It’s not the end, it’s only the beginning. But first…

I have to buck the fuck up and move past the trauma at which I have been subjected to, yet again.

I have been trying to create content and I have been trying to create posts that aren’t centered around the current things at which I am dealing with. But I decided that is not fair to me. I need to stop preserving and protecting other reputations for the sake of them. And I need to start protecting myself and speaking my truth. And that is what I am going to do and continue to keep doing. Because, it is absolutely not fair to me to have to hold my tongue and not speak up about what I have been through so that others feel okay about their behavior. And to be honest. I am done with it. I have to keep protecting myself, peace, space, and energy. I need to start focusing on working through the words and the things that were said to me and the way my mind was manipulated for long enough, when I painted the image of being happy and in a healthy relationship. The only way I know how to work through these things is to talk about it and that is what I am now choosing to do. Because if I do not. I will not survive this, I will absolutely continue to sit in this place and not allow myself the time for growth and to actually work through it. So, I need to get this out and off of me.

I was in love. So, I thought. But from the beginning, I knew deep down in my deep self-conscious that I was not in the right place. But I stayed because I felt as if I finally met someone who was able to love… me. Because that is what I was told. “You have been through things, and not in a weird or bad way, but I am glad that you have been through things, it makes you more mature and it allows you to understand many things that are above your age. And I think that is beautiful”. But all of that changed to, “You need to work on your fucking shit and get it together”. And he became that person that was actually putting me through the things that that others had subjected me to in the past as well. And hindsight is 20/20.

Looking back at it all, I knew I was in a situation that I probably should not have been in because I would make up excuses or take all of the blame for things when it wasn’t my fault. I wouldn’t tell the whole truth about something that happened for the fear that it would change other people’s opinions about him. And that possibly they would tell me to leave him, and that was something that honestly, I just was not ready for, yet. I was not ready to hear that it wasn’t healthy or that it was not fit for me, or in fact, that it was abusive. It was just something that I could not handle to hear because I promised myself that I would never put myself in that type of relationship again. But I did. And it took a while to see that I did. So, I would make up excuses and I would hide behaviors or sugar coat it, because deep down inside I knew, but I just thought that I was in my own mind again and making up abusive behaviors and living in my abusive past instead of staring someone in the face and realizing that they were doing the same things that I spent nights displaying my emotions to them about, again.

I spent a lot of time battling my inner thoughts and feelings because I thought that this was going to be it for me. And to be completely honest, I thought that I was making all of this up. I kept telling myself, there is absolutely no way that this man could be doing the things at which I thought would never, ever happen to me again. I thought it was something that was in my imagination and my nightmares. But, in all reality it was happening to me… again. And once I started paying attention to the red flags, that was actually stated to me, by him. Then, I realized that this was not for me and that it was happening again. The first argument that took place, I probably should have left. Being told I was unable to comprehend something because I was a woman, and women never understand the perspective of men. And I was absolutely taken aback. Aside, from the fact that we were arguing about my lack of intimacy. I was literally being belittled and screamed at because we had been dating for a few weeks and we didn’t have sex as much as he wanted to have sex. And I should have paid attention then, I should have looked at it was for what it was, then. Yet, I blamed myself because “I needed to work on things”. And that is not completely incorrect. That is true, I did need to work on my trust with intimacy but that comes with trusting and feeling safe with your partner and not shamed for going through things.

After that first argument it was just, I knew deep down, I felt it within me that I just wasn’t in the right place. But he apologized and his behaviors changed, and we were working on our communication and so I stayed. Yet, things seemed to get worse, and literally everything was always my fault, and everything seemed to be centered around sex and lack thereof. I am a sexual assault survivor, and if I didn’t feel safe or comfortable, I need/ed my spouse to understand that it is something that needs to be done gently, with love, safety, and care. And that was not the case. I began writing my “how to love me” journal to explain a lot of things. And the night I brought it up it was a nightmare. Screaming, yelling, victim blaming, hands hitting the steering wheel, and harsh words. It was a nightmare. And I just wanted it to end. I should have walked away that night. It was all centered around sex, and that this person was doing everything for me, and that it was almost a chore to have sex with me. He would be upset because he couldn’t just randomly be spontaneous and jump on me, and he was upset because we could only do it in a specific way (no anal… sorry, that is a bit much of information). I was being screamed at and told at the same time “Well if you paid attention to the red flags in your previous relationships you wouldn’t have had half the shit that happened to you, happen to you. You don’t see the fucking smoke signals? You didn’t just fucking pay attention?”. And as he is yelling at me and getting mad at me for past situations, I was being victim shamed. But at the same time, he was not completely wrong. So, I started paying attention to the red flags. His anger and how he talked to me, was without a doubt, a big ass red fucking flag.

I tried a lot to tell him that I didn’t like how he spoke to me. At times (most of the time) he spoke to me as if I was his child or I was some random bitch off the street that he didn’t like and was disrespecting him. And that to me was so damn hurtful. And I told him several times that I didn’t like the way he spoke to me, and I told him he spoke to me as if I was his child and he would tell me, “no I don’t speak to you like that”. And would completely dismiss it. One day, he told me he just didn’t think that he would ever be able to speak to me in the way that I wanted or needed him to. I was told that I needed to stop thinking so emotionally and only think with logic when it came to the things that he was saying to me. And some of the things… most of the things he would say to me out of anger were the things that I was supposed to think logically about. Some of those things included:

• I am not attracted to you, but it’s not because you are not pretty
• You do things for attention
• I cannot trust that you are going to be mentally stable in 3 years
• Once I get to the point of not wanting to have sex with you anymore there is not going back
• Why do I need to stroke your ego when you have a whole entire world of people who do that for you every single day?
• Timing isn’t working for me, if you need to get your physical shit together and we revisit this relationship at a later time, then that’s what we need to do (in the context of my health issues being a problem because of limited sex)
• You have very bad decision-making skills
• Sometimes having sex with you is like having sex with someone who is going to die at any moment
• I am not verbally abusive, you’re just a fucking baby who can’t handle when someone is telling you the truth about yourself
• I am not going to praise you for cooking for me, that’s what I expect my woman to do

But those are just some of the small things I am not supposed to look at emotionally and only logically. And I am supposed to believe that these things are not verbal abuse. But I put up with this and more for a very long time that I should not have. But master manipulators are really good at what they do, and he was really fucking good. And that is why I am so flabbergasted because I just do not know how I didn’t see it. But when you are wanting to believe so bad that this person was your person and being told over and over again, they are not the previous people, but they are without a doubt very similar.

I spent a lot of my time feeling as if I was crazy and that I was truly making a lot of things up. Being screamed and belittled about sex, was not going to make me want to have sex. And I have reached the realization that my intimacy issues didn’t come from my physical illnesses, it came from someone who didn’t create a place for me to feel safe or comfortable. In fact, it did become a chore. It felt like if I didn’t do it, I was going to be subjected to anger and pouting and passive aggressively being ignored. And that was something that was the issue. I didn’t feel safe or wanting of the sexual relationship because I was being chastised for it. And that was so hard for me. Sometimes I would literally have to take several shots of tequila or drink a half a bottle of wine to even allow myself to get in the mood for sex with my spouse. And it should not have been that way, I should have had a place created to allow me to feel safe and feel comfortable to have sex with the man that I wanted to spend my life with, or so I thought. I had come to that realization that it wasn’t what I was going through that I simply couldn’t change but was actively working on. It was because I did not feel safe and I was feeling triggered. And I was continuously blaming it on my physical health issues, when I didn’t realize that it was much more than that. And I couldn’t articulate it because I was living in fear. I couldn’t even be on my period without being afraid of the reaction because I simply needed space or time because I was dealing with my own human physicality. Something that I could not change.

I had to stop making excuses and taking the blame on myself. I should have been open with my friends and my family. I should not have held it all in for the simple fact that I thought that I was making this all up. I thought that I was shaming myself and placing myself in the shoes of the past, in which I was not. Hindsight is 20/20 and I am now realizing a lot of things that I am actively working through and almost questioning my own sanity. When you are around something for so long and someone is repeatedly telling you that they are not what you are thinking or that they are not like the past and how good of a person they are, you believe it. And when you realize that it was all a lie and that I was all true and that you weren’t making it up. And I had to start accepting things for what it was, it without a doubt was/is abusive. And I have to be able to create a place for myself to be open and honest without the fear of ruining someone else’ image, because they simply did not give a fuck about ruining me.

Emotionally controlling, a roller coaster that I didn’t not want to be put on again, but I rode it. And for the sake of honesty, it took a really long time for me to even feel comfortable within myself, physically like I was in the right relationship. And once I did, it didn’t last very long and by that time I reached a point of walking away before I actually walked away. I express how I felt in a letter about his words becoming abusive and I was punished for my truth. And in turn, I was also turned into the villain. And I was given a half ass apology but was told over and over again that he apologized for his behavior, but I knew he wasn’t sorry because his behavior did not change, at all. The behaviors became isolated and he began to ignore me and pull away because I was honest with how I felt and in the end, he was mad at me again, for my lack of intimacy and not working on my “issues”, which the whole entire relationship I was doing nothing but working on myself and growing as a person when I was the only one doing it. I was dating someone with the god complex, nothing he ever did was wrong, it was always me. Things were always being flipped around on me. Things were always my fault and never his. It was always me. He was perfect and everyone else around him was and is the problem.

To this day I have to continuously remind myself that I was not making any of this up and what was said and done was real. I have to remind myself that what happened wasn’t love. Love doesn’t hurt people like that. Love doesn’t tear people down and chastise them for everything that they do. I could do no right, there was no pleasing that person. And when I tried it was not good enough because it was not when he wanted it to happen. I simply could not win. I had to look at it for what it was, and I had to walk away for my own sake. And that was probably the easiest thing I have done, walking away. The hardest thing I have done was admitting, openly admitting that I was in an abusive relationship yet again. But once I did that, I was able to see things much clearer and what I needed to do for myself and for my sanity. So, I packed my shit and I left.

But I had to start being honest with myself. I had to put fear to the side. I had to stop sugar coating. I had to stop trying to protect others who never had any intentions on protecting me. So, I had to do what I do best, and that was write it out. I had to write out the truth. I had to write out the reality, I had to write out what it really was so that I can allow the gateway to healing open.But first… I had to accept reality, and reality is, was abused again. But I will prevail.