Where’s the panic button when you need it?

I’m trapped.

Stuck in-between the car door and my boyfriend.

Holding his hand.

I didn’t realize I was gripping until he asked why I was squeezing so tightly.

The car’s about 90° but I didn’t notice the heat until that blasted song came on the radio.

Follow Me by Uncle Kracker came on the radio. I always thought I was safe from hearing that song on the radio because it really never comes on. I mentally cursed every time Hey There Delilah by the Plain White Tees came on after we broke up I cringed but my thoughts were always, “Look on the bright side, at least Follow Me is never going to come up on the radio.” As always, I proved myself wrong.

I don’t know what to do. My boyfriend, his mom, his brother, and two of our friends are sitting in the car with me, so I have too much of an audience to cry. I really don’t want flashbacks, not now, when I’ve been having a good day in a terrible week.

I decide to sing along with the radio; maybe singing can help fend off those terrible flashbacks. I’m not singing alone, my boyfriend and one of my friends are both singing along with the radio also.

The singing doesn’t help keep the flashbacks at bay.

I dive into the horrors of my past. I see when I used to sing this song with Anthony over the phone but that takes me to all of the millions of times that he used plays on words to call me a s*** on the phone.

That brings me to the time he stole $20 dollars from me at the fair and convinced me it was my fault.

That brings me to the time he laughed when I nearly fell over the junk littering the floor in his room and didn’t show any type of concern.

That brings me to just two days before, when I, along with my boyfriend and another friend of mine, were at his house to pick up my best friend and Anthony’s brother, my friend who is singing in the car. Anthony sent his girlfriend to his house after us and she wouldn’t leave us alone while we were walking there. She was stalking us. I became so annoyed that I yelled at her to leave. She left.

When we got to his house, he came yelling at us for scaring off his girlfriend. I was already extremely annoyed at him for sending his girlfriend after us, especially since the friend that was with us was her ex and they had an uneasy break up. With him yelling at me for something that wasn’t my fault, it felt like a flashback. I screamed back, “Then why the f*** did you send your girlfriend to stalk us!”
As he ran into the house, his sister, who was standing on the porch, replied, “Excuse you.” I know she gave me a lecture on how that’s going to land me a lawsuit because I would hit him, eventually, and he wouldn’t hit back. She meant to say, “Because he won’t hit a girl.” But it came out being, “Because she won’t…”

I laughed and said, “Well you got that right.” At that moment, he came out of the house. In real life, he screamed, “I can hear you!” In my thing alternate-reality playing out in my head, he ranted how I wasn’t doing anything this year; how I had accomplished nothing and I never would without his popularity helping me.

At that moment, I forced myself to surface from the drowning sea of my past.

It was only on the second verse of the song. I must have only been under for less than a minute. I sang along for the rest of the song, trying to regain the happiness I felt before that song came on the radio.

It’s been 9 months already, since I’d dated him, equivalent to the entire time I was with him. I don’t know why I’m still having flashbacks now but I wish they would stop. I’ve worked months to build up my life again, after his emotional and physical abuse. He’s done everything in his power to stop me.

My past still haunts me.

I don’t think it will stop until he is stopped.

I’m not the last girl to go through that.

But I’m trying to stop the cycle.

Once and for all.