*TRIGGER WARNING*
Cause – What happened?
I met somebody when I was doing a semester abroad. I saw how they were vulnerable and sharing things that were going on in their life, and that they were seeking friendship. So, I was friends with them, and it was very platonic for me because they were kind of prickly. We stayed in touch when I came back home. A year or so later he visited my family, which a lot of students from that school travelled here to do. On the last day of his visit, he said he had feelings for me. I didn’t want to date him initially but because he was so sure of his feelings and he gave this strong sense of urgency, this pressure, I ended up developing feelings in an unnatural way. Later, when I went to visit him to explore the relationship, there were some red flags that I didn’t recognize at the time. My idea of abuse was so narrow. He would be angry and cold-shoulder me, act embarrassed of me in public, and he would drive too fast. I kept wondering – how do I make this better, how do I fix this? It laid the foundation for a trauma bond with his push and pull dynamic. There were moments of connection and then moments of feeling like I hurt him. My empathy, which is core to my identity, was weaponized.
We went into the fall semester of college as a long-distance couple. The push-pull dynamic kept escalating. He cast doubt on my family and friends, saying I was talking to them too much, and I was creating a bad picture of him. Then I started to have tension with family and friends. I broke up with him before Christmas because he had said something mean to me and I couldn’t come up with a positive intention. I knew he had tried to hurt me. After Christmas though, he moved to my school and then there was more of the push and pull dynamic, and I went back to him a few times. In the end, when I had firm boundaries, he tried to weasel his way to me and put me in a corner and leave a note in my hand or tell me that all the boys in his dorm were against me. Then he told me he was the only one that cared about me.
Impact – How did it impact you?
I felt addicted to checking his Instagram because sometimes he’d post cryptic things about me. I had to block everyone he knew and any mutual friends so that he couldn’t find any loopholes to see what was going on with my life. I needed super firm distance and detachment in order to move on. It was hard because he had plans of visiting the campus the following year, and I couldn’t move on until I knew his visits were over. I had to get school security involved. He wasn’t allowed to walk around the campus. The more I learned about abuse the more afraid I got of him, and I would think I could see him behind me, but it was me developing hyper vigilance. I had difficulty fulling engaging with my life. I wasn’t going to events I thought he might be at and sat in my room crying.
I had a lot of anger towards anyone who was nice to him. Everything felt personal. It was really, really hard. So many people didn’t see him the way I did, so it created a feeling of helplessness. It was isolating. How do you get other people to wake up? Even some of my family members had a misunderstanding of what happened, and why I didn’t leave him sooner. I ended up writing a paper for class on victim blaming. I sent that paper to my family and it opened their eyes. After I was in this vulnerable state, I noticed I would overshare with people that I didn’t know very well and felt vulnerable after. A strong fear I had at the time, was that the friends that rallied around me during the abuse would now leave me.
Much later, after I experienced significant healing, and with my involvement of helping others, I heard stories of long-term abusive relationships, or women leaving their abusers only to have to share custody and send their babies to the person who hurt them. That stirred up a lot for me. What would have happened if I had stayed with him? I could have married, and the violence could have escalated, and I would have had to share custody, and he was in a different country. That would have impacted my family. This thought gives me a dark heavy feeling. There’s sadness. After the relationship I would get triggered and I didn’t know what from, and I would get cold and numb, and I would shake uncontrollably.
Healing – How did you heal?
I had an amazing friend that was there through everything with me, and she was very constant and patient. There was a campus counselor who was also a postive presence and very understanding. I healed through journaling and poetry and symbolic creative expressions. I created a map of the campus and put an x on each spot where I felt pain, and then I wrote healing words over it and I redeemed it for me. Instead of the school feeling like a dark, haunted place, I made it a place of light and love again. I feel like healing came to me like a gift. A lot of the healing was intuitive and spiritual – soaking in the presence of a loving God.
I received a lot of healing after I met my husband. He treated me with respect and patience and gentleness and kindness. I told him I felt like I had a cage of darkness inside of me and I had to try to keep it all in there, but he told me that I was full of light, and the darkness is on the outside. Just some beautiful reframing.
I’m thank to my parents and my siblings for being loving and supportive. They were there for me, and they were great.
