Her Charmed Life

This is difficult for me to speak about. It is very difficult for me to write and publish online where people can see it.

So in my last post, Is It the Stars or Am I Lost Down the Woo Woo Rabbit Hole, I mentioned briefly a man called Uncle. This is my love revelation story and how my boyfriend’s uncle fucked my entire life up in one evening.

In 2018 I lost my home and everything I owned in Hurricane Michael (how ironic). I was in an abusive relationship at the time with a 31-year-old man and wasn’t allowed to have friends. Especially friends of the opposite gender. I was 19 years old. I thought I was in love with him. Now, I know he groomed me. That whole thing is for a different post but basically, I got away from him with my friend JR and his father’s help. JR showed me the situation I was in, sometimes by literally googling phrases like “top 10 signs of an abusive relationship” and shoving the laptop in my face. His father, Jon, showed me how to be happy again. I have so many happy memories with Jon from those weeks. JR cried a lot during those months- he was going through his own relationship problems. I never saw Jon cry. We all were very close and saw each other every single day for months. It was a time of hardship for me but I find myself thinking about it often, fondly, years later.

Thanksgiving rolled around and I had nowhere to go. My command was stressing the importance of being around family in this difficult time (I’d rather go back to living in my truck than call my family) and I also was avoiding communication with my sort of ex-boyfriend. JR invited me to go to his aunt’s house. I was a little hesitant, but I agreed. After a vague pep talk from him and Jon during the ENTIRE five-hour drive, we arrived at the house.

To fully understand the vibe of the home you have to understand their family. But you won’t. I still don’t. I’ve never come across a place that feels like this one did and I don’t think I ever will. Maybe it’s the Cherokee blood, maybe it’s the Spirit(s)- I don’t know, I don’t have the language or imagination needed to describe it. I imagine it as a rainbow of swirling pastel colors, beautiful and inviting, but also as a black hole in the ground that will swallow you right up if you aren’t careful. Charlotte– the creepy but nice grandmother, Hope– the 16-ish-year-old cousin who reminds me of a willow tree, Mercy– the 12-ish-year-old cousin who is a tornado of energy, and Destiny– the wildly protective and rundown aunt lived in the house. Uncle arrived later than we did. I’m at a loss for how to describe Uncle. He is a very faceted man in my eyes. Wronged, redeemed, sharp, altruistic, loving, and intense all remind me of him.  A girl who worked with Destiny was also invited, Ivy. I remember my first thought of Ivy was that she was so beautiful. She seemed very put together. She was dark in her hair and eyes while I was light. She was taller while I was short. She seemed grown, I seemed young. Ivy was the total opposite of me.

The hours before dinner are a blur for me. We cooked all day. We chatted with each other, or at least everyone else did. Their family had not seen JR or Jon for a very long time, 10 or so years. I stayed on the outskirts. I was already a little nervous (holidays in my childhood were vastly different from this one) and I felt like an outsider- like I was looking in the window of someone else’s life. Charlotte tried to include me (or tried to read my soul, something like that). She spoke to me and when I answered her, it was like I couldn’t stop the information from coming out of my mouth. I remember thinking “Dude shut up! She’s a stranger and it’s weird to tell her all this!” when I was talking about my family with her. I literally could not hold the words in my mouth. It was very strange and one of the first interactions I had with her.

JR and Ivy were of course getting along swimmingly, at least it looked like that to me. JR and Ivy had never met before, but they were in constant reach of each other all day. Although JR invited ME to Thanksgiving with his family, knowing how much the holidays meant to me, he avoided me like the plague. While JR and I had said a handful of sentences to each other all day, it seemed to me that he couldn’t get enough of her voice. She was so pretty. We ate, cleaned, and sat around fat and happy. Mercy went to bed and JR and Ivy decided to go to the liquor store. As they packed to leave, I remember JR leaning over me and whispering “Green isn’t your color,” into my ear. He was trying to flirt with me. Men are idiots. Of course I was jealous of her! He had invited ME. He didn’t even know her! And yet here he stood, leaning over me and smiling like that. Like he felt something for me. Like he thought it was just so funny or cute or whatever that I was jealous of him spending all his time and attention on her. I had spent weeks with him and his father, but I felt alone in a house full of people I had never met. Charlotte asked me why I didn’t go with them and I had to explain to her that it would be easier if I stayed because I wasn’t 21 yet, that I didn’t want to sit in the car. JR and Ivy didn’t even invite me. When they got back, we all went into the garage to drink and play spoons. There was…. something in the air. It wasn’t really heaviness exactly, but it made me uncomfortable. I was very drunk, everyone was. Uncle had been leering at me from the end of the table and with Hope and Charlotte gone to bed, he sat directly to my left. He was at one end, Jon at the other, and everyone else crammed in between. It felt like a battlefield and I was smack in the middle.

JR rushed to the bathroom after an hour or so of the game. He was throwing up in the bathroom from drinking so much. I told him he shouldn’t drink so many sweet drinks. I know him better than fucking Ivy. JR was gone for only a few minutes but it felt like hours. The air definitely was heavy then and I was suddenly trapped in a cage I didn’t even know I had been sitting in. Uncle started asking me questions. I can’t even remember if Ivy was still at the table. Uncle asked if I wanted to suck off JR, if I’d “get on my knees for him“. I was so drunk and the environment made me feel flighty, but there was nowhere for me to go. I laughed nervously and rolled my eyes at Uncle. He was persistent and kept asking different versions of the same question. I denied denied denied. Jon was a silent force at the end of the table. Destiny spoke up and told me Uncle was trying to ask me if I was in love with JR. I explained that I was in a sort of relationship with this other guy (the abuser) so of course I didn’t love JR. Destiny fired off a series of quick but gentle questions and she announced to the room that my abuser was my first love. I suppose Uncle wanted JR to be my second. I was crying. Uncle started in on me again. Where the fuck was JR? Why did he leave me alone with these damn people? I swear the spoons on my right trembled. Maybe it was me fidgeting and sobbing in that freezing garage- I think it was Jon. I know how that sounds and I stand by what I saw with my own eyes. It had to have been Jon. Energy was coming off him in waves. It felt like he was miles away from me rather than two empty folding chairs. His face remained blank. At the same time that I finally yelled at Uncle “Why are you doing this to me?”, Jon stood from his chair with a look of fury on his face. I have never seen him look like that before. It scared me. It still scares me when I think about it. “That’s enough,” was all Jon said. His voice was gruff and deep. The room felt like magma. I was in slow motion. Did anyone else feel this way? Was Ivy sitting across from me completely oblivious? Uncle opened his mouth to answer me and JR finally walked into the room. He sat down and put his hand on my thigh. I stared at him. He made eye contact with me and glanced at his father then took me outside. It was drizzling and cold and I screamed at him for 15 minutes in the street. I told him what happened and probably blamed him. JR still thinks that somehow Uncle made him get sick before asking me all those inappropriate things; before making me sob uncontrollably in front of these people. That somehow Uncle used some weird Jedi mind tricks on him in order for him to leave the room. I have never seen JR sick from drinking again.

I don’t like to think that Uncle did that to me on purpose, but he did do it on purpose. I think he was using me as some kind of scapegoat with his family or maybe he was just an asshole. I fell for JR during our time together after the hurricane. We spent so much time, every day, together. How could I have not? He quickly became my best friend and then one day, he was suddenly the most important person in my life. Uncle forced me to recognize that. It’s been five years. I love JR and we just bought a house together. Thanks a lot, Uncle. You brought me into all this. Fuck you and your beautiful hair, Ivy.

So yeah anyway this is just a super traumatic thing that happened to me, not really a love story. Thank you for reading, sorry if it fucked you up.