I wasn’t having a good day today, all of my symptoms were acting up. I spent most of the day crying thinking about what I went through with this relationship. My best friend has chronic pain right now so I’m trying really hard to empathize and not dump more on her. I go to therapy twice a week, but the time in between therapy is what’s hard for me. Every day, every hour, sometimes every minute seems unbearable because thoughts and horrible memories just flash into my mind. 

Quick background, I met my abuser when I was off my meds and I was severely manic and experiencing psychosis. I had signed up for this site called fetlife, which turned out to be a horrible decision. There’s a lot of abusers on there, but my abuser disguised himself as a good man. He seems like everything I wanted in a partner, so patient sweet and kind. But I ignored all the red flags. He lied about his age(he was considerably older than me to start, he’s 41 and I was 21 at the time. He said he was 36). He was going through a legal situation involving Sexting a minor, but I believed him when he said he was framed because my brother was going through a similar situation.

Our first date, he offered to drive me back to my car. He choked me until I went unconscious, but for some reason I just went along with it? I don’t know what was wrong with me. We ended up having sex that day, but I wanted to have protected sex. He took off the condom without telling me, and that was only the start of the problems. Every time we met, he would choke me until I was unconscious. I started experiencing some bad symptoms a couple months into the relationship, to this day I have dizziness, nausea, headaches, blurred vision, brain fog and memory loss. I am seeing a neurologist about it tomorrow, thankfully.

I never wanted to be choked. I never wanted him to inflict the severe pain on me that he did. My body and my mind have permanent scars. It took me so long to finally work up the courage to break up with him. I thought that I was in love with him, but I was really just being gaslighted and manipulated. He was cheating on me the entire relationship. He would ghost me randomly, and then act like nothing happened and I felt like I was just going crazier and crazier by the day. I thought of suicide every day. I don’t know why I couldn’t just leave him.

Five days before my 22nd birthday, I was with my friend and I finally got the courage to send the text that I had been rehearsing over and over. I sent the text and then I blocked him. I wanted nothing to do with him, I wanted him out of my life and anything associated with him out of my life. I now am scared of anything to do with sex and the BDSM community. I cry whenever I see mentions of it on social media. I developed severe agoraphobia, and I only leave my apartment late at night to walk around and get a little bit of exercise, or for therapy. I hate myself for being judgemental of that community, but I can’t help it. 

I just know that the day I met him, it was like signing my death sentence. Leaving him was the hardest thing I ever did, and I fear that I’ll never recover from this relationship.