Little did I know that my life was going to be put on the line. It all started one day when I was hearing rumors. I heard people talking that someone was going to ask me to homecoming. Liam had officially come up to me to see if I would go with a boy named Antonio. I didn’t know who Antonio was at the time but I told Liam I would go with him, if he would ask me himself. Later that day, I was at lunch walking towards the bathroom when I heard my name. It was Antonio. He shyly asked me to homecoming. I accepted his proposal. A few hours after school, he had added me on Snapchat and we started talking about homecoming. He seemed like a sweet and loveable guy.

As days went on, Antonio and I got to know each other a lot better. We started dating on September 12, a couple of weeks before the homecoming dance. My friends thought we made a cute couple. On September 29 was the homecoming dance. Antonio and I danced the night away. I remember one specific moment when we were dancing in the back of the room. He looked into my eyes and called me beautiful. When the dance ended, he kissed me goodbye and went on his way. When I got home, I decided to keep the corsage he had given me and set it on my nightstand.

Antonio was in the same class as me, Child Development. As a couple of weeks pass, it was time to take robot babies home and take care of them. I got a baby boy and Antonio got a girl. I was very worried about taking care of my baby but Antonio reassured me that I would do great. This led him to start gaining my trust.

The first time he ever hurt me; we were standing at my locker, talking but Antonio was beyond outraged about something. I didn’t get a chance to figure out what was wrong because it was time to go to class. Antonio always walked me to first period. As we started for my classroom, he pinched me as hard as he possibly could. I smacked his hand off of my soft skin. We walked the rest of the way in silence, to my classroom. He hugged me, kissed me, and started to apologize, but I walked away trying so hard to fight back the tears in my eyes. Second period came around and Antonio slid a note into my sweatshirt pocket. It was an apology letter. He described himself as being a monster and said he should take his own life. Me being me, I forgave him thinking that it wouldn’t ever happen again.

When I got home from school, I would always have to call him right away. If not, I would be called crude names and get threatened. Then again, he would do that to me on a daily basis. Antonio played with my head, my heart, and my emotions. I wasn’t allowed to hang out with any of my friends; I lost all of my friends. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere with my family; my family started to hate me. I always had to be in contact with him or else I would be threatened. Antonio ultimately had me getting into a lot of trouble.

At school during lunch, he would get mad at me for not talking to him and tell me to go sit somewhere else. He did that quite often. When I would get up to go move, he would yell at me to sit down again. He would yell at me again to get up then, sit back down. He did this repeatedly.  One time, Antonio ended up pinching my hand extremely hard that it left a bruise and blood marks. That happened during lunch. Antonio would throw me around like I was nothing. After one of his sporting practices, he came out angry about something. When I asked what was wrong, he ended up headbutting me. I felt the sweat on his forehead rub off on mine and his hair brush against my skin. When he did this, I was taken back for a second. One of my friends witnessed it. Antonio and I both went into the hallway to talk. Antonio was so outraged that he grabbed both of my arms as hard as possible and started to lift me off the ground. I yelled at him to let go as I was struggling to get out of his grasp. He had realized what he was doing and had let go of his tight grip. Antonio apologized then had to leave right away because his ride was there to get him.

I had to stay after school because I had a basketball game to cheer at. While I was waiting for the game to start, I talked to some of my friends about the issues and names Antonio has been calling me. When the game was over, Antonio asked me if I had told anyone about the things he was doing to me. So to protect myself, I said no. Eventually, Antonio found out that I did talk about him. He got so irritated at me, cussed me out, and was breaking things in his room. His mom ended up sending him to the hospital because he was threatening his life. But he blamed me for putting him in there. Antonio wasn’t allowed to have his phone with him the days he was in the hospital. That felt like total freedom for me.  This is when I started to realize that I must get away. When he came back from the hospital a week later, it was like nothing had changed.

Antonio would get upset with me because my family didn’t like him. Since they didn’t like him, we weren’t allowed to hang out. Therefore, Antonio would tell me that I never make an effort to see him when in reality, I was asking my parents all the time to see him; practically begging them. Also, Antonio would get upset and aggravated when I would wear makeup. When I walked up to him one day, he noticed I was wearing makeup and the first thing out of his mouth was the words ew you look disgusting. I didn’t want to get hurt by him again so I stopped wearing makeup for the longest time after.

During school, we had an event called Clash of Classes where classes compete with each other to see who is best. When we were being dismissed from the event, I started to walk down the stairs when Antonio grabbed me by the back of the shirt and choked me. He also had kicked me in the leg. He was upset because I started down the stairs without him. I started to cry but I knew couldn’t. Anytime I would cry, Antonio would yell at me to stop so he wouldn’t get in trouble. I eventually trained myself not to cry. For Valentine's day, I received a necklace from Antonio. One day, he got mad and ripped the necklace right off my neck and threw it on the ground. The necklace was broken but still wearable.

Antonio would get angry at his bus for being late and would take it out on me.  There were times where I thought he was going to break my hand. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he did. After all of the things he had done to me, I had started giving up. One time, he was mad at me and called me worthless. Also, he told me to cut myself as he watched. If not, he would come to my house and kill me. Another time, Antonio was mad at lunch. I had pretty much given up on myself so I told him to take it out on me. I was so used to him hurting me, it was agonizingly painful. He grabbed my hand and took my thumb. He started bending it backward. It bent to the point where it could have broke. I was in so much pain but no one would have known. It was all hidden behind my lifeless eyes. At some points, Antonio wouldn’t allow me to eat. I would go a day or two without eating every couple of weeks.

One day, Antonio threw his phone at a locker because he was very enraged. He broke his phone. I was under so much stress and was hurt that my body was starting to give up on itself. My nose started bleeding and didn’t stop until third period of that school day. Antonio felt guilty about it and wrote me another apology note thinking it would make everything better. It didn’t.

When summer came around, Antonio always wanted to sneak to my house. I would always tell him, no but then he would get aggravated. He started threatening me. He would say he is going to come to kill me and make it look like a suicide. He would call me profane names on a daily basis. I thought he was going to kill me. Antonio told me one day he practiced shooting guns. He said he loved how it felt to shoot it. He told me it was relaxing to him. At this point, I was terrified.

During school, I would do Antonio’s homework on top of mine.  He would get good grades on the stuff I did for him but when it came to tests, he would fail. All summer long, he blamed me for him failing classes and not being able to play a sport. I would hear it every day along with the horrible things he would call me. When school came in session, Antonio got the opportunity to be able to be part of his sports team and play the last two games in the season. He followed through with the offer but then ended up quitting. He still blamed me for him not being able to play after he quit. At the end of our first sports game, he went to give me a kiss. He was so upset about not being able to play that he bit my top lip. My lip started to bleed. He tried to force a hug upon me. I kept pushing him away but he wouldn’t stop. My lip bled the whole ride home from the game. Eventually, he got in trouble for it.

Before Antonio got in trouble for that, we ended up breaking up. He got mad because I wanted to hang up on our call to go eat. He was so upset with me and threw his phone and broke it. As he was doing that, he said he wanted to break up. He couldn’t use his phone anymore and ended up using someone else's to contact me. He apologized and said he would change but I had enough. I explained to him that he broke up with me. We weren’t going to get back together this time. He wouldn’t leave me alone and kept spamming my social media account once we broke up. I blocked his account but he ended up creating twelve more social media accounts to be able to contact me. I blocked every single one of them and eventually, he gave up. Antonio still to this day bullies me and talks about me behind my back. I know if I don’t acknowledge his childish behavior, he will eventually grow up.

People ask me, why did you stay with him? My answer to that is, my life was on the line and I didn’t want to lose it. I waited for an out. An easy way to leave so I wouldn’t get physically or mentally abused anymore. I had to relearn how to love myself. I still to this day, struggle with mental issues that the abuse has brought upon me but every day I grow a little stronger.