This one is for the people who think they are trapped. This one is for you. Written by a girl who has emerged from the wreckage that she thought was going to be impossible to overcome. Living, breathing proof that it is never too late to get out.

I’ll set the scene to my senior year in college and my first “real” relationship. The kind where you are talking constantly and see each other everyday and even give it the label of “boyfriend/girlfriend.” Of course I had been on dates before, but spent my high school years watching my friends be miserable in relationships, decided that wasn’t for me, and focused on sports and my grades.

So here I am, 21, and giving my first go at this “being a girlfriend” thing. Little did I know that this man I stumbled across was going to send my pretty boring average life into a whirlwind of stress, anger, anxiety and depression.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a pretty happy person. I always try to find the best in any situation, and I always try to see the best in people. Which sometimes can get me in trouble. That being said, I naturally wanted to give this everything that I had. After being single for so long I was ready to dive headfirst into this relationship and probably missed some red flags right out of the starting gate.

The first month or so was normal. Or as normal as things could be I suppose. The first date he told me that he didn’t have a car, which was fine, but he failed to mention that he was also lacking a license. So he couldn’t drive himself anywhere even if he wanted to. I very quickly became his personal taxi and was at his beck and call when he needed a ride. This was fine for the “honeymoon” stage of our relationship, but soon became something I resented him for. I was expected to drop whatever I was doing when he needed to be somewhere.

It also became an issue when I was doing things that didn’t involve him. Like go to class. Or go to work. I was just about to start my student teaching and was also working part time to make some money to at least put some gas in my car. If I wasn’t in constant contact with him, he began to get angry and agitated that he didn’t know what I was doing. Trust was something that he couldn’t give me even though he had no reason not to. Every single time I saw him he made me promise to him that I hadn’t just cheated on him. “I swear over my life that I didn’t cheat on you.” EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. And sometimes he’d make me say it more than once. I could leave the movie theater to go to the bathroom for 5 minutes and come back and he’d ask me if I had cheated on him. Looking back now it seems absurd (because it is) but at the time I just thought it was something I had to do to ease his insecurities. I didn’t see that it was slowly adding anxiety to my own life.

Little things started wearing on me. He would get mad and start a fight with me if I didn’t want to stay the night at his apartment and wanted to go spend time with my family. Fights that guilted me into staying even if I didn’t want to. It got to the point where I couldn’t wear certain clothes or colors because he “didn’t like them” and I couldn’t wear certain earrings or paint my fingernails because “who was I trying to impress?” I had always known what physical abuse was in a relationship, but never did I think that emotional abuse could be just as worse. I was emotionally exhausted and was beginning to believe that it was me who was the cause of all of the problems.

I started to feel trapped. Every second of every day that I wasn’t either working or at school, I was expected to be with him. Random change of plans and I might not make it over because I was invited to dinner at my Grandmothers? Couldn’t go, because he would be convinced that I was off cheating on him. Why didn’t I just leave the relationship you ask? Because it’s not that simple. I was completely brainwashed. I was being told absolute asinine things to make me think that what I was getting was what I deserved. And some things you can never forget. Like the time I was told that I was “lucky that he loved me” because “no other man could love someone who was as fat and looked like I did.” I was “lucky that he found me pretty” because “not a lot of men would.” And the silly thing is, is that I believed him. My self confidence plummeted and I was beginning to hate myself. I became sad, tired, and anxious all the time.

The real kicker was the GPS that was on my phone that I had no idea about. Yeah, you read that right. You know how your laptop has anti-virus software on it? Well he had just purchased some anti-virus software and had “a couple of devices left that he could use it on, so did I want him to add my phone?” Well sure, I had said. I didn’t want my brand new phone to become infected with a virus, so why not? The truth came out one day when I was sitting in the breakroom at work and my phone screen locked and a message popped up telling me that the only thing I could do was make an emergency call. I immediately knew it had something to do with him and was so mad because I couldn’t do anything. Five minutes later and the lock came off my phone. I texted him and told him we needed to talk, and he sent me a flood of apology messages. Later that night when I got out of work, I made him show me the “anti-virus” he downloaded on my phone. Turns out that it WAS an anti-virus, but also had features where you could go on to your laptop and monitor the other devices. It had a GPS tracker, and even had a feature that allowed you to take a picture using the camera of the device to see exactly where it was. Phone inside my purse? It’d snap a picture of the inside my purse. The phone was in my hand and I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook? It’d snap a picture of me staring at my phone. Never have I ever felt so violated in my life.

This barely scratches the surface of the demeaning, belittling, and absurd things that I put up with for 10 months too long. I finally saw for myself that the person I was looking at in the mirror every day was a woman that I didn’t even recognize. I had become someone completely different, someone that I didn’t like. The point of this article is to tell all of you who are feeling like you are stuck in a relationship, that it’s never too late to get out. You deserve so much more than being with someone who does nothing but put you down. You are worth so much more than what you are feeling. There is a way out, and I promise that things get better. They do. You just have to make the decision that you’ve had enough. I made the decision to leave and never look back and I am forever grateful for the love and support my family and friends gave me and continue to give me everyday. Two years later and I am in a happy, healthy, loving relationship with a man who treats me with respect, supports my decisions, and makes me laugh like no other. A man who treats me like a princess and would do anything for me. Something that at one point, I thought I would never have. Once you realize what you deserve, you will never settle for anything less.