Year One

by DP
(VA)

How it started

Writing this story is one of my first steps to healing. I've read multiple times that living in an abuser's world distorts your reality to their reality so I guess this is my attempt to figure out what happened over the past four years.

My ex-boyfriend and I started dating our Sophomore year of high school. He had become a good friend and we were constantly texting. One thing led to another and we began to date. After a brief 6 months though we broke up.The break up was confusing, messy and complicated. After fighting for a few months during the summer going into Junior year- he blocked my number and completely cut me off. I was devastated but accepted the reality that I lost my best friend and first love. A few weeks later I had put a brave face on despite my heartbreak and continued on with my high school life. He ended up being in one of my classes, but we did not speak or even look at each other. After the first quarter of our Junior year my ex ended up dropping out of high school and pursuing a GED. I remember walking into the class we had together late that day because I was with my dad at the DMV. I was shocked when I heard and felt really sad for him.

Fast forward two years later... when my senior year was coming to an end. I was at the height of senior bliss... I spent my spring break in Paris, got into MSU, and had an incredible prom. Life was really good. One night out of the blue I got a text from no other than my ex. He said, "Who is this?" I immediately responded with a snarky response and asked who he was (although I knew). We ended up texting on and off for a couple days, both refusing to acknowledge that we knew who each other was. Right there and then I should have stopped myself. But I was curious and never had proper closure the first time we had broken up.

Next thing I knew we decided to hang out. Then we began to hang out all the time and got back into the same pattern as before. I thought to myself this is too good to be true. And it was. The real story starts here:

Year One:

We didn't start officially going out until my second semester of college. He surprised me with a hotel room when I came back home for Spring break. Towards the end of the week of my break he told me he always knew we would get back together. That should have been my first warning sign because for about 6 months he gave me hell. I ended up wanting to make things official after the summer ended but he didn't want to. We fought and fought. He was cruel and gave me mixed signals. After we began officially dating again though things began to look up, since I was attending MSU and we were in a distance relationship we ended up planning a trip to Chicago together and looked forward to spending the summer together.

My parents and friends were very against us dating but eventually they let up their complaints. May rolled around quickly but painfully, and I went home to finally be with my boyfriend. It was a disaster. He ended up picking up two jobs while selling drugs on the side. I was horrified and disgusted. I couldn't believe that he would ever start selling drugs to make ends meet. Before he started he asked my permission and told me to give it a test run and that if I saw him changing or if I still really felt uncomfortable with the idea he would stop. Of course I told him a few weeks later I didn't feel comfortable at all but he continued.

To make things worst we began fighting all the time. I didn't feel like a priority at all and that's around the time he started being very cruel. One time when he had finally had a night free, he chose to go to the movies with his friend instead of me. He rubbed it in my face and told me I was unbearable to be around. Eventually the summer ended, and I had to go back to MSU. We left on bad terms. We had gotten into a horrible argument because when we first started hooking up the previous summer we both had an outbreak of herpes. He was the only guy I had ever been with but he denied ever being with anyone else. He still lies about it until this day. But being stupid, naive and young, I let it go after he swore for over a year that he had never been with anyone else, and I eventually began to believe him. I also eventually began to feed into his illusion that we didn't have it in the first place and the results must have been a mistake.

Year Two

To be continued....