Eerie Calm

Several people have expressed their amazement at how well I seem to be handling the situation. And I have pretty much agreed. Outwardly I have projected a stability that has even surprised me. I have been able to get on with things in a pretty remarkable way. I have recently acknowledged the sort of eerie calm that has come over me. I have moments of severe sadness; when I look at my bruises, touch my nose, see the reddish brown-tinted circular blood stain left on the carpet.

Until June, I never told anyone about the black eye I got in April. The utter absurdity and embarassment at having to explain to my boss, my first week on the job at the Pentagon how I got it. I think it's sick that I allowed it.

The fight started at a bar, over the color of a military patch. I thought it was a joke the entire time. I was positive it was green, he insisted it was blue. Who gives a damn? He did obviously. He left me at the bar. When I finally got home he was following me from room to room with printouts from online supposedly proving his point. I was tired and disgusted. I just wanted to sleep and told him to please leave me alone. He got so angry that I wouldn't hear him out that he pushed me into the wall, and cracked his head and against mine which effectively closed my eye up. An almost immediate and horrific black eye. I played with makeup for awhile the next day but it didn't do too much, only for my eyelid. And I thought I would maim him each time I looked in the mirror.

Cleaning my own blood from the floor after it was all over in June was wrenching. I couldn’t get it all. The droplets were clustered so densely, like pinpoints on a map of a metropolitan area- a massive one like NYC, where there are so many locations that they bleed into each other; it was too much. I keep thinking about the sharpness and nothingness that I felt when he slammed my head on the floor for the last time. He defensively mentioned that there wasn’t even any blood to dispute my claim after I cried out in horror that it had to be broken. Moments later the blood started flowing. All over. My work clothes, my Pentagon badges and a few very substantial drops clustered on his daughter’s painting from art camp. When I packed his things I made sure to fold her artwork up, leaving the blood stains visible.

This is not supposed to happen to me. Cliche but it's what I have thought all along. And what I have heard endlessly from people who know me well. I am skeptical, savvy, mistrustful to a fault, and intelligent. But lapses in judgement for different reasons plague us all. Yet my mind can't yet fully connect the gruesome story with me. Hence the calm.