30 Days of Truth - Day 8

Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.

Have you ever had someone in your life that was simply toxic? A relative? Friend? Co-worker? I have been lucky to only have roughly two people who were truly “toxic” to my life. It took me way too long to figure out that I needed to separate myself from them, but eventually I did it.

The person I’ll mention today is an ex-boyfriend that I had and thought I loved…But, after years of looking back and analyzing, I’ve since realized I was in the relationship for other reasons. I am always the “fixer” when it comes to other people’s problems – hence, the career as a therapist! Boy, did he need fixing!
Things started off innocently enough. I should have known that something was funky when he told me he loved me on our second date! I was 16, what did I know? Obviously nothing!

Well, as time went on, I began to spend every waking moment with him. He would pick me up from school in the morning, bring me home from school in the afternoon and hang out with me, spend all my weekends together…I saw less and less of my family and friends. I began to get uncomfortable with this and was getting a ton of grief from people. So, I decided to say something…suggest that I go to the movies with my girlfriends, spend time with my mother…needless to say, it didn’t go over very well…I won’t get into the dirty details, but he began to insinuate that he would harm himself if I ever left him. He made me feel guilty from then on whenever I tried to be my own person.

Senior year came and it was time to apply to college. I wanted to apply to a variety of school for “Communications” in the hopes I would land a career someday as a journalist/television news reporter….ahhh…yeah…that didn’t go over very well either because that would mean traveling…so what did I do???

I changed my freakin’ major for him!!!!

Can you BELIEVE it???

I then proceeded to spend many weekends of my freshman year at UNH at home with him – and of course, my friends at school began to get angry…

It wasn’t until the Fall of my sophomore year that I began to get angry. He was still threatening to hurt himself. He was still saying, “No one will have you but me”. But, I didn’t feel guilty anymore. I was too angry to feel badly.

On the night I broke up with him, he was so upset, he put his arm through the car window. That’s the first instance when I could see the destruction he was capable of and it only confirmed that I was doing the right thing. My roommate and I drove him to the hospital, I called his parents, and waited for them to arrive. I then walked out of the ER and out of his life.

I wish I could say that this was the last time that I saw him, but the stalking began about a month later. I received dead-air phone calls about five or six times a day. I called the phone company and then told me they placed a tracer on my phone, but I came to find out that they hadn’t really.

I met my husband during this time. He ended up having to drive to my ex’s house to “explain things to him”. The phone calls then stopped, thank God!!! I was able to move on with my life.

It was a year or so later that I was talking to my girlfriend from home who heard that my ex was driving up to UNH on the weekends and staying at a friend’s house that was DIRECTLY NEXT TO MY SORORITY HOUSE AND WHOSE BEDROOM COULD SEE MINE FROM THEIRS!!!! He was watching me answer the phone…I still get goosebumps when I think about it.

While in my senior year of college, I began interning for a domestic violence organization in Portsmouth, NH. I began working with women and children and spending time in the shelter with women who had fled with nothing. I listened to their stories and realized how lucky I was that I had left my relationship relatively easily.
So, my ex made my life a living hell for a time, but I’m not sure I would change it. I am a better person for it. I understand other women better because of it and it has certainly helped me in working with children.

Thank you once again for listening….:)