how i took back my pride. anonymous

I wasn't out when I met him. Twenty-three, only just having found my footing and new to the busy world of journalism when, at some stupid work do, I met a guy. Gorgeous and he obviously knew it with this cropped dark hair and eyes that literally swept my life along with them and when I found out he was into men, I knew God was on my side.

Or so I thought. 

He asked me out for drinks later on in the evening with a couple of his friends and eagerly, stupidly, I accepted. I think back and wonder now if maybe I hadn't accepted those drinks, if I would be writing my story. Probably not. 

We found ourselves in a dingy pub and had a laugh, getting more and more sloshed as the night went on and getting along as though we'd be friends since the get-go and, eventually, things got progressively more flirtatious, a gentle caress of the thigh, a tug of the waist to make room for another patrons. We were making out in a back alley ten minutes later, grinding against each other, pretty happy to carry on what we were doing in any bed, albeit at the side of the road. Somehow, unbeknownst to me, we got into a hotel and had sex on the chair by the window like some horny teenagers, barely able to make it onto the mattress and I, young, newly gay, felt happy as I blurted out a fumbled confession and a request to date. He probably found me funny, like a plaything he could tease a little and that's probably why he accepted, wanting to drag out whatever emotions I had thought I'd developed. 

He was gone the next morning, the first red flag, but he'd left a note, something I believed to make up for it, with a scrawled note with his number and a promise that we'd meet again a little later. Left me with the bill for the room but my mind was eager to overlook this. 

Our romance, if you could call it that, was bittersweet. Hot, violent sex ensued every argument we had in an attempt to just cover them up rather then dealing with them and they sat behind the scenes, a stagnant mist, fogging our relationship. It sometimes choked me when I least expected it, a constant reminder that our relationship was based on our bodies.

It was almost six months in when I first refused sex. We'd had an argument, not one of our usual petty arguments but it was personal, he criticized the way I looked, my use of make-up, saying that I "didn't need to be like all the other f*gs". I'd gotten more irritated then usual, calling him names and saying that my life didn't revolve around him and his view on me. It had pissed me off; I wasn't his to control. But I guess he didn't like that and he especially didn't like, when he started towards the bed, me pushing him away, turning my head from his advances.

"Not tonight," I remember saying. "I'm pissed at you. For real this time. We can't just forget things with sex."

That's when he seemed to snap. He grabbed me, spun me around and pinned me to the bed, holding my head to the mattress, knees digging into my legs. I felt his hands tug at my trousers, ignoring my struggling, my panicked cries, pleading and begging him to stop and let go; we could talk this through. But he held me down and assaulted me, using my body over and over until I fell limp and until he was finished.

I lay there for hours after trembling, listening to the sounds of the empty house around me, the site of my abuse. After a while, I cleaned myself, tugged up my jeans and, without a word, packed a bag and left. I crashed at a friends house for a few weeks, refusing to speak, spending the evening sobbing into my hands or onto her shoulder.

Leaving him was the scariest thing I'd done but I'm so glad I did. It gave me my freedom back that I hadn't had for the longest time and I finally felt liberated from him.

A year later, he still has a huge impact on my daily life, having taken with him a small part of me. But I am healing. You made me cry, Ryan, but not anymore.