He moved over to Korea to do some teaching for a year and she moved back home, so they continued to see each other over there. After a while Terry wanted to break up with her. He was tired of her mood swings and wanted to be single again. So he took her to a restaurant to break the news. This is where things go a little crazy.

He tells her, she goes crazy and starts yelling and screaming in a restaurant full of people. He wasn’t having any of this so he walked out. Jimin started throwing food at him as he left. He told me the other restaurant goers were staring in shock.

Terry left the restaurant and was walking down the city street. This was a pretty busy city. It was in the business centre so there were a lot of people walking around, going to work etc. All of the sudden he feels these nails dig into his arm. As he turns around an arm swings and hits him in the head. It was Jimin. He got out of the clutches of the now ex girlfriend and started running down the busy street. She was hitting him in the back, nobody would stop and help. Eventually he out ran her and escaped.

This isn’t the end of it.

After a while he circled back to his apartment he was staying in. The place he lived at had a sort of door man/maintenance guy. He wasn’t security but he was there when you needed help. Anyway, Terry reached his apartment, the door was ajar. He said he felt like he was in one of those crazy Japanese horror films. His ex had a copy of the key for the apartment you see.

He pushed the door open slowly and called out, “Jimin, are you there?”. When the door opened fully, he saw his ex girlfriend standing in the middle of the room, fists clenched at her side, just staring at him. At first he didn’t know what to say, “Jimin, are you alright?”.

She didn’t move. He closed the door and went to get the door man/maintenance guy. He came up to help, but, as he got to the door, he offered to call the cops. Terry, said later with 20/20 hindsight that he wrongly chose not to accept his offer. As the man was leaving, Terry heard a thud inside.

He rushed in and saw his ex lying on the ground, shaking and convulsing uncontrollably. He, being the nice guy, went over to help and she attacked him again. After a while of talking her straight, she decided to go to sleep. So, my friend let her sleep in his bed, while he slept on the couch.

After that he never saw her again. That guy has so many stories about crazy girls. He’s now dating a sane girl who is pretty cool.

23. “She’s your problem now”

Now, to start with, I didn’t grow up soft. I scrapped in school, at one point threw my brother through a window. But you don’t hit girls, you just don’t.

So I hooked up with a woman I’d been crushing on for a while. We’d been friends for years, and things kind of escalated. I’d been interested in her since I’d met her. After a few months, I’m looking at moving out of my parents house (relationship started about 5-6 months after I turned 18), so she invites me to move in with her. Ok, sure, why not? Things are going well, and we lived together for the next 4 years.

That was the worst 4 years of my life. The violence was the easiest of her abuse to cope with. She was manipulative, mentally and emotionally abusive. There was no drinking or other drugs involved. She’d start hitting and I wouldn’t fight back, it was my fault for making her angry. I deserved it for talking to a woman at work, or for having a female teacher, or any number of other incidental, entirely non-interesting exposures to women that shouldn’t be alarming. For instance:

Me: “This isn’t working.”