I first listened to this song a few weeks ago, and it’s really been sticking with me. On top of the facts that I’ve harbored a long-time appreciation for Eminem as a sort of guilty pleasure and Rihanna’s chorus is catchy and sung beautifully as always, I’m a one-time survivor and currently navigating my way through a relationship-turned-nonrelationship much like the one addressed in the song (second-time survivor-to-be?).
The song lyrics and video illustrate so perfectly situations and peculiarities I’ve experienced with both of my abusive relationships. The first one was completely one-sided–more like the circumstances the character Tommy on True Blood grew up in. My abuser completely obliterated what little sense of self I had going into the relationship and left me honestly believing I deserved all his vitriol and poison, and the first time I tried to get away, I spent two weeks completely lost and confused, not knowing what to do without him there and feeling completely unable to take care of myself alone. It’s so difficult to get someone who hasn’t experienced at least something similar to even come close to understanding, and even then, no one I’ve known has expressed to me that they were in the same boat in the past, so I’m more assuming the people who’ve dealt with similar are relating on some level.
A dependency so consuming and intense characterized that relationship. I literally did not exist outside the abuse, and that is what made it impossible to leave the first time. How could I leave if I was nothing on my own? It wasn’t until I met someone who gave me the vibe that it was possible to have a relationship where I was my own person, a good person, worthy of respect and care and appreciation simply for who I was and not what I did or didn’t do, how well I obeyed and cooperated, or how utterly self-sacrificing I was, that I was able to finally end the relationship and get away from the abuse.
It is a bit scary, looking back, because honestly if it wasn’t for that truly good person who opened my eyes to the possibility and instilled a sense of hope that I could have something genuinely kind, I don’t know how long I would have stayed… I don’t think I could have left him on my own. I was so weakened by the abuse, and I was absolutely not one of those women who could pick herself up off of the floor and just leave, alone and groundless, out of sheer determination to escape the cruelty.
Even now, I’ll say how much I realize I don’t deserve anything like that, and have marginally removed myself from bad situations, I’m once again caught in the cycle of abuse. It’s even scarier knowing that I recognize this and still entertain the idea of not cutting all ties and making my escape.
Embedded in all the drama, pain, hurtful words, and hardhearted treatment is an intense passion. Embodied in the line “Maybe that’s what happens when a tornado meets a volcano” is the power of the interaction between us. While I have never been an instigator–at least not intentionally–and definitely still have a tendency to defer to an abuser, being self-sacrificing and obedient even when my heart isn’t truly in it, I have gotten better about standing up for myself and have used my penchant for observing idiosyncracies and picking up on the things people are truly sensitive about in order to push buttons when I’ve had enough. I honestly don’t like being that way, but it seems to be the only way I can manage to cope when I feel like I’m being attacked and mistreated. It’s become intoxicatingly cathartic to respond with meanness and hate when I’m being subjected to the abuse. I quite simply don’t have it in me to be violent and can’t see that ever happening because even when struck I don’t have the drive to fight back, but I can be just as vicious with words.
This obviously isn’t healthy, and the fact that I keep forgiving it all and even vaguely consider going back honestly disgusts me. I feel trapped in the same situation as my first abusive relationship–I don’t know if I can ever truly move on without something beyond my own will to pull me away. It certainly doesn’t help that there would be a benefit to going back, something I’m increasingly desperate to have. I know how much of a bad idea it all is, prolonging the situation and incessantly ignoring the truly awful in light of the bits of good.
My inability to get away from these situations on my own and my seemingly terrible luck (a full two-thirds of my relationships have been abusive, odds that are heartily discouraging to me for future relationships) are starting to jade me. Of course, I’m an impossibly hopeful person, so I doubt it could ever become my default state of being to anticipate any relationship turning this dreadfully sour, but it certainly lowers my desire to pursue anything close.
You ever love somebody so much you can barely breathe when you’re with ’em?
You meet and neither one of you even know what hit ’em
Got that warm fuzzy feeling, yeah, them those chills you used to get ’em
Now you’re getting fucking sick of looking at ’em
That’s how it went both times. Wonderful to start and then blindsided by the bad. It makes me feel like there’s no way to avoid it; that any relationship, no matter how amazing it is to start, has the potential to turn into something just as destructive.
So I’ve developed a habit of being detached. I just don’t know that it’s really the way I want to be…
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