It Wasn't Abuse Because...

It wasn’t abuse because he didn’t hit me.
This was one of the biggest lies I ever believed.

Can I share some personal demons with you? Because I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a story about me, and it's always been hard for me to talk about it. For a long time, in fact, I was rather ashamed to. Things of this nature tend to get to you like that. They make you feel that something is wrong with you, or that you don't deserve to feel better. They make you feel that you deserve all the hurt you bring upon yourself to feel. Even if that isn't true.

The last year has been a really transformative one for me. A lot of counseling, relating behavioural patterns to past trauma, and trying to work through a lot of things I've struggled with in the past - it's been healthy for me, but it's also been hard. I moved to Atlanta in such a bad place, sometimes I look back on my life and I can't even recognize that person who I was anymore. Those long days that felt as though they were dragging on without end are so foreign to me. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of things to love about those days - life in a new city, living in an amazing townhome with so much sunlight, those white walls decorated with my paintings, finding new coffee shops, and starting PT school. The excitement and adventure of starting life in a new place and discovering new things was so wonderful. But that first year was also harder than you can imagine. I broke down in the hall at school one day during my first semester, crying at my locker. The weight of everything was making me crack, and I couldn't handle it. The intense pressure of physical therapy school was stripping away the careful sense of strength I had built around myself to deal with the difficulty of my personal life. The feeling of loss of control was terrifying. I didn't feel I had any control over anything at all.

This is what happens with abusive relationships, and it has taken me a long time to accept that term as something I have gone through. I never wanted to admit it or was "too nice" to even consider that that was what was happening to me. I told myself it wasn't abuse because of a number of excuses to try and justify the situation in my head through a lens of it being all my fault, because that's what I believed. Abusive relationships leave scars on us even before we're aware of them, you see. And then you start to think that you're the cause of it, because the other person is telling you how it's all your fault. You start to think the other person in justified in how cruel they are to you, because of how you hurt them. So it's okay for them to hurt you.
I cringe now, thinking back on what happened - but back then, I had been so oblivious, so blinded. I was only 17 when I moved to Georgia. I'd just been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. I was so excited to live in the same state as my long time boyfriend. There were signs of trouble long before I ever moved here, but I noticed none of them. This was my first love. I would have hung the moon for him. I thought that he could do no wrong, and me - when I was disappointed because of something that happened, or I upset him - it had to be my fault. This was my first relationship. He knew what he was doing, but I did not. I was just being silly. I was too attached. I was too idealistic. I was too sentimental. I was too emotional. I was too, "too".

One of the signs I should have recognized was was the guilting. This was, perhaps, one of the worst things. How he'd guilt me into paying for things, telling me how selfish and stingy I was if I didn't. He'd remind me of all the things he or his parents paid for. I owed them. He'd tell me his love language was generosity, but me - I was so selfish - I just didn't get it. How could I be so selfish? Why did I look so selfish when I paid for things? Why was money a big deal anyways? "You act like you're so much better than everyone else," he'd tell me. "You have it so easy. It's so easy for you to make money. You don't understand how hard it is for me. It's hard for a man in this city to get a job. You just don't get it." It was little purchases at first. It was dates. And then it turned into traffic tickets. It turned into a suspended license. Bail for a bench warrant for an unpaid ticket. A car. A computer. Rent. It snowballed. But if I ever mentioned how it felt even a little unfair - "You're so selfish. All you care about is work and money." If I ever mentioned being paid back for anything he'd promised to repay me for, he'd bring up all of the times he had done things for me. "I don't keep score like you do. People in relationships shouldn't do that. It's selfish. That's not love"
There was the complete lack of ownership or responsibility over his life - everything was someone else's fault. But I - I was "entitled". I, who had fought for so much in my life - planned life out since middle school, studied endless hours in high school, pushed myself through college before I graduated high school, started a business to support myself in college - all at the bidding of my mother who, God bless her, I thought she was just being pushy at the time but I listened  to her advice growing up - I had obviously been handed everything, as if that was the only way to account for the worth of my merits - not, perhaps, the hard work I had put in to get there. My job, that I had made for myself, was so "easy" - I just slapped on a princess costume and made $200 at a party. Nevermind the years it took to learn the skills I did. Or the money I paid to advertise myself successfully. Or the communication skills I learned to book clients. Or the money I paid for supplies. For a job that many people say they could do, but balk before they even start at how many steps it takes to get there. But I didn't know what it was like to actually work, until I had worked in the service industry. Or retail. Or sales. Like him. How dare I compare my being tired to his! He slaved for minimum wage and had it taxed away, but me - I had everything handed to me so easily. I didn't have the right to complain if I was tired. I didn't know what real tired was.

And my diabetes... how tiring it was, for me to complain about something that wasn't even a real disease. He told me that one time, and it was especially hurtful. He told me I didn't have a real disease, after we dated during a time in which I came close to death when I was first diagnosed because I went into diabetic ketoacidosis and near coma. How small I felt, when he said these things. How he made my troubles seem so worthless compared to his own.

I laugh now, at just how worthless he made me feel without realizing it for so long - in an apartment I paid for, while working 4 jobs my senior year of college to save money and pay bills and have a good standard of living that I felt comfortable with, applying to graduate school and worrying about the certainty of my future. How absurd I should have found it to be ridiculed and berated for working. I found myself crying in a chair in the living room in front of him as he belittled me for this, when he contributed nothing to those bills. He yelled at me and made me feel so bad for running late to a family dinner he didn't tell me we were having after I ran late at a gig, which I often do. My already tired self, felt awful. How selfish I was then, too, to want to make enough to pay bills, and save enough money to not live paycheck to paycheck being anxious. Money has never been about the power, or idolizing it, to me. Do you know what it was about? It was about being incredibly anxious watching friends and families of mine live paycheck to paycheck. It was watching diabetes make me more anxious because I was going to lose my insurance while I was in graduate school and have to find a way to afford insulin. Working and saving money became a natural way for me to relieve the intense anxiety I felt over the uncertainty of my situation, and it worked. It helped me feel responsible and strong and safe in knowing that if I ever ran into trouble, I'd have a little extra to get me through. I tried to tell him that, but all I ever heard - while I paid for the things he asked me to - was the continual belittlement of the man who never once tried to understand this or help me. Only took and belittled me as he did, while I gave willingly, asking myself why I was so horrible to not give more openly, or have the heart to give more. What was wrong with me? I let myself be convinced of by him. Why wasn't I more giving, like him? He was so giving, he'd always say. He just didn't have the means to give. But back when he did - his generosity knew no bounds, he'd say. It would be that way if he had the means currently, too.

Except 4 years passed and it was never that way.

I brushed off the constant, excessive jealously. I was too much of a flirt. I was too naive. I needed to get myself together. I could not talk to another male without him being a direct threat. One time, I sang in the car with him and his sister's boyfriend at the time. "You never sing in the car with me," he told me later. "Do you like him or something?" It was always me - never, perhaps, his own insecurities, that made him think this. I sought the advice of many friends over the years as I wondered if things were really as bad as they seemed, or if I was just so horrible at this relationship thing, that I was messing everything up, with my selfishness, my immaturity, my not knowing any better. He made me feel so bad about myself, and made me feel that I was singlehandedly responsible for all of our relationship problems. And then he made me feel unwelcome to voice my doubts and concerns to him - because I was scared. I was never in a relationship where I felt open to speak my mind without judgement and persecution. Because he'd belittle me when I did. He'd get angry. He'd stop talking to me. He'd be aggressive. So many times then I'd try to speak, and the words evaporated when I went to open my mouth. Unable to speak because of fear. Unable to speak because I was with someone I was woefully incompatible with - but I'd never been with anyone else to know the difference. I thought this was the norm, and I was taught to think it was all a fault within me because I did not know better. This was all I knew at the time.

When we broke up, I had been agonizing those words I said to him for so long. I was so broken, so torn up, so hurt, so conflicted. I thought so horribly of myself for the times I had wondered, "was this it?" when I evaluated my life with him, trying to push back the well of disappointment and disenchantment I felt in my life. Was I supposed to look at other couples and feel jealously over their happiness? Why did I not feel that sense of happiness or belonging? Why did I evaluate my own relationship and feel... sad? Empty? Begging for answers to the mountain of problems that had grown over the course of years of joyfully happy ups to make me forget the terrifyingly low lows of my relationship, I began to wonder if I'd made a mistake by not dating other people. I wondered if dating other people would have been like this. Was I...missing something? But that was impossible. I was with the love of my life. We were always going to be together. To end that - that wasn't what love was about. You stuck with someone when things got hard. You didn't give up... right? Still, that didn't quell my continual questioning of whether this was what love was supposed to be like. I'd had many people tell me it was not over the years, including other men, and at first I'd respond offended, and then I'd think about it and start to listen to them, but then I'd feel so guilty about entertaining this thought, I'd shut them out, block out these thoughts in my head yet again. It was a cycle. I really listened to one man tell me this once, because he made a very good point of it - and my ex and I broke up because of this when we were in a particularly bad spell. We later got back together, and I pushed the thoughts away still. I had clearly been lied to by this other person - they didn't know what they were talking about. They were biased. They were just trying to tear me away from true love, and I couldn't let that happen.

But years down the road, after being warned that I would regret the decision of us getting back together - I painfully started to wonder if love should not be a girl at 19 supporting a grown man almost 5 years older than her. I burst into tears one day in my senior year of college, telling him how I felt - crushed, and responsible for so much - I was juggling a full courseload of difficult classes, working several jobs, paying bills, applying to graduate school, and I told him I desperately needed help from him. A part time job, anything - to help ease the burden. He looked at me and sincerely told me, "maybe I could help you get some more gigs in my free time." Never once saying, "maybe I can help work to take some of this burden off of you" - but always saying he couldn't. It was just too hard for a man to get a job in that city. It was way easier for me. He was too overqualified. There weren't enough good jobs. He didn't want to work just anywhere. I had already felt incredibly guilty about asking in the first place - how long it had taken to get the courage to ask him for help. How crushed I felt inside when he told me that maybe he could get me more gigs to make more money.

I couldn't do it anymore. I felt like I was at the end of my rope. For years.... I had tried so hard. I had agonized about my many flaws. I had beat myself up, asking God how he could make a human so selfish, so incapable of loving freely and openly, so bad at communicating and speaking her mind, so... me. But I began to think, what if... it wasn't just me? What if this wasn't the true love I had always thought it was?
I got the courage to speak out. I had not been perfect. But I was also starting to realize I wasn't wrong. I had a right to be angry. I had a right to be skeptical of someone who had, certainly, had a lot of misfortune befall him - but 4 years had passed, with every opportunity to better himself, be that college, a better job, anything - all of which I had tried to push him towards - and they all had passed him by, as he lamented at how unfair the world was to him. He blamed me for ruining his life because I had begged him to be close to me. I had done this - I loved him. I was such a child when I loved him, at 14, and later I was a still-blinded, too idealistic woman who loved him. I did, naively, beg him to be close to me. It was hard, in my youth, to imagine anything worse than him deploying overseas or moving across the country, because we had already done long distance so long. And he listened to me, and he stayed - to both our faults. I was too shortsighted to see how this might make him bitter, and he to realize that he was perhaps passing up good opportunities. It was both our faults, and I owned this in the end. I still did what I could. I encouraged college. I paid for him to go to a bartending course, hopeful that this could help. He managed to get little on-off bartending jobs in the last few months of our relationship. He worked part time at a nursing home. He made a few hundred dollars a month, and he'd pay for his new computer, games, and a utility bill. Things didn't get better. By then, I was in a deep well of depression, questioning the mistakes I'd made that had gotten me to a place where I felt hopelessly stuck. By then, I think I'd realized that I was unhappy, and I didn't want this. But I didn't know how to get out of it. I'd made too many commitments and I'd hurt him too much, I told myself. Over the years, I'd become codependent. He needed me. I couldn't give up on this. But I hurt both of us in the months I agonized over this realization that had taken years to dawn on me. I reached back out to the man who told me I'd regret my choice and I told him he was right. I wrote in my journal about this to try and work through it. I still felt guilty about it, so I cut him out of my life again, and suffered in silence. I talked to someone else who made me feel, for a brief period of time, a little better. Who made me feel like relationships didn't have to be like the one I was in now. That was wrong of me. But having people just to talk to made me feel a little less alone in this world made of my mistakes.

And that's what ultimately led me to finally break things off one night. It was one of the darkest nights of my life. I had worked all day, driven home in my new car following my bad car accident that winter, and my engine failed. I was going to have to get another car. I got towed home. My mom was upset at the situation I was in, and gave me a rather stern reprimanding as I cried on the phone to her. I cried the whole way. The words weighed like lead on my tongue, but I told him those deep dark feelings on my heart because I couldn't take the loneliness anymore. I couldn't live a life in which I was so unhappy that every day I cringed at all the happy people around me. Oh, how there were a lot of questions I had at 19, 20, that I needed answers to, and I was just trying to find them, through any avenues I could. Starting with freeing myself. He screamed at me. He was upset. Understandably. A few days went by and things were quiet. Then, he tried to convince me to get back together with him.

It seemed sweet at first.

He showed up unwanted, let himself in before I had changed the locks, and gave me the second bouquet of flowers I'd ever received from him in 5 years, and a teapot. It was nice.
He took me to the cemetery we loved to walk around and I let him, part because I feared him, and part because I felt so bad about how upset I had made him (part of the struggle of codependency), and part because I feared who I would be without him. "Give me another chance," he asked, when we got back to the apartment, after he gave me the nice things and took me to the graveyard and we'd taken nice pictures. It was nice. Wouldn't it be easier to just... say yes? Undo all the hurt? Surely I didn't want this? It was hard enough to speak my heart once, but here I was, having to do it twice, and my will was crumbling under my codependency.
And I wanted to say yes... kind of. Rather, I was more afraid of what he would do if I said no. Most of my communication issues stem from simply hating to let people down. I always have to fight to not tell them what they want to hear simply because I'll feel bad if I don't. I am painfully aware of this reality, but it is hard for me to change, and it was even harder then that it is for me now. I was torn between wanting to do what I knew would make him happy, and the fact that I'd be killing my own happiness in the process. I could not bear the thought of doing this again, because I had let this guilt and emotional codependency take control of so much of my life for so long.
So I told him no.
And that's when he got so angry. As if he were just putting on a facade and I had stripped it off. "I spent the last of my money on these gifts for you," he said. "I'll have nowhere to go if we're not together." I almost broke again then. I felt so guilty.
But I had come so far. It had taken me so long to have the strength to say those words to tell him to leave in the first place. It hurt so bad, what was happening. But letting all that be for nothing - that would hurt worse.

The next couple of months passed, and things got worse. He took those photos he'd taken at the graveyard and kept posting them on my profile. When I tried to delete them, he'd keep posting them. He posted about me on social media and told this story about how he got his heart broken and broke up with me when I cheated on him the day he was going to propose. He was right, I had been texting someone else, the same person who made me feel a little better through my depression clouded mind. And that was one hundred percent wrong of me, which I will readily admit. But that's not what happened. We had gone to Savannah, and it was Valentine's day weekend. I was sad because he didn't get me a card or anything for Valentine's day, but he told me I must have accidentally thrown away the card, because he had definitely gotten me one. This vacation was a last ditch attempt on my part to fix things between us, and I became so overwhelmed with depression that night, I begged him to take us back to the hotel, not hungry for dinner or in the mood to do anything. We spent the night in silence and drove home the next morning. Two weeks later, I broke up with him.

One night, I woke up with him standing at my bedside, as he set his phone down next to me, begging me to take him back as he lamented at how hurt he was. That phone was playing Moon River, a song I still can't listen to to this day without it evoking a genuinely visceral reaction in me that nearly makes me throw up. In tears, I begged him to leave, crying until he finally did, as if those tears would block out his presence.
When being nice didn't work, he hacked my internet so he could tell who was at my apartment. He cloned my phone so he could read all of my text messages. Months back, I had let him buy a computer that went on my credit - foolishly - and he then refused to pay for it, holding my desire to not damage my credit over my head. So I finished paying for it, even while months later he'd brag about how much money he made as a new bartender. He would leave notes on my car around town. He'd say he saw me places, referencing things that I'd done that no one could have known without doing so. I finished working at school one day, and he was waiting outside for me - refusing to leave until I talked to him. My boss let me hide in the office and locked me in, for hours, until he agreed to leave.

It got worse. He got violent. Before I changed my locks, he showed up again - my journals in his hands. Photos, frames, cards. Journal entries referencing other people during our breakup a few years ago. The more recent entries dealing with my doubt over my relationship and conflict. He tore these things up and threw them at me. Took the journals and posted photos of the entries to Facebook. Screamed at me as I curled up in a ball on the floor, crying, wishing it would stop. "I'm going to torture you," He told me. "Worse than what I went through in basic training." He threw photos, smashing glass everywhere. He threw a vase of the roses he'd given me when trying to get me back, and it smashed into pieces. I tried to run for the door. He grabbed me and held me down. "I bet you're going to say I hit you," He'd scream. "But I'm not. This isn't abuse. You need to get over it. This is nothing compared to the pain I feel," He'd scream again, physically holding me down, blocking the door.
Finally he left. A guy offered to come over to help me clean up the mess he had made when he had thrown things everywhere - I was feeling particularly unsafe the next night - and then he showed up with a gun, telling him to leave. This was before I realized that he could tell when other people were at my apartment.
I'll never forget the night I found out I was accepted into Mercer. It was the last night before I finally changed my locks. I came home from work and he had cooked dinner. He hadn't told me he would be there. My mouth felt like cardboard as I tried to eat with no appetite. I told him the news of my acceptance to Mercer. He talked with me like old times. "Take me back," he said. "I'm proud of you," he told me. "We can explore Atlanta together. Like we used to."
I looked at him, swallowing the cardboard food.
"We... won't be exploring Atlanta together. We aren't getting back together." He got so angry again. I was so fearful. He yelled. He screamed. He threw more pictures. He smashed things. I tried to leave and he blocked the door again.And then he cried and he collapsed. Terrified, I seized the opportunity I had. I grabbed my purse with my insulin and my car keys and I ran. I ran out the door and I started my car and I drove to Wesleyan and I stayed the night with a friend. I didn't call the cops because I didn't want to make his life difficult. How naive I was. But I did call my mother. I told her what happened and she called his family and she threatened the cops. My stepdad came up the next weekend and helped me get my locks changed and made sure he got back all of his stuff and I didn't have to be there. I was so relieved, even as I slept on the floor in an empty room alone that night, because all of my furniture in the apartment had been his. I was sad, and I had paid a high price for this freedom. But I was free. Or so I thought - but I wasn't out of the woods yet. Because this is how abuse works. You still think it's your fault. And I was so codependent that I was afraid to fully let him go. His hurt made me feel so guilty. I couldn't just cut things off.
So I would still go over and see him occasionally, when he'd gotten his own place. Because in those moments I didn't feel so afraid of what my life would look like once he was really and truly gone, and I was alone. I was terrified of being alone, even though I had been so lonely - and terrified of saying goodbye forever. But the longer I went without doing it, the harder it got. We'd try to hang out like old times, but then there was one night he asked me if I was talking to other people, and I told him yes. While on one hand, I felt incapable of moving on, I was still trying to. He got so angry that he locked me in a dark room as he took my phone and texted anyone else I was talking to that I didn't want to talk to them. I banged on that door, scared, begging him to let me out. I was so scared and desperate that I slammed my body against that stupid door and I splintered it. I ran, I grabbed my phone out of his hands, and got out the door, crying hysterically as I stumbled down the street in the middle of the night. I ran but he caught me and I collapsed, crying, begging him to let me go. But he wouldn't. He finally agreed to let me go when we drove to the house of one of the people I was talking to - so he could bang on his door and tell him I didn't want to see him anymore. I was afraid to talk to other people because at this point, I knew he was reading all of my text messages, because he had told me, although I didn't know how.

I reached out to one of his good friends in an attempt to try and make him the middle man in making things better between us. He had always been nice to me, and I thought he would help me. His friend attempted to sexually assault me, and when I refused his advances, he spread rumors behind my back and told my ex that I had pursued him. I tried to tell my ex that this wasn't what happened, but he fully believed it was my fault. It was further fuel on the fire for how I was unloyal, untrustworthy. Unable to get close to anyone because my ex always seemed to know where I was and who I was with, I felt more alone than ever. He would then harass me until I agreed to see him, with hundreds of texts, with phone calls. I couldn't change my phone number because it was also my business number, and I didn't want to lose business. If I blocked his number, he'd just use a google number. He was a constant presence in my life, and I was too afraid to let go, even though him being in my life made me so scared. My grandmother and my mother didn't know how bad it was, but they told me it was abuse. I brushed it off. "He's just hurt," I'd say, refusing to acknowledge all the signs before me. "He didn't hit me." They begged me to listen, before it got even worse. I was so naive. I kick myself for not listening.

I thought I'd escaped when I got to Atlanta. I was so careful. I had wiped my phone. But somehow, he still found me, and he stalked me. He moved to Atlanta, too. And then he began leaving more notes on my car... in my gated community. With an address I had been careful to not disclose. It got worse - he'd leave items on the doorstep. He'd stand outside my window in the middle of the night. I couldn't go home one night after school. because he was waiting outside the gate to my apartment, waiting to confront me. I started dating someone else, and he called them, trying to sway them from dating me. He took advantage of the fact that I was still hurting and used it as fuel to harass me further, while badmouthing me to everyone he had the chance to, privately as well as on social media. He'd post photos of the cash he'd made on social media and personally belittle me in long, drawn out statuses about how I hadn't had the insight to realize all that he was worth. Brag and brag he would about how much money he made bartending - ask if he was "good enough" now, say that he could have done this all along, but I simply took him for granted - perhaps forgetting that I had been the one behind him to help him get there. Over time, I became paranoid, afraid to go home, afraid to walk down the stairs at night, afraid to open my window blinds. I was afraid to go places away from home, afraid he'd find me. Afraid to check social media, because he'd post horrible things about me.

I didn't even know where to start in trying to get help, or even to share how bad it was. Being depressed took away my desire to want to reach out to others to accept what was happening to me. And I felt very alone. Thankfully, I did have a few close friends in PT school who were able to help me make it through. And it's important to say that this wasn't all his fault. I let it happen to me, too. I wanted it to stop, but I was also afraid of the unknown. He used the fact that I felt conflicted over this situation as fuel on the fire to do what he did. It was when I started letting go of the fear of a life without him that I started regaining some power over my life again. And somehow, I made it.
And then one day - 11 months after we had broken up - the stalking and the harassment stopped. And you know what's so funny? I had been so fearful of letting go, so scared of what it meant to be alone, and felt so broken inside the last day I saw him. But I said goodbye for good in my heart that night, and I met the love of my life only two days later in a tiny cabin in the Buckhead woods in the water fountain line. And the rest is history.

I have healed so much in these three years. I have also realized that I have much more healing still to do. I deserved better, but I didn't think so at the time. But I do now. There's so much I wish I could have gone back and said - so much I didn't have the courage to say back then. That's another thing I felt like I'd lost control of - my ability, my right, to speak up. I never felt like I could talk with him. The words just got choked in my throat. They felt unwelcome - they'd be met with hostile ears. So I put them away for so long. I let my loss of confidence, my belief that everything was my fault, make me feel like nothing, and make me feel powerless to try and seek help.

My heart pounds as I have written this and gotten it off my chest. Even all of these years later, this story is so hard to share with people. So much hurt is folded up into those painful memories, too many of which there are for me to share in a single post. And what if no one cares? What if no one reads this? What if he sends me a threatening email again, like he did the last time, telling me how I need to get over it and again claiming that what he did wasn't abuse? His and my stories are so different. We are both biased through the lens of our own hurt, but it doesn't take away everything that happened. To him - his actions may have seemed rational. Even if they caused me the incredible hurt I've shared with you. But I'd always have to laugh a little sadly at how he'd threaten me if I didn't take down anything I said about him, never even mentioning a name - but those photos he posted of my journal on facebook are still there, years later. He'd tell me he deserved to share what I did to him because I hurt him. All while he thought it okay to threaten and try to silence me. But, you know what? I will not be silenced.

Our demons can be very hard to share. And I'm sharing them with you, not as some way to get back at someone that hurt me so long ago - but to help myself, who is very much still healing from things that happened to me, long ago. It's been all these years, and I'm still fighting them, even when I don't want to or don't think I am. They haunt me when my walls go up. When I get into conflicts and I just want to run away and shut down, like I tried to all those years ago, not knowing what else to do. These things have caused me a lot of pain, but someday, I don't want them to. Healing happens for years, and years. I'm better now, but I'm still healing. And that's something that I'm completely okay with.