He was in my room again, doing what he always did. Whenever things got hard–and God knows how many times that’s been– he would always go to my room. Ripping things up was somehow therapeutic for him, but the things he chose to rip up was stressful for me. He would tear down the pictures of us that I kept on my walls, rip them up into tiny pieces and throw them down, missing the garbage can. It was his desperate attempt to erase the past, the memories, and the bond between us.

“Stop!” I cried, running for my room, because I knew what was to come. He didn’t listen.

“Why?” he asked. “These mean nothing now.” He was worked up, but I’d be lying if I said I’ve never seen him that angry before.

“How could you say that?” Tears were already streaming down my face, blinding my view. I hated the consistency of this: the same thing over and over again. He always got mad at the littlest things and went off on me like there was no tomorrow. I couldn’t wait for the tomorrows. They were new days, different days. But not different enough.

“You don’t want these. Why would you even keep them after this?”

“Because I want them,” I told him with my shaky voice. I knew that no matter how bad things got that day, we would stay together. That’s what always happened, and that’s why I always tried to salvage the pictures.

He turned around to look at me. “You’re pathetic.”

“Stop,” I said again, hoping he would listen the second time. He went back to ripping up pictures. I put my hand on his shoulder, trying to turn him around so he could look at me. Instead, he grabbed my shoulders and threw me down. The thud that I made didn’t seem to bother him. He just kept looking for more things to destroy. He went in my drawers, knowing where I kept our scrapbook, and starting ripping those pages out.

“Stop! Get out of my room!” I cried. He never listened; why did I think that time was different? “I’m serious! Just get out of my house!”

“Where is it?” he said, shuffling through the wrong drawers. I knew what he was looking for. He looks for it every time. That is exactly why I hid it. “The poem, Tara. Where is it?”

He had written a poem about me for his English class the day before we started going out. I would have never expected him to write something so beautiful. He gave me the poem to keep, after it had been graded. He knew how much I loved it. I always hid it in one of my drawers, because I knew that one of these days, when he suddenly hated me, he would want it back, unable to forgive himself for writing something so sweet to me.

“I’m not telling you,” I told him.

“I swear to God, Tara!”

“You gave it to me. It’s mine.”

“Yeah, well I want it back. It wasn’t meant for you. I wrote it about someone else.” My heart sank into my stomach. I knew he was lying. He always did that. But I was always baffled by how far he would go to hurt me. “Give it to me.”

I didn’t say anything. This made him even angrier. He walked up to me and screamed in my face. “WHERE IS IT!”
I was crying hysterically. I pointed to the door. “Get out!”

“I’m not leaving until I have everything that’s mine.”

“Yours! You come into my room and rip up my pictures and you think this stuff is yours? It doesn’t work that way. Just leave!” I was yelling now.

“Wow,” he said. “This is such a joke. You’re pathetic if you honestly still want all of these things. They don’t mean anything. You’re so pathetic. I can’t believe I could ever love you. You’re a waste of seven months. Seriously. I wish I never even met you. You could go die. I wouldn’t care. I never want to see your face again.” With that, he finally left my room, left my house, and drove off.

I watched his car speed down the street. So many things were running through my mind: I was hurt, I was angry, and I was crying so hard, I could barely breathe. The most painful thing, though, was the fact that I knew what was going to happen. I knew that later that day, he would call me and apologize for everything he said. He would hear the hesitation in my voice and know that I didn’t really want to go back to him. He would butter me up and say all the right things. He would convince me that he’ll change, even though I’ve heard that line a thousand times. He would do all of this, and I would go back. I always went back.

So I walked to my room, still crying, and looked at the broken pictures that were scattered over the floor. I started picking them up and taping them back together, giving him yet another thing to rip when the same thing happens again.

He called a few minutes later.