I Made It Out

I Made It Out

By Lyndsay Rowley

Sitting on her bed with her arms wrapped around a large pillow, Kate says, "I remember the night it went from bad to worse. I remember the way my face burned and looked up from the ground to see him towering over me."

Kate Smith (not her real name) and Brandon (not her former boyfriend's real name) met during her junior year in high school. Brandon was a senior.

"He was captain of the lacrosse team and drove a BMW. He was cute, funny, and popular," Kate explains.

Kate and Brandon began dating the day before her seventeenth birthday.

"That night he walked me out to my ugly blue Honda, and before I got in he leaned in and kissed me. We were inseparable from that day on," Kate says as she reaches to her desk drawer and grabs out a picture of the couple from his senior prom.

Their smiling faces light up the picture. Their matching blonde hair makes them look like a flawless couple. With her arms wrapped around him, it is like she had gone to the ball and found her prince charming.

Kate describes the next two years as perfect.

"We fell in love. He was my everything," Kate comments as she brushes back her thick blonde hair from her face.

Kate explains that Brandon even gave her a blanket that they loved to watch movies under with a letter written on the blanket explaining all the reasons why he loved her.

Kate stands up and walks to her tiny closet in the corner of her cluttered room, and pulls out a large red blanket.

Holding it up Kate shrugs her shoulder and softly says, "I don't know why, but I just could never bring myself to throw it away."

Brandon gave Kate the blanket the day before he left for college.

"I knew him going to college in another state was going to be hard, but we both were not ready to let go," Kate explains while looking down at her vibrant pink bedspread.

Kate explains how things continued to go well, until the Christmas break during her freshman year of college.

"I remember the day when I started to be a little suspicious of the kind of guy Brandon was," Kate says.

"We were in his basement with a couple of his friends and we were joking around and wrestling. All of a sudden he sort of shoved my head down slamming it against the pool table," Kate says as she grabs the side of her head.

"My head felt like it was going to explode. I could barely see straight," Kate explains.

Kate was so shocked that she ran upstairs and left without even putting her shoes on.

Kate goes on to explain that within hours she was back at his house after several phone calls.

"He said he didn't see anything wrong. He said it was a joke and he didn't mean to hurt me," Kate says smirking.

Kate explains how the next time she saw Brandon was summer break, and that is when her life took a turn for the worse.

"Brandon began drinking a lot. He got meaner when he drank," Kate says as she picks up her pillow and rests her chin on it.

During that summer Kate started seeing a therapist for depression. She lost 25 pounds in two months, and became bulimic.

"One day my dad wouldn't let me leave the house until i ate three crackers with peanut butter on them," Kate says staring at the lavender wall to her left.

Kate remembers the worst night. She explains how looking back this is what made her life a living hell.

A group of people had gotten together to drink and Brandon was drinking heavily.

Kate continues, "At the end of the night we walked up to his house and he was having trouble getting the key in the door, so I tried to help."

Brandon then pushed Kate down the brick stairs that lead to his door. Her face slid across the bricks on the pathway.

With tears in her eyes, "I rolled over on the ground and looked up to see him yelling at me. It was like looking at a stranger"

Kate explains how Brandon was calling her a dog, and telling her she was a trashy whore. Brandon continued by telling her to get off his property while on the phone to invite another girl over.

The House of Kate's Former Boyfriend

"His friends saw me walking to my car crying, and I guess they confronted him the next day by telling him he was out of control, " Kate explains.

Kate pauses and looks to the ceiling, "Looking back, this was my breaking point. By the end of the next day I was apologizing to him for, supposedly, ruining his reputation."

Wiping away her streaming tears Kate mumbles, "The really low point was lying to my mother. I told her I had run into a tree branch when she asked me about my face."

Kate felt hopeless and unworthy of living. By the end of the next week Kate was hospitalized for malnutrition.

After Kate was hospitalized her parents made her start taking medication for her depression. Kate slowly began to get better.

With the help of a therapist, Kate's family, and her medication she began to eat again and gain some weight back. At the end of the summer, Brandon told Kate he wanted to be in a more open relationship. Brandon wanted freedom to be with other girls.

She headed back to school still talking to Brandon, but because they went to separate schools, she began to heal.

Kate puts her head down and mutters, "if it hadn't been time to go back to school I don't think I ever would have gotten away."

Brandon never apologized for what he did to Kate. The next time they were both home Brandon tried to see Kate, but she refused. It took several months, but Kate was finally strong enough to say no.

Kate never told her family about what Brandon had done, and did not tell any friends until a year later.

Kate explains, "if we would have gone to the same school, I don't really know if I would be here today."

Kate says that she learned from her experience and will never let a guy hurt her like that again.

Kate pauses and looks up with her wet eyes, "Looking back on what happened, I know things were bad but could have been worse. At least I made it out."