up with to be with me. Course, she had told the boyfriend something completely different: that she had conned me into living with them in the hopes that I would be a free babysitter and maid, which is why he tolerated the idea of me living with them, which I found strange from the get-go. But again, I was stupid and young and naive.
To be fair, I was a terrible house guest, but at that age I knew nothing about manners or being considerate of other people and their property and such, so I definitely wasn’t a pleasure to live with.
It was several days of a living hell, some of the worst I’ve ever been through my entire life. They lived in a trashy poor apartment with no ventilation, it was in the middle of July and 100 degrees, and they were heavy smokers.
Finally after a couple of days we had a big fight. They were having another of their fights in the morning...which they always did...and I stepped in and ran my mouth. They always fought constantly and I played the pacifist normally. But I figured the only way they’d start to listen was if I acted like they did. And of course they flipped the table on me, proverbially speaking, once I did that. Me and him almost got into a fist fight. I spent the rest of the day trying to make it right and hopefully fix the situation because I completely blamed myself. I started out by apologizing and trying to clean up the apartment in a few other things, as much as I could do given that the apartment was a hundred degrees and I was dying.
Frankly, if they had kept up the act another day I probably would have still fallen for it and stayed there for some more time, but they screwed up big-time. They were horrible people but very stupid people, too. I was in another room and they decided to have very vocal sex and dropped the pretense of everything. I didn’t confront him about it because I knew what I had to do one way or the other.
After a couple of hours of sleep I knew the only thing I could do is to get out of the situation the next day. I think it was the first time in my life I’ve ever had the thought that I can’t take this anymore and I have to do something better to survive. And mind you, I have very little experience doing anything independent up to that point.
So I spent the next day contacting relatives to get bus fare and other things in the hopes that I would be able to take off in the evening, but there were a lot of hurdles to overcome that day such as arranging a taxi to the bus station and such without them realizing what was happening. I also had to take into account that I was watching their two small children and it would be wrong to just abandon them even though I really wanted to do that. I wasn’t angry at the children, but I wanted to get out of the situation.
I had just enough money to get a cab and I hope that if the fare went over what I had in my pocket that they would be willing to wait for me to get money from Western Union. When I called from the apartment before I left that taxi never came so I had to walk down the street with all my luggage which I took a lot on the trip thinking I would be there for a while, but by some miracle I was able to find a payphone. I finally got a taxi to take me to the bus station. I’m carrying four-five suitcases full of stuff, running on pure adrenaline to get there in time on a hundred degree day. I had to hold in all my emotions for 26-28 hours. That was the hardest part. The whole time I was thinking I hope they don’t run after me or start a scene because I don’t know what I would have done, but it would have certainly been something that the cops would have been called for and I would have been in jail. But I made it to the bus station and luckily the bus was late so I had plenty of time.
When I got to Oswego I still thought my life was over, because I had been told by my father I could never get into college, since I was me and had a GED. Didn’t help that it was a hot summer and I was living in a trailer with no AC either. Aside from my situation now it was the roughest time.
My first thoughts were that I had blown my only shot at something and nobody else would ever have me. Although there was relief of being out of the situation and knowing I would never go back. I had dreams/sorta nightmares about them for months every night...only slowed down once I got into a relationship about two months later.
She contacted me eventually and acted like she was completely clueless to why I left. I still believed to a degree that her pending third child was mine. The kid could, in theory, pass as mine. Of course the story changed drastically once I said I wanted a DNA test and if it turned out to be mine my mother would fight her for custody...a battle she would lose because she had a good long record with CPS anyway.
Probably March or April 2000 was the last I heard from her. I’m more or less over it nowadays I guess. It still haunts me from time to time. It’s not an experience I totally regret. There were initial perks to it...or something. That was just the trial of fire that everybody needs in their life.
“What did you learn from that relationship that you carried into others?” I asked him.
Not to be so naive. But frankly I didn’t learn the lesson well because I’ve made the similar mistake other times, but not to that extreme. Other relationships have been dysfunctional but not that extreme. To my knowledge I haven’t been the other guy in that since ever since, well at least without the first guy knowing and being okay with it. I guess I learned enough about sex and that situation so that I wasn’t a newbie for my next one, which was an actual full-fledged relationship that, while dysfunctional, was a proper relationship.
When somebody is willing to be with you that doesn’t mean really anything in terms of liking you or being a good person or anything. You really need to know that a person is fairly moral and decent human being before trying to do anything with them that’s really important.