Hard to Forget

It's been about three years. I thought that I would be able to get over it by now, but I think that I have been suppressing it for the longest time. I forgot that it even happened for a good year, but now it pops up in my dreams and just shoves its way into my head.

I dated someone I should have not. He was too old for me and I should have seen all the red flags. I did see them, I just chose to ignore them and I believed that he would change. Well, that was also partly because he kept saying he would change. He was manipulative and I didn't even realize it until about a couple months after the breakup. I was so brainwashed into thinking that the way he treated me okay to the point that I didn't even realize that he hurt me so much in the process.

*Warning- Emotional Abuse*

He would tell me that I was worthless and that no one would ever love me, which I believed. I was already in such a weak state that I believed that he was treating me "right". After all, for the majority of my life I felt outcasted by my own family and the people around me. I wasn't able to make a single friend and I was so alone for the majority of my life especially because I had social anxiety to the extent that I didn't talk at all for years in fear. I was deep in depression and my family didn't believe me. I told them that I wanted therapy for years and they wouldn't give it to me, saying that I was okay and that therapy was only for crazy people. When I told my dad that I wanted to leave the world, he told me to do it and said he wouldn't care. I really felt like no one love me at all. My cousins never wanted to hang out with me, my brother would leave me in supermarkets saying that I embarrased him, my dad would lock me in a closet and beat me, and I was bullied at school everyday to the point that I was afraid of school and pretended to be sick to avoid it. Maybe that is why I felt that the way he treated me was okay, because in a way I was used to it.

He wouldn't allow me to do things that I wanted at all. He tracked my location all the time. He always said I was cheating on him although I was not. The thing that got to me was when he started to threaten me. He said that he would kill me and my family if I cheated, saying that he loved me too much to let go of me. He said that this is what true love was. I don't blame him, he had many issues of his own, but the way he treated me was far from okay. I was fearful everyday, that he would do something to me. It was gradual. At first he was good and he made me happy. But as time passed he became more paranoid. He told me that therapy was bad. ( at the time I was taking antidepressants and going to therapy ). I wanted his approval so bad that I quit therapy for him and stopped taking medicine at all. It started to get physical, and that's when I feared for my life. His eyes would get really big and he would stare me down. I felt so weak and if I cried he would blame me more and yell at me. As I've been yelled at a lot as a kid, this just made it worse because I felt so scared. It reminded me of my dad who would yell at me before hitting me. He didn't allow me to talk to my friends at all. He said that they were all liars. He convinced me that anyone who talked bad about him was a terrible person. He pitted me against my own family and friends.

He was not doing good financially, and like the naive teenager I was, I gave him large sums of money to pay off his bills. I stole from my own family to provide for him. He had me so manipulated that I would do anything, literally anything, to make him happy so that he would treat me good again.

*Warning- Physical Abuse*

First it started off as his anxiety, then transcended into emotional threats, then it became physical. He would grab me abruptly when I did something he didn't like. He choked me a couple of times while calling me a liar and cursing me out. I never really wanted to have sex, but he urged me to and said that he needed it. So I gave in. But I don't consider him my first. That's because he violated me and forced me to do things I didn't want. He said that I wanted it, but I didn't. I said no a lot and showed discomfort but he continued. He got off on the idea that I was being hurt. I felt sad for the longest time because I thought that I had lost my virginity to a vicious person. But I realized that I didn't, because I was not respected at all. And that to me was relief.

There's a lot more to this incident, but I have become so numb to it that I forgot that it happened. I'm not sure how that happened, but I think that if someone goes through something so harsh, their brain can just shut off completely. And that is what happened to me. The memories only recently resurfaced again.

Now I'm doing better. I'm happy to say that I have a friend that I can actually open up to. It's surreal to think that I even went through this to be honest. Pretty much no one knows about it except my close friends. The problem is that it's resurfacing again, and as I'm going off to college, I'm worried that it will get in the way of me living my life. I guess that is a part of living with the trauma.

Thank you for listening.