Content warning: emotional abuse, abusive relationship
On my daily walk, I was listening to my Spotify Daily Mix and Hilary Duff’s “Stranger” came on. I hadn’t heard the song since I was in middle school. Now, a decade later, I was struck by the way the lyrics connected with the experiences that a friend had shared with me, regarding her time in an abusive relationship.
In honor of National Domestic Violence Awareness month, I asked this friend if she would be willing to discuss these lyrics as a way to share her experiences with a broader audience. She agreed, so we listened to “Stranger,” and talked about her previous relationship.
**Here is part 3 of “Stranger,” a 4-part series that is updated every day from October 20 – October 23. Lyrics will be centered and italicized. Comments from me (Amanda) will be denoted with an A; comments from my friend will be denoted with an L.**
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Verse 2:
Did I ever do anything that was this cruel to you?
Did I ever make you wonder who was standing in the room?
A: These lines were actually what made me think of doing this interview in the first place. It reminded me of the mind games and guilt that go into abusive relationships, people thinking, what did I do to deserve this?
L: In the first few months of the relationship, I still had some fight in me. I would say “I don’t think what you did is right.” “That made me uncomfortable.” By the end of the relationship, if he told me that the sky was purple, I would have believed him. One of the reasons that I left is that I had a really bad feeling that it was headed in the physical abuse direction. He was starting to raise his voice more, and he was starting to hit things. Not me, but things, like furniture. And I was afraid that I would let the physical abuse happen because I felt like everything was my fault. Like no matter what he did, what I did was worse.
A: But you said that you had less “fight” at the end of the relationship. So why would he have to raise his voice, start being more aggressive?
L: I was giving more and more and he was able to tolerate less and less. He was entitled. At the beginning, he probably felt like he still had to work for some things. As the relationship progressed, it felt like not fighting him was crucial for my safety because we were living together.
You made yourself look perfect in every way
So, when this goes down, I’m the one that will be blamed
Your plan is working, so you can just walk away
Baby, your secret’s safe
L: The last line is a cheeky line. It’s very clever. It’s true that his secret is safe. After the relationship was over, I told the bare minimum to my closest friends, and I specifically told them not to tell anyone. You would think it would be the opposite. I was paranoid about keeping it secret, as if I were the perpetrator. To this day, I can’t explain it. I’m telling this to you now because it’s anonymous.
A: Yeah, I really appreciate your willingness to share this with me right now. It can’t be easy to talk about a dark period in your life. We’re good friends, but I’ve kind of realized that I’ll never really know what happened during those two years or so with him, even though you’ve told me bits and pieces before and we’re doing this interview right now. I only know how it’s still affecting you today.
L: I think it’s worth noting that I’ve talked more about it in this interview than I have collectively in the last year and a half since I ended the relationship. The lyrics really helped guide this conversation. My friends used to ask me what happened and I couldn’t really answer. He redefined my reality every day and so my memory’s messed up.
I spoke to a friend who used to be an alcoholic, and I asked him what it’s like when he would black out. And he said you’re still living, responding to people and stimuli. You can hold a conversation. But the thing is that your brain has stopped recording it. And that’s the closest analogy that I can think of. And this might not apply to everyone who experienced abuse. If he did 1000 bad things, there are maybe 20 that I remember very clearly. The rest are blurry, I could probably remember if I tried hard enough, but I don’t want to go there. I don’t think my brain wants to remember all the bad things he did. What’s interesting is that the more time has passed, the more memories come back to me. Sometimes I’ll be using my chopsticks and suddenly remember the time he berated me at a restaurant for holding my chopsticks the wrong way.
Bridge:
Such a long way back from this place we are at
L: The most powerful lyrics. No one goes into a relationship looking for a bad time. We just want a happy ending. Maybe I was so fixated on the happy ending, that I turned a blind eye to the dark stuff.
A: I remember towards the beginning of your relationship, you would share a few romantic things that he did for you. Like you were long distance for a while, and he knew how to code, so he coded a compliment-bot. You write “hi” or “hello” to the bot, and it would spit out a compliment or some flirtatious comment very specific to you.
L: “Such a long way back.” Great lyric because it shows how much things can change in the course of a relationship. When I think way, way back to the beginning of the relationship, it was like a romantic movie. And then it would be disrupted by some horrific moments. But in the first few months, the ratio was still 90% romance and 10% horror or psychological thriller. Because he was testing the water. And then 2 years later it got to the point where it was romance one day and horror the next day, or it changed hour to hour. It happened so often that eventually I thought of romance and horror as the same genre. And I didn’t question it because it became my new reality. And there was no more sense of good or bad. How I interpreted it at the time was that every relationship is different, so maybe that’s just how my relationship was.
When I think of all the time I’ve wasted, I could cry
L: It’s been a year and a half since I moved out, and I still punish myself for the 2 and a half year long relationship. When I was younger I always thought the worst thing that could happen romantically was a breakup. But now I see that the worst thing was losing all that time because time is irreplaceable. I also lost a sense of my own humanity and dignity. I didn’t feel like a person. When you lose your sense of dignity, it’s very hard to rebuild. Dignity is a very abstract thing. Ideally you build it up over the course of many years through supportive relationships, education, work opportunities, etc. So when you lose that, the thought of having to start it up again and start from the beginning is overwhelming. For example, I had to rebuild my connections with family and friends. And now I have to think about what I like, now that I don’t have to spend time anticipating his mood swings. And how should I spend my time now? I feel like I have to make up for all that lost time.
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From the National Domestic Violence Hotline: “Domestic violence (also referred to as intimate partner violence (IPV), dating abuse, or relationship abuse) is a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship.” https://www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/understand-relationship-abuse/
Thank you to my good friend, L, for taking the time to talk through these lyrics with me and for sharing your story with a broader audience. Thank you to Todd Gibbs for providing the list of resources for Dartmouth students below.
For Dartmouth students, here are some resources and initiatives regarding sexual assault, sexual or gender-based harassment, dating or domestic violence, or stalking:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n-NF475K0QoLxzi6AtAvaWFt64iT1bbDh15lyo2cd2c/edit?usp=sharing
~Amanda V. Chen ‘21
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