She was a beautiful girl who loved ugly things. She spent her days thumbing through decayed thrift shops and moldy bookstores, searching for the beauty underneath the layers of dust and mildew. Some days she would find something, an object so beaten up and torn that she would sit, staring for hours, her eyes searching for the underlying worth.
She told me she learned to love old things from her mother. She spent much of her childhood watching her mother repair old sweaters and broken men. She would tell me how she could hear strangers coming in and out of the house late at night when she was just a little girl. Whenever she would ask her mother about them, her mother would smile and comb her hair back behind her ears.
“They’re just a little cracked dear, but don’t worry. With enough love they’ll be whole again, you’ll see.”
She was never the kind to go for the easy or the simple. She craved complexity, and challenges made her fingers ache with desperation, at least that’s how she always described it to me. That was how she felt when she met him. He was lost and forever changing, but to her he was a puzzle waiting for someone to put all his pieces together. He would appear late at night to her apartment with tales of wild drunken adventures, and she would lay her head in his lap with her eyes closed, wondering how she ever fell asleep without him.
He adored her, of that I’m positive. I remember her telling me stories of his spontaneous romantic gestures, which was saying more than the others before him. He always kept her on the edge of her seat wondering what he was going to do next. He had loads of friends and was constantly on the move from one adventure to the next. Everyone loved him; he was infectious with charisma. All the other girls wanted him for their own, but he was hers. He was always hers.
I don’t remember the exact moment when things began to change, but I remember the look in her eyes when they did. Her beautiful, big brown eyes grew weary, and her cheek bones began jutting out like knives. I knew it was his fault from the very beginning, but she never admitted as such. I could see the way loving him drained her. She never complained though, rather she always came running to his defense.
“Jenna, you don’t understand what he’s going through.”
“I don’t need to understand. I see how he’s changing you, and it’s not okay.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“I don’t think I am.”
“I promise I’m fine.”
“Pinky swear?”
“Pinky swear.”
I thought things would get better when we left for university. A few hours in distance would be good and give her some space away from him to see things more clearly. But things just got worse. She would wake up in the middle of the night to phone calls full of profanity and degrading slurs. I remember her rushing to turn down the volume and creeping to the living room, whispering and pleading for him to calm down. I would roll over and pretend I couldn’t hear her crying when she crawled back into bed, trying to stifle the sound of her tears. One night I couldn’t take it anymore, and I rushed out to the living room and snatched the phone and ended the call.
“Jenna! What are you doing? Call him back! I have to call him back!”
“No, you don’t! He shouldn’t be talking to you like that. No one should ever talk to you like that. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?! I know what I’m doing. Just give me back the phone!”
“You pinky swore—“
“I know, and I meant it. Please, he’s just going through a lot of stuff at home right now. He’s really stressed, and he needs me. Please just let me be there for him.”
“He’s toxic! Can’t you see that? He’s always drunk, and he treats you like trash! You deserve so much better than this! I know it, and you know it too!”
“What am I supposed to do Jenna? Just leave him?!”
“You don’t have to fix everyone!”
“I can’t leave him! Everyone always leaves him, and I promised him I wouldn’t. I promised him I would be different. Please. Just hand me back the phone. I’m okay. I’ll be okay. He just needs someone to love him right now.”
I looked down at her big, brown eyes encircled by dark shadows. I knew she wasn’t okay, but she was an adult, and she was smart, and she promised. She never broke a promise.
Read part two here.
