Let’s get right into it: for five years, I was heavily abused by a former partner.
That guy in the too-tight Grunt Style shirt and Oakleys, with his arm squeezed tight around me in every single picture? Yeah, that was him. Shocking, I know.
Turns out that behind the scenes of those pictures, he was a dangerous, narcissistic, unfaithful, alcoholic, weapon-obsessed (the list goes on and it’s all bad) person. I count myself wildly lucky to have gotten away from him.
As abusers so often do, he had trauma of his own; which instead of doing the work to heal he chose to weaponize to prey upon my empathy and keep me on the hook.
Fear of retaliation and invalidation kept me silent for way too long.
I was introverted to begin with, but being hurt so much for so long by someone I was supposed to trust caused me to turn inward even more. Years later, it still feels safer just to be alone.
I spent a lot of time being trained to doubt my own experiences and am still working to untangle the manipulations and gaslighting. It’s been exhausting, draining, unshackling, enlivening work; and I’m nowhere near done.
If you haven’t heard from me for a while, I hope you know I care about you so deeply and I fought like hell to stay here with you. I’m so grateful to be alive.
I had to go away for a little while to find safety and rediscover myself, but I’m slowly working my way back.
I still don’t post much on social media anymore, mostly for safety reasons. The abuse instilled in me issues with trust and hypervigilance. Staying in touch with my family and friends takes a backseat to making sure my abuser doesn’t have a way to keep tabs on me easily.
Anyway, I started an anonymous blog a little while ago. I needed a way to let some steam out of the kettle, you know?
I’m trying to let go of my fears of actually sharing it with people I know, but I honestly don’t know that I ever will.