How a guy destroyed my life. This is my story…

When I was 17, I was captain of the dance team and on the honor roll at my school.  I was very involved at my church, had loving parents, great friends and I gave it all up for a guy.

I met him in March of 2003 and was immediately attracted to him.  He was older, tattoo-covered and, most significantly, he wanted me.  We dated passionately, believing that I was falling in love, for three weeks before he dumped me for my best friend (keep reading, it gets much worse).  I pathetically begged for him back over and over until I was ready to give up.  I took to cutting and wrote suicide letters to everyone in my life.  The day I planned to kill myself, my mom found my letters.  She came to my school, pulled me out and took me on a mental health vacation.  I was still heartbroken, but I felt more like I had a reason to live.

On our way back into cellphone reception, I noticed I had a couple of voicemails.  It was him saying that he wanted to meet with me.  I was both thrilled and hesitant because I didn’t want to get hurt again, but when we met he said he made a huge mistake.  He said that when he was with my friend, he didn’t feel the spark that he felt with me.  I fell for him all over again.  He told me that he didn’t know how to break things off with my friend, so we couldn’t date just yet.  I played along for about a week while he dated her, but IMed me saying he loved me.

Finally, he ended things with her and we were back together.  A few days into take 2 of our relationship, I get a message from my friend (the one he left me for) saying, amongst other understandable hatred, that he slept with our other friend the night they broke up.  When I confronted him about it, he said it was the only way he could end the relationship.  I bought it.  Shortly after, we started having sex.

This is where things get bad.

He became such a big part of my life that he was the only thing I ever thought about, the only person I wanted to talk to or spend time with.  Nobody approved of my relationship with him, including my parents.  I thought they were jealous or trying to keep me from being happy and he fed that fire.  He made me think my parents were my biggest enemy and he convinced me to run away with him.

10 days before my 18th birthday and six months before high school graduation, we ran away to another state.  It was exhilarating and terrifying, but I thought that as long as I had him, I’d be fine.

As soon as we settled in our new home (the basement of a stranger’s house), he changed.  He wouldn’t show affection or let me show affection.  We never touched, never kissed, barely talked.  The closest thing we ever had to passion was an occasional fuck session, that ended in us returning to our opposite corners of the room.

I was completely alone.

But what could I do?  I’d given up everything for him.  I had no one to support me, no one to go back to, I’d thrown away my education.  If I didn’t make this relationship succeed, I would have been a failure.

I snooped on his computer and found out he immediately started looking for girls in our area once we moved.  I was heartbroken.  I confronted him about it and he became livid.

Three months after we moved, he decided he wanted to go back home.  So that’s what we did.  I still felt like he was the only person I had in the world, so we got an apartment in our home state and started looking for jobs.  Things actually seemed good for awhile, until his best friend moved in with us.  That’s when he decided he no longer had to work.  He quit his job and didn’t work again for the remainder of our relationship while I worked at several jobs that I hated with a passion.

He started drinking.  He drank all the time, always going out and leaving me home alone.  I always assumed he was cheating on me, but I never had any proof.  But one day, I received a text from my only friend telling me that she’d slept with him.  I was crushed.  The world caved in around me.  He said he had planned to tell me, then somehow managed to convince me that it was my fault that he slept with her.

I bought it.

A few months later, though, he did it again, with the same girl.  This time I was brave enough to throw him out.  Then, when I was crying on the couch later that night, realizing I had no one else to talk to (because he wouldn’t really let me have friends) I texted him.  He told me he had taken an entire bottle of pills and he wouldn’t throw them up unless I agreed to take him back.  So that’s what I did.

He suggested we get married.  I was hopeless, completely trapped in the relationship, so I agreed. 

Then things got very bad.

He started drinking even more.  He’d start as soon as he woke up.  One night, I was awoken to the sounds of him vomiting in the shower.  I went in to see if he was alright.  He then proceeded to tell me that I was weak and pathetic and that he was using me.  The only reason he was with me was to use me and that he never loved me.  I cried myself to sleep that night in our bed because I had no where to go.  The next day, he apologized claiming that none of what he said was true.  I didn’t believe him.  I didn’t love him, but I didn’t have a choice.  Every time he touched me, every time he made me have sex with him felt like rape.  I was disgusted by him and disgusted by myself.  I wanted to kill myself, but I didn’t have the courage.  I wanted to cut myself, but I didn’t have the privacy and I was afraid of what he would do when he saw the cut marks.  So I just prayed every night that I just wouldn’t wake up the next morning.  I was trapped.

He started doing cocaine.  I tried it a few times, but the morning after was not worth the high or the escape.  He continued and I hated it.

We got married.  He said he wanted to have a baby, so I agreed.  He’d always said he never wanted kids and I always did, so I jumped at the opportunity.  Two weeks later, I was pregnant.  I told him I didn’t want the cocaine in the apartment anymore, so he started doing it behind my back.

During my pregnancy, I rarely saw him.  I worked during the day, he drank at night.  I spent every holiday, including my birthday, alone while I was pregnant because he was out partying.  I spent thanksgiving alone.  I bought myself a birthday cake and had a piece, alone, before throwing the rest away.  Christmas and New Years, I was alone.

When my beautiful daughter was finally born, I spent five days in the hospital without him.

Through the birth of my daughter, I was able to reconnect with my parents, and I slowly began to realize that I had a support system outside of the hell which I’d been living in.

I started spending more time with my parents and less time with my husband.

When I had to return to work after maternity leave, he was still drinking.  There were two mornings a week he had to watch her.  He’d stay out drinking all night, then force her to sleep in until he was ready to get up.  I’d return home to her crying while he had his back to her playing on the computer. 

The day I knew I had to get away, he walked in drunk as I was ready to leave for work.  He asked me to stay home with the baby, but I needed to keep my job, so I left. He sent me raging texts claiming I was a horrible mother and if I didn’t come home and take care of my daughter, he was going to leave her in the apartment alone.

I drove home that day, 6 years after we met, crying my eyes out.  Not for me, but for my daughter who had been born into a broken home.  That she would have to one day ask where her daddy was and I’d have to explain.  My heart broke for her.

But with the support of my parents I did manage to leave him that day for good, but the relationship still haunts me.  I found out that there was not a single time in our relationship that he was not cheating on me.  He was never faithful and it was never real.  I am very broken inside, but I am working to fix myself.  I hope that one day I will be whole again, that one day I can love again and that one day I’ll be lovable again.