Toxic love: Ilaria’s story

THEor I remember. A letter to line up the memories of a toxic love and help the women who are tangled in it to get out of it before it’s too late.

“You should be more feminine”

I remember all those phrases you repeated to me over and over again.
“Ah, but why do you dress like that to go out with your friends?” .
“You and me together for the shops with you in jeans and a sweatshirt? No. I want you dressed properly!”
“Even if you’re with me, do you continue to go to the Curva Nord to watch Genoa!!?” (and I went there, and I go, in overalls!)

You should be more feminine. When I introduce you to my mom, she teaches you!” .
As if my mother had raised a wretch (Mom, thank you for raising me as I am).

“Choose: or me and your friend”

I remember

“But do you have male friends??”
“You have to choose between your best friend and me.”
“When I’m on duty, you go out with your friends. This isn’t normal, you know?”

I remember: we had been together for a short time, you still seemed normal.
You were resting at my house and I was at the office.
I came back and found the house in perfect order with you looking at me strangely and you said:“I did it, even if you should do it, you’re really messy for a woman.”
Which made me feel deeply wrong.
Because I was 24 and not 38 like now (now I would kick you out of my house).
Among other things in that my house where you lived, because without me you would have only had one room, paid for by the State, to boot.

Toxic love: “surprise” visits

I also remember calls on the office phone when I worked overtime:
“Ah, are you still there?
“Yes, I wrote it to you in the message…”
“Ah ok ok”.
About you checking my PC while I wasn’t at home.
The warm, blue eyes I had fallen in love with that turned to ice and stared through me with infinite contempt for unimaginable things.

I remember the “But in these photos you were much thinner than now. When will you come back like this for me?”
And the messages full of disdain and hatred that you had for me, which became honey when I sent you finally to glean after 2 days spent trying to make you see reason.
When you hid behind the elevator in my house, waiting for me to come home at 3 in the morning, even though I told you that I didn’t want to see or hear from you anymore.
About you disappearing for 2 or 3 days to punish me for something, in your opinion, unforgivable.
And who knows how many you went with in those days (I understood it later… Your obsessive jealousy has many reasons, and one of these is that you systematically do what you don’t want done to you).
About when I, a migraine sufferer, fell asleep in pain one evening and heard myself say “Ah but how can we not make love?”
When in theory you were working and instead I suddenly found you in front of me shouting: “Stsurprised!!! I wasn’t on duty”.
Already.
Surprise.
I don’t control.
Surprise.

“My ex listened to me. Not you”

I remember the trip to Verona to visit one of my best friends, during which you bombarded me with text messages.
Continuously.
When you smelled my hands after I had kneaded something, and you told me that that was how my hands must smell.
Of yours: “Well, when I told her not to do something, my ex didn’t do it. And she listened to me. You didn’t.”
I was such a rude bitch, huh?

Of your mother, silenced in the house her from his brother with a raise of his hand over his mouth.
Of your sister who at 22 years old lived controlled by you and your mother.

Of my constantly leaving you because I couldn’t be with someone like you.
It was all wrong, yet I missed you like a drug (and a drug you were) and after a few months after I had finished, you showed up in some of my usual places and I capitulated to them.

My parents: only now do I understand

But I also remember my parents, who gave me an example of family and couple and of love that was healthy.
I remember that they pushed me not to be with you, and they were probably so worried that only now that I am a mother can I partially understand what they suffered.

Friends: they never gave up on me

And friends always giving me tough talks because I was with you.
But without ever giving up on me.
No one allowed me to drown in that toxic love I had for you, which I never thought I would fall into.

Really me.
Always free in my stories and in my life.
Always shouting out my rights and my truths.

And after almost 2 years I finally understood.
I made slices of ham fall out of my eyes.
Your jokes didn’t even make me laugh anymore.
And you didn’t even seem that handsome anymore.

This isn’t love, this is illness

And there I tried:“Oh, you’re probably not a bad person. But you have to get treatment. This is not loving, this is illness.”
You laughed in my face.
I was the sick one, according to you, because I wanted to be free.

I don’t know what happened to you but I’m happy that you are just a distant and horrible memory.

How many are not like me?

But how many are not like me?
How many like your sister or your mother who grew up and lived in this world thinking it was normal?
How many don’t have the network and security around them given by the right education that I had?

If tomorrow I read your name in a newspaper for violence against some woman I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’ve said it with relief for almost years, because that woman won’t be me.
But lately I no longer have that relief.
I feel guilty.

Because I didn’t do anything except for myself.

Just going out today isn’t enough for me

I went ahead, but I didn’t do anything for all that sea of ​​women who are instead tangled up, incarcerated, gangrenous in this situation.

And I don’t know what I can do to help.
But since, they say, I can write quite well, who knows, maybe writing these lines 13 years later will be of some use.

With a man nearby who (think of you) irons and washes the floors.
With whom I share burdens and honors 50/50
And he looks at me in a way you can’t understand when I put on my overalls.
Yes guys, even when I put on my Genoa tracksuit and go to the stadium (And he’s also Doriano)
And I had two children with him.
Males.

And I to these two males I know that, together with their father, I will teach, with the purest and simplest daily example, to raise at least decent men.

Girls, escape from toxic love

Violence isn’t just hands on.
Those then actually arrive, for me too it was only a matter of time if I hadn’t cut it off before.
But violence is all I have described in these lines.
And many more things.
Run away at every sign that doesn’t add up.

And you guys, if you think that even one of the things suffered by me are normal for you… talk to a psychologist.
Why not.
There is not Nothing normal in what I just described.

Ilaria Capurro

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