my #metoo

TRIGGER WARNING! This is pretty detailed and personal, and probably triggering if you’ve ever been abused. It mentions verbal/emotional/physical abuse, sexual assault, gaslighting, and stalking. Also, I curse. A lot.

 

Chloe Dykstra, cosplayer extraordinaire and super brave woman, came forward yesterday with details regarding a three-year abusive relationship she was in and why she stayed (https://medium.com/@skydart/rose-colored-glasses-6be0594970ca). I had goosebumps the entire time reading her story as hers sounds so familiar to the one I went through. I’ve told very few people outside of my psychiatrists and therapist over the years, but now I feel compelled to not only say #metoo, but share my story as well, because even though my abusive relationship ended years ago, I still struggle every single day with what happened and the long-lasting effects it has had on my life, all because of one asshole man-child.

I met him as an undergraduate student. I had just been dumped over Christmas and this new guy was nice, charming, and seemed kind. My heart was broken and I immediately latched on to this apparent kindness. He seemed perfect – we were both in the same field, had similar career aspirations, had similar tastes in music (this was apparently very important to me at that time), and he was intelligent. He was all about doing things for me, and taking me out to dinner, and meeting my family, and as I think of it now, being seen with me. He always told me what a “hot, tight body” I had and was very aware of how other people perceived him. In a short amount of time after we started dating, he started getting upset when I didn’t want to go out with him and people from the department to get drinks on a Friday. That should have been my first red flag. I didn’t want to go because people smoked in the bars and I hated smoke (he smoked too, but that’s another story). I didn’t like bars in general. I also had social anxiety and depression, and had literally zero interest in going out after being in classes and around people all day. Instead of accepting my reasons, he would tell me that he didn’t want anyone to think he was controlling me and making me stay home.

I met his parents and he told me his life story and all the bad things he’d been through. He didn’t get along well with his parents and swore his mom was schizophrenic, and often told me what a bad idea it was for her to teach children (she was a teacher) because she was schizophrenic. He told me that his dad was an alcoholic and abusive before he died, although not in so many words, and I remember going to the cemetery with him multiple times to visit his father’s grave where he’d pour expensive liquor over the grave as a tribute to him. I never understood why he would do that to someone who had hurt him, and thought how wonderful it is that he’s so sensitive. He told me that as a child his mom had taken him to doctor after doctor (mostly psychiatrists) trying to find out what was wrong with him, and he often joked that he’d been on enough meds over the years that he had one for every letter of the alphabet. He said that his mother NEEDED something to be wrong with him and that’s why he was on all those meds. He also said that he’d been on antipsychotics as an adult but stopped taking them because he didn’t like what they did to him.

Sex was important to him, and so it became important to me. The relationship was shiny and new and I was desperate for affection and I remember feeling high on life at the time, like that feeling when you drive really fast or you’re on a rollercoaster or doing something else that makes lots of endorphins. He sometimes made it a game to see if we could have a quickie between classes. It isn’t something I was interested in myself, but I did it because he wanted to and I didn’t know how to say no. He would occasionally bring alcohol to my dorm room (I was over 21 at the time) and we’d get drunk and have sex. Eventually he started sleeping in my dorm at night during the week because he said he didn’t want to drive the 30 minutes back home when he just had to be back in the morning for class. It made sense to me at the time so I allowed it, despite it being a boundary I didn’t want to let him cross. As an introvert I needed time to recharge after being around people all day, and my mental health was wreaking havoc with my body, including horrible insomnia and panic attacks. I had this thing where if I could hear any noise outside of my dorm room after the sun went down, my anxiety would go through the roof and I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without taking extra meds to help me sleep (in addition to my regular sleep meds). During that time I experimented with all sorts of methods just so I could sleep at night – yoga, nightcaps of vodka, cough syrup, chamomile or valerian capsules, unisom, Tylenol PM, then benadryl when I realized it was the active ingredient in Tylenol PM and worked really well. On the nights he’d stay in my room I often had to take 4-6x the recommended dose of benadryl in addition to some alcohol just so I could sleep through his snoring. I remember being so drugged I felt like I might pass out, but still being unable to fall asleep and being up most of the night because of it. And still I couldn’t say I didn’t want him there, because he CARED about me.

Eventually even benadryl stopped working and my doctor put me on ambien, and now I recognize that as being the beginning of the end for me. You see, my doctor put me on the highest dose of ambien available at that time because she wanted to make sure I could sleep. And I quickly learned that ambien is not like benadryl or the other sleep aids I’d tried. You see, ambien causes amnesia that starts the moment you take the pill until the moment you wake up the next morning, makes you unsteady on your feet, removes all your normal inhibitions, makes you highly suggestible and honest, and most importantly makes you unable to consent to anything. When he found this out he used it against me and it took me months to figure it out. The longer I was on ambien, the more I’d recall bits and pieces of memories from when I’d taken it. He gave me a ring for Christmas or something one year and I remember that he waited until I was all drugged up on ambien, then showed me the ring and asked if it was something I liked, and then put it away until the holiday weeks later. He’d ask me questions about what I’d been doing to make sure it was an honest answer. I recall him escorting me to the bathroom more than once because I couldn’t walk straight (or stand up on my own well) on ambien. I recall hallucinating one night that there was a strange man in the room so I woke him up, but it was just a hallucination. I remember having sex on ambien and telling him, in my drugged state, that it was the best sex ever. And after that I remember that he’d wait until after I’d taken ambien and then initiate sex, after I’d told him no before taking ambien, because he knew I wouldn’t remember it. This went on for MONTHS before I finally was able to get off ambien, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time because he was my boyfriend, so of course if he wanted to have sex he was entitled to it even if I didn’t want to have it. Even if I was drunk or drugged and therefore unable to consent. Even if I was sober and didn’t want to have sex, we had sex. I remember laying on my dorm floor crying and being a lifeless doll because I was so depressed and experiencing serious psychomotor slowing (as a result of said depression), and him trying to have sex with me anyway and getting frustrated when I didn’t respond to him, saying that it wasn’t fun for him. Sometimes he’d try to finish anyway and then go elsewhere, and I’d just lay there and cry because I hadn’t wanted to have sex, felt like shit, and according to him that wasn’t a good enough reason to deny him. The depression would come and go, but increasingly I DID NOT want to have sex even when not depressed and it happened anyway.

He proposed and I said yes, mostly because I felt it was the right thing to do (because after all, he said he loved me) and my only option (because who else would ever love me?). He decided that since I wanted to go to grad school that he would too. I wanted to try for Washington University in St. Louis as I really liked the program there, but he was a year ahead of me and got accepted at the University of Iowa, so that’s where I had to go too. He framed it like this: I would follow him for my master’s, and then he’d follow me for my PhD. In reality, I wasn’t really given a choice. He moved to Iowa and I stayed in South Dakota to finish my bachelor’s degree. While in Iowa, he tore his ACL and had to have surgery to repair it. I drove down over Thanksgiving break to take care of him after surgery, and he told me that he wanted me to move to Iowa and finish my degree down there so I could help take care of him until he was better. He said I could finish my classes at a community college and transfer the credits back to my undergrad institute, so my degree would technically be from a major public university.

I said no, and he didn’t like it. He badgered me for months about it and it didn’t matter how valid my reasons were, I was a bad girlfriend for not picking up my life when he wanted and moving to another state at his whim, because taking care of him was more important than my education. I was well-established and flourishing in two departments. I was actively conducting research with a professor in one department. I had won awards from the other department. I didn’t want to attend a community college because it didn’t make sense to finish my final semester at a community college when I could just finish where I was at. I DIDN’T WANT TO GO and that wasn’t a good enough reason for him, and he accused my family and friends of manipulating me so I would stay in South Dakota until graduation.

I applied for admission to the graduate program at the University of Iowa and was accepted, and that placated him for a while because he knew I’d be moving out there with him soon. Right after graduation he wanted to get our living situation settled. He’d been renting an apartment in a beautiful old building in a suburb of Iowa City, but the building hadn’t been properly cared for over the years so it was a real piece of shit on the inside with the potential to be nice if properly renovated. He really loved living there and knew it wasn’t up to my standards so promised he’d renovate it and fix it up so I’d be comfortable living there. I’d have my own bedroom (a boundary I refused to bend after my dorm room because of my chronic sleep problems) and my own space to work. It had original hardwood floors and was in what he called a “quiet” location as it was above an antique shop, except that there was a bar downstairs and you could hear the music in the bathroom – a major trigger for my anxiety. Best of all, rent for this gigantic apartment was only like $300 a month so it was very affordable, and he didn’t mind the daily commute (I did) or the state it was in.

It was a great plan, but it was made before he tore his ACL. And of course being injured, the apartment never got fixed up. The floors got sanded and re-stained, but that was it. The bathroom, which was a glorified closet that needed a new sink and bathtub at a minimum, never got fixed. Parts of the ceiling were falling down in my “new bedroom”. None of the windows were sealed properly and it got really fucking cold. The carpeting in the two rooms with carpet needed replacing due to my allergies. The kitchen needed some serious TLC. And none of these things happened. I understood, because DUH you just had surgery, but whenever I talked to him about maybe living somewhere else he’d get super defensive and say it wasn’t his fault that the apartment didn’t get fixed up. Okay, whatever, it didn’t get fixed up, you don’t want to pay someone else to do it, and I refused to live there based purely on health concerns for me. He threw a fit about that and it took a lot of unproductive conversation before he agreed to live elsewhere. We found a nice little house within reasonable distance from campus with a fenced yard as I wanted to bring my dog with (which also wouldn’t have worked at that apartment). We signed the lease and moved in. I wanted separate living spaces as he had cats (which I’m very allergic to) so he agreed to take the basement and I’d have the main floor, and we’d share the common areas. I thought everything would be fine, just as it had been “fine” up until then.

That’s when the real nightmare started.

He struggled with anger issues but had never really directed it at me. Sure, he’d been unhappy and resentful that I hadn’t moved out there right away when he wanted, and he’d been unhappy that I wasn’t willing to live with him in a literal shit hole, but he hadn’t been ANGRY at me. I’d seen him yell at his mom before, or get really upset with someone in customer service, or complain loudly about people for apparent slights against him, but he hadn’t been angry at ME.

It started slowly. Sometimes it was because I said something innocuous, or because I did or didn’t do something. Sometimes it was because I didn’t do the dishes right. Sometimes it was because he was upset about something else and I just happened to be there. Sometimes he accused me of sleeping around when I didn’t want to have sex, because I had zero sex drive at that point so obviously I was getting it somewhere else. Sometimes it was something my dog Snowflake did, like having an accident in the house. Most of the time I have NO FUCKING IDEA what set him off.

He’d yell at me. He’d stand six inches from my hear and SCREAM at me so loud I’m sure the neighbors must have heard, but no one ever said anything. He scared my dog with his behavior so much that she’d run and hide when he got angry. He occasionally threw things in my direction. I remember one night he threw a bottle of red Gatorade across the room that shattered and spilled all over the floor, furniture, and part of the wall. He told me it was my fault and I had to clean it up. One time I was on the phone with my sister in my bedroom, and he came in and told me how useless and WORTHLESS I was. It was the first time he’d ever said that and I didn’t know why, except that I must have done something wrong. Eventually he called me worthless on the regular, but he also praised me regularly about how smart I was and how helpful I was and how beautiful I was. I never believed his words about me being smart or otherwise because his words never felt genuine, even though I knew I wasn’t a complete idiot. There was at least one class in grad school we took together and the only reason he got a passing grade is because I helped him with absolutely everything because he didn’t understand it. He started blaming me for everything that went wrong, or blaming someone else. For example, he was in grad school to become a geochemist. He didn’t agree with the grad school model, where you take some classes but mostly teach yourself what you need to know with the help of your advisor. So when OUR advisor (she was mine too) would assign papers to him and he didn’t understand them, he’d complain about how they expected him to be a geochemist without TEACHING HIM how to be one. Or when she would ask him to do XYZ and he didn’t have the skills yet to do it (because this was a TEACHING EXERCISE so he could learn said skills) he’d blame his inability to learn or do the task on our advisor because she wasn’t teaching him adequately. He was never the one to blame and never took responsibility for anything.

That semester was absolute hell. I was in class all day, and would come home to yelling and screaming and throwing things and being told how worthless I was because I didn’t do something his way, or I didn’t read his mind fast enough, or whatever his “reason” was for punishing me. Everything was my fault. Nothing I ever said or did was good enough, and he made sure I knew that at home. In public though he was a complete gentleman. He would tell people how smart I was and that I was his “better half” and the one who helped him succeed. He would buy me things all the time and want to take me out for dinner and do nice things. When it would storm he’d go with me to park my car in a ramp for the night so it wouldn’t get hail damage even if it was really late (sounds lame, but my car was really important to me). He even was “nice” and made sure that when we went somewhere it was in his piece of crap Honda Accord so mine wouldn’t rack up miles. Sometimes he’d make comments about my body in public, and at home he told me multiple times that I needed to work on my posture because I didn’t stand up straight enough, or “are you really wearing that?”. Sometimes he would make inappropriate sexual comments that he knew made me uncomfortable because I’d told him so. He wanted me to go out with him and his friends (some of whom were also mine) to drink, and again would get upset with me if I didn’t want to go out, because he didn’t want to be seen as “controlling” me, even though that’s exactly what he was doing.

But it wasn’t just the anger and the inappropriate comments. He gaslighted me, hardcore. He would say we had discussed something when I had ZERO memory of it happening. I would tell him that and he’d say I was crazy or remembered it wrong or invoke the memory problems he knew I had from meds. Or he would recount a mutual memory differently than I recalled. He would say he’d done something when he hadn’t, or that he hadn’t done something when he had. He knew I had some memory problems due to a med I’d been on in undergrad, and he used that against me, even when I told him my memory of XYZ was crystal clear. He made me doubt my own memory and my own sanity, because I trusted him, so if he said something was true, it must be true and I must be wrong. Sometimes it was obvious that he was just trying to get his way about something he was wrong about, but most of the time I don’t know why he did it, and it was those times that he was the most believable because why would he say those things if they weren’t actually true? I must have heard or remembered or saw wrong.

I quickly learned that his sex drive was high as ever after the move, and he was never satisfied enough. I didn’t want to have sex but he badgered or guilted me into it multiple times a week. Eventually I learned that if I just shut up and put up with it, it would be over that much faster than if I protested. Sometimes he’d make me stand there naked for an hour while he got himself off and I’d be shivering because I was freezing but he didn’t care. Sometimes he was rough when I asked him not to be because it really hurt. He really enjoyed leaving marks, because that meant I was “his,” and he often asked me to tell him I belonged to him. Sometimes he’d wake me up at night while I was trying to sleep (when he was fully aware of my sleep problems), sometimes it happened first thing in the morning when I woke up (which he knew I hated), sometimes it happened when I was in the middle of doing something important but it was never more important than sex. Whenever I said no he would make it a point to “change my mind” through whatever means necessary so I’d say yes. And then afterward he would tell me how glad I was that I’d said yes, because I always seemed to enjoy it even though I said no at the beginning. In reality, I pretended to enjoy it so it would be over faster and I could get back to what I was doing. It never dawned on me that what he was doing was wrong; at worst it was just another annoying thing I had to deal with.

Eventually it escalated beyond the verbal and emotional abuse and the gaslighting, beyond just screaming at me, beyond just throwing things in my direction, beyond throwing things at my dog, beyond convincing me how worthless I was, beyond pressuring me into sex all the time and taking advantage of me when I couldn’t consent. All those times he was angry, or upset, but I never thought he would actually physically HURT ME (nevermind that he’d been doing that all along, because that wasn’t “real” abuse). Nevermind that multiple times he’d gripped my arm or other body part so tightly that it left bruises that took forever to fade, that I had to strategically hide with my clothing. Right before I went home for Christmas break I was getting ready for bed and brushing my teeth in the bathroom. He came in pissed as hell, yelling at me for some reason I don’t recall. He left the bathroom, I tried to follow him, and then he backed me up against the bathroom door where I didn’t have anywhere to go. He screamed in my face (I still remember his wild eyes and hot breath on my face and the ringing in my ears and how I thought I was going to piss myself) and then pulled his fist back for a punch. I remember closing my eyes and waiting for the pain, but instead I felt a whoosh and heard a loud thud next to my ear. He had wanted to punch me, but had hit the door right next to my face instead. He screamed at me some more and left, and I went to bed feeling completely broken and worthless and wondering what I’d done to make him so angry.

I told a few of my close friends what happened and they helped me, at a time when I believed I was utterly worthless and unworthy of help or respect or anything else. My best friend told my advisor what was going on, and they both turned all mother hen and moved my office on campus FOR ME because my old office had been literally steps away from his. When I got back they helped me sneak back into my OWN house at the end of Christmas break to remove a few important and valuable things. I hadn’t told him I was coming back, so he came upstairs with some object in hand ready to face a burglar. Instead, my friends kept moving out the important things and my sister sat with me in me living room while I told him it was over. There was no yelling or screaming, but I had strategically made sure people would be around for that reason. Because he rarely ever yelled in front of other people, and I don’t think he had ever berated me in front of others. He insisted on getting the engagement ring back, which I didn’t like, but I gave it to him. Then we left.

I don’t remember a whole lot from the first few weeks after that, except that he wanted to negotiate so we could still live together – he’d have the basement and I’d have the main floor. To save on expenses, or so he said. After a few weeks I told him it wasn’t going to work and he moved out, back into that shitty apartment. Some of his friends who helped him pack up and move apologized to me for what I’d presumably been through, and that’s when I found out I wasn’t the first person he’d done this to. I didn’t get details, but it was clear that this had happened before. I only know that he’d been engaged once or twice before, and that at the beginning he’d told me all his exes were “crazy,” whatever that meant. I’d brushed it off because the guy in front of me seemed intelligent and sane, so maybe they were all crazy like he said.

He kept in contact with me after he moved out. His “parting gift” was fleas from one of his cats, that he claimed came from my dog (who was frontlined, so no) or somehow came from the house itself (probably not dude). I was newly single and emotionally unable to handle it all alone, as it was the first time in my life that my OCD had been triggered (I hadn’t known then that I had OCD), so stupid me asked him for help. He, of course, was very willing to help me handle the situation, and let me stay overnight at his house one night when my anxiety couldn’t handle the house anymore, and wanted to help pay for an exterminator to come out. He’d isolated me from my friends by making me feel worthless and undeserving, and even though I knew I could count on them, he’d made me believe I could only count on him, that he was the only one there I could ask for help since my family was six hours away, that my friends didn’t really care about me.

The fleas got taken care of and I cut contact with him again, but he kept trying to contact me. He’d text me to let me know storms were coming and to make sure I took my car to the parking ramp (the house had no covered parking). He’d text me to let me know when the parking ramp I preferred to use was full, of course always before I got to campus to teach my classes (and I never told him when they were). He showed up at the house a few times after giving me his keys. Once was to tell me HE was willing to take ME back if I’d only apologize to him. Another time was to apologize to me for something. Another time I heard him pulling up and made sure the doors were locked, the curtains were drawn, and I hid in the shower for what felt like an eternity until I heard his car leave. Another time was to warn me that there were some bad people after him and he was concerned about me. That the utilities had all been in his name and these bad people could look up that information online, and he was worried they’d show up at the house and hurt me, and could he come over and watch over me to make sure nothing bad happened. I actually called the police that time to ask what I should do, and all I was told is that if he’d physically harmed me I could file for a restraining order, but that’s all they could do. They couldn’t do anything about him calling or texting me or showing up at the house uninvited. He sent me messages on facebook saying all sorts of nasty things about me – about how worthless I was, how I’d never be loved by someone again because I didn’t deserve to be loved, that no one else but him could love me because I’m so difficult to love, how he was the best thing that had ever happened to me and I’d tossed him away like trash, how I was such a bitch for dumping him. Sometimes he’d run into me at the department and give me this really intense look. Sometimes I was told he was looking for me and so I’d hide in my office with the door locked and phone on silent. At one point a mutual acquaintance told me in passing that he had showed up to campus at some point after the breakup with a gun in his car, which I reported to the department right away after having a bad panic attack, and the person who told me never spoke to me again because he was friends with my ex and didn’t think it was a big deal for him to have a fucking GUN IN HIS CAR ON CAMPUS. Months after I had moved out of that house and into a nice apartment across town I got a text message saying he was worried because he’d heard sirens and seen flashing lights heading down the road toward my apartment complex. I NEVER TOLD HIM WHERE I MOVED TO, and I made sure my address was not available to anyone in the department except my advisor, the secretary who maintained the list for the department, and made sure no contact information other than my email was available through the university’s directory. No one who knew where I had moved to (a short list) would have told him either. I now realize he was stalking me.

Eventually he graduated, but not after being dropped by our advisor and filing official complaints against her and another professor in the department who he felt had treated him “unfairly” because he was smart and deserved good grades even if he didn’t put in the work or understand the material. He got handed to the department chair and somehow wrote a thesis with him and graduated. I found out that even though his thesis defense was supposed to be public, he had to have a “secret” defense because he thought I would show up to his defense and try to sabotage him. I saw him again while I was standing at an intersection and he was driving in his car with another girl. He gave me a nasty look when he saw me and I quickly hurried to my destination and hoped he had lost interest in me because the text messages and facebook messages had finally stopped but I was still afraid of him and that he’d follow me. I ran into him one last time a few years ago when I was inline skating at a nice outdoor track, and he was walking on the paved path I was skating on. As soon as I recognized him I went straight to my car and got the fuck out of there, and remember being confused because his car wasn’t there, but his mom’s WAS. Found out later that he was now driving his mom’s car, so that was something else I had to look out for because he was still living in town. I avoided that park (which I loved, as it reminded me of home) for almost a whole year because I was so afraid I’d see him again. I was only able to relax when I found out that he’d moved to another state, so I hopefully wouldn’t see him ever again.

There were so many red flags, but like Chloe Dykstra said, you don’t see them. Or if you do, you rationalize them away as something else. When you look at red flags through rose-colored glasses, they’re just flags. He told me all his exes were crazy. He was overly concerned about how other people perceived our relationship. He was so brilliant and smart and funny and everything bad that happened happened to HIM, and those things were never his fault. It was always someone else’s fault or a result of bad circumstances. Nothing was ever his fault and he never took responsibility for anything. He pressured me into doing things I didn’t want to do by downplaying my (legitimate) concerns, and then making me feel bad when I didn’t agree with him. He tried to force me to move against my will. He successfully sexually assaulted me regularly, something I didn’t even realize until YEARS afterward. He yelled and screamed at me on a regular basis. He threw things at me. HE TRIED TO FUCKING PUNCH ME. And it wasn’t until he tried to punch me that I was able to do something about it.

This happened years ago. Recently facebook told me that we got engaged eight years ago in that facebook memories thing it does that I wish it wouldn’t do. I broke up with him after my first semester in grad school, which would have been six and a half years ago. I’m STILL recovering from the shit that asshole did to me. He abused me mentally and physically in ways that still haunt me. I don’t trust my memory as much as I should, and tend to believe other people’s recollections over my own. I have nightmares about what he did and what he said. I have unhealthy expectations of myself because nothing I ever did was good enough, and I always fall short of those unrealistic expectations. I am afraid to be around groups of men, and panic when I’m around redheads with beards (because that’s what he looked like). I legitimately cannot find redheaded men attractive anymore. I intentionally will not listen to Ed Sheeran because of what he looks like and if I see his picture show up on the internet I have to quickly scroll past because of my anxiety. I don’t like cats or find them cute anymore, because he had cats and convinced me that my allergies and health concerns were less valid than his preferences. The incident with the fleas triggered my OCD and since then I’ve struggled every single day with hardcore contamination and bug anxiety. I have to wash my hands after every time I’ve been outside, even in my own yard, or after touching something I perceive as “contaminated”. Often I have to actually shower and scrub my body clean to get rid of the contamination I don’t like petting dogs other than my own because I don’t know their frontline history and am afraid I’ll carry something to my home from them. If I see a bug inside my house (which is common, I know) I have to clean AT LEAST my bedroom (used to be my whole apartment or house) until it is spotless and check my bed repeatedly for bugs. I’ve had depression and anxiety since childhood, but that asshole caused a new feature of my depression. When I’m severely depressed, my brain now tells me how worthless I am. I’d had episodes of major depression before that asshole came along and had never experienced that. Now, I hear a voice in my head every day telling me I’m worthless and useless and unlovable and undeserving of kindness or affection. At my lowest, that voice is the one that has compelled me to try to kill myself. Not the regular depression-y things my brain tells me, but specifically because I’m useless and worthless and undeserving of even basic human rights or affection. I have trouble with intimacy and struggle with boundaries. I still struggle with chronic insomnia and an entire class of possible medication I could take to help alleviate it (hypnotics like ambien) is unsafe for me to take because of what he did to me on ambien and my fear that it could happen again, even though I know I’m safe. Seeing a white, late-model Honda Accord triggers severe anxiety and I have to check the roof (his had a huge dent in it) to make sure it isn’t his before I can calm down a bit and quickly speed past the car. Seeing a newer champagne-colored Accord triggers my anxiety because that’s what he drives now, as far as I know. Seeing these vehicles causes me anxiety EVEN THOUGH I know he’s living several states away, but what if he has come back to visit? I don’t want to have long hair ever again because he used to grab onto it. I miss it, but keep it short because my long hair reminds me of HIM. I had an important internship years ago where I was able to work on a super exciting scientific project and got to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (HELLO THAT WAS ONE OF MY DREAMS), and I can’t even look at the work I did or think about it without it feeling dirty or contaminated because he ALSO had an internship with me at the time. Even though working at JPL was my dream for YEARS. It took me years to not associate his name with JPL whenever I heard it because he was there with me. I struggle with feeling attracted to other people, and attractive in general, and for the most part just cannot find people very attractive anymore. I worry that people in future relationships will turn abusive and am hypervigilant about “red flags” now, but still ignore them when I see them. I am unable to have a normal sexual relationship with a partner, even after years in therapy. For the most part I am unable to get angry now unless I’ve been seriously provoked; the exception is irritability caused by my depression or meds or withdrawal from meds, but that’s not the same as being angry. I cannot get genuinely MAD about something 99.5% of the time and at one point was told by an unhelpful doctor that there must be something seriously wrong with me if I can’t get mad about anything, which set back my recovery a long time.

This is just SOME of the shit I live with now BECAUSE OF HIM and his abuse. Meanwhile, he’s living happily in another state with a job that utilizes his degree, presumably with a girlfriend, presumably telling her how crazy I am, presumably treating her the same way he treated me and all the others. He gets to live happily while I live with the trauma and its effects. How fair is that? I don’t even have any legal options because the statute of limitations expired before I was able to talk about it with someone other than my therapist. Also, he never actually hit me, so of course that’s not REAL abuse and I can’t press charges unless he actually hit me. At least, that’s what I was told by law enforcement the one time I looked into it. I am now disabled at 30 years old from my mental health, and his abuse is a huge contributing factor to its severity and longevity. And he’s gets to go through life with no repercussions, as though I’m just another bug on his proverbial windshield.

It’s a funny thing. In a moment when I was feeling really hurt after the breakup, I told him that I’d have to be in therapy for years after what he’d done to me. At the time it was just something I said to try and hurt him like he’d hurt me. In reality? I’ve been in therapy non-stop since then. I’ve gotten a bit better about some things, and my therapist has helped me understand that many of the things that he did that I thought were normal are not okay, but there are some effects of his abuse that I will never be free of. Most of the time I try to accept it and move on because the past isn’t going to change, but sometimes I’m able to get angry about it, usually when I’m in remission from severe major depression. Those are the times I’m able to heal a bit and feel normal. Because who wouldn’t be angry at a person who abused them and sexually assaulted them for years? But then I inevitably head into another episode of major depression, and I have to convince myself that I don’t deserve what he did to me.

 

My life is really fucked up from my abuse, and I hope that Chloe Dykstra looks out for herself and her mental health and is able to find some healing, because FUCK THAT ASSHOLE and all the other abusive assholes out there. I’m glad her abuser is being punished, by being outed and having his name dragged through the mud. I wish my abuser could be punished, but he won’t be. Instead, we are the ones who will live with the punishment. Because with the after effects of trauma it certainly feels like we are the ones being punished for it.