I have never consciously joined a support group, yet I constantly find myself within them. From my mother and my sister, to my closest of friends, they have always delegated their support in the most balanced of ways, as if pre-established on a printed curriculum I haven’t seen.
Impulsively on a beach day last summer, two of my friends and I got matching tattoos. Standing ankle deep in the water, the waves tickling our toes as they rushed the shore, we spitballed designs and ideas. Landing on a common theme with differing variations, we decided to get tattoos of our zodiac signs. My friends chose designs of their respective signs, pisces and libra, while I sifted through designs of my own: Taurus, a tattoo of the bull.
Arriving home from the beach, high on the joy from the day, I checked instagram before climbing into bed. I had a message request from a woman, a woman that my boyfriend at the time knew. With my heart caught in my throat and my hand clutching the soreness on my left ribcage, I opened the message, and I read all the words I expected to read.
“Hey girly…”
“Are you dating a guy named…”
“...You seem really sweet… I’m so, so sorry.”
“I promise I had no idea.”
I called him faster than I should have, when really I should have sat on it. I screamed at three in the morning, when really I needed to rest. He was angry that I had woken him, offered an apology I’d generously refer to as lacklustre, and told me to go back to sleep.
I had already, in a frenzy, texted my friends everything. By 10:00 am the next morning, pisces and libra were at my front door. They arrived empty handed, save the bundle of rage and gift basket of pain smuggled along with them. At the time it had irritated me, they way they poured gasoline on my dying fire, they way they had looked at me with such sadness. Though they had provided me with the things I should have been providing myself with –the anger of betrayal, the sadness of heartbreak– they arrived at my door prepared to soothe me through a breakup while I had only wanted them to help ease the discomfort I felt from what he had done, and no more.
That morning my friends did not come close to giving me the support that I wanted. Their approach to the situation left me feeling more uncomfortable than I had prior, only because I was wise enough to know that they had instead given me the support that I needed. Reflecting back to me in their eyes the true pain I avoided in my own, they made sure I understood it; they made sure I felt it.
Another one of my closest friends paid me a visit after the first two had left me on my own. She did not arrive empty handed in any physical sense, carrying tupperwares of egg bites and lemon loafs. She gave me a hug, told me she was sorry, and listened while I spoke. She did not judge me in any sense, unless you would consider telling someone that they deserve a better partner, as judgement. She convinced me to eat something as she rambled about protein and nutrients, and she cleaned the living room around me as I slowly ate the egg bites she brought. She then suggested I take a shower and clean the beach off of me from the day before, insisting I’d feel better after.
Undressing in the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of the bull on my left ribcage. Maneuvering my body in the mirror, contorting the bull in the reflection, I tried to think of it as a part of me. Watching it move as I move, feeling the things that I feel. The ink would forever scar my skin, though the bull didn’t yet feel like mine. I tried to forget that the day I branded myself with this symbol of strength, would always be the same day I proved myself to be severely unaligned.
I was always of the opinion that women in bad relationships should ‘just leave’. It wasn’t until I found myself in one, that I understood the complexity of it. Though the support I was able to provide myself through that time was not enough to guide me to the right decisions, the support I found in the women around me, was. I eventually left him, months later, and though I wish I had done it sooner, I am grateful I hadn’t done it later.
