Wednesday, January 16, 2013

'So you're a whore?'

I could read her thoughts in those beady little eyes. The corners of her mouth twitching at the sight of my shame, eager to pounce on her prey like a matted-haired scavenger seeking out weakness on a savage safari plain.

Was that glee behind those horn-rimmed spectacles?

I had found myself in a counselling room before. I had laid my soul bare for a stranger in the hope that I would find some solace in my confession. In fact I'd been handing over £40 a week over the last 4 years for the pleasure. But this was a different beast altogether.

Where to even start with an explanation to this predicament?

If someone had told me 4 years ago that this is where I would've ended up... I would have bet big money against them being right. How did I possibly go from being a working boy on the street, with a drug habit and highly questionable taste in men who like to beat the bejesus out of me, to finding myself in a stable, mature relationship with a man who would do anything I asked of him?

Domestic goddess was not my main objective at this point in my life.

However, he seemed to stay.

A passing fancy who took me to dinner and then took me in his arms and held me there for 2 years.

The discomfort at having someone gentle and thoughtful in my life made my skin crawl. Give me bruises. Give me danger. Give me arrogance and narcissism. Give me lip. Give me something familiar to work with here. Gentleness, love, care... none of this felt like me. Or him. Or anything I knew.

I ran. Almost every day. I didn't think I could take the soothing love that was being offered by this creature who, no matter how much I wished it, would not beat me.

The running shrunk in distance, and shrunk in intensity. And he eased my hurts and fears. No matter how terrified I felt, even though the terror remained.

However, he seemed to stay.

And now we found ourselves in this brightly lit box, with the she devil from Essex sitting across from us, passing judgement from behind her horn-rimmed spectacles and her Maggie Thatcher do.

'So you're a whore?'

Is this what I had wanted all those years of searching? Moving from destructive relationship to destructive relationship, drowning myself in someone else only to end up years later sitting in front of this psychodynamist with nowhere to hide, in front of the man I loved.

He wanted to spend his life with me. I wanted to make it past January.

Too late, I felt her say. You're too late. You're here now.

You can't crawl back into your hole after being wide awake.

Wide awake I was.

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