July 1988 Playmate, Terri Lynn Doss

photographed by Richard Fegley

💀 GOTHIC NIGHTMARES 💀

Last night was hard.

Last night we fought. I told her that I didn’t want to be with someone that doesn’t treat me like I’m even human. Her response was “Good, because I don’t want to be with you anyway.” 

This is hard to wrap my mind around and somehow even though I know I caused it, I still feel like I don’t deserve this. My whole life I’ve been screamed at and abused and treated like garbage by the people who fucked and spit me out. They were alcoholics so it’s genetic and makes sense that I would later at 21 years old become addicted myself. And just like those before me I fell into a drunken rage of screaming, breaking things, sobbing, and then screaming some more. My previous serious girlfriend, now known as my kinda-girlfriend, and I have been together for 5 years now. In those 5 years we have both had our ups and downs. What else is to be expected from a couple that have both been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD, along with the accompanying depression and anxiety? Nothing less, I presume. She’s put me through my fair share of misery and I can sadly say I’ve done the same to her. Lets call her “Garissa” for anonymity but also to humor me and our inside joke. Garissa may have hurt me terribly in the past but I hurt her “worse”. You see, for me, physical violence, screaming, and cussing was normal. It’s something I experienced everyday. These things left me with a pain that I can only describe as unbearable and thanks to genes I found that booze soothed this pain to a certain extent. But with my addictive personality came overindulgence which led to black outs where I would scream heinous remarks and sob and at one point actually smacked Garissa on the side of her head for saying something I cant fully remember other than the fact that it hurt me. I went to a psych ward a few times over this because in my drunken episodes I would feel I had no other option but to kill myself but my sober conscience broke through and brought me there. I put Garissa through this for a little over a year, it started after a serious death in my family sparked a trauma response to just get absolutely shit faced and ended a couple months ago. It’s only been 2 months since I’ve had a drink and I honestly do feel better for breaking the cycle but the stress that this put on my relationship is equivalent to the pain I felt when drinking. I hurt her so fucking bad that she doesn’t think she can forgive me. She tells me she has no sympathy for me and can’t stand anything about me but is conflicted because the next minute she loves me and wants no one but me. It’s sad to watch her go through this. I know if you’re reading this you know nothing about me but I like to consider myself a good person that went through some awful shit growing up that developed into mental disorders and a fucked up coping mechanism which led to an addiction that made me act like a terrible person as a way to protect myself from being hurt again. It’s a lot, right? Imagine how my girlfriend and I feel, she has a story of her own but that’s up to her to write about. I’m just documenting bits of mine so I don’t explode from the pent up emotions. Anyway, I’m not the piece of shit I act like when I drink. I have always been anxious and quiet, a very reserved person. I have never had any bad intentions with anyone and I am so full of love and care, this is what helped me maintain decent years with Garissa. Granted, without medication I can become irritable and snap easily or become very outspoken on things I feel strongly about. These are just symptoms of my disorders that I try to keep controlled but overall I’m very polite. The type to hold the door open for you in a store or compliment your hair or outfit and we cant forget manners. ALWAYS say please, thanks, and smile at people. The things I went through and the way I handled them don’t represent me as a person. I simply made mistakes in an attempt to heal. Garissa now uses drunk me to define sober me. I don’t behave even remotely similar when I’m sober but when she looks at me she still sees the pile of wreckage I was for the past year. Not the person before the storm hit. Being the emotionally dependent person I am, it’s extremely hard to get used to being called an abusive, evil, piece of shit. Especially when you don’t even remember the things you did or said when you were drunk. To me it feels like I’ve done nothing and to her it feels like I stabbed her in the heart. I am so kind and have done so much to try to make her love me the same but she still has resentment for me that I see in her face when she looks at me. She doesn’t want to hear me cry when she gets done bashing me because I bashed her and didn’t care so why should I be the one crying? It’s just an awful emotional battle right now that I’m having a hard time fighting. I love her so much, a life without her is not a life I can imagine. The fact that I hurt her has brought so much self loathing and disgust on myself, but that’s something I’m working on separately. I just don’t know how to rebuild our relationship and myself if in order for her to cope with the situation she has to curse at me and say awful things to me. It just kind of seems like getting even, which I can somewhat understand but what happens when the tables are turned and now I have resentment for not only myself but for her as well? This isn’t healthy but breaking up isn’t an option. I know we can rebuild, I just don’t know how. Hopefully, I’ll make a breakthrough as I continue to write my thoughts here. We’ll see.