Smarmy

It was never a punch. It was a comment about what I was wearing delivered with a smile that dared me to call it cruelty.

“You’re wearing that?”

Three words. A question mark. Plausible deniability built right in. Because it’s not an insult, is it. It’s a question. He’s just asking. He’s just being honest. He’s just looking out for me because apparently I can’t be trusted to dress myself without supervision.

The comments were constant. Small. Surgical. Placed exactly where they’d do the most damage and leave the least evidence.

“Are you sitting down again?”
“Have you thought about going to the gym?”
“My mother managed to keep the house clean and raise three kids.”
“I’m just being honest. You’d want me to be honest, wouldn’t you?”

That last one was his favourite. The honesty defence. As if honesty and cruelty are the same thing. As if telling someone they’re not attractive any more is a favour. As if wrapping destruction in the language of care makes it care.

I couldn’t point at it. That’s the genius of it. There’s nothing to show anyone. No bruises. No screenshots of threats. No smashed plates. Just a woman who used to be confident slowly becoming a woman who checks her reflection four times before leaving the house and still changes her outfit.

People say why didn’t you leave. Why didn’t you tell someone. Why didn’t you just ignore him.

Because you can’t ignore the weather when you live in it. You can’t ignore the temperature of the room when the room is your entire life. You adjust. You adapt. You make yourself smaller. You stop wearing the red dress. You clean the kitchen before he gets home. You sit in the bedroom instead of the living room because at least in the bedroom there’s nobody to tell you you’re sitting wrong.

Death by a thousand cuts. That’s what they call it. And every single cut was delivered with a smile and a tone that said I’m only saying this because I care.

He didn’t care. Caring doesn’t make people smaller. Caring doesn’t take the red dress out of the wardrobe and replace it with something less likely to attract attention.

Caring looks nothing like that.

I know that now. I didn’t know it then. Because when someone tells you often enough that they’re being kind, you start believing them. Even when your body knows they’re lying.

Your body always knows.