"If you walked away from a toxic, negative, abusive, one-sided, dead-end, low vibrational relationship or friendship - you won." --Lalah Delia
I have to tell you something.
This is something that is hard to talk about because it's difficult to understand; more often deciding on who to believe. Please understand that I'm speaking about this to bring awareness and allow myself to move on from it.
For over the course of three years, I was in an emotional and mental abusive relationship and it screwed me up.
While our society has become better at addressing issues about rape and sexuality, being abused emotionally, sexually, physically, spiritually, or mentally is still a topic of discomfort. The reason being that no one wants to talk about the "dirtiness" of the word. No one wants to accept they've been led astray by a sociopath.
Not all abuse is physical. Sometimes the unseen damage takes a harder effect on a victim, but it all depends on the person. It's easy to watch abuse in the movies and television shows because you know the victim will get their revenge or you're able to disassociate yourself from that. You may think that it's easy to get away from, but it's not.
In this relationship, for the first two years he strung me along and the moment I started looking somewhere else, he'd reel me back in. Once we started officially dating, he was my cheerleader. I wasn't popular but I knew a lot of people, I had a lot of opportunities presented to me, I'm creative and I put everything I have into my work. He skated by on luck and charm. So while he supported everything I did, it started to become too much. It was almost like he was setting me up for failure just make himself feel better. There were times he'd tell me in the moment, "I'm sorry that that happened to you." but a few weeks down the road he'd change his tune to "Well, you weren't very good." I'd bring up the change and he'd claim he never said the first thing.
I started to go crazy. Am I making up things? What can I say without making him mad? I started to become very depressed, because nothing was right. I didn't love enough. I didn't care enough. He bought me a cat, why did I want to break up? I would wake up in the middle of the night with panic attacks.
It was the subtle things. It was never big, never enough to make someone question, "wait a second, did he really just say that?" I was in the last quarter of University and I spent a total of 50 hours between work and school. Every other hour he demanded we spend time together. I started sleeping less than five hours each night and started drinking way more, so I could just forget everything.
We finally broke up but it didn't end until a few weeks ago, because he would stalk me (even during the relationship), blow my phone up with messages asking why I hated him, why I was ignoring him. He'd leave presents on my doorstep. Send me notes of encouragement. Make a scene at the bar.
I lost friends over the course of my relationship, because they couldn't stand me and my ex together and I was too stubborn to listen to them. "He's different. You don't know him like I do." I started to reach out to them again after our breakup and you just find that some people aren't worth fighting for anymore. I'd have friends who tell me "I told you so, but how can I help?" and check up on me every few weeks. Then there are the others who just had to be right and keep rubbing it in your face. Some judged how much I had been drinking and still drinking even after ending things. During those moments, a bottle was more comforting than my supposed friends.
People don't understand, it's hard to just cut ties with someone who is emotionally unstable. It's not fair to have to pick up your whole life and move somewhere else and leave everyone behind because of one person. Obviously if he was physically abusive, it would've been a different story. He only hit me once, a few months after we broke up, because I said I was seeing other people and asked him to leave. I knew he was stalking me and checking up on me that I had to wait until the right time to break off everything. I offered him friendship, and it calmed him down a little bit, enough that I was able to slip away.
I still wake up in the middle of night almost in tears half-expecting him to be outside my bedroom window. I'm still accepting that things happened. It's still so fresh to me that I miss him at times but then it's quickly followed with anxiety.
I never thought that that relationship affected me until a guy I had been out with on a few dates asked to be my boyfriend and I started having a panic attack.
So I have to tell you something.
I struggle with depression. I didn't think anyone would believe me because it wasn't physical. I just thought I was weak because I couldn't leave. I know now that I wasn't weak, I was in a toxic relationship.
I'm learning to accept that not every guy cares if I wear make up or not, let alone shave my legs. You can't start over and be who you used to be before that relationship, so you learn to move on and create from the bad. I now have a radar for toxic relationships, it still might take me a bit to realize it, but I'm much faster than I was before.
I wrote an article a few weeks ago that I found a guy who was never going to be anything to me besides a friend, and that still holds true, but he helped me see my potential without realizing it. Currently, I've met a guy and while we're just chatting about life, I find myself free. I constantly have a smile on my face. Even if he and I just stay friends, I'm finding myself again and I'll always have a soft spot for him. I'm free again.
You're never alone. There's always someone that will be there to help and if there isn't, count it as a blessing because you don't need that in your life anyways. There's always help out there. Things start to become better when you finally find the strength to move on.
