This is what it looked like.

I want to spend some time talking about how I felt when I was in the thick of things. I think it’s important that I really dig deep and share the nitty gritty. I don’t want to hold back or make things nice. I want to be very honest about what I was thinking about and what resonated and how I coped or didn’t.

I am not scared to share but also, I am. I am terrified that I am misremembering or somehow putting myself on some pedestal. That’s not real though. That’s the gaslighting. That’s the emotional abuse. That’s my muddled brain and messy heart. I DO take responsibility. I HAVE taken responsibility. That’s not this.

This is MY story. I am going to tell it in excerpts. I am not going to provide context. There is none that will make this make sense.

This is what living in an emotionally abusive relationship felt like and looked like for me…

I said I’m sorry, a lot.

I didn’t care for my appearance, often. Unless he said I looked nice and then, I felt better.

I thought I wasn’t as smart as he was/is.

I thought he was an expert on all the things he didn’t know about before we met.

I thought it was better if he was the center of attention at all times.

I was afraid of his silence.

I was afraid of mentioning his silence.

I was afraid of his brooding or scowl more than his silence.

I was afraid of his withdrawals from me, physically and emotionally.  

I allowed myself to be tickled to the point of physical pain because it was the only touch I received.

I was solicitous, often.

I sought reassurance in a million situations. in a million ways.

I sometimes mustered up the courage to express my unhappiness and when I did, I was annihilated. I was told to leave. I was called ungrateful. It was intimated that I was ungrateful. Wasn’t it enough? It wasn’t, but it had to be.

I ate cereal for dinner. I hate cereal for dinner.

I made dinner when I was tired and didn’t want to do anything, let alone cook.

I was terrified to cook. I wanted everything to be perfect. Not just food. Everything.

I was scared to go out with friends and miss time with him. I felt guilty. He was annoyed. I was stressed. I looked at the time. A lot. Everywhere. My watch. My phone. Clocks. Microwaves. I made excuses. I sweat. I avoided. I rescheduled. I cancelled. All the time. I cancelled all the damn time.

I generally received little to no affection, save the aforementioned tickling.

I was not permitted to get frustrated or be sad or have a bad day. Sometimes I had a bad day and sympathy was forthcoming, but only for a moment.  A heartbeat. There and then gone.

I wanted to do whatever I needed to do to fix things, to sustain things, but I couldn’t. There was no path forward. I had no idea. Every time I chose a direction, it was the wrong one.

He flirted with a woman at work and I had to be okay. He talked to a friend about a woman he met online and I had to pretend I didn’t know. He was often moody and surly and I had to understand. Always. I couldn’t make anything about me. Ever.

He would listen to me, but only to a point. He was supportive but only inasmuch as I had to look to him for guidance and where to go next.

He told me that my stuffy nose was annoying and that I often spoke too loud. I was shushed, more often than I care to admit. More often than I can speak of. I was advised that my attempts to be physical made him uncomfortable and were absolutely ‘unfair’.

I was mocked for going to early morning spin and punished when I wanted to go on an early morning run on the weekend.

I was so miserable, but we were meant to be, and so, we had to be.

I didn’t trust him, but I had to trust him, so I didn’t trust myself.

I lay awake in the dark wondering why I was so unlovable and undesirable and difficult. I imagined all the ways in which I would tell him to fuck off in the morning and then, the morning came and I felt nothing, at all.

I begged to discuss our issues and he told me that I was our issue. I had lied five years before and that had broken us, and I was just going to have to be okay with the bootleg version of what we had become.

I was told that friends of his didn’t like me and also, certain family members. I was forever questioning myself in front of them. What to say, how to behave, what to do. I knew I couldn’t measure up to whatever the expectations were so I just wanted to get somewhere slightly above the bottom rung.

Even at the end, when I knew he had cheated and lied, I still thought I had brought it on myself. My wounds were deep and the damage was pervasive. I was convinced that his treatment of me was an apt punishment for all the ways in which I failed him, failed us. When I stood up for myself and demanded clarity and explanations and maybe even some finality, I was destroyed. And so, I stopped asking, for anything. I waited. I wanted and waited.

We would have dinner every Sunday night after we broke up. Sometimes he would confirm the day before and sometimes he would wait until 5:30 PM that evening. I distinctly remember one time I was out for a run when he texted me and I nearly vomited in the street from stress. I can feel the fear that overtook my body as I contemplated whether my rebellious behavior (how dare I run when I knew he might call me for dinner) would be the final straw that broke the broken camel’s back.

It wasn’t until I put nearly four thousand miles between me and him that I was able to breathe again. I didn’t realize how I had been holding my breath for five years. I didn’t realize that you could hold tension in every muscle. I didn’t realize that you could feel stress in the fibers of your skin. Cellular level agony. I didn’t think that I had a right to speak to how I felt.

What was I going to tell people? That he never hit me?

Sigh.

x

L.