Not sure if this counts....

I'm not really sure if this is the appropriate place to tell this, or if what I went though even counts as trauma, but I feel like I need to get this out.

A few years back, I was in a toxic relationship...I would say he was emotionally abusive. He lied at seemingly every opportunity, cheated on me (multiple times as far as I can tell, but I'm unsure), and did so much to tear me down. I was criticized for the simplest of things; "Did you really just put that deodorant ALL OVER your underarm?" "Did you really have to use that much dish soap! You know I don't like being wasteful!" "You can't cook!" "You need me to do everything for you!" "It's not like you do anything around here anyways..." "You're a whore"....The list goes on.Once, he went and picked up a drunken female friend and took her home and spent time with her there and I think that things happened, and they were coworkers! I told him the friendship they had made me very uncomfortable and I wanted him to pull back but I know he never did. I was isolated during our time together because any time I spent time around my friends, it turned into this massive argument over seemingly irrelevant things.

I'm bisexual, and he would throw my sexuality in my face at any chance he got because he knew I wasn't the most secure with it. I was too explicit when we first started dating about previous sexual partners. which I can admit that I was wrong for doing, but that was something he was angry about for the entirety of our relationship! We dated for over a year, and I do not think he ever fully let that go....

About a month before we broke up, I found his journal and curiosity got the best of me. You see, there was a death in his family early on in our relationship, and he would go through phases of being very distant, and I was worried about him. But I knew if I tried to talk to him, he wouldn't be honest with me and would just tell me he was fine. So, I read his journal to see what was going on, and I found passages with him talking about his ex-girlfriend and how she was the woman of his dreams (dated during the time of our relationship) and how he still had all of these feelings for her, and it absolutely crushed me. I fell apart, but I did not directly talk to him because I was ashamed of what I had done. But it had me questioning everything and I was in such a terrible mood all the time and all I wanted to do was talk about him and his feelings for her. So naturally, he decided to break up with me (three days after a year and half together), which we were only a few months in to a year long lease at this point, so we had to spend the next nine months still living together because neither of us could afford to break the lease or the apartment we were living in alone, which was its own unique hell, to say the least.

We didn't cut contact until a few months after we no longer lived together. I guess, looking back, the details of it all don't much matter. I find myself still thinking of all the negative things he said to me when I begin to criticize myself. I find myself replaying interactions with him and how I should have said this instead or how I shouldn't have let him walk all over me and I should have stood up for myself...ruminating on events that in no way matter now and happened three or four years ago. It feels like a lot of those wounds never healed. It feels like I'm still trapped in that apartment, living every day on edge and angry and trying to convince someone else to love me again because I was incapable of loving myself. I still feel incapable of loving myself. It is easier to stay angry and sad than try to let go, because at this point, I feel like all I know of myself is my anger. Part of me feels like I deserved everything that happened to me; I didn't have a strong relationship with myself before the relationship, so it was very easy to lose what little I had.

I'm exhausted....I'm exhausted with telling myself that I am going to make the necesaary changes in my life. I'm fed up with thinking about him. I hate myself for actually missing him sometimes (it feels so stupid to feel that way...), I have been alone ever since. I've held myself back for so long...how do I let go? How do I unchain myself from all of this? How do I get his voice out of my head an learn to love myself?