Sometime around early November, Henry and I were seated next to each other in AP Microeconomics—placing us so close that our arms would occasionally brush against one another, sending alarm through my body like a shockwave. There’s a part of me that wonders if our teacher found out we were exes and sat us next to each other purely for his entertainment. Because come on. I kept my eyes cast down at the desk or up at the teacher, looking anywhere but at Henry. I built an imaginary wall between us.
But having to sit next to him every day, I gave myself permission to relax bit by bit for the sake of my education. I was always an A student, I wasn’t going to just not participate. Spending time in the same room as him grew to be more manageable. Eventually small talk inevitably blossomed in the cracks of lecture. He asked me how my family was. Then we worked together on an assignment. I asked him where he was applying for college. He explained a concept to me.
At this point we had been broken up for about two and a half years. During that time I had developed a close relationship with my sisters and parents, was swim captain, had gotten into my dream college, was proud of who I’d become.
I thought I wanted to pretend he wasn’t there, but I realized I was actually liking it better that he could see me now—that he could see me succeeding.
Throughout our relationship, Henry had lots of ideas for how I should change. My clothes, my makeup, my friends, my love for my family—it all had to go. For instance, as an only child, he thought it was strange that I was so close with my sisters. Up until that point, I had always considered my sisters my “built-in friends,” but Henry insisted that it was sad that I needed “built-in friends” and couldn’t make “real friends.”
I genuinely believed that he knew what was best for me, so I tried my hardest to create distance with my sisters and spend time with who he'd decided counted as real friends. Then whenever I brought him around my friends, he stayed absurdly quiet, never gave them anything to work with. Later when we’d be alone he’d give me his reasons why it would be best if I didn’t see them anymore. He’d tell me that spending time with them would lead me down a path of becoming like them: alcoholics-to-be with bleak futures.
It wasn't just my sisters and my friends, though. Henry’s insights always had a way of peeling back the layers of the people I respected and trusted. Particularly adults. Until I met Henry, I’d always kind of accepted adults’ general authority without question because, well, they were the adults. But Henry made me see things differently. He pointed out that adults weren’t always right, that they weren’t infallible. That I shouldn’t be so naive as to blindly trust them just because they had authority over me.
Even more specifically, the adults Henry was most critical of were my parents. My mom was the classic “almond mom.” She was thin in that way that looked like it took effort, always filled our pantry with foods that were low-fat-low-carb-low-calorie, read nutrition labels like they held scripture. With the best of intentions, she always pushed her beliefs about diet culture and thinness onto my sisters and me, thinking it was wisdom she was passing down. Her values weren’t entirely her fault; they were very much the result of the Western beauty culture she was shaped by. But still, I can’t deny that it had a major impact on my perception of myself and the world around me.
My dad, on the other hand, struggled with an alcohol addiction. Growing up, he’d sip straight liquor over ice from morning until night, often peppering his daily haze with prescription anxiety meds to get through the day. It was normal for him to have no recollection of weekday evenings. My sisters and I would drag him to bed after we’d find him passed out on the floor and learned to set up his CPAP machine that he used at night for sleep apnea.
I knew he was an alcoholic prior to Henry pointing it out to me, but what I hadn’t noticed was how pervasive his alcoholism was in my upbringing and home life. Honestly, I’d never known anything different. It was the same with my mom’s eating habits—I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t see her obsession with her weight or looks as anything unusual. I just assumed that all adults were like that. I also assumed that all adults drank every day. The picture of adulthood that I created in my head consisted of coffee, P90X, Whiskey Manhattans, and Klonopin.
I was surprised to learn that not only did Henry’s parents not drink every day, but they rarely drank at all. They also didn’t take pills for anxiety. And they kept chocolate ice cream in the house.
Henry did not like my parents, and he made a point of consistently highlighting their flaws to me. He warned that if I was not careful I would become like them, and I took his words to heart. As he unveiled my parents’ struggles to me, I couldn’t help but question what else about life I might have overlooked. Seeing my parents through this new lens, I felt a surge of shame and became increasingly critical of them. Growing up I had always been close to them, had always been open with them. But soon I found myself intentionally distancing myself from these two people who, I can see now, were just doing their best with what they'd been given.
Henry began to meticulously point out issues with the people in my life: my sisters, my parents, and my friends, one by one. I found some validity in his criticisms of my parents, so it made genuine sense to me that he would have an insight into these other people too that I just couldn’t see. He told me that with his guidance, he could rescue me from the impending disaster that adulthood apparently held for me: a future marked by anorexia and alcoholism. A future where no one could possibly love me, he’d say. So I allowed him to cut people from my life at his discretion. In fact, I aided and abetted. Maybe that’s why women and girls don’t talk about becoming prey—because first, we walk willingly into their traps. But he seemed to know Everything, while I could only hope, meekly, to one day achieve even a fraction of his brilliance.
My sense of his superiority wasn’t limited to private conversations; trustworthy people in my life painted him as someone who had the answers, someone who could guide me when they couldn’t. I remember mentioning to my biology teacher that I was interested in taking AP biology the following year. While she cautioned me about the course’s difficulty, she added, “But wait, you’re dating Henry, right? He can help you, you’ll be okay,” despite the fact that I was acing every test without his help. I didn’t enroll in AP bio for the next year.
Teachers and peers who knew him seemed to think more highly of me when they learned I was his girlfriend. If he approved of me, then they did, too. He was gifted, he was golden, he was brilliant. And I was the supposed winner.
Henry wielded a power over me that I struggled to put into words. With each idea he implanted in my mind, I began to doubt my own instincts. I felt as if my worldview had been so sheltered prior to him that I needed him now to show me everything I had missed.
But soon he started to dangle our relationship out on a little string, barely within reach, and continuously threatened to cut it if I failed to live up to his standards. He was always just on the edge of abandoning this charitable role he had assumed in my life.
He started imposing rules on me, claiming that I needed to follow them if I wanted to stay with him. Which, of course I did—I needed him to save me, I thought, and beyond that I thought I’d never find a guy so perfect ever again. His first rule was that I had to respond to his texts immediately. In the early days of texting culture, I didn’t see this as much of a problem. He wanted me to prove that I cared about him, that I could be dependable. I convinced myself that I could do that for him. I thought it was kind of sweet, actually.
Soon some of Henry’s peak coercion began to come through in the form of a girl I would never meet: Carly. She had a looming, lingering presence in the background of our relationship. I never knew her last name or had any idea what she looked like, but she was a girl who had been in Henry’s life for a while, and he was romantically interested in her.
This wasn’t a conclusion I had arrived at through speculation; Henry outright told me. He told me that my failure to live up to his standards had caused him to develop a wandering eye. He repeatedly told me that I kept “messing up.” He’d often tell me, verbatim, “you need to be perfect.” Perfection, of course, was an impossible standard to attain, but I thought I needed him, so I had to try.
I did feel some jealousy toward Carly, underneath the guilt. Was he nice to her? I wondered if she only saw his good side, if she got to befriend the version of him that I wished I was dating. I knew they talked often, texting and calling each other, discussing me. I couldn't help but be jealous that she got to know him without ever having to earn it, without a list of rules to follow.
But still, I rose to the challenge, sacrificing any trace of the person I had been prior to him. All friends, family, and relationships that I had abandoned were mere casualties lost to a greater good. Just a few months into our relationship and he already had so many rules I needed to follow that I could never get them right. He’d have me redo my makeup before an outing, maybe change my clothes too. Then I didn’t text back fast enough. I’d talk too much and it was annoying, then later I didn’t talk enough and it was weird. I didn’t text back fast enough. I let my little sister answer the phone when he called and he was so pissed that he swore at her. My friends were too loud and it was embarrassing. I didn’t fucking text back fast enough.
I couldn’t keep up, new rules were being added daily. I had such a hard time remembering them all that I started to keep a list in my phone. I had to—because above all else, his number one rule was that I had to remember every single thing he said. I told him I was trying. I was trying so hard. He said trying wasn’t enough, I had to actually do it. He said he couldn’t understand how this could be so hard for me if I actually loved him like I said I did.
He probably wouldn’t have admitted that they were “rules” per se, but I kept track of what I did that upset him so I could avoid repeating my mistakes. And every rule had a caveat: text back within two minutes, but triple check it so you don’t say something wrong. Don’t let your sisters answer the phone for you, but you absolutely cannot miss the call.
I couldn’t go a single day without “messing up.”
If I made any mistake, whether it be taking too long to text back or making a new dumb friend, he would respond with silent treatments that lasted days, often making me guess what I did wrong. Of course, this silence was unbearable for me because I had cut out so many people that he was the only person I talked to most days.
During his bouts of silence, I was still expected to text him continuously, even if he gave one-worded responses, even if he gave no response at all. He also expected me to still walk with him in the hallways at school and spend the evenings at his house, even if he refused to talk to me the entire time—sitting a foot apart on his basement couch, some show playing that neither of us was watching.
The silence was maddening. More often than not I had no idea which of his rules I violated, and there was always the possibility that I made a brand new mistake that created a new rule. Our “fights” were usually him being mad at me over some unknown cause, and me pleading with him to forgive me, guessing at what I might have done this time to disappoint him, repeatedly apologizing.
Deep down I questioned if this was normal in a relationship, so I kept his rules and his anger a secret from everyone—ashamed that I entertained it. Instead of speaking up, I hung onto a dirty hope that one day everything would just… click. I thought soon I’d stop making mistakes, his rules would become second nature. This won’t last forever, because I’ll figure it out, I thought. My existence was deflating, my sense of self shrinking. But I thought he was The One, and I was so lost in the idea of making myself worthy of his love that I didn’t notice I was disappearing in the process.
Spoiler alert: it never “clicked.” He tortured me until the day I left him.
Sitting next to him now, I found that being around him didn’t need to make me feel small—instead it could make me feel powerful, capable. I was thriving, and he couldn’t take any of the credit. I had flourished despite how horribly he treated me.
Not to be dramatic, but I rose from the ashes he left me in like a goddamn phoenix.
When Henry and I were dating, he spent so much time and energy trying to change me that he never actually got to know the real me. Now as I sat next to him in class, I was the version of myself that he missed out on… and I knew it. I took any and every opportunity to flaunt my confidence, my freedom.
Once when we were dating I wore high heels to school and he was pissed. He wanted me to change into my gym shoes or even a spare pair of his own shoes. Now that I was out of his grasp, I wore the heels as I pleased—and I wore them right in front of him. I made it my goal to show him that none of his rules had stuck, and I hoped it was eating him alive.
I remember getting ready together for a school dance our sophomore year and he decided I was wearing too much makeup, told me I looked like a whore. He demanded that I wash it all off before meeting up with our friends. I still remember how he stood behind me at the bathroom sink, my face a slick mess of tears, makeup remover, and mascara. His hungry eyes met with mine in the mirror—glaring to ensure my obedience, feasting on my groveling for forgiveness. We met up with our friends that evening, and I smiled for pictures like nothing happened.
Never again, I told myself. Now I wore jet-black winged eyeliner unapologetically.
I’d casually mention parts of my life that he blatantly hated or had tried to keep me from. I was close with my parents and sisters. I was still friends with the same “loud” girls. I went on dates, there were guys who were interested in me, despite Henry’s insistence that no one could ever love me as I was.
Not many people get the chance to rub their growth and happiness in the face of their toxic ex in person, and let me tell you—it felt damn good.