13 Letters I Never Wrote: Dear A, I expected better from you.

Dear A,

I expected better from you. Not for me, we both know there was already no hope for me when I showed up at your doorstep, but for everything and everyone that came after me, I expected better from you.

In all the years that you kept me, I didn't realise that I was keeping you as well.  I didn't realise I was keeping you from hurting other women. I couldn't imagine that you would fall so low, to trick a woman into marrying you and then explaining your abuse as a habit I brought out in you, by leaving you.

Yes, I know.

I know her. I spoke to her. She tracked me down herself. She cried on the phone with me. I begged her to let me help her, but she was pregnant, and she wanted her child to have a father. She didn't know where else to go anyway, because you chose well, didn't you? You chose a girl you knew would be scared in the big city and know nothing of it. You chose a girl from a tiny hamlet far away from your home because you could isolate her so easily the moment she got to you. You chose a girl whose family wouldn't accept her if she got divorced or spoke out against abuse.  You chose a girl who was charmed enough by your tortured and soulful persona to fight for the right to love you, and thereby trap herself in the cage of her own decisions. You chose her friends and gave her a list of professions she was allowed to practice. You learnt a lot, didn't you?

The entire time we were together, I believed the source of your anger was who I was, and how you couldn't bend me to be the woman you wanted me to be. You couldn't get me to see the the value in bearing children, being the martyr of my family, getting a house two doors down from your mother, becoming a teacher and dressing in girlish colours, and I thought for a long time that maybe if I had just stopped fighting you on those things, and been what you wanted me to be, you wouldn't have treated me the way you did. I thought you hated me for everything you loved to fuck about me, and you did. You hated my promiscuity, and how much I loved being hurt. You hated my ambition and later my job, and the fact that it forced me to be fearless, away and free. You hated that I wanted and enjoyed sex, and even when you forced me to go fuck other people for your amusement, you hated me for doing it and being just as amused as you were. You wanted me, right from the beginning, because everyone you knew had already had me, but you hated me for being a slut. You hated me for doing drugs and drinking, even though you did it right alongside me. You hated my big tattoos, and my tiny clothes, even though your own body was covered in them, and your dick loved everything I didn't wear. You hated everything about me, I cannot remember a single thing you actually said you liked about me that wasn't physical. I thought you just hated me, and if you had a woman in your life who was better suited to you, you wouldn't need to beat, control and terrify her the way you did me.

But I was so wrong, A.

Apparently, all you need is excuses, and any woman can give you enough of an excuse to beat her when you get angry. You beat your wife two days into your marriage. You beat her in plain view of half your family and none of them said anything. As usual. What could she have possibly done? She said it was something she said about your mother, something you interpreted as snide, but she has no idea what she said. What is wrong with you? This umbilical cord that both you and her refuse to cut is noxious and it's destroying people's lives.

See the thing that really gets me, the thing that really bothers me, is that with me your intentions to be abusive were not premeditated. You intended to hurt me, sure, but that is what I wanted, and in that capacity it was always intensely beautiful to suffer for you, but I believe you didn't know that you had this endless capacity for violation and abuse until me. The first time you lost your cool and beat me up, was the first time you ever did that to a woman. Do you remember it? I can never forget. I was sixteen years old, and I made the grave error of not following your instructions about what not to put in your burger to perfection, and for that one extra ingredient, you kicked me and slapped me and punched me in the middle of a residential street. I was always female, but that is the day I became a woman. It had nothing to do with my genitals, maturity or puberty. That was the day I realised that no one helps us when a man beats us. People watch. People turn away. No one says anything. That is how we continue to condone this.

I was naïve then. I believed you would never do it again, even though you never said that, but you got so much worse over the years. It wasn't the physical abuse that got me, it was the realisation that I was your fantasy life, and you never intended to be with me as long as you were until you learnt that I would take your anger and abuse and turn it into gratification and poetry, and then you tried to cram the fantasy of me into your real life. I didn't see that until you proposed to me. It wasa beautiful proposal, I'll give you that. Taking me back to the hotel where we spent so many years hooking up, and doing other filthy things, and asking for the receptionist who had been there for a decade, and knew us well, to help you. It was perfect, and perfectly romantic, but we were not. We were not perfect. That became perfectly clear to me two days after you proposed. Until then I was embroiled in a romance with the disturbia of your violent rages and cruel love. There were many parts of that I truly loved, and retrospectively, I cannot explain that to anyone in my life, because they'd have to dive very deep into my head to understand, and here, on the other side of an abusive relationship, they can only see how you were (and are) a monster. Which is not wrong, that is exactly what you are, but your monster used to make me love it and it was hardest for me to understand that I had to leave you amidst the violence. The violence wasn't the reason I left, it was the reason I stayed for all those years.

The reason I left was because after you displayed your intent to marry me, you tried to neutralize and normalise me. Once you had to stand beside me in front of your family instead of beating me in front of strangers, you hated how "unconventional" I was. Once you wanted to take me to parties with your colleagues, instead of sending me to perform "favours" on your clients, you couldn't stand how "argumentative" I was. Once you wanted me to have dinner with your friends on pretty china instead of snorting courage off of a plastic plate and then having sex with them, you couldn't stand how "wild" I was. Once you wanted me to be your wife, you didn't like how "independent" I was. I could have let you beat me and break me my entire life, but you were a fool to think I would ever sacrifice my liberty for this love. I wouldn't do that for any love. You called that being "headstrong," I call it being alive. I understand quite well now why I didn't leave you, and why I finally did when I did, and I cite abuse as the reason when asked, but it wasn't exactly that, I didn't leave because you fulfilled a sick darkness in me, and I left when you tried to whitewash my outsides.

But I never thought you would do this to a girl like her. It wasn't until I left you, and you married her that I realised the depth of your psychosis and criminal intent. I thought it was easier with me because I was half-willing, and I thought it was harder to be with me because I wasn't the woman you wanted. But her? She's exactly who you wanted me to be. She's docile, she's timid and she loves you. She has conservative ideas about marriage and gender roles. She doesn't believe in premarital sex, A, and you told her, you actually told her you had never been with anyone before her? She believed you, because that is who she is, she cannot fathom why someone would lie about that. It was a big deal to her that you held her hand and kissed her before marrying her, that was a big deal to her, and she felt like she had violated her principles because of that. That's who she is. How could you do this to her? I'm not being a martyr, and I am not minimising my own pain, but different things impact different people in different ways, and she doesn't see violence like I did, and I thought that may make it harder for you. She doesn't even "deserve" it based on your standards for female behaviour, I did, because you were punishing me for being the bad woman in the world, but she's the perfect woman by your archaic standards. Then why? Why would you do this to her? Of course, I know why, because it's not about her, and it's not about me, this is who you are. You are sick and entitled. You are a criminal and you should be in prison.

Do you know how heartbreaking it was for me to talk to her? She was terrified just at the prospect of contacting me because you might have found out, and we both knew, exactly what would happen then, because we had both lived it. She said something to me that completely broke me. She asked me why someone would fuck her that way, you know the way you do? The way it hurts and bleeds and makes you scream for it to stop and all you do is switch holes? She asked: "If you love someone, why would you want to hurt them?" That's the girl you are abusing, she doesn't even understand the concept of causing someone pain, and she doesn't understand you derive pleasure from hurting her, she just thinks you hate her, and she makes you angry. It's not her. You hate yourself. You make yourself angry. She neglect her, and ignore her, and you make her guess what she did wrong and then make her beg for forgiveness for days, and I know what that's like, and I feel like a fool for thinking that you'd do better.

In a way I think I overestimated myself. I thought that losing me would have more of, or at least a different impact on you, but I was so wrong. It is my greatest regret in life that I didn't have you put away when I had the chance. There were so many days when I could have just walked into a police station and my body bore enough evidence for a conviction. There were so many days when I could have done something, and maybe if I had realised then that after me there would be others, I would have. You taught me so effectively not to value myself, or my pain, as warranting any justice, but you know, I wouldn't have allowed it to happen to someone around me. I could have done something, and I didn't, because I thought it was all about me, and it was okay for me to suffer that way because there was romance in it for me.

I made such a huge mistake, but I hope I will get a chance to fix it someday, because I cannot live in a world where someone like you can act with impunity. I have to believe that there will be justice, and I don't have to be the one to bring that on, but someday, you have to pay for what you did. You have to. Or the world makes no sense.

Regretfully,
Ancilla.