I’m hoping some people will find some positivity for themselves in this. I'm just proud of this and just had to share.

I’m fresh out of four years of a relationship. The last year was rocky but it seemed like he wanted to patch things up. Turns out he didn’t, and he was just stringing me along for his own entertainment. 

So I ended this year abandoned, kicked out, and left in a situation where I had owned up and took responsibility and flogged myself for his benefit for everything I’d done, while he sat there on his high horse with nary a mention of his lies, the many times he betrayed me, the times he mocked me and talked shit about me behind my back while refusing to discuss any relationship problems with me to my face, and all the other toxic shit that he did which I ignored because I spent years letting him twist me into thinking I was the broken one and, therefore, I was the only one to blame and had no right to complain when he hurt me. I have no illusions about this: he does this to make himself feel powerful. He’s quite pleased with himself at this point and thinks he’s broken me.

He’s wrong.

For the first time in my life, when I lay on my bed post-crisis and went looking for the suicidal ideation, I found that it wasn’t there. I didn't want to kill myself. On the contrary, I was excited for the future. I feel more powerful than I ever have. I spent four years trying to be what he wanted and being punished for it when I failed, but the upside to that is that I’ve come so far. I’m a different, more mature, more stable person than I was even a year ago. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m stronger than my illness.

Despite all the ways he tried to break me down, he failed. Despite all his attempts to gaslight me into thinking I was the only problem in the relationship, the people around me—including his own parents—have helped me find perspective and realize that while some blame lies with me (and I can learn from that), I’m not the irredeemable monster I spent four years thinking I was. 

I thought he was everything. I thought I was nothing without him. But now that he’s gone, it’s like I can breathe again. 

And now the future is unfolding in front of me. It’s a giant question mark, and I love it. I’m not abandoned, I’m fucking free, and I could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. I’m free to find my identity and let it blossom without him trying to take it from me. I don’t have to cram myself into a box anymore. I don’t have to neuter myself to be the bland, palatable, acceptable little woman who never disagrees, never raises her voice above a kindergarten teacher’s gentle croon, and passively lets her partner chain her up in a safe, comfortable bubble. 

I’m not broken. I’m not a monster. I don’t even want to die. It’s absolutely magical. I’ve never felt stronger in my life.

And I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned how to control my illness and I’ve learned not to let people treat me as less because of it. I’ve learned never to settle. I’ve learned not to put the happiness of others before my own when they just use it to hurt me. All the work I did on myself for him? He doesn’t want it, so it’s mine now, and I’m going to use it to make my mark on the world. I finally know who I am, and I finally feel like I have a future that’s mine, not something someone else wanted.

To all of you who feel like you’re unfixable: I did too. And I wish I could say exactly how I escaped that, but I’m not completely sure myself (and the few things I do know that contributed to it are probably not for anyone anyway). But I’m hoping that someone might find some hope in this. I thought I had no future, and I was wrong. It’s not necessarily the end of the line, even if it seems that way. Getting kicked out of paradise just means you now have a whole new realm to explore. 

I thought my life was over when this year started. And now I’ve never felt more alive.