shipping-isnt-morality:

the thing is,

if i wanted to fictionalize the story of my abuse. if i wanted to tell it properly, the way a good story should be told; tell it so that it would be believed, so it would be felt

i would have to make the reader fall in love with her, the way that i was in love with her.

i’d have to tell them about her eyes. the way that they were gold-brown, a color i didn’t know before her. the way her black hair erupted in the sun into shades of deep reds and golds.

i’d have to tell them about how she dropped things when she looked at me. how when her voice broke on the phone as she confessed to being scared, i felt my life realign to care for her. how she touched me with trembling hands and called me “beautiful”, and told me she didn’t deserve me. that she dreamt of me. how she told me she knew i could be better, knew i could be amazing.

tell them about the tingles that raced all over my skin when she cornered me in the dark tech booth and leaned into me all night, making excuses until she didn’t. how she almost kissed me in the abandoned hallways after school, and in the office she’d sneak into while I TA’d, and in the classroom after everyone had left, and how every time it happened my heart beat so hard I felt bruised.

i’d have to tell them how she finally kissed me and how she’d meant to leave after one kiss but she didn’t, bent down and kissed me again and whispered “you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that”, i’d have to tell them that I said, “i think i might” and pulled her back in and felt the world fade away.

and then i’d have to tell them about the second time she kissed me, when I tried to pull her in again and she pressed both hands to my throat until lights flashed in front of my eyes, until i considered that she might really kill me as she told me not to touch her.

how she changed her mind about that two days later and threatened to leave me because i wasn’t assertive enough.

and how she laid in bed with me, petting my hair and reading the sherlock holmes novels with me the day after. how we read at the exact same rate, turned pages in unison and she told me her mind fit mine like a puzzle piece.

the problem with edward cullen, with christian grey, is not that we as readers are meant to love them. that is arguably the only thing that the books get right, is how wildly charismatic, how intense, how perfect an abusive relationship can look at first.

if i wanted to really tell the story of my abuse, i’d have to make them love her like i did and hate her like i did and fear her like i did and long to protect her like i did. i’d have to make them sick with confusion, literally sick, so twisted that even bleeding on the side of the road they’re not sure what went wrong or whose fault it was.

i want them to sympathize with her, because i did, extensively, running antiseptic over the places she cut me watching my phone on the counter so i’d know if she texted me. i want them to know how someone gets to the point of worrying about the person who is hurting them even as they’re still doing it.

if i told the story of my abuse and it was not romantic, if the reader was not in love, if some part of them does not try to make excuses for her, if they don’t try to turn the pieces around in their head to find a way to have the joy without the agony – if they don’t ache with longing for the good parts, i have told the story wrong.

how can we talk about abuse if we cannot talk about why people stay? how can we deny fiction’s ability to explore every fractal: maybe in some universe i fix her. maybe in some universe she kills me. maybe in some universe i kill her. maybe i write a hundred endings to the story. see if any of them bring us peace.