Dark clouds and sunny days; overcoming dating abuse
By Caroline Burkhart // Staff Writer
One in three adolescents in the U.S. is a victim of physical, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner, a figure that far exceeds rates of any other types of youth violence. I am that statistic. I am one of those three.
It starts out like any other relationship. It’s like a dream you never want to wake up from. You catch yourself over and over again saying, “He is the nicest guy I have ever met.” Then, everything changes.
I was a senior in high school who had never had a boyfriend and had never been in love. I had no idea what to expect. I was just over the moon to have someone interested in me.
It was like a feeling of bliss at first. Anybody would want somebody who wants to hang out with them all the time. Anybody would want somebody who gets invested in them so quickly. Yet, it goes from someone wanting to hang out with you, to someone forcing you to hang out with them all the time. You become isolated.
It is being accused of cheating more times than you can count because he is the one cheating and doesn’t want to get caught. It is watching him punch a wall because he is so mad at you for hanging out with your family instead of him. It is that and so much more.
Sleepless nights wondering what you did in order to be treated like this. Monitoring every picture you post on social media because you can’t deal with one more text that says you’re a slut.
This is the thing. You can’t change a person. They are who they are. Even love can’t snap them out of it.
When you finally get out of an abusive relationship, you do a lot of thinking and wondering. Did he ever really love me? Where did I go wrong? Why did I stay in the relationship so long? There is a lot of questions. There always will be. Being in an abusive relationship changes you as a person.
You aren’t ever the same and you don’t look at things the same. Part of yourself becomes lost. In a way you become lost. You lose a lot of confidence and to put it bluntly, you lose a lot of love for yourself and it takes a heck of a long time to gain it back.
It has taken me years and the self love I lost is something that I am still working on. It makes relationships harder, any type of relationship. I have spent years rebuilding the relationships with the important people I ignored in those two years.
There are no words to describe how thankful I am for the people who stuck with me during that time. I won’t forget those special people who saw what I could not see myself.
When somebody tells you that you don’t have any sparkle in your eyes anymore, you know something needs to change. When somebody tells you that you seem like a shell of yourself, you know something needs to change.
Those special people know who they are, and I will forever have the highest admiration for them. They helped me immensely and now my goal is to make sure nobody else has to feel the way I did.
I have also spent my most recent years appreciating what I have learned and knowing to never put myself in a situation like that ever again. Love shouldn’t and doesn’t hurt.
I will never forget some of the words that came out of the mouth of my ex. Worthless, ugly, broken, easy and skanky. Sometimes they haunt me,and I have to remind myself that they aren’t true.
The tough times in life teach you how strong you are. I know I’m not perfect, but now I know I’m strong.