Part 6 – Abuse

Excuse me while I jump around my life.

Abuse. There are so many forms in which this can  take place. There is verbal, mental, physical and sexual. There may or may not be more. But these are the ones I am going to focus on. Why? Because these are the ones I’ve experienced.

Where to start. Lets go to one of the more painful and confusing ones. Going back to a previous blog where I stated I was raped by my ex boyfriend (we will call him Ex 2). I didnt know at the time that you could be raped by someone you were dating. I didn’t know until I was telling my therapist a story and he asked me, “so he raped you?”. My immediate response was “no, we were dating” and then he explained to me that I was in fact raped. It took me a very long time to come to grips with that. Actually, I still don’t know if I have fully emmoted to it yet. To think that someone that you love with all your heart could do this…. it’s just unfathomable.

It all starts with manipulation. They start with mental and emotional abuse. Telling you that you just are not good enough. You won’t survive without them. They deserve better. You aren’t worthy of them. The name calling, belittling, insulting, accusations…. they will say so many things about you because the truth of the insult lies in them and they need someone else to put the blame on. Heaven forbid they admit their own short comings.

They make you feel like you need them. And no matter how clear your mind was at the start, you eventually believe them. Why? Because of this powerful drug called love. The most powerful and self destructive drug out there. Love, the most prominent form of self destruction. The only thing that will make you completely vulnerable that you fall to your knees and beg for more. It’s so satisfying. But this kind of vulnerability in the wrong hands can kill you.

They control your every action, and thought. They need to know everything. They never believe you. All of the things that stem from their own guilt. It’s just…. horrible.

My home, out of all other places in the world, should be my safe place. He took that from me. Ex 2 had taken the only place that I can go to in order to feel safe and warm. That one place without fear or judgement. My place is gone. I haven’t slept in my bedroom for basically a year now. I sleep on my couch, when I can sleep that is. On average I get about 3 hours of sleep a night.

The one person that was supposed to be by my side, become my best friend, be my better half….destroyed me. How could he? How dare he punch me, choke me out, break almost everything I own and let’s not forget about the hot sauce sprayed in my face. He almost broke my arm. I had numerous bruises, fat lips and black eyes. Not to mention the mental and emotional damage done.

Don’t get me wrong, there were so many times I told myself nobody deserved this. But I stayed anyways. Maybe I’m hopes of him changing  (typical I know). I cried myself to sleep so many times I can’t even count.

He destroyed me is all I can say over and over again. Took away so many opportunities. So many good times. He stole my happiness. There were times when I was driving in my car and I would have to take a picture of every area of my car to prove I was alone. Get this, he still didn’t believe me, he’d say the person was just hopping around my car to avoid the picture. If I wasn’t talking to him 24/7 I was cheating on him. Which I eventually learned came from his own guilty conscience because he cheated on me almost every day. But I never dared to tell him that in fear of another punishment. He would tell me how awful I was and rude…. I was manipulative and a liar. He even told me he wanted me to kill myself. He tracked my spending and if it looked like I might have bought even just an extra coffee, then that was it. I was cheating. And when I went home, I got it. The yelling, name calling, hitting…. He broke 6 of my phones in less than a year….
I was living a nightmare. I didn’t know where to go or who to turn to. Sure, calling the cops is an easy answer to throw out there, but when you’re in the situation it is NOT that easy, especially when He implants the fear of making you lose your child. That’s right, he threatened to have her take from me. He brought me to a new level of low. My trust in humanity was gone. I had no hope for me or my future. All I knew at the time was that I loved him and that he would go back to the man he was at the beginning. It kept getting worse. I wasn’t allowed around my family, I couldn’t laugh with my daughter without him thinking I was plotting against him…. I was stuck. Even grocery shopping I was put on a time limit. And heaven forbid my bathroom breaks or showers take longer than they should.

One minute we were perfectly fine in our loving bliss, the next…. Well it was just the exact opposite. I don’t even know what set him off sometimes. If my phone made a sound, if someone called my house, if someone (even a female or my family) said they missed Me, if I was tired, if I didn’t want to have sex…. literally anything at all. It still hurts. It’s been a year. I still struggle with where it went wrong and why. And I will never understand how I wasn’t good enough to keep him happy.

The old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” has never been more wrong. Words hurt. They almost killed me.

Even his apologies, yes he tried to apologize, were empty and more often than not were followed with his reasoning, which of course were my fault. The worst part? I believed it. And I was the one apologizing in the end. He raped me, hit me, pushed and shoved and punched…. All the names…. And I apologized.

Out of all the times he forced sex on me, I ended up getting pregnant. Because he didn’t want to use protection. Because then that meant I didn’t trust him. After all that, he made me get an abortion because he didn’t want to be stuck with me…. the other reason that he flat out admitted to was that he didn’t want to have to stop cheating on me. I still have a hard time handling that.

This is abuse.

In case you haven’t followed my other blogs, yes I got out. I kicked him out actually. But don’t be proud of me, I begged for him to come back. For months. I was lost. I didn’t know what to do. I still hid my phone, my stuff, my money…. I looked over my shoulders for almost 4 months. Actually, that’s a lie. Sometimes I still do.

It hasn’t gone away…. will it ever go away?