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Nosedive

The other day, I'm downstairs having some water, and putting on my shoes to get the beast off the bus.  The doorbell rings, about five minutes before I would normally walk out the door.  It's an odd time for people to show up, and no one had ordered anything.

I open the door and find my uncle.  The asshole one I posted about a while back.  Except I have no mental preparation for him to visit, so instantly my brain panics.

No more than two minutes after he walks in the door, the starts swatting at my stomach asking what "that" is.  I tell him it's my stomach, and has a bunch of extra skin from having a kid.  He gets like two inches from my face, saying it's been too long since I had the beast, and so it should be gone.  My mother and his wife (who has a kid from before they were married) all say with me that it's extra skin and will be around forever.

He insists it can't just be skin, to which I tell him that there is a lot of muscle under what is very obviously empty skin.  He tells me I do nothing, and there's no way I could have muscle.  I point out that I work out, and dance nearly every day.  He tells me I don't.  Because obviously I'm just lying to him.  At this point I walk out to get the beast off the bus.

When I come in with her, I go to get her set up with her homework, and label her page so that she knows where to put things.  He starts saying I'm doing her work for her, and baby her too much, and do everything for her.  I tell him that I'm labelling something so she knows how to lay out her work, and I am the only person I allow to do her work with her, because everyone in the house just gives her answers and does it for her.  He shuts up, and instead walks around the table, where I'm leaned over looking at papers less than a foot away from the beast.  He then starts grabbing at my sides, and it takes every bit of my restraint not to swing at him, because my daughter is too close to me for me to be sure she'll be safe if I do.

He continues with his normal telling me that I'm a piece of shit, and I try to cool down.

After he leaves, I tell my mom how pissed I was, and she tells me I was overreacting.  Then my father comes home.  My mother tells him her version of what happens, and I hear him say "Well I've seen plenty of girls who have had kids and don't have a belly like hers."  My mother responds with "I know, but she was insulted because he pointed out her stomach."  At which point I'm about to get violent again.  I wanted to walk in and ask how many girls he's looking at who lost as much weight as I have, had kids, and didn't have access to photoshop or a smartphone.  To point out that every dancer with kids that I know has a stomach just like mine, because that's how the abdominal muscles form when you dance.

I wanted to tell that that his comment wasn't what matter.  It was the fact that he was grabbing at me like he was entitled to.  That all he does it treat me like shit, and then act like I'm an object, and I should put up with it because he's related to me.  That he just refuses to believe anything I say and has to have a problem with every aspect of me because I'm nothing like him, and don't just agree with him.

A more textbook example of abuse could not be found, and of backing abuse with more abuse.  And this is what I live with.  These are the problems we read about on social media.  These are the reasons some women never date, or start doing drugs, or drinking.  It took me a long time to level out from it at all, and I don't know how much more of it I can sit through.


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