I was always the invisible one in my family. Always the good one, the quiet one, the meek one. Always smiling and nodding. Always happy and pleasant, regardless of the situation, regardless of the amount of inner pain I was experiencing. It was easy to forget about me I guess. Easy to pass me over for my male cousins, who always came first in every situation, and easy to push me aside for my little sister, the baby of the family. So at the time, this boyfriend really was the only source of affection I had.

It was so easy to dismiss the hurtful comments at the beginning. And it just snowballed. Everything got worse and worse. Eventually, nothing was ever good enough. I was never good enough.

Damn. Looking back on this sucks. *sigh* To think I was ever so stupid hurts, but I digress...

Eventually, he started cheating on me, and convinced me that since [at the time], I was waiting until I was married to have sex, and it was only fair. But he still loved me, or said he did, except when I wasn't good enough for him...so I stayed with him. It hurt. It really did. Especially when he began bringing the girls he was fucking to parties and making booty calls when I was hanging out with him and some friends at his house. Aside from the pain of being passed over yet again, to have him be so open about it, that just killed me.

One day I confronted him about it. I told him I wasn't going to stand for it anymore, and that he was going to have to stop, or I was going to break up with him. And he said he would. He would stop. He said he loved me.

But he didn't. It just got worse. So I confronted him again with the same ultimatum. And he ridiculed me. He told me that I would never leave him because I would never find anyone better. He told me that no one would ever love me, not even my family. And I believed him. *sigh* I fucking believed him.

I've mentioned him before. So you may know how his part of this story ends, but it's not really the end.

The last time I confronted him, he had some friends from high school over who he hadn't seen in years. *grin* I've always been into older guys.

And he made a booty call. In front of me, in front of them. I couldn't take it, so I called him on it. I bitched him out in a way I have never done since. Whether it was me finally losing it, or the fact that I was doing it in front of his friends, he exploded. He said mind-numbingly-horrible things to me. He threatened me. He told me that if I didn't quit he'd, he'd...

He'd what? He'd hit me?? Fucking hit me then asshole! Son of a bitch can't think of another shit excuse to throw at me, he has to fucking hit me? Hit a girl half his age? Fucking hit me then!!

And he did. He backhanded me across the face. I fell backwards against the wall and then he grabbed me by the hair and shoved me to the floor. The room spun and I was completely dazed. I had been sobbing and screaming at him and now it felt like everything was in slow motion. I didn't see his friends jump up and pull him away from me. I didn't hear their furious shouting at him for hitting me. I sat on the floor until the room stopped spinning and then I noticed that my lip felt like it was twice its normal size. So I reached up to feel whether it was really swollen or if it was just the pain that made it feel that way. I discovered I was bleeding. I was bleeding a lot. Facial wounds bleed like you couldn't imagine. Then I started crying.

I wasn't aware of one of his friends helping me up and taking me out of the house. I don't remember him directing me to his truck. The next conscious memory I have was of me sitting on the edge of a bed in a motel holding a bloody hand towel full of ice to my face.

The boy who removed me from my boyfriend's apartment deserves a name here. I'll call him The Cowboy, or TC for short.

TC had been the ex's friend since high school, but after that day, he wrote him off, as did his other 3 friends there that day. After TC took me from the apartment, his other former friends beat the shit out of him. It was a matter of honor you see.

That day, I feel in love with TC. I knew nothing about him, and it was probably sparked by a sort of hero worship, but I fell madly in love with him. We became tight friends, and over the next 5 years, I pined for him constantly.

I feel bad for any boyfriend I wound up with during that time, because he really stood no chance. The entire time, I adored TC. He was everything to me. He was on the Pro Rodeo circuit, and wasn't in San Diego much, but whenever he was, we were together. We were never single at the same time, and while we flirted, I never thought anything would come of it and I was destined to love him from afar.

5 years ago this December, I was a senior in high school. I was going out with an idiot of a meatball from Boston. I call him my 3-month brain fart. *sigh* While I have never been with anyone abusive since that one guy, I do seem to fall for the ones who pass me over, but he's another story for another day.

2 days before Christmas, this was back when I celebrated Christmas; I got a phone call. It was TC, and he was at the airport. He was supposed to spend the holidays with a friend in San Diego, but the friend had gone out of town and not been able to contact him. He was at the airport and wondered if I could pick him up and maybe give him a lift to a motel. I was ecstatic to be able to see him, but there was no way I was going to let him spend the holiday in a motel. I talked to my grandma, who set up another bed in the den and busied herself with the task of making room for another person. I didn't tell him when I picked him up. I just small-talked with him the entire way to my house. When we pulled up, he asked me what I was doing. I grabbed his duffel and said that I was taking him to his hotel. My grandma welcomed him with open arms, shuffling him off to the shower with a towel fresh from the dryer, and my cousin helped me bring his heavier gear in so it wouldn't get damp outside.

After he had showered and settled into the den, we went and sat out on the porch and drank mulled cider. We were quiet for awhile, and then he expressed his shock in my grandma letting him stay there for the night. I told him he wasn't staying for the night; I'd asked her if he could stay for his entire trip out here. He was speechless. I just smiled and put my head on his shoulder and said that I couldn't let him spend the holiday alone.

And then he told me he loved me. It started coming out in a rush, like he couldn't stop for fear of not saying it all.

He told me he'd loved me from that first day when I'd gotten my lip split open, and that it had just gotten stronger as the years went by and how he was so upset that he couldn't keep it to himself because he knew I had a boyfriend and he probably ruined everything between us now, but that he could push his feeling aside and it wouldn't get weird because he treasures our friendship too much and he knew he could never have me, but he didn't want to lose what he did have with me.

I started crying, because I'm an over-emotional Cancer and I cry at the drop of a hat. He thought I was upset and he became even more upset and began apologizing and assuring me that nothing would change between us. When I finally found words, I told him that I'd been in love with him as long as he'd been in love with me.

After my confession, we were both kind of shell-shocked. We sat there long past midnight talking about everything and nothing.

The next day, I called my boyfriend and asked if I could come over. He was busy, and would be for the next week because his friends were having a Mortal Kombat tournament. Well then, what's a girl to do? So I broke up with him over the phone. TC and spent the day hanging around the house. We walked down to the park and lay on the grass together. I remember how much I smiled when he called me his girlfriend.

That night, Christmas Eve, we exchanged our pressies. I'd had my uncle make him a pair of custom spurs. He was completely speechless, even more so when he realized that I'd had it done for him before our true feelings had come out. He had a CD he'd bought for me before he came to San Diego, but that day, when he borrowed my car, he had also gone down and had his claddagh ring resized for me.

On December 24th, after 5 years of being secretly in love with one of my best friends, he put his ring on my finger and I promised to marry him. The next day, we discussed the logistics of it. Obviously, I needed to graduate, and he couldn't really stay in San Diego. So he would go home to his dad's in Oklahoma and work for his contracting business. I wasn't going to tell my family until after I graduated. Two days after Christmas, I kissed my fianc� goodbye and he promised he'd call me when he landed. It was the first of many phone calls.

Three months later, he called me to tell me his dad had bought a smaller house about 3 blocks away from the house TC grew up in, and was moving into it and leaving TC the family home. After all, he was just a single guy and didn't need all that room and he would be spending plenty of time over there getting to know his new daughter and eventual grandkids.

He made a few trips out here, and we called each other every day.

One day in early July, after I'd graduated, but before his trip out here to tell my family, I got a phone call from his dad. That in itself was not unusual, but his dad had been crying. He couldn't really talk to me, and his dad's girlfriend took the phone.

She told me that TC had entered to ride in a local rodeo that day, and had fallen. He hit his head on one of the rails of the arena and had been unconscious since. They didn't know what the outcome would be, but "it doesn't look good honey."

"it doesn't look good honey."

Those words are burned into my brain. She said them once, but I heard them over and over. I spent that night locked in my room crying until I made myself physically ill.

The next day, she called me again saying he had flatlined during the night and was gone. I dropped the phone and my cousin told me that I feinted.

*sigh* I haven't even told Cosmo all of this.

He picked up the phone and took down all the details and I told him most of the story when he asked me. I told him he had only been a friend, but I don't think he believed me.

I don't know what made me think of all of this. I'm not sad right now. It's been 4 years this past July that he died. This December 24th will be 5 years since I put on his ring.

I wore his ring until a tweaker friend of mine stole it.

I know everything happens for a reason. I don't pretend to know what those reasons are, but I know that I will never tolerate any form of abuse ever again. This scar tells me that. I know that I can sense that hidden streak of violence and have been able to steer clear of some seemingly fine catches that have turned out to be bad news. I know that my heart has been broken and that I can recover from it. I have an ability to love both madly and passionately, and I know what true love feels like.

Maybe those are the reasons, maybe not. Who knows.

Is there any one epiphany to be reached? Any single conclusion? Why limit myself to one when both relationships are filled with lessons to be learned?

That's all...I'm going to spell check and post this before I ramble on too much longer.