Am I a Monster?

 I am almost certainly going to see Breaking Dawn II tomorrow. But that’s not the real point of this – just something I thought you might like to know.

About fifteen years ago – a little while before I met my current girlfriend – I had a girlfriend named Lucinda. We were together around five years, and we even moved in together. 

She did not have a happy past – her father was an abusive drunk, who was – quite honestly – a total shit. I met him once, and that was enough to do me for a lifetime.

While she was growing up, he would routinely hit her mother, her older sister and her. Not all the time, just when he got drunk (which happened a lot since he really didn’t like his life all that much, but rather than accepting that and doing something about it, he decided getting drunk and beating the crap out of his family was the way to deal with it). 

Lucinda’s older sister Eloise moved out as soon as she could, and Lucinda did the same – the day she finished school,  she moved in with her sister (on a temporary basis) and then – a bit later – she moved in with me. 

But the thing is – Lucinda did not hate her father. She loved him. And from the stories she has told me of her childhood, when he wasn’t getting drunk and beating her, he was actually quite a nice guy. He taught her to ride a bike, to paint and so on, and – when he was not behaving like a monster – he was a fairly decent guy who (in other circumstances) I would have been glad to call my girlfriend’s father, even my father-in-law. 

When I met her, she hadn’t seen him in about two years. And it would be two years of us together before she did – when her mother fell ill, she felt she should go and see her father. I tried to talk her out of it, because I thought she was better off without him – but she told me he was better, that he didn’t drink as much and that now she was grown up, he wouldn’t hit her. 

She came back full of happy stories – they had talked it all out and he had apologised, and that she was going to see him again the weekend after. I still thought it was a bad idea, and that she would regret it, but decided to hold my peace, because after all it was her father and her family, and maybe he had changed. 

The next weekend she went to see him, and when she came home, she told me that it had been another good visit, but she winced when she put pressure on her right hand. She told me that she had banged it against a door, and it was a little bit sore. 

Two days later, I saw her mother in town, and noticed that Lavender had a black eye. 

I went home and talked to Lucy about it, and she admitted that her father had hit her mother, and when she had tried to interfere, he had twisted her hand. 

At that point I more or less forbade her from seeing her father again – I didn’t exactly phrase it like that, but I said she shouldn’t be around him because while he was perfectly nice and safe most of the time, it was apparent he could change from the nice guy to the monster in a second, and she could get seriously hurt. 

I refused to have anything to do with him, and I refused to give her lifts or lend her the car to go see her father. The next time she went to see him, she had to get the bus, because I thought it was a huge mistake and was not going to do anything to help her make it worse.

During the next year (before we broke up and I moved out) she visited him another ten times, and for eight of those times, she came back with happy stories and tried to convince me her father had reformed for good. 

The other two times – once she came back with a slight limp (where he had nearly broken her ankle for suggesting he shouldn’t drink so much) and once she came back with a fairly bruised arm (where he had twisted it when she broke a plate while helping her mother with dinner). 

When she came back from her eleventh visit with another bruised arm, I told her that she had to choose – that I wasn’t going to watch while she continued to visit a man who could lash out at a moments notice, that I wasn’t going to watch while she continued to risk her life visiting someone she knew could easily kill her. She said that she wasn’t going to stop seeing her father – he was her FATHER for gods’ sake – so the next morning I moved out.

I haven’t seen her since, but quite honestly it wouldn’t surprise me to find out he had killed her. 

So – am I a monster for trying to stop her seeing someone who she thought was nice and safe (and most of the time I admit he probably was) but could – in an instant – turn in to a bastard who would hit her, hurt her and maybe even kill her? 

Or was I doing the right thing?