Before college, I had never really been exposed to toxic relationships. I had seen them on TV, and I had heard about them in conversation, but I had never experienced them myself. Just this year, my apartment has seen three types of destructive relationships. Each roommate experienced a different type, but we ultimately experienced all of them together. I learned a lot about the people in this world and what they are capable of. Reality seemed to hit me in the face when I got here. I was immediately exposed to three different types of toxic relationships that came with their own level of destruction: the consuming, the abusive, and the manipulative.

The consuming relationship.

I watched as my roommate's life was taken over by her relationship. As she came home with stories every day, I kept noticing that she was losing herself in this other person. She had passed the point of loving and was flirting with the line of obsession. As she lost her individuality, she started to identify herself as her significant other which was not only suffocating her partner, but her as well. She destroyed herself by losing herself. She was engulfed in anger, jealousy, and paranoia for so long that she didn't know how to be at peace. It's dangerous to lose your independence. You are the only thing in this world that you can control and you should never give that power to someone else. When she finally let go of him, she didn't even know how to piece herself back together again because she didn't know which pieces were his and which were hers.

"Nobody that genuinely loves you will allow you to love them more than you love yourself. Remember that." Dau Voire.

The abusive relationship.

This was a type of toxic relationship that I heard about all the time but never had first-hand experience with. When I found out my other roommate was struggling with this, I honestly didn't know what to do. The first night I found out, I remember kicking her boyfriend out of the apartment and not being able to understand why she hadn't already done that herself. It didn't occur to me that this boy she had been with for a year had turned into something she didn't recognize. It didn't occur to me that she was holding onto the hope that maybe he would realize his errors and change. It didn't occur to me that she was blinded by love. I knew that if he laid his hands on her once, he would do it again, but she was trying to believe he wouldn't.

All I could do was be there for her when it happened and be there for her again when he didn't change. She even began to blame herself for the choices he had made. She told me once that if she hadn't provoked him, he wouldn't have done it. I wanted so badly to help her see that she deserved so much better than filth like that, but she still saw him as the boy she first fell in love with. There was nothing I could do because it wasn't my fight. I just had to watch and hope that she would see how much more she was worth than he made her believe. She eventually let go of her toxin and found a way to see all that she had the potential to be.

"There's a day when you realize you're not just a survivor, you're a warrior." Brooke Davis.

And then there's my story.

The manipulative relationship.

I spent three months with a compulsive liar who made up too many stories to count. He would lie just because he could and for a while, I had no idea. Not only did it make it hard to trust him, but it caused problems in the relationship that never even existed. His charisma allowed him to manipulate me into taking the blame for the problems in our relationship. The worst part is he knew he was doing it. After I caught onto what he was doing and ended it, he admitted to everything he lied about. I didn't really know how to process that information, so ever since then I've struggled with that emotional trauma. The most frustrating of all, though, is that he had moved onto his next project in two weeks and got away with everything he had done. Just like that. Even though my time with him was as short as it was, he managed to leave me without a way to trust anyone.

Because I've been so protective of myself, I'm sure many guys I've met since him think I am a total bitch. Instead of opening up to them, I just assume they are going to do exactly what the last guy did. Without even realizing it, I began to see guys as objects instead of people. I knew if I saw them as people, I would be allowing myself to get hurt again. I've struggled a lot with healing on my own, but I'm trying to take back the life he took from me. The life where I saw the best in people. I know eventually I will and I know that I have learned the lesson he was meant to teach me. That though the mountain may crumble, I will not.

"We're stronger in the places we've been broken." Ernest Hemingway.

Each type of toxic relationship brings with it its own pain and its own lesson. Each is difficult to heal from in its own way because you are fighting a war. A war with yourself and a war with a toxin. It won't be easy, but there's no doubt that you can come out on the other side victorious. I've watched it happen three times. And each time, we have used our lessons to help us grow.