I left, but part of me is still stuck there

Hello, friend ♡

I haven’t been writing much lately, which isn’t like me at all. The thoughts have been swirling, as they always do, but it’s been difficult to get anything out.

Things have also been very busy. Between my partner getting a head injury from falling off his bike (which I talked about in a recent Instagram post), and managing a family visit, it’s been a lot. I’m just starting to feel like myself again since getting off medication too (I was on wellbutrin for 3 years but quit this spring due to side effects). 

Hopefully things are calming down soon because I’ve really been craving a slower pace to my days. Especially as we are going into autumn (the greatest time of year!!) which for me is the ultimate season of peace, calm and enjoyment. I plan to be present and enjoy each day, so you better not sabotage me this year, brain!

I just started therapy again after a three month break for summer, and it feels hard, but good. Over the summer, I realized that a specific part of my past still affects me more than I wanted to admit.

Because I already worked on it so much and had several rounds of EMDR for it, and wanted to believe that I was done with that part of my life, it feels almost like a setback to acknowledge it. But part of me is still stuck “back there”.

I tried to force myself into being done with it. But it isn’t done with me, and I think my only choice is to accept that.

This is something I’ve told very few people: I was in an abusive relationship before I met my current boyfriend. It started when I was in my early 20s and lasted five years. 

When I say it like that, it sounds simple, neatly contained in time. Five years isn't that long. And it’s in the past - it’s been nearly ten years since I met my ex.

But living through it was a different story. It didn’t feel neatly contained at all. It felt three times as long. Its’ borders felt indefinable. It felt like being trapped. It felt like wading through tar. It felt like slowly drowning.

Getting out was possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And being out didn’t fix what he broke.

Years afterwards, I’m still repairing myself. He reduced me to almost nothing, so that was my starting point when I tried to build myself back up into a person again.

It’s nearly unbelievable, isn’t it? How one person can blow through your life like a tornado, tearing down everything but the bare-bones foundations, leaving you on the ground, gasping for breath and wondering what the hell happened.

I’ve been having nightmares again recently where he plays the starring role. In these nightmares, he kidnaps me, holds me hostage, tries to kill me, but always in ways where I am kept alive as long as possible. It is never fast. My attempts at escape always fail - somehow he always finds me again.

Sometimes there are other girlfriends he does the same thing to. That’s usually the saddest part of these dreams; the other women who have no idea yet what they are in for. They are like confused sheep, being guided to their demise by him.

I know I wasn’t the only one. He was just being who he is - a tornado, and everyone who held the title of ‘girlfriend’ experienced it. (And there had been quiiite a few girlfriends before I came along).

But I think it was different with me in many ways. I was the only one to ever live with him. I stayed longer than the others. Tried harder, broke myself more.

I made it my mission to help him, and what I got in return was a lesson.

One time, less than six months into the relationship, I came across a Facebook message from one of his exes. At the time, I had the impression that he saw her as “the one who got away”. (Later, I think maybe I held that position.) In her message, she asked him firmly but respectfully to not contact her anymore. They had been together for only 8 months when it ended, and she said the relationship was not at all what she signed up for, and that she was absolutely not subjecting herself to that for a minute longer. I deeply admired her self-respect and firm boundaries, and for doing what was best for her - without giving him a thousand chances to break her first.

She had seen enough to tell what the future would be like if she stayed with him. And she was right to get out when she did. I feel so proud of this woman I have never even met, and thought of her often during the course of my relationship with him. I never mentioned any of this to him, he doesn’t know I saw that message. It was just something for me to hold on to, even if I didn’t know what to do with the information I had learned.

So, imagine me, maybe four or five months into this relationship, reading this message. I can see myself so clearly, sitting on his bed in his tiny student housing apartment outside of Lillestrøm, curiously glancing at his laptop screen, not being able to stop myself when I saw her name.

At this point, I was already caught in his web. I believed his ex - it’s not like I didn’t see the truth in what she was saying about him, but I still thought it would be different for us. That he would get better - not so, so much worse.

He had already raped me once. I didn’t understand that it was rape until years later, when both my therapist and current partner pointed out that if you say “no” about fifteen times and the sex still happens, then that’s rape. Hell, saying “no” once should be enough.

I logically knew that I never gave my consent in that situation, that I absolutely did not want the sex to happen in that moment, but I was more focused on the part where I tried and failed to get him to see my point of view, putting the responsibility on myself instead of on him.

It was basically my own fault that he wasn’t convinced by my “no”, because I probably didn’t explain my reasoning well enough, and even if I did, I guess he just didn’t think my reasons (“someone might come, we’re too close to people, I’m really uncomfortable, I really don’t want to do this”) were good enough. After all, his reasons (“but I want to”) won.

Besides the rape, there were other warning signs. Two or three weeks into us dating, I witnessed the first of what I would come to internally refer to as his ‘episodes’.

It would be like flipping a switch. He would turn into a different version of himself. Jekyll & Hyde. His eyes would go black - that’s how I knew, even before he had said a word. When he was in one of these episodes, I could not get through to him. Have you ever tried to talk to someone who’s black-out drunk? Because it feels like that. Like they are just too far gone to even hear you. They are simply in a different reality, and no matter what you say, you will not snap them out of it. The only thing to do is to wait until the storm passes.

Of course, there will be collateral damage, and it will be at your expense.

I have later understood that, like a natural disaster, it isn’t personal. It’s not happening because you are you, it’s happening because you are there.

He told me once, in a moment of calm and clarity, that he would have treated anyone else the same way. That it wasn’t me. But even after he told me that, even though it felt momentarily soothing to hear, my core beliefs about myself remained. The belief that it was possible for me to become ‘good enough’ to be treated well, simply because I deserved it by being a ‘good enough person’. So if I wasn’t being treated well, it’s at least partly my own fault for not being good enough to deserve better.

(Jesus. Writing this made me think it was only a matter of time before I ended up in a situation like that, with those beliefs about myself…)

After the first ‘episode’, he told me that he has Borderline Personality Disorder. I knew very little about it, and tried to be as understanding as possible. A former close friend of mine had BPD too, and I loved her. So I knew she had some troubles because of it, but I was primed to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He focused mostly on how the condition was misunderstood, villainized. How they are sensitive and pure souls (that’s true for all of us at our core, isn’t it?) and it is this chronic misunderstanding by society and others that causes so much of their pain.

They carry around incredible amounts of emotional pain, and sometimes this pain gets triggered and cannot be contained, and it explodes out of them, or they implode with it. But if you are standing next to the person who explodes, you will find yourself embedded with shrapnel. Usually, the condition develops during teenage and stems from childhood trauma.

He gave me specific sources to read and told me not to google it or look up anything on my own, because then I would see an overwhelmingly negative representation of the disorder. I agreed, and didn’t look for more resources until years into the relationship, when he had me nearly convinced that I was the one with the personality disorder. Then again, when being freshly out of the relationship and finding the r/BPDlovedones subreddit, where we all seemed to have dated the same person.

Over that first summer together, I had a vague idea that something might be wrong in our relationship. But he was exceptionally talented at explaining everything away whenever I had a concern. And as he pointed out time and time again, he was the one with relationship experience. He was the authority, I didn’t know anything.

It was the first adult relationship I had ever been in. All my previous experience was in drama-filled teenage dating and hookups at parties. He was right that I didn’t have much real relationship experience. But I knew what I wanted, and that has remained the same to this day.

Safety and stability, that one person to spend my life with, have kids with, get married to. For me and this person to create a home together for our family, a place where all of us can always feel safe and comfortable. I have dreamt of this loving safety for decades. It is the fantasy that kept me going in my nights of lonely despair, both as a teenager longing to be saved, and as an adult trying not to give up on a brighter future.

Ironically, that’s exactly what I was looking for when I met him. What that relationship turned out to be was about as far from my vision of safe love as you could get.

Before him, I felt like I really liked who I was becoming. I was sure of what I wanted, at least in terms of relationships and family. I knew who I was, what I could give to someone.

After him … I was no longer a person. Didn’t feel human anymore. A barely alive creature, my formerly strong inner voice reduced to a whisper.

I left, but part of me is still trapped in that past. It’s up to me to get her out, to drag her into the present with me. Help her see that she has a choice, that she doesn’t have to stay there anymore.

The cage is open and she can walk out whenever she’s ready, and when she comes out, there is love and safety waiting here for her.

This was rough to write, but it also helped me process some things and remember some events I had forgotten. I have massive holes in my memory from the five years I spent with him - a great source of frustration that often makes me think “it can’t have been that bad if I don’t even remember”. But it’s coming back, in pieces.

I’m nowhere near done writing about this topic. My wish is to share my experiences so that people who have gone through similar things feel less alone. So that people who are wondering if what they experienced was abuse can get clarity. So that people who wonder why you can’t just leave an abusive relationship will understand (I used to be one of those people myself! it’s almost absurd to think about being on the other side of it now).

My logic is; if I had to go through this, it has to be good for something more than the quiet lessons I’ve learned. The thing that pains me the most about all of this is that other people have to experience these things too. That, I cannot accept. When it’s me, that’s fine. But another person? Not on my watch.

Really, though - I know I’m largely powerless to prevent anyone else from being trapped in a relationship that hurts them. But if my words can make one person feel seen, one person realize that the relationship they are in isn’t a healthy one and get themselves out before they become trapped, I would consider it all worth it.

Thank you for reading.

*context: all the pictures in this post were taken during the abusive relationship.