Hello! To start off, I have decided that I'm going to be posting *regularly* on Sundays. I think it'll be a good opportunity for reflecting on my week, and the chance to look forward.
Well, here we go. So far 23 has KICKED. MY. ASS.
I started my birthday off RIGHT by admitting myself into a mental health facility. I have a lot of things that have been going on, and I haven't been dealing with any of it, and eventually it all came to the surface at once. So to whoever reads this~ PLEASE take care of yourself. You deserve to have your feelings, thoughts, and emotions acknowledged and allowed.
One of the hardest things I have been dealing with, and will be probably for a while is that I recently have gotten out of an incredibly abusive relationship. My close friends and family are really the only people who know what happened, and it feels as though it's this baggage that's been weighing really heavily on my heart. And I guess for some reason I feel like this is the place to air it out. If you read this, you can know my story. I think it's a good place to start with vulnerability and openness. Also, part of this is to give hope to any people currently in abusive relationships.
So I started dating Jimmy* (I'm changing his name even if you do know who I'm talking about out of respect for his privacy.) in January of last year, and that in and of itself is CRAZY. But anyway, this had all started after a brief session of talking before he went to school on the other side of the country. Things while he was gone were great. We would FaceTime all the time, had dates over Skype, we'd watch movies on a streaming site, things were good. Even when he first got back, things were going really well. Of course, I had my mental things that I was dealing with, but he had always seemed so supportive.
He actually ended up coming to live with me after the fourth of July because his grandparents kicked him out for staying the night at my house. That's an entire other story. But we had argued before, but this is about when they started getting bad. I don't remember when it started, but every fight started turning unhealthy. He would grab my hands and force me to hit him, because he thought at the time he deserved it. He would tower of me and get in my face and speak demonically to me, telling me he was worthless and he deserved to be punished. I would be crying (because I'm emotional AF) and he would hold my wrists and use them to hit him.
After my birthday, I remember that was distinctly the first time I did actually hit him. I was angry. I was hurting. I figured skipping the steps of force was better? And he started taunting me, almost like a boxing coach. Looking back, I don't understand any of what happened, and I know that it's going to take time to figure it out. But that night he had punched trees, stop signs, and he head-butted those same trees, and our car. That was the first night I truly remember as being toxic, but I know it dates back further.
After that, basically were terrible. Almost constant fighting about something, and it always ending with him commanding me to hit him, and me doing what I was told. I knew that this couldn't be healthy, and so I would try to break up with him. Every time, he would tell me that I need to wait until I'm calm and decide then. But he never tried letting me calm down. He kept pushing the fights, and I would try to leave the conversation, because I would start getting heated, and he would never let me have time for myself to breathe.
Eventually the fighting led to him threatening to harm himself. It started out as threatening, then led to self harm, and turned into suicide threats. I can't even count how many times he threatened to kill himself through the duration of our relationship. I have a foggy timeline of the major times, but there were many threats.
In September of last year, he ended up going to his family's house for outpatient after attempting to hang himself out of our bedroom window. That fight started over me asking him not to eat my candy. He ended up coming home around the beginning of October. Right before Halloween, we had a huge fight that the neighbors actually ended up calling the police about. Jimmy had been whipping himself with a belt and cutting himself in front of me during this fight. At one point he stabbed the bed next to my head where I was laying down and crying. He had also welted my foot because he accidentally got me with the belt.
Because of the welt, he got arrested for domestic violence. I told my mom that everything was all a mistake and asked her to bail him out. He was out the next day. I was the one to pick him up from the police station. There was technically a restraining order, but we didn't follow it. I ended up quitting my job around then, just because (at the time) I thought I just needed a new job. He said he no longer felt comfortable in our house because he was worried my roommates hated him and that month, we moved into our own apartment together.
He proposed later that month, and everything in me wanted to say no, but I chalked it up to me just being afraid of commitment, and I realize now that probably wasn't the case. But I said yes, and we got engaged.
Things were fine for maybe a month? But I wasn't doing well. I was in a severe depression and didn't know what to do. I didn't really want to get out of bed. I didn't really want to do anything. And the fighting kept happening. It was exhausting.
Eventually, we got into a huge fight, and he left. I was terrified he was going to try to kill himself again. My friend and I drove around about an hour looking for him and calling him. He wasn't responding so I called the hospital. I genuinely was scared that he was dead. I got home a little later, and five minutes later, I heard a knock on my door.
There were two police officers there, and my first thought was they were coming to tell me he was dead. I don't even know if that's how it works, but I've never been in that position before. They had a couple of questions about that night, and a few nights before. They asked if I hit him. I said yes, because I had.
Just like that, I was being arrested for 4th degree assault. I found out while he was gone, he went to the police station to file a restraining order against me. They saw his black eye and he told them that I hit him when I get mad. So they came to investigate. Anddd the rest happened.
My mom bailed me out (again, and she was NOT thrilled to say the least). I wasn't allowed to contact him, or speak with him. I lost my current teaching job, lost my car, and was on the verge of losing the apartment he left. My entire world felt destroyed. And that was in March. It has been almost exactly four months since everything has ended, and I feel like I'm just starting to process it.
Part of the reason I wanted to post this, is because domestic violence isn't as obvious as a lot of us think. It is manipulative, cruel, and in some ways, evil. I really do want people to understand that it all can be very well hidden. Reach out to your friends, make sure to call out red flags, because as BoJack Horseman says,'With rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.'
SO CHECK ON YOUR FRIENDS. CALL OUT TOXIC BEHAVIOR. Lets spend the rest of this year, and hopefully our lives not allowing people to treat us as less then we deserve.
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Alright, so I know that was some deep and heavy stuff, but I needed to get that out of the way. I will more than likely be referencing these things in later posts while I'm still processing and working through all of these things. If you want to talk, my inbox is always open. <3
With all the love,
