Open letter to my rapist

 Open letter to my rapist.
  How much of our time together do you remember, do you remember every time you threatened me? Do you member how many times you hid in the dark to watch me through the window. How about the night you watch me on a date and called me to tell me what the date was wearing detail for detail and where  in the room we were sitting. I do.
When you walked up to me in that store did you know that I was a newlywed. Notice please the past tense. You feeling encouraged to speak to me set off a snowball effect I went crazy for every moment of fear I ever had for you and now my husband wants to divorce me. My husband is not the bad guy here. He the amazing man that married me in January two days before my hysterectomy. My hysterectomy included two large tumors that were thought to be cancer the cancer specialist had to do the surgery the tumor this were not cancer and we were happy to be married. I would always jump around like a Chihuahua to hug him gushing "I can't believe we're married I'm so lucky to be married to you" and I would go yay like a cheerleader.  Now he recoils when I try to touch his arm, as if I'm poison. All my hysteria exploded the day his grandfather died, and I went to the local psychiatric hospital. I spent four days heavily sedated on the same unit my mother spent months at a time in. I came home banished to roommate status, the pain from everything I've done to him is visceral, set in stone. When he looks at me, I can see there is no fixing anything. I wish I could stamp my foot and cry that it was a bad reaction to the Zoloft I have taken for years, please give me the benefit of doubt and stayed married to me forever like  the vows said, in sickness and in health. Beg that, "but the doctor says I have PTSD" but those wash away nothing. In this divorce, I have not a single person telling him I'm a good person, please forgive her, she's sweet, she's kind, not a single person telling him how much I completely love him. Not a single person in his life will ever be Team Lerryn. I am just the psycho wife and it is what it is, move on dude. Let that shit be the psycho ex wife.
I changed when I saw you that day and you needed to talk to me. I know you didn't say anything mean or scary and you didn't try to touch me. But still the fear that I ever had and always had consumed me. I went erratic and unreasonable and I treated him like hell. I got clingy and needy and I got jealous of the man that he was just hanging out with to play video games, and I said mean things to his best friend. I never liked the man I judged him inappropriately because 20 years ago he cheated on his wife and gave her HIV and 13 years ago he beat her. I didn't want him around and I didn't want to be friends with them. So instead of saying everything mean that I should've said to you I said it to this guy and his only real crime was having the same name as your middle name. I thought I could tell my husband him or me and my husband would pick me over this guy I was wrong I was spiraling out of control and I called this guy and said everything to him that I should've said to you. I said I know you're beating your wife I said she so scared of you and she wants to leave you, but if she leaves you she says he'll you'll kill her. Sounds familiar to you?  That was really the only reason I stayed with you because you did threaten to kill me over and over. You threaten to kill my mother You even threatened to kill my cat. I even told this fella that she was in love with her first boyfriend and wanted  him instead and I know that sounds familiar to you. That was our whole relationship you threatening to kill me so I couldn't leave and I never loved you ever, I was eighteen and was too scared to leave but I was always in love with someone else. You hated him wonder why was it his golden boy status or just the fact that he was my first and I was in love with him and not love with you. I've always wondered over the years what made you do it why why couldn't you just leave me alone when I didn't want you why you couldn't just  away. Why did you follow me to college, waiting for me to leave my classes just to stare at me. Why did you slash my tires, trash my car. What was it about me that was so all fire important that you couldn't just walk away.  I wish you could tell me.   Here I am four a.m. wondering why I can't keep my husband of eight months when I could not get rid of you to save my sanity. Thru the grapevine I heard you are harmless now. Are you?  Did you have a come to Jesus moment? You woke up one morning, and the whiskey wasn't working anymore? Or was is just harder to find me? I've spent years hiding in loose clothes, no makeup when I'm out alone, my hair in a sloppy bun slash ponytail hot mess. Even still you found me in the middle of a huge store. Why? What couldn't you forget? A teenage girl a foot shorter than you that was easy to intimidate? The first time you hit me, you picked me up and threw me across the bed, I bounced off the wall and you punched my leg and left a bruise the size of a dinner plate. The night I woke up to you reaching through my window, jerking my arm, trying to pull me out through the window. I thought you were the bogeyman incarnate. I can't remember your favorite song or your cologne. But I remember the sound of your voice, you couldn't speak a single sentence without a "hmm, yeah, uh, you know" Sometimes when you would speak you would do that weird thing with your nose, using your right hand to pull it down to your mustache. You would pull a strand of hair repeatedly from the back of your neck when you where sober and nervous. When you weren't sober the way your eyes didn't get dull, they would flicker in a way that just looked evil.
What do you remember about December 28, 1990, 11:37 p.m.? I was seeing golden boy at the time, and you hated it, you hated him. I was twenty years old. Do you remember it at all? You were drunk, did you believe it was consensual sex? The blood and the fact you tied my hands should have sunk in to your soul that I did not give my consent to have sex with you. That night has haunted me every since. It's been the excuse I gave myself for every self destructive thing I have ever done since that night, hence my room mate status divorce situation. Back to you. It was over fast. When you let me get dressed there was a small bloodstain on the bottom of my cream colored with a small paisley print that I had just gotten for Christmas the week before. Nothing screams "She was asking for it" like a Christmas turtleneck. My jeans had bloodstains on the waist band and the crotch. During the rape you had my blood on your face and down to your genitals. That image was gruesome, and burned into my nightmares for years. I considered you a demon, vampire, bogeyman. I remember grabbing a pair of long john pants that were off white and cleaned my self as good as I could, you didn't wear a condom so it had my blood and your sperm on it. By 1 a.m. I was home. My mother was passed out and I called golden boy. I wanted him there by my side, to hold my hand and take me to the ER, with my bag of bloody clothes. He was busy with his real girlfriend and couldn't be bothered. After he hung up on me, I remember staring at my phone, it was a oval white phone with a black stripe and it had my blood on it. I still had spots of blood on my hand. Does that much blood sound like consent to you? I took a handful of sleeping pills, not bothering to count. I didn't care if I woke up or not. I felt like that I had nothing.
Remember the whole me being self destructive thing? I was devastated that golden boy didn't come in and save me. He hated me and I didn't hear from him for seven years. He married the girl that was his real girlfriend there that night. I wanted him to hurt as much as I did, so about a year after I went after his father. I seduced him and busted my ass to have an affair with him for spite. The affair lasted six months.I was young and beautiful and I didn't care. I thought it made me feel better to be so cruel to other people.
Here I am back to being alone because of stupid shit I did. I wish I could run away like I did then. It was so easy to run off to the beach and stay with my best friend. But for the past couple of months I've been such a screwup I don't even have a car, I'm walking to work right here in Sandston.  After being off of Zoloft for two weeks this is the clearest I have ever been in years. Except for tonight, I am falling asleep like a normal person and waking up early, every day, cleaning the house to make it easier for him to be my roommate while I am broke. That is how good he is. I had to move him into the spare bedroom, and here I am alone in our king size bed, by a window that is always open with a fan in it.  I love him so much I wish I had the money to just leave. Buy an old Airstream and a good truck and just drive. Drive to Alaska and fish everywhere all day and write all night. Go back to LA and cry in the Chateau Marmont, staying until I forget how much he means to me. Take a break in Vegas and waste some of my first husbands money. Then go to Maine, where he was born and we were supposed to have our belated honeymoon and just mourn the way our marriage died. Because that's what I need to do. I can't be cruel and fight for him to fall in love with me. Because that's what you did to me. I didn't want you and you didn't care. This is my rock bottom, I will never fight if he divorces me, if that's what he needs I love him too much to torture him to try and stay.
But I will fight you. Your not the bogeyman anymore. Your just a coward and I never loved you. Never. Not one second not one moment. I loved golden boy the entire time I was with you. You weren't man enough to say shit to him, but a 5'2 eighteen year old girl and your game on. Your such a coward, went I dated Jesse, your best friend, because he was so much bigger than you, you were pissing your pants and shaking in your shoes. I told him everything, he wanted to kill you and I didn't care. I just wanted you to get scared enough to stay away. But you never stayed away for long.
So here I am alone, I'm not hiding behind any guy now. What do want to say to me? What? Here is your shot, you want to talk to me? What the hell did you stalk me for all those years, and still you try to talk to me every chance. I'm not hiding behind messy hair and loose clothes. Can't miss me now, my hair is red, just for you. I am here in plain sight with out my baggy clothes and my makeup is flawless everyday. After all this bullshit I would hate for you not to recognize me for a second. Here is the deal. You get what you want, I will talk to you for thirty minutes and not in a public place. I will answer any question you have. I will be alone, no cell, no gun, no stun gun. Just me. You have to earn it. Put a video on YouTube. Label it Team Lerryn. I don't care if you call me a psycho (not the first time these past two weeks). Tell the whole world I am lying my ass off. I asked for it, I begged for it. Say you were drunk and don't remember a thing while you say hmm and grab your hair. Recite you favorite Taco Bell order. You show up on YouTube, I'll show up. Thirty minutes of my time, when I see the video I will send you a direct message, or call you at work, or better yet, get a prepaid cell phone and put it at the window you tried to drag me out of.
But you be careful, because this time if you try to touch me, I will fight, I'm not scared of you, and this time I'm not backing down from shit.