That feeling you get when you graduate with a diploma in your hand or have mastered the art of learning several different languages. You feel accomplished, put together and ready to take on your next challenge.

Now, that is what it feels like to finally overcome a haunting, toxic relationship. You feel victorious one morning waking up, and you know your "Debbie Downer" days are over. No more crying yourself to sleep at night wondering how you could feel so stupid. No more trying to find answers to why someone would humiliate you when you could not even see that side of them. You feel blinded and glued to the pain that lived within you for the time in between the break-up.

It's almost like removing super glue from your fingers when it sticks to your calluses and can't seem to get it off without peeling a layer of your skin off.

Well, my layers have peeled... and have peeled all the way to the core of my heart. I never thought my first relationship could really be one of those abusive types that you see in drama films. It lasted 4-5 years, and I didn't want to let go. I was afraid of who I was with, and who anyone could really be when I had no idea who I was even dating for more than 365 days a year. Your mind and emotions spiral out, and you feel almost as if you can't breathe. The fresh air you once felt in and out, has now become smoke from a cigarette to ease your residual pain.

I'm now 23, dated a clinically diagnosed sociopath among many disorders he's been diagnosed with... and the last words that still haunt me to this day would have to be "I'll always come back to you, no matter how many boyfriends you go through or even if you are a married woman. I will propose to you once in your lifetime and let you know that you will always love me, forever."

Those words have haunted me for years, have tormented my mind because I let it. I let it because that's how I began to cope with the realism that men like this do exist. They are out there, and they have no remorse. Same with women, and how I dated a human being who enjoyed provoking me to the point where I wanted to kill myself every day, and of course I knew I had his support with that.

Fighting suicidal thoughts, fighting my mind to accept the fact that there are sick people in this world, and my mindset and heart was blinded since he was my first boyfriend. I wish I had a better experience, maybe even got cheated on and then left. That would've been better than staying in something I stayed in because I had no idea what other humans out here in this world would treat me like this.

I would keep my end down everywhere I would go, and even a new relationship I entered in years later got affected by my past trauma. It ate my current partner up, to know I would cry and have impulses of anxiety and panic attacks from a previous relationship. It made him feel like he wasn't right for me, and quite frankly he couldn't relate or put himself in my shoes well enough to know what I felt was equivalent to getting stabbed without evidence to prove I was hurting.

Years of therapy, and years of building up my self-esteem when everyone I seemed to get close to could not understand how I could allow someone to destroy my mentality the way he did. I let him because I knew the longer I let him destroy me I could only bloom into the strongest human version of myself I could be and, to this day, he will still try to come back and still not understand how I will not abide by his words and will not trust a single phrase he says.

Yet, I have allowed and programmed myself to the strongest version I can be to say..." No, I am not ever coming back. No, I am not in love with you. Yes, I can talk to you as a human for I am blinded by the nonsense you have distributed throughout my mind over the years. It has been over, and you have made your choices.

I was a choice for you to pry on, to feel safe, and to have you beat me up when I was already beaten up before I met you. But now, I'm so strong hearing your voice, and every syllable you pronounce is just an empty echo that once killed me. But now, I am beautiful and strong and powerful in my own way and still that same innocent girl I was when I was 16 years old. Sadly, you have no say in my life after years of leaving me with this doubt and pain and hate towards myself."

Everything has an end, and if you don't think it's the end it's not the end then. This article is written for all the girls and guys, who have been blinded by their own emotions to benefit another. This is for the people who wish they could leave an abusive relationship, and wonder if there is any light at the end of the tunnel. There is, and I'm inside the light and I never want to go back to the darkness.

There is hope, and there is faith, always believe in yourself #1 and never think for a second you have to feel bad for letting go of someone who was okay with beating you up, torturing your mind and body, without your permission. You have choices, and a path to follow. You're born alone in this world, and you die alone. Don't let anyone or anything define you temporarily when you know what you want in this life, in this world and it's not the second-guessing game of wondering who belongs in your life. You already know who does, so trust yourself and everything falls into a better place. Better than any place you know of, where you can finally rest easy by just being your complete authentic self.