I’m 33 years old, and I do feel blessed to say that there are so many things I’ve experienced in this life that I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams.
I sit here now in a beautiful, luxurious 5-bedroom home by the water in Hawai’i, a place where I spend a big percentage of my time because I work from home as a Professional Matchmaker. As simple as that may sound, that alone is something that wouldn’t even have come up in my imagination just a year and a half ago.
And I sit here now, needing to write my heart out, because my body is asking me to name my experience: I was in an abusive relationship. In some ways, it’s also something I wouldn’t have imagined me needing to ever do… But in some ways, I guess you could say it was a story already written out for me – maybe even before I breathed my first breath.
I struggle to write about this. How do you write about this? It would be an easy exercise to just air out a laundry list of things that both hurt and harmed. It would be very easy… and yet the reason why I’m here writing is because it’s a reality that I’m very much having a hard time accepting. Being in an abusive relationship is a truth I’m very much having a hard time telling.
It’s hard because I really care about what other people think, and I don’t care enough about what I think – a major reason why I stayed even when things were hard. But this is a season of stopping the abuse that I inflict upon my own self.
People may think I’m just a scorned woman who couldn’t accept that someone she had given everything to could leave her in a blink of an eye and move on. Things change right? One day you say you are going to marry someone and have children with them, and the next day it’s all a lie. Things change, scorned woman. It’s a sentiment and label that I would receive from my ex when we were on shaky ground.
People may think, that’s not enough harm to be called abuse. Stop talking. I mean, I say that to my own self. He was so good to you half of the time, treated you like a queen. So, is the other 50% really valid?
At some point though, what people may think is truly trumped by very real feelings. Feeling crazy cause you’re questioning your own reality. Feeling like you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t because of consistent crazy making behavior. Always feeling like everything that was wrong was your fault because you’re too “powerful,” and you’re a “puppeteer.” Feeling constantly confused and always walking on egg shells because you never know what mood the other person is going to be in, and to what degree of intensity.
There are so many other feelings to share. But I feel myself getting immensely tired and exhausted – a sign of resistance to an emotional breakthrough, according to my therapist. It may be the case that I am resisting hard feelings right now… but what’s important is that I’ve fulfilled a promise to myself. I’ve started writing again.