This year has been a very eventful one; my cousin for example, got married to a girl who my family doesn’t like. Jason, my newly married cousin has been living in Florida since the day after her graduated college so him not being here is nothing new. Our whole family has gotten used to it.

What my family isn’t used to is my cousin Carly being gone. She’s twenty-one years old and she had to move to California. She was my best friend growing up and we did everything together. It all started when she got this new boyfriend. She was around 18 and she met him at work. When he came over to meet all of us he seemed really nice and like he cared about her. My aunt, uncle, dad, mom and nana really liked him. The only people who didn’t like him were my cousin Joe and I. Joe is her brother. After her boyfriend left, Joe and I looked at each other. Something was off about him and we both knew it.

I told my mom I didn’t like this new guy and she told me that “I judged to quickly and he was a nice boy”. Maybe I was wrong? I decided to give him a chance. Everything was great for a few months. She was happier then ever; he would take her out all the time and treat her like a princess. He came to all of our family functions, even my 15th birthday party. I didn’t really want him there because I still secretly hated this guy, well it wasn’t really a secret because he walked in and said happy birthday to me and I walked right by. I knew something was weird about him and my cousin looked like she had been crying.

We had dinner and everything was fine until I walked by him holding her tightly by the arm. He saw me because I slammed my plate down and he let her go. At this moment I knew that this gut feeling I had was completely true. After that they left and from then on I never saw Carly as much as I used to. We used to go shopping every other weekend and she would pick me up from dance and then sleepover. All of that changed in the blink of an eye and there was nothing I could do about it.

I would hear my mom and my aunt talking on the phone all the time about this situation but I chose to not listen. The next time I saw her she had lost about 15 pounds, which meant she was around 90 pounds and had not a stitch of makeup on. That wasn’t like Carly…she always wore makeup and looked her best; she was always happy and smiling. From then on that is what she looked like. No makeup, sunken in eyes, thin and sad. This was the hardest thing for me to see. My family and I watched a bright and happy young women turn into something that was the complete opposite.

She called me one day and asked me to go out. Of course, I said yes because I hadn’t spent any time with just her in ages. We went down to Newport, parked her car, and went for a nice day of shopping and lunch. During this I was holding her phone in my pocket. He had called her 20 times in one hour. When I told her to answer because maybe something was wrong, she replied with “don’t worry he does this all the time.” That made me worry even more. This whole situation wasn’t normal. During those 4 hours of being out with Carly she had 74 missed phone calls from him. With every ring she became more and more nervous looking. I shut her phone off shortly after because we were going to dinner.

Dinner went well and we were walking back to her car. When we turned the corner we both stopped laughing and froze. Two of her tires were slashed, her window was broken, her windshield was smashed, the radio was outside of the car, and all of her makeup was smudged all over the hood of her car. She sat on the corner of the street and cried. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I called my cousin Joe and triple a. He picked us up and AAA towed the car. When we got back to her house she told me everything. How she couldn’t get out of this, how bad her relationship was, all of it. This had been going on for around a year now.

Around 20 minutes later we heard a car pull up outside. I looked out the window and it was him. Apparently after every fight he would come over and scream and or hit her whenever he felt like it, which explained her bruises. He knew when she was home alone. I told Carly to stay in her room and I would go downstairs. She was petrified of him and she had a reason to be. I walked down and opened the door. He was so mad and I was petrified but I wasn’t going to let him know that. I told him to calm down and just talk. I explained that she was out with me and everything was fine but she wasn’t home right now. I went to close to the door and he pushed it back open. When I saw him raise his foot to come inside I slammed the door shut on his hand locked it and ran upstairs. He stood outside swearing and yelling at us for a half hour until the cops arrived and he was escorted back home.

My uncle called his mom and threatened legal action if he didn’t stay away. Carly tried to get away… she broke it off many times, ignored his call and much more but somehow he always found her. It was almost like he had his friends spying on her. Anywhere she would go one of his friends, or him would show up. She could no longer go out alone. This happened for a few months more, he tried contacting everyone in our family. It has now been a year and a half. Each member of our family placed a restraining order on him. Carly called me one day and said she needed to talk to me. She told me that was taking a “road trip” to California; only difference was she wasn’t coming back. I was the only one who knew this. She said bye to everyone and no one knew why I wouldn’t stop crying except her and I.

The last time I saw her was the end of 2012. She has a new life in California and is finally safe. This Christmas she called me and we talked, she said to open my back door too see if my presents arrived. I put the phone down and opened it. My present was there, and It was her. She surprised my whole family and came home for two days. It was great to see her finally looking like herself again. She had to stay at my house because “the psycho” as my family calls him is still looking for her. Even though she was only here for two days that was the best Christmas present I could have ever received. It’s just sad that one person can ruin another’s life so quickly. Now she wont even be able to see me go off to senior prom or graduate just like I did for her, but iv gotten over that and I just thank god that she is still alive. She no longer has to run away from the man who supposedly loved her.