Katherine Brooke Writes

When I started this website, I decided to put one of my old college poems under the Poetry section. I originally did not think much of it. It was a poem I wrote while going to University of Iowa for Creative Writing and English.

I sent this website to a few people in my life, and the reactions were somewhat surprising to me. There were only two posts – one of them being the Fruity Females poem. One person in particular said that it was heart wrenching.

And I was surprised. Because I didn’t think what I was talking about was that ‘bad’. The poem is about my ex, who I finally broke up with my freshman year of college. Fun fact, I actually sent him this poem in college right after I finished it, and I hope it made him think about some things.

I knew he was a ‘bad’ boyfriend, but going to college made me realize how bad of a boyfriend he was. Especially when I made a joke about him hitting me to some new college friends. No one found that funny. Rightfully so.

I won’t go into details about the relationship itself because I feel like the poem painted a pretty good picture of what it was like. But it was an unusually serious relationship for being so young, with his parents especially pressuring us to get married.

But there is one thing I remember telling myself when things got bad: “Hey, at least it’s not as bad as dad.”

For some context, my dad was a pedophile. The next question is usually, “To you?” And the answer is yes. You get how that’s a terrible situation.

But in the relationship with my ex, I kept telling myself that, “Hey, at least it’s not as bad as dad,” or a variation:

“Dad was worse.”

“At least this is better.” This was a core saying.

I accepted some ‘bad’. Everyone has ‘bad’.

But what was not clicking for me is that there are boundaries. Yes, people have bad days. They might raise their voice at you. Not their hand.

I remember I always used to have one rule for relationships: “If my partner hits me, I’m done.” That was my mentality. But I remember the day he hit me like it was yesterday. And I remember sitting on the floor afterwards, debating what to do.

And I just remember not wanting to go home. Because home was worse. So I accepted that this was just part of his ‘bad’. And suddenly my boundary of: “If my partner hits me, I’m done” . . . wasn’t true anymore.

But I do want to emphasize that my reasoning was, “Well, this is better.” But better does not mean good. I did not realize that either.

But I learned. And maybe next post, I’ll talk about what that process was like. And how I finally got into an actually happy, healthy, and loving relationship.