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My friend, Michele's boyfriend, Dennis, manly and confident, humiliated her in small and big ways over the course of a year and a half, but was always just boyfriendly enough to make her keep coming back. On a recent Sunday night, after she dropped in late and unannounced, he loudly and heartbreakingly yelled at her to get out, or he was calling the police. She speculated that another woman was hiding in the house, and the loud barking and denial of their relationship was for the she-closet-hider's benefit. He picked up the cell phone, as he shouted, and of course, Michele left, bewildered and ashamed. A few days, a week went by, and he text messaged her. "Hi, how are you?" Now, here is the part that is ridiculous to those not in it, but makes perfect sense were you Michele or one of the million women like her, exactly like her, refusing to see what has been so clearly laid out for her. She replied, "Fine." Not "Eat dirt and die, you ^&*(!@," but, "Fine." That is why I know she is not done with him yet, and probably won't be until he is thoroughly done with her and throws her out like a linty, snotty tissue, picked up at the edge with the very tips of two fingers. Deep down inside her, she knows this, she knows that she can do so much better, that she is so much better, that she is taking the dregs of what someone without basic decency can give her, and yet she replies, "Fine." She said she was happy that he was thinking about her. Thinking about her in the demented, man on top, psychologically sick way that men think about the woman that they can degrade and still have around, happy for whatever crumbs they throw. This bothers me so much because I have been that woman, most woman have been that woman, and after it is over, if it is truly over and we are in a better place, the way I am now, we can pretend we were never Michele. Maybe there are a few women out there who never were, but for those of us who are honest with ourselves, we can say, that was me, I know what it feels like, and I know the stories you are telling yourself now. They are fiction, these stories, and I hope you can end them early, a cliff-hanger for him, or a surprise ending, before you lose the last of your self-respect and good hope for what can be without him.

Learn more about this author, Erika Tremper.
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