A
female
age
26-29,
xTheAlmightyDuckx
writes:Okay... Well basically I have recently come out of an abusive relationship and I have had a lot of time to sit and reflect on my relationship as a whole, and I have decided I want to share my story of domestic abuse, as an attempt to both educate those who don't understand it, and to help others who may be in a similar relationship. I am writing this to mainly help the younger men and women as the number of teenagers who are being subjected to domestic abuse is astounding, and the number of teenagers who don't actually realize it, is even more astounding. I want to write my whole relationship from start to finish, I want people to know how it feels to be in a relationship like that and I want to try help others to know the signs of an abusive relationship so they can both avoid it and seek the right kind of help if they need to. This series of articles is going to be in-depth and will include a great amount of detail. This story is very personal with me and I have decided to share it simply to help those who feel like they are stuck. This of course can relate to both men and women but this is going to be written from a female's point of view. Also, these articles are going to be very long and I hope to release one a week if I can :) It's going to take a few months to finish and if you ever want to find the next article simply click on my page to read them from the beginning. Anyway, on with article number one. I'll give you all a big of a back story first. Also for safety reasons, all names in these articles will be changed. I am an 18 year old girl who lives in England, I live in a small coastal town and have done all my life. In this lovely little town everyone knows everyone's business, and the poverty here is getting worse each year. There isn't much to do here, which means that criminal activity and drug use is at an all time high. I myself have always stood out. I have always struggled to fit in and I have always been blessed with the gift of intelligence, which in this society isn't always understood when you're young. Since the age of 13 I have had extremely bad mental health issues, I was house bound for a year that resulted in me missing a year of school. I had a severe anxiety disorder and depression for years, and at the age of 16 it slowly developed in to Bipolar disorder which is still a hell to live with. Also, due to my Bipolar, sometimes my judgements are not always what they would normally be, and sometimes my own thoughts are irrational without me even knowing so.. which is probably why the relationship I entered into was not a good idea. I was cut off at the age of sixteen, I found it hard to make friends and I had just managed to sort my mental health out enough to gain the courage to go back to high school for my last two years.... so you can imagine the thrill I had when I met my first ever boyfriend...I will refer to him as Jack. He was a lovely boy, and I was very shy and timid. He was very interested in me and wasn't long before I entered into my first ever relationship. I lost my virginity to him and for the first month or so everything was lovely. He gave me butterflies and I knew I adored him. However... he had very bad family problems, and it wasn't long before he ended up relying on my family for support, which we happily gave him. We dealt with social workers, his mother, and done everything we could... but it wasn't long until other hidden traits of his started to appear. He became selfish and turned into a liar, every chance he had he blew it, and eventually every week just spelled trouble. He eventually got kicked out of his home and we housed him for a week. After that he went into the hostel system, which was both nasty and dangerous... we supported him through that too. He also introduced me to a group of friends of his who were simply no good... all of them were at least one year older, and when I eventually left him after he kissed another girl at a party and we have a physical fight, they all smelled weakness and it didn't take long until they started saying just the right things to get me to do what they wanted, one of these boys was also Jack's cousin. They would all tell me they loved me, and I was far too naive to see that was not true, they all wanted one thing and I did end up giving it to them. Me and Jack then got back together for less than a month before breaking up again... and we broke up because he ended up choosing drugs instead of me. When I was finally deadly serious about ending this relationship.. things took a violent turn. He started to harass me, make threats against me and my family, he would turn up at my house in the dead of night and one time he even bought weapons. Even on the night my Aunt passed away due to cancer, he still insisted on calling me names and harassing me on social media. During this time I also got with another boy, less than a month after me and Jack broke up.. this boy was also a weasel in the nasty ring of friends Jack had introduced me too, who smelt vulnerability and pounced.. he of course made out he loved me and cared, and I was too young and naive to see he didn't. However due to this poor choice of men I had no time to get over Jack, as I simply jumped into a relationship straight afterwards.. partly because I was afraid of being alone and partly because it helped me stop thinking about Jack... almost five months after me and Jack broke up.. he ended up assaulting me in town.. I attempted to help my friend who he was beating up and in the process he punched me in the face.. for me it was the final straw, he ended up on conditional bail and I ended up having a burning rage inside of me which could never be tamed when it came to him. After that, I never thought I would get back with him, not after he had treated me so badly and some of the things he did. I saw no reason at all to continue loving him, and the part of me that did love him was filled with hate. I told everyone what he did, and when I was encouraged to hack his facebook by his ex-bestfriends I had no problem in doing so, and when I saw the conversations he had been having with younger girls, my hate for him was fuelled even more. I spent 3 years with nothing but resentment for him. I thought it was healthy to be eternally hateful towards him, but little did I know it was killing me from the inside out. Being hateful towards him done nothing for me apart from hinder me from moving forwards. The more I focused on him, the more I was taking away from myself. I had no time to get over him, I jumped into a new relationship straight away which ended by this guy cheating on me with seven different women, which only added to the pain I was feeling. However, everytime Jack would contact me, I would always rise to it like a fool, and everytime I made progress he would just set me back. Jack would contact me every couple of months, either by phone or social media. Even if I had him block he would get people to tell me to unblock him, and whenever he called I would always end up talking to him, partly because I was intrigued as to what he wanted to say, and there was an opportunity to be hateful towards him, as he had done to me, however this simply let him know he had some kind of control over me, as everytime he called I responded. Eventually Jack contacting me became a routine, it became something that just happened, and something I just got used to.. I always thought the reason I never managed to let him go was because I always knew he would end up coming back. The only time this changed however was when he met his new longterm girlfriend, I will call her Amy. He had, had many girlfriends since we broke up, and none of them ever stayed, which gave me satisfaction as I knew this meant he hadn't changed. However for some reason this one was different, for the first time for years, when I saw him with her one day in town, he looked happy, and he looked like a completely changed man. At first I was filled with happiness, I was happy for him and happy to know I might now be free from him contacting me every few months, but it wasn't long until the loneliness and doubts set in. I felt awful, I felt stupid. There he was looking happy and changed, and there I was, still dealing with the same issues I had years ago and completely alone. It done my head in, I felt like I was being punished. I hadn't dated or even spoke to another man in a flirtatious way since the ex who cheated one me, and I started feeling like nobody wanted me. I felt like the one person who had pursued me for years and had begged me for another chance was now gone, and I simply didn't listen to his pleas about being a changed man. This new girl was going to get all the good bits, all the good bits I had yearned and tried for over the years, and I immediately thought the reason he hadn't changed for me was because there was something wrong with me, and it was probably because of my looks. It destroyed me inside, and when I started looking on his facebook and seeing him proclaiming his love and doing things me and him had always wanted to, with her, it sent me spiralling downwards into depression. As the months went on, I sunk deeper and deeper into depression. I would often think of what "could of been" when it came to me and him, and it only made me feel worse. My self esteem had all but gone, and I had accepted I didn't deserve love, and no one would ever want me, not now and not ever. I became constantly miserable and the loneliness just got worse.. I had joined a college where I knew no one, and I had failed to make any longterm friends.. all my other friends were in employment or also busy with college, so I wasn't seeing them as often as I usually would. I wished I was dead, and when it all got to much and I dropped out of college, I felt both unloved and a failure. It was early January, I was just recovering from having a major breakdown. I was sat with my bestfriend of 14 years, I will call him Harry, when he got a message from Jack asking for me to unblock me, he said he had something important he needed to talk about. My heart jumped, because I had wanted nothing more than to talk to him for a long time. Despite Harry's advice that Jack could say one mean thing that would send me spiralling downwards into another pool of depression, I went ahead and unblocked him. I was filled with anxiety as to what could be so important that he needed to say and what had changed all of a sudden. I messaged him saying "what is it?" to which he replied, "Heya, how are you? :) x"... this was what Jack always did. Make out there was something urgent he needed to say, when in reality all he wanted was to "check up on me" I knew immediately after that how things were going to go. He just wanted a response from me, and as I would always give him one, it would let him know he had the control. My first thought was about his girlfriend. Despite my feelings, I have never been the sort of girl to chat up or take someone who wasn't mine, and I never will be, so my first question was of course. "Why are you talking to me? Your girlfriend won't be happy your speaking to your ex", it was then he revealed they had broken up around about a week ago. When I heard this, I was filled with all kinds of emotions, part of me was happy, simply because I knew this meant he couldn't of changed that much for another longterm girlfriend to leave, I was also secretly happy that despite breaking up with his girlfriend who I considered to be more attractive, thinner etc. That he had still come back to me, but at the end of the day I was still filled with caution and negativity. This was Jack, and as soon as something didn't go his way, he would turn nasty at the drop of a hat. Also him and his girlfiriend had only been broken up for a week.. he could go back to her at any moment, and during this first conversation I even suggest he talk to her if he was feeling lonely. I knew I was probably nothing more than a rebound, so I continued to answer his small talk as bluntly as I could. No kisses. No smiley faces and one word answers, I found this was a good way to get him to go away in the past, as regardless of how I felt,, I still didn't like him, I still hadn't forgiven him for the things he had done, so why did I have to talk to him like a friend? However.. I was still intrigued as to why he kept on coming back, I was still intrigued on to why he thought it was acceptable to keep contacting me after all that had happened, and at that time I had so many questions I needed answers too, and so many repressed emotions I had to get out.. as after all, half of these emotions had been put there because of him. So after a little bit of small talk, I put it straight to him. I asked him why he kept on coming back, I asked him why he thought it was acceptable to keep coming back, I asked him why he was so interested in me even though him and his girlfriend had broken up a week ago. He dodged my questions like he always did, said he was just checking up on me. I tried to say that maybe I didn't want to talk to him, and as per-usual he was completely oblivious as to why. With Jack, as soon as he decided to be nice, the same was expected back, regardless of what had happened in the past. I wasn't looking for fight, or an argument, but I had to get my feelings out. I had to tell him what him and his friends had done to me, so I did. For the first time in three years with out any anger or aggression I told him everything I had felt, during our relationship and afterwards. I told him how seeing him and his new girlfriend Amy in town had made me feel, and for once, a massive weight felt like it had been lifted. I even apologized for the anger I had shown towards him over the years, even though it was something I really should of not been sorry for. In my eyes, even though he had treated me like dirt during and after our relationship, when we had good times, they were perfect, and I hadn't felt that when it came to anyone else. I asked him if he still loved me, and I told him that if he wanted to salvage his last relationship, he shouldn't be talking to me as it would show he didn't love her much. This appeared to strike a nerve, as straight away he defended himself, saying I had no right to talk about it and of course he didn't love me. When he asked me the same question, I said a part of me always would, and that's when he changed his tune and said he did in fact love me. It felt weird him denying it and then changing his tune as soon as I confessed first.. I had no idea this would be the theme of our relationship for the next 5 months. I said I was done talking after that, and that's when he begged me not to block him and just talk as friends. As this conversation had gone a lot better than our previous ones and Facebook would not allow me to reblock him for another 48 hours, I figured I would chat time him until I could reblock him, after that I went to bed. However.. surprisingly he turned up about an hour later, knocked on the door and asked me for a hug... this was weird, very weird. And as my mum didn't even know I was speaking to him, I told him he needed to go, and that I didn't want to hug him. He came back a second time and tried to ask for a hug again, and even though I did want to hug him, I said to him seriously that he needed to leave. Which at that point he did. We talked after that on and off for around about 4 days, we talked about stuff that had been and past, made small talk, talked about jobs and college and what had happened in the last three years, and briefly about our previous relationship. I still remained blunt through out these conversations. If he tried to get me to open up or talk more about something, I simply would ignore it, same with any of the compliments he gave to me. During these chats, he was very very insistent on me meeting up with him, and I knew deep down in my heart that was an extremely stupid thing to do. When I said no, he would come up with other suggestions. Such as we met in public and I shouldn't be afraid of him. I said no everytime, and when that didn't work he would make offers of weed and alcohol, but still none of it worked. I spent a lot of time reflecting on us talking again.. and I was rather surprised he hadn't gone off his rocket yet and told me he hated me. I was actually very surprised that he was not having as many mood changes at normal... and I hated to admit it, but I was actually starting to enjoy our conversations. Despite not letting on to him I was. I knew deep down in my heart that I was madly in love with him, that I had never moved on and in a way I had convinced myself he had treated me right, even though I knew he actually hadn't. My best friend Harry was the only person who knew we were talking and at that moment in time I wanted to keep it like that, if my mum found out she would not be happy about it, and neither would my other friends as they had all been about during the times Jack had spat his venom at me. On the fifth day of us talking, he once again asked me to come see him, he said he had a nice room now.. he had been living in hostels since he was 15, and in the UK, hostels are not nice places. Sometimes you will be lucky to even get a decent bed, and normally the rooms are riddled with mold and the people who end up going into hostels rarely find there own two feet, because of the unfair system they are put in. Jack had never been good at looking after himself, when we were together previously his personal hygiene was awful, as was all his other habits. However a lot had changed, and part of me thought that maybe this could of changed too. I had to know for myself if he really had changed, he had preached it so much, and part of me thought that due to him pursuing me for 3 years, that maybe he genuinely did love me, maybe he was just trying to look out for me and maybe I had been wrong all along. I had to find out. So that's when I agreed to meet him, I discovered he only lived round the corner and I have always had a thing for thinking I was invincible so I had no concerns for my safety, but I knew I had to keep this a secret, as I knew deep deep down what I was doing was wrong, and everyone would see it that way. So.. that's when I got my shoes on and finally went to meet the man who I had hated for three years and all of it was for the sake of curiosity. *The continuing part of my story will be coming sometime next week, so please bare with me. If you want to see if any new articles have been put up. Please go to my page* Thank you all for reading the first article of my story.
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best friend, broke up, cousin, drugs, facebook, flirt, got back together, his ex, liar, lost my virginity, self esteem, shy, unloved, violent Reply to this Article
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female
reader, Abella  +, writes (19 July 2015):
 Thank you so very much Almighty Duck. That was indeed a very heavy burden put on your shoulders. as I came towards the end of the story I was saying in my head, NO, no, please don't visit the hostel. But I shall just have to be patient until the next instalment.
You have been through so much. Your strength comes through the words you've chosen to illustrate all that you have been through. I am so sorry that you have suffered so much.
The plus for you is your awesome empathy and kindness and your sincerity towards others.
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