He had a hold on me from the beginning. When I looked into his eyes I realized that I wanted to be with him. Little did I know who he was inside, broken, abused fragmented. He was someone who needed to be taken care of. But he didn’t ask me to take care of him instead he hurt me over and over again. Calling me names, worthless, unlovable. He told me that nobody would ever love me except for him. I was in prison; his prison.

How could I escape the handcuffs that he put with me? I didn’t want to call it abuse because I loved him. And that love is still there no matter what happened between us. You can’t blame people for their past. But you can’t hold them accountable for what they do and how they treat you. It was my choice to stay for eight years. It was my choice to let him treat me the way that he did. Because I was brainwashed, I was not aware of my self-worth, and he beat me down verbally and emotionally.
I couldn’t even say the word PTSD for the longest time. I didn’t want to believe that what I went through with trauma. But it was. It was traumatic and I am in touch with the fact that I need to heal.
I’ve talked with other survivors and our stories overlap; they are so similar. And just because you love somebody that’s bad for you doesn’t mean that you are a bad person. It doesn’t mean that they are a bad person either.  It means that they are broken and taking out their brokenness on you. It is a human being’s choice as to whether they work on themselves or take out their pain on others. I realize now that that’s what he was doing; he did not know how to manage his pain and his own abuse and so he gave it to me.
But now I am free and I am going to heal. Now I am more of the person I want to be and less of who he wanted me to be. I am me.
Emotional and verbal abuse is extremely real. It’s something that survivors experience and can heal from. If you are experiencing emotional and verbal abuse there are organizations that help you. Safe Horizon is a great one as well a RAINN.