Katherine Schweitzer-Carney

Toxic Relationships

My father did as he saw fit with his daughters. Mom saw it fit to look away. She saw it fit, too, to send me off with a thirty-two year-old pedophile when I was sixteen. Since then, she’s seen it fit to blame me if I call her out on what she did and didn’t do.

I tried to make the best of it. Tried to make him love me. But he screwed the windows shut and took the knob out of the bedroom door. When it was shut, it was shut. He had a hook and latch on the outer side with a combination lock like the one I used to have on my school locker. He didn’t use this all the time though and I enjoyed the company of the dogs. But he broke the Belgian Sheepdog’s back when he got mad at me. Threw it into the wall and killed it. Some time later, when the German Shepherd died, (his favorite dog), he saved its body in an old Pinto out back until the neighbor’s started complaining of a stench. I had to help him bury its blue, bloated body.

I escaped on Tuesday, October twenty-fourth. he forgot to key lock the bolts on the front door. He stalked me for thirteen years.

I usually tell people the stalking is what ended my relationship with Tim even though it isn’t the truth. I mean, how can I possibly explain that clean vacuum lines were expected in the carpet at all times and all the dishes had to be lined up with perfect spacing like soldiers at attention? How can I explain letting Tim pimp me out for his sexual gratification then handing him any monies I made followed by him doing as he saw fit with me as well? Me, taking on my mother’s role of silence about the matter?

I don’t explain the competing stalker I obtained in the form of an alcoholic truck driver after time, either--the one with anger management issues. He was the easiest to escape. All mouth both when he said he loved me and when the other side of his personality cut loose.

So, I took up gardening. Yard work is good for the mind they say. It was true for me once I found the right antihistamine and decongestant combination. Gotta watch the bees, though. I keep an epipen shot just in case.

I told my nineteen year-old cat once that if God decided animals could start talking I’d have to shoot him because he knew too much. The boy just purred and snuggled closer to my chest, pushing his little head backward into my neck. He loves me no matter what kind of mood I’m in and I have cream for the hives and some nose spray to keep me from sneezing. I don’t mind using my inhaler, either. It’s not like he’s going to kill me.