Truce

     Things haven't really been the same. I'm back in school and looking for work and Jonathan is spending more and more time doing things for ****** because he feels like I'm going to leave him behind. It's really a catch 22. School frustrates me because I'm a junior/senior learning about pilgrims and Indians from a 1st graders history book while all my teachers tell me I should be in college. The only thing that keeps me there is art class. It feels good to be the center of attention and applauded in a place where Jonathan can't see or scold me for it. We haven't had a blow out in awhile but we haven't been especially happy either. I decide to go see my best friends Abby and Monae for the weekend. But that is short lived when Jonathan calls every five minutes to check up on me and Abby keeps trying to snatch the phone to tell him to leave me alone. He finally calls and tries to break up with me for not answering one of his calls and I demand to be taken the 2 hour ride back home. As soon as I get there he leaves with his boys, saying it was my fault that he made plans to be out since I was out. I cry and beg and plead for him to stay home but he just says I'm making myself look childish and foolish and leaves. I try calling and threatening him to leave his house, to leave him for good but he just laughs and says go ahead. I'm so frustrated and hurt that I don't have the same power over him that he has over me. I call Abby crying. Monae wouldn't understand. I've never seen her gaga over anyone. Abby tells me how sad she is to see me so broken over a guy who doesn't respect me as he should. How I have given up everything in my life that meant something to me to try and make him better. How I should call my dad and try to fix things, come back home. I want to hang up the phone. She doesn't understand. She's a virgin. She doesn't get how connected I feel to him, how that one night changed the trajectory of my life. How it felt like I gave him a piece of my soul and how leaving him would feel like giving up on myself. She doesn't understand that calling my dad would absolve him of any guilt in abandoning me once again. The more she talks the more I see Jonathan is right, my friends don't want to see me happy, they want me to themselves. They want me to fit into the square, tidy boxes they live in. But I stay silent, making agreeing noises when the conversation calls for it. I make up my mind in that moment to stop holding back. To give Jonathan my everything, try harder to give him the child that will hold us together, to support him in everything even if that means him selling drugs. I will be the one who doesn't abandon him, I will show him unconditional love and it will give him the freedom he needs to make the changes I've been waiting for. I tell him all of this when he gets home, minus my motives, and he picks me up and spins me around. ?"You see it! You finally see how jealous those girls are that your life isn't about rules. Now it's you and me babe. You over anyone even ******. Any decision I make we'll make together." "We're a team, a packaged deal." "Yes we are! So when can I start slanging wifey?" I ask if we could discuss it the next day, he says yes and asks me to spend the night. The next morning I'm woken up by the smell of bacon but as soon as I open my eyes Jonathan laughs and dumps a water bottle on my head. I snatch it out of his hands and empty the remainder onto his. We have a water fight that ends in the shower and my world is right again.

*Originally written January 10th 2012