Letting Go of an Abusive Relationship

17 Oct Letting Go of an Abusive Relationship

     13 years old, I met this guy. I absolutely had the hugest crush on him. I would try my best to talk to him, but since he was a year older, which made a lot of difference as a kid, I was shy and would run away. I was horribly picked on for all sorts of things growing up. I was too skinny, I smelled like smoke because my parents were smokers, I didn’t have a huge fancy house or expensive clothes, I didn’t have this or that. I was ostracized by girls at school and hated even more by them because I would play and get along better with the guys. As much as I got along with the guys, this one boy made me flustered. I didn’t understand it and actually thought he didn’t like me.

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     One day, a friend leaked that I liked him. To my surprise, he liked me back. I was head over heels for this guy. He was cute, funny, and creative. If you know anything about me, you know that I love to laugh. I feel like laughing is something that people can be deprived of sometimes. Our relationship was going great, as great as a middle school relationship could go. We were innocent. We held hands and gave hugs, but there was nothing else. We kissed a few times but it wasn’t anything overly romantic. It came down to him telling me that he loved me. I was overwhelmed. I was happy, a bit sad, confused, and mostly scared. I was young, I knew what love was but I was never sure I was ready for it.

     His mother always appeared that she liked me, but I knew for a fact that his grandmother hated me. She hated our relationship. She put restrictions on him to keep him from talking to me or seeing me. As a side story, his mother moved and left him and his brother with his grandma. His grandma was one of those special kind of ladies. The type of lady that didn’t seem like she ever worked for anything in her life, had money, a beautiful house on the lake… but behind her seemingly perfect life, she was two-faced. Without my knowledge for a long time she talked horrible about me. I only seen a glimpse of it once when I went on vacation with his family. She got really upset and wanted me to leave.

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     After the end of the school year, he moved. He told me that he couldn’t take how his grandma was treating him… me… so he moved three and a half hours away to be with his mom again. He said he didn’t want to. He said he wanted to stay to be with me, but she was driving him insane. I was 14. I couldn’t handle a long distance relationship.

I couldn’t even drive to see him. We exchanged e-mails for a while, talked via webcam, and then it came down to if it would ever work of not. I eventually made one of the hardest choices ever… I let him go. I didn’t want him to prolong it. I didn’t want to hear his pleas, I was heartless. I ended it. I hung up the phone and never heard from him. I was torn inside. I never had the heart to do that to anyone, but it was hurting me… and I knew it was hurting him.

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     4 Years later, I somehow got in contact with him again. I was over the moon with joy. That love never left me. We started talking again and it eventually grew into a relationship once again. I just graduated high school. I could drive, I could visit him, I could see him… once again. We reunited. In my head, everything seemed perfect. I was set on being with him my entire life.

I walked into the house where he lived and it was like time stood still. The same dog painting hung over the dinning room table. The same bedding draped over the beds, and it even smelt the same. The air was the same. Everything was the same. Except for him. He grew up. He matured into a man. He had a job, his own friends, a whole life I knew nothing about between those 4 years. It was like I didn’t know him at all but was holding onto the person I once knew. He had an emptiness in his eyes. He was sad and trying to fill a void. Our relationship wasn’t enough for that.

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I wasn’t enough for him.He started to abuse me in ways that you probably wouldn’t think of it as abuse. He would tell me I needed to gain weight, where before weight wasn’t seen. He told me I looked better with makeup, where before makeup wasn’t seen. He said I needed to grow my hair out, when he used to love my shoulder length hair. He wanted me to dress differently, act differently, be… different. Those 4 years has changed him so much he didn’t truly love me anymore. He loved parts of other girls and tried to turn me into each part of them.

I was never supposed to be a huge part of his life. I wasn’t supposed to meet his friends, but Facebook makes that inevitable. I was supposed to be his secret. I was excited to see his mother again. I always thought she liked me. I was wrong. Day one of us being together again, she tried to split us up. He eventually went on to tell me that she thought I was vindictive and a back stabber. Those words shot through my heart like lightning. I couldn’t understand how someone I was always nice and respectful towards would just say that about me. I was hurt, I cried… He later stood up to her and defended me. After that, it never seemed like there were issues.

I was blind.

He would do little things that hinted that we weren’t going to last. He was heavily into porn. He added tons of girls on Facebook. He would spend time alone with other girls and say they were just friends. I never spoke out. I got upset once and expressed it and he kept telling me I was being dramatic… that I needed to grow up. He always told me I needed to grow up. In desperation of wanting to be with him… I changed. My personality changed, my face, hair, clothes, and my life changed.

The once pink room I had was painted grey. A more “mature” color. All the memories of my childhood… stuffed animals, barbies, everything… was tossed or put into storage. I started to wear shorts, which always made me self conscious. I wore makeup all the time. I tried to grow my hair out. I tried to be… mature.

I wasn’t ready.

I feel like I’ve always had a deep soul. I’ve always had the ability to look inside someone else and feel their pain, give them advise, and to help them heal in some way. But I was always care-free. I thought this meant I could no longer be care-free. I started to regress into a little shell once again. I didn’t want to have a choice that he wouldn’t like so I let him decide everything for me. What we ate, what we did, who we saw, when we went to bed. Everything. I thought that’s what he wanted. I became an empty shell of my former self. I was so far gone from who I wanted to be and who I was that I became this hollow statue of what I thought he wanted.

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He visited me for Christmas and since his grandma lived near, it was a perfect time to see me and family. He didn’t visit me. He visited someone else. I found out he was over at his ex girlfriends house. He told me that he was sick with food poisoning and his brother needed to talk to her brother, “Relax, she isn’t even here. I’m sitting in the car waiting for my brother.” I was infuriated. I yelled at him… for the first time. “Do you want to know why I hate that family? Not only is she your ex who hurt you dearly, but her brother raped my best friend. The whole family is crap!”

He never heard that about her brother, but why would he? A rapist isn’t going to go around and tell everyone that he drugged and raped a girl that was on her period at a party. He urged me to calm down that he wasn’t feel good and that he was avoiding them anyways.

I was dumb.

I believed him and saw him the next day. Everything went great in my head and after that it seemed like our relationship was somehow better than it was before. Valentines day came around and he wrote me a funny and sweet letter. It was the first hand written letter he sent me since we were children. I was happy but sad that I couldn’t see him. The college spring break came around and it was still very cold so him and a few friends, who I became close with, came up so we could go snowboarding.

They also had some friends at a college close to me, so they could see them as well. I met them half way to the snowboarding lodge and they picked me up and we drove the rest of the way. When we got there, it was raining so we ended up not being able to go.
I think we tried again the second day, but those days are hazed so much from how sad and infuriated I was.

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Driving back into town, we saw some huge icicles coming off the mountain. He and one of our friends got out of the car to go look at them. I stayed in because I was cold. I’ve never done this before, but I saw his phone and I grabbed it. I briefly looked through his photos and what I saw changed my life. I say changed my life because in all of the cheating relationships I’ve been in… this was the first time I had visual proof. Photos of this naked girl were all through his phone. Even just normal photos of her. I instantly freaked out but didn’t want to make a scene in front of his friends.

He got in the car and I threw the phone at him as my eyes swelled up with tears. He looked at me confused and asked what was wrong. I texted him the issue. At first he denied it and said that the photos were of me. I instantly retorted with, ” I know my body and I know I’ve never been in that ugly bathroom before.” Then he made a comment on how his friends will send him photos of the girls they were with and since he can’t see images on his phone without downloading them, that that’s why they were in his phone. A sharp stare at disbelief from me glared into his soul and knew he was lying.

He knew he couldn’t hide.

He later admitted to everything. He even admitted that while he was there for spring break he met up with his ex. He admitted that he wasn’t really sick and did in fact see her that day during Christmas. He admitted to everything as I cried. He left me. After all of that, I still loved him so unconditionally that I wanted to fix things. I wanted to so desperately keep him that I was willing to forgive his actions and try to move on together.

I still wasn’t fucking good enough.

Well you know what? I will never be good enough for someone who is seeking the impossible in me. You didn’t help me grow. You didn’t encourage me. You didn’t take the time to understand me. You wanted me to be a shell of former relationships. My soul is more beautiful than my looks will ever be. I’ve been picked on my whole life about my looks. I change for other people and I’m still not good enough. If there was anything that you taught me… you taught me to not be blind. You taught me to never automatically trust people, to never instantly look for the good in people, but most importantly… you taught me that every person hides something. There is something to every person that makes them dark. Everyone has a piece of darkness in their heart that feeds on their soul.

You are the darkness in my heart.

I can pretend all day that I forgive you, that I’m over the point and time in my life where everything changed. Pretend that I don’t hate you and that I don’t still have dreams about you – good or bad. Do you know what I say in my dreams? I yell… I yell to the top of my lungs at you. I watch you crumble in my dreams into dust of a memory. I was never respected, I was called trash.

I am proud of myself.

I am proud of where I came from and where I am now. Proud that I’ve had all of these tragedies in my life that shaped me into the individual I am today. I’m proud of all my hard work and success. I never got the closure I needed from you. You were never man enough to do that for me. Instead you’d make jokes or say I’m being overly dramatic. You know exactly how you’ve changed me and you’ve never sincerely apologized for it once.

I’m breathing you in… and I’m letting you go.

“Breath No More” 10-17-2013