Disclaimer: This post might be triggering for anyone with a history of intimate partner violence.
I got dressed this week, went out and ran some errands. It was hot, probably 100 degrees, and muggy. I put on this wrap-ey, strapless flowy shirt I really like in the summer. It’s a shirt I haven’t worn in a little over a year because my toxic ex-boyfriend didn’t think it was appropriate to wear in public (he’s wrong, btw.)
My ex and I had a very intense relationship. We got serious fast. We dated for four months and then lived together for another fourteen as a couple. We also lived together seven mouths post break up, but that’s kind of a different story.
While we were dating, I remember times when we would be fighting and he would shake me to get his point across. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I mean, everyone gets frustrated and it wasn’t like he actually hit me or anything. It’s easier to write off things like that when you’re dating. The occasions of physical violence were far less common than other smaller stuff that should have sent up very big red flags. He’d hide my phone, or attempt to take it with him when he left the apartment to go to class claiming that he wanted to make me less dependent on it. He had a constantly short fuse about pretty much everything and when things went wrong, it was always my fault and he never let me forget about those things.
I’m different, maybe, in that I didn’t end it because of that. I ended it for different reasons. I ended it for the wrong reasons. Clarity for me came really, really slow. In september, I was sitting in a class listening to a lecturer talk about unhealthy relationships, that was the first seed of clarity. The big one was when we were five months post break up, he shook me. We weren’t even dating and he shook me by the shoulders. It was something he had done before, but didn’t phase me one bit while we were dating, but now that we weren’t, it was suddenly not OK. At this point we were tossing the idea back and forth about signing another lease in an apartment together and continuing to live as roommates, and I knew that was a really awful idea in aftermath of that incident( I now live alone. Go me!) Clarity is funny like that. It comes when you need it the most, not too early and hopefully not too late.
A couple weeks ago my mother asked me if he ever hit me out of the blue. I said no, I didn’t lie exactly, he never did hit me, not exactly. I told very few people about this once I realized what was going on and none of those people were my mother. Would it have been better if i had told my mother the truth? Who is to say either way?
Just get out if you’re living what I lived in any way, shape, or form. Get out. There is no reason worth sticking it out. Not a single one.