What I Learned From An Emotionally Abusive Relationship

Today, I miss you.

It’s been a while since I opened that box in my mind, where I’d locked you up, all your memories, all the pain. Sometimes I feel like I do it to self-inflict pain, but when I’m sitting in a dark corner with a wandering mind, I like to flood myself with your memories. But most times, I just find myself drowning in heartbreak.

I remember everything, as clear as yesterday.

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The way you smiled at me from across a room full of people, like they didn’t even exist. The way you hesitated before you held my hand for the first time. When you sniffed my hair and thought I didn’t notice. The intensity with which you said you loved me when you were on top of me. When you introduced me to your family as your girlfriend and they grinned like I was the best thing that happened to you.


Its like walking on eggshells. Literally. Quote from a Quora user


I remember all your friends treating me like family. I even dream of your arm wrapped around my waist, protectively, like you were trying to stir me away from all the creeps who checked me out. When I’m dreaming, sometimes I can even see your face beaming with pride and overwhelming happiness, thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m dating my best friend’.

 

But that clarity is not one sided. I can see the other side and that’s what wakes me up at night.

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I remember the day you told me that my friends aren’t good enough for you or anyone else. I remember the times you refused to meet my mom because ‘everyone didn’t have to know about us’. I remember you naming our future children, and then standing under the pouring rain, telling me you don’t see a future with me.


I have slowly lost touch with my friends because he does not like or approve of them. I have been isolated from everyone I know. Quote from a Quora user


I remember seeing my face in the mirror after yet another fight, I was shivering, with mascara smudged all over my face and you just walked away. I remember missing my best friend’s 21st birthday because you wanted to ‘hang-out’, but I also remember standing at the bus stop the same night reading your text saying, ‘You can’t come because your friend needed you’.

 

I remember your rushed I love you’s, I remember your false promises, I even engraved your initials.

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But it’s thought of the intense gazes, the smiles that were reserved for me, your memory of every small milestone in our relationship and your ability to predict my every move, that made me forgive your infidelity. That made me erase the memory of those texts I saw on your phone, the exes who didn’t know I existed, your reluctance to make me at least one of your top priorities. I forgave everything, because I belived with all my heart that you loved me.


I cannot leave him because my heart tells me I love him too much. He has broke up with me for no reason multiple times, because he knows I will just pretend nothing happened when he comes back. Quote from a Quora user


 

But I could never forgive myself.

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I made myself feel small. I made myself believe that I wasn’t lovable, that I didn’t deserve better and that even if I wanted to, I could never do better, because you made me believe a lie. That you loved me. I forgot the bubbly, sarcastic and fun person I used to be, instead I became the person friends would avoid, the colleague who always cried at her desk, the woman who had no self-respect and the ex girlfriend who couldn’t get over you.


At the end of that relationship I had gone from being a really sociable guy who does great in school do a hollow shell who couldn’t even muster the energy to leave his apartment. Quote from a Quora user


 

I hated myself, so much so that you were my punishment.

But today, I don’t think of you for all the same reasons, I think of you when this man looks at me without breaking eye contact and tells me I’m beautiful, and I realize that you’ve made me feel so ugly, that I can’t believe it. Now I don’t think of you as something I regret. I want to thank you, because if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t appreciate the small things that really matter.


I knew intellectually that I wasn’t a terrible person, but I came to feel ashamed of and disgusted by myself about many things. Quote from a Quora user


 

Only after you, I’ve learned I don’t need love that engulfs me and takes me with the tide.

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I need love that grounds me and makes me sane. And that love, isn’t something I need from someone else, I need that love from me and me alone.

And here’s why I thought of you today, to tell you that I respect myself enough that I don’t have enough room in my mind for someone who’s emotionally abused me for 3 years of my life.

And so, It’s time to throw this box away, no corner is dark enough to store this anymore.

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