I grew up in a Catholic family, in a marriage where my parents stuck it out, as they say, for the sake of myself and my brother. I witnessed domestic violence daily from around junior high until I moved out. It was my mom who did the slapping/throwing/hitting to my father (usually not to her children). Around here, I think we understand this is not unusual, but my mother honestly has some very real and very unfortunate psychiatric issues, and as I've grown older I understand she actually really tried to hold things together as best she could given all that goes on inside her head.

But for a long time, I really hated her for making me and my brother watch her hit, kick, slap, punch, and throw things at my dad, who only ever worked his ass off for the family. I moved to college and wound up in a relationship with a girl for a few years, she was generally a pretty good person but a couple times she would playfully slap me which really made me feel angry even though it wasn't meant to be anything. Eventually I explained to her that I'd rather she not and of course she said she was just kidding and a discussion on the above ensued, and she agreed and never did anything like that again. The idea of that kind of physicality in a relationship just irked me, it didn't matter to me the context, I know it's unreasonable, but like I say I had issues from watching my own parents.

So after a few years we parted ways, it wasn't a bad break up, I didn't think. We had out disagreements obviously and weren't pretending to be friends, but aside from some hurt feelings I was sure there was no serious ill will between us. A few months after I was hanging out with a mutual friend (girl) who confided in me that she was told by my ex that I pushed or shoved her, but that my friend did not believe I would ever do such a thing, and she just wanted me to know that she didn't believe my ex and was "on my side" etc etc. It took me a few minutes to understand, out of confusion, why would my ex say this thing about me to a mutual friend, especially when she knew that it was actually something that bothered me so much it made me angry when people do it in public jokingly.

Then it hit me. She did because she knew it pissed me off. It all came crashing down on me, it was genius. She knew that most people don't give a damn if a guy denies a claim like that, most people will believe the woman. And in my case it must have seemed that much sweeter of "fuck-you" because of the conversations we had.

I don't know if my friend was telling me the truth about believing me. I never asked her who she believed she just came out with it all at once before I could process anything. And of course the text to my ex asking what the fuck was going on was never returned. To my knowledge she only decided to give that little parting gift to our one mutual friend, though I often wonder if she has spun into her relationships since. If her family, who I met and got along with well, think to this day, years later, that abused her.

I have never told anyone. Because it's a weird story, and I feel like society expects the man to be guilty always in this situation. So I've kept it bottled up, eating at me a little for half a decade, which is pretty much exactly what she probably intended..

Well, it's nice to finally say it in a place where people will believe me because not only is this essentially anonymous and there is no benefit to anyone believing me anyways, you guys are familiar with how women can be vengeful as fuck when parting ways.

Mostly, I just needed to finally tell my story. Mundane as it is.