Returning Injury by Becky Due

they’d taken turns paying on their dates. Her dates with Roy had been strange—one date, she liked him; the next date, she didn’t. It felt like she was dating twins: one nice and one evil. She would call him in a couple days and tell him it wasn’t going to work out, but she would like to stay friends. She hated that she was afraid to tell him that she was not interested. She hated that she felt weak and strangely scared to tell him the truth.
    About a week and a half after she told him that they were better off as friends, he moved into the apartment next to hers.
    Rebecca started attending a women’s group to help empower women and teach basic skills that women had forgotten or never learned, like boundaries, communication, definitions of abuse and how to set and achieve goals. The other women who attended the group had boyfriends or husbands who hated that they attended such a course. She figured the guys were fearful of losing the women they had trained so well, and she learned from these women that they wanted out but were afraid and didn’t know how to get out.
    One woman, Mary, said that her plan was to tell her boyfriend that she needed a break to re-evaluate the relationship and she needed him to stop coming over. She wasn’t breaking things offentirely; maybe they could date and see how it went. Of course, this was not something she learned in the group—this was passive—but she felt it was the safest and easiest way to get the ball rolling. Mary didn’t know why she was afraid of him. He had never hit her or scared her in any way, but she was still afraid.
    After Mary told him she needed a break, she spent three days in the hospital.
    When Mary, still bruised, came back to the group meeting and shared her story, Rebecca made the decision to start seeing a counselor. Her counselor was one of the women who taught the course.
    What bothered Rebecca most was that Mary feared this man, but there was nothing that could be done. There was no evidence or proof that he would hurt her. He had never hurt her in the past, so she would not have been able to get a restraining order for protection. A judge wouldn’t have signed it. This was a scary thought. She wondered why a person couldn’t just say I’m scared and I want protection, period. If he was normal and didn’t do anything, fine, but if he did try to hurt her, she would have better protection or maybe it would deter him from doing something to her in the first place.
    Rebecca kept trying to deny the reasons why Roy moved in next to her. She didn’t want to believe he was crazy or a borderline stalker, but she could tell he kept an eye on her. He always seemed to be in the hall when she was coming or going. He would show up in the laundry room with laundry while she was doing her laundry. Her counselor became afraid for her and told her to start documenting everything that didn’t feel right. So Rebecca bought ajournal and started doing just that. She wrote in her journal every night, not only about Roy, but about what she was learning about herself. Between counseling, the women’s group and journaling, she was starting to get a better understanding about the person she was and the person she wanted to be.
    Her choice of men was not healthy; therefore, Rebecca was not healthy. Her job was not her dream, and she hadn’t tried to do anything about it; therefore, she was discouraged. She also recognized that she had spent money foolishly while Roy was in her life. She had started shopping more and buying things she didn’t need. Although she and Roy took turns paying for the dates, she usually spent more than she should have. She could no longer pay the entire balance on her credit cards at the end of the month. She was beginning to understand that her spending was directly related to being frustrated about her life and about dating Roy.
    Work was also becoming more stressful. Ed was suddenly under the impression that Rebecca was a nymphomaniac, and