Bad Connection

I could see the pain in her eyes. She wanted to cry, there was no doubt about it. Her tears had already begun to formulate in her tear ducts. I could see the tiny drops appear on her lashes. They fell slowly and quietly down her cheek and around her chin. Some fell into the crevasses of her lips and others fell gently to the ground.

I don’t think anyone could tell what her problem was; anyone but me. I knew what it was. I had been there before. I made a fool of myself crying. My boyfriend, William picked on me horribly for it too. Kept saying, “You aren’t allowed to cry, so stop it!” Those words were like knives in my chest. Can’t cry? How I supposed to show emotion then? Deep down I knew though, he had cried before too.

I drew back to the girl. I wasn’t sure what I should say. I didn’t know if I could help her. I wasn’t going to tell her to stop though… stop crying… I would never. That would just make it worse. Unfortunately, I experienced that too. William made me experience a lot with him… things I could never get used to. Things I am not sure I even want to explain because they are too painful.

I was so unsure about the girl. I thought I knew her, but I was wrong. Her face was so familiar, yet so unrecognizable. Maybe the bruises made her look different. Deep down I knew she was experiencing something like me. Maybe hers was worse… maybe it wasn’t. I couldn’t quite tell yet. I walked by her, she wasn’t too bad. Maybe a black eye, but it was covered by makeup that now trailed down her face after the tears and exposed it in a striped manner. However, I knew that the emotion pain was much worse than this physical nonsense. I know that the emotional was killing her. I knew that, because it almost killed me too.

She calmly looked at me and quickly stopped crying, trying to rub the evidence of hurt and pain of her face with her palms and wrists. That when I knew I had to do something. She was scared to cry in front of people. She couldn’t live in fear every time she cried. “Here.” I handed her my number. “Call me, we need to talk.”

She looked at me not like a crazy stranger (which any normal human would have), but a stranger that knew her pain and exactly what she was going through.

Days passed- no call. Weeks passed- no call. What was with her? I knew what was up. I knew the pain and fear took her over. It hurt her so bad, it even scared me. Then- RING! RING! RING! It happened. She called. I picked up and said nothing. I didn’t want to scare her more. Finally, after five minutes of dead air, she spoke. She spoke of it all.

Her boyfriend was the problem. (Gee, that sounded oddly familiar…) He called her names, cheated, made her do all his things like chores, make him food, clean his room, homework, anything he didn’t want to do- he figured that’s what she was there for. (…too familiar.) He hit, pushed, slapped, punched, grabbed, and choked her. (She was practically living my life.) He sounded like William. He did it all to her. Treated her like a white trash slave. A slave that he could boss around then have his with at the end of the day.

What was his name? She hadn’t said his name. And I wasn’t sure if she would… she said she was scared she could never get out or away from…

Yeah, from? From who??? Who are we talking about?

She sighed heavily like his name weighed 4,000,000 pounds as she said, “William.”