I am in love with a person who is so possessive I feel as though I am being tortured.
Our relationship was physically abusive three years ago, but that has stopped. The mental and verbal torture is almost worse.
I can’t stop loving him. When he was sober, he was my best friend. I never dreamed so many dreams, accomplished so many things, laughed so much in those short years. Now he is a monster. His possessiveness knows no bounds. He threatens to kill himself when I say I’m leaving the relationship. I am afraid for the little dog he owns, whom I love.
I must release him to the world. To someone else. To himself. Only, he doesn’t want his life.
It reminds me of the old Ana NG lyrics, “I don’t want the world, I just want your half.”
If I stay late at work, he is mad. If I stay home at night with my cat, I apparently don’t love him anymore …the list goes on.
I cannot do this anymore.
I am finally getting back into enjoying my life. I see a future possibly for myself. I don’t feel broken every single day, like I have all my life.
I was raised in an abusive, violent, alcoholic-ridden family. I am not the greatest person. I am a failure and I don’t know how to have a normal relationship either. I am no good most of the time. I have a mood disorder and trichotillomania and am afraid of being alone forever.
I don’t want to lose my best friend, but it is killing me to be tortured every single day. I can’t be with this person. I want to, but cannot imagine living with him and being trapped in the same home with all the manipulation and possessiveness.
I’m not making much sense.
I just need to know how to release him to a better place then where we are now.
I’ve been thinking and thinking about this. This time of year everyone is making their thankful lists. Generally at the top of the list is “Family and Friends.” They are always at the top of mine. Except this year, a piece of my family, a piece of me, is not with us. I will never, ever be able to express how thankful I am that Graysen came into my life. There is nothing I am more grateful for.
It is just very hard to balance the thankfulness for the love I have for this little warrior and the fact that she is not here.
I’m just going to say it …it’s hard to be thankful this year. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m just saying that it could be so easy to give in, to embrace my pain and my rage, to wallow in jealousy and negativity.
Some days it feels like these ugly emotions are like drugs. They provide an escape from my journey to stay positive, hopeful, loving, and kind. They are an easy escape from reality because when one is deep in these feelings, the outside world ceases to exist. It’s an odd realization that my ongoing internal pain and grief hurts less than my struggles in the real world. My internal thoughts are familiar although painful. The outside world is the unpredictable, sobering, and therefore fear inducing.
The negative emotions are free, they take no effort to bring on, and they have no expectations. They also don’t know when its time to leave.
To rid myself of them, I am forced to look at them honestly, take them head on, and then use every fiber of my being to convince myself that there is an alternative. That there is a future full of positive emotion and experience.
Positive emotions are earned. The spoils from my battle with ugly emotions include happiness, contentment, and peacefulness.
I just have to work for it, if I want it. It’s not going to come easily, and it will involve an epic battle to fend off negativity.
Trust me, I WANT to work for it. I have had moments, even entire days full of positive emotion and experience. When this happens, I want to stop time and bathe in the feelings and cling to them and stockpile them away as ammunition against darker times. This is truly a war I’m waging against myself. I want both sides to emerge victorious.
Last year we were happily preparing for our first family Thanksgiving and Graysen’s baptism. I was so honored to have so many family and friends in town for that beautiful week of celebration. Brock and I relished every single day with our Little Warrior, and these days were no different. Graysen was placed in the arms of pretty much every guest at our party for her. As each loved one had their turn, we truly felt the love of every person in that room spreading out to her, giving her strength, and teaching her what love feels like.
This year I’m fighting to remind myself what that kind of love feels like. The strength that that feeling can bring to a family. I’ve dug in and those of you who know me know that once that happens, I am unwavering in my resolve. We have been lucky to be surrounded by family and friends who are showering us with that kind of love. Every kind word, hug, look, and smile in our direction gives us that much more desire to fight.
I wish everyone peace, love, and kindness this Thanksgiving. I am thankful. Thankful that I am able to offer kind wishes to others, that I have the strength to honor the efforts of myself, Brock, and our family and friends. I am thankful that I continue to want to fight, to live a meaningful life, and support those around me. I am thankful for those who model strength and resilience. Who continue to mentor and counsel my family. We have all been doing such hard work and the holidays are exhausting when such work is required.
Remember that many more people than you think are putting on a brave face and may look peaceful, but are battling just like I am. Smiles, kind gestures, and compassion are the greatest gifts for both the giver and the receiver.
I just can’t say it enough …I am thankful for Graysen’s love. I feel her sending it to me everyday. The warmth starts deep inside my heart and extends out to every part of my being. She protects me with a suit of armor against the cold reality.
I actually feel bad for posting this because it’s a petty problem. Everyone on here has real problems, and I’m just writing about a guy I’m still in love with. It’s pathetic, I know. No one has to read this if they don’t want to.
In 8th grade, I realized that I wanted to have someone always there to compliment me, to make me feel beautiful or important, so I was on a social media website. Even though I never believed the guys I added on there, I still wanted the attention.
Blake lived about three hours away. He accepted my friend request, and sent me a message. When I was going to spend a week at my aunt’s house, and wouldn’t have internet access, I asked him to text me. He was pretty cool and attractive. We talked a little. One day, he sent me a message saying, “Please don’t let us drift apart.” I said we wouldn’t. Sometimes, he would try to call me, but I don’t like talking on the phone, so I wouldn’t usually answer.
One day I did answer, and it was an amazing night. I got to know him a bit better than I did through text messages. He’s extremely funny, sarcastic, and witty. I found his laugh and the way he talks adorable. That started my huge crush on him. I found out the next day, he liked me, too. Long distance relationships suck. We didn’t date, but we really liked each other. Eventually, it turned into love.
I truly trusted him and loved him, so I told him my secrets. He told me he wanted to kiss me really bad, and that he loved me. He even wrote me a poem on Facebook in a message. I was happy with whatever Blake and I were. I wanted it to be official, but understood why we weren’t.
I’m insecure, and I was hurt by the distance, so I started dating Landon, a guy I went to school with. That hurt Blake a lot, but he continued to be my friend, even though it was painful. It wasn’t my intention to hurt Blake. Eventually, Landon and I broke up, and I apologized to Blake for hurting him.
I wanted to be the first to tell him “Happy Birthday,” so I called him at five minutes to 12:00 the night before. We had a very good conversation, with lots of humor, and he seemed to be in a good mood.
I told him later that when I got off the phone with him that night, my friend asked why we weren’t “dating” anymore. Blake didn’t like that. He quit texting me. I knew that I screwed everything up. He was done.
After he was gone, I realized just how much I love him. He has probably succeeded in moving on, but I haven’t. It’s been almost three years, and I still have the same feelings for him. I don’t think they’re going away.
I’m currently dating a guy named Brandon. He knows about Blake. He’s rightfully scared that I’m not over Blake, and it’s true. I’m not. I thought dating someone else would help me get over him. At one point, I thought I was. Then, I saw that Blake was going to a concert near me. I spent my summer trying to go to it, just to finally see him. I thought that he might start talking to me again. There were bands that I wanted to see, but Blake was the main reason I was going. I saw him, but he didn’t see me. He was talking to someone, so I didn’t intrude.
Later, I posted my pictures from the concert online, and he messaged me for the first time in a while. He asked if I went to that concert, I told him that I had. When I told him why I didn’t talk to him there, he said, “Oh, you should’ve said hey, I never saw you.” That made me the happiest I had been in a very long time. It sounded like he would have wanted to see me if he had known I was going. I wish I had told him I would be there.
Basically, I really hate myself for screwing things up. I still believe that I love Blake. We haven’t talked since that day after the concert. I don’t believe I should be alive because of the way I treated him. I was terrible to him, when all he did was care about me and love me. He’s so perfect, and he could do better than me anyways. But I can’t help it. I want to be selfish. I love him so much.
He had asked me for a divorce, and I had fought for months to keep that from happening. I loved him, and I didn’t want our family to fall apart. I knew there was another woman, even though he wouldn’t admit it. He had never admitted to any of the others, why would he tell the truth this time?
I was annoyed by the irony of how he wanted to sign the divorce papers. He had dropped off the papers at the house for me to read them, but he didn’t want either of us to sign them until we were together. It was like he wanted it to be some kind of sick date! How romantic of him, right? Let’s get together as a couple and sign the divorce papers. Be still my heart!
I had been avoiding reading them until that day, trying to delay the inevitable. I knew there was nothing I could do. He’d made up his mind. But when I sat down to read them, I couldn’t believe my eyes! Here was my way out of this! The papers said that I was agreeing that our marriage was irreconcilable. The thing was, I didn’t belive our marriage WAS irreconcilable. I thought it could be saved. This was a legal document. I could not put my signature on a legal document that I didn’t agree with! So if I told him that I believed our marriage was worth saving, and I couldn’t sign the papers, maybe he would agree to work on it!
He came over that night, cheerful as could be, ready to have our special little night of writing off our marriage. I took a deep breath and told him I couldn’t sign the papers, explaining my reasons.
His rage was immediate. I saw his eyes go red and his lips swell up like they always did when he was ready to start punching things. I knew he’d had an anger management problem before we met. I’d read his homework from the court-appointed class that he’d had to take. I knew he’d lied on the homework, making things look less than they were. But he seemed to have learned from the class because he’d only ever thrown things before when he was mad at me. It had only happened a handful of times, but he would grab whatever was closest to him, throw it, and then stomp out of the house.
I had never worried about him actually hitting me.
But now he was on a rampage. His fury was terrifying. He punched his fist through a tv tray that was in the living room, completely destroying it. He took the little table that my dad had built when I was a child, that our daughter used to do puzzles and color, and smashed it into the floor. The corner of the little table was crushed, it dented the hardwood floor, then it bounced and hit the edge of our brand new tv. Thankfully, it didn’t hit the screen. But it left a permanent mark on the tv’s frame that I could never clean off, no matter how hard I scrubbed.
Then he crashed his way through the house and into our bedroom. I was even more terrified because our daughter and our foster daughter were asleep in the next room and I was so afraid he would wake them. I didn’t want them to see this side of him.
Once in our bedroom, my terror turned to horror as he grabbed the golf club he always kept next to the bed – for protection from intruders – and started swinging it around the room. He smashed the glass on the pictures hanging just a few feet away from my head. For the first time in our ten-year marriage, I was truly afraid that he might actually hit me. I stood there sobbing, pleading with him to calm down.
And that’s when I knew.
Our marriage could no longer be saved.
He had crossed a line that I was not willing to deal with.
Our marriage really was irreconcilable.
I told him I would sign the papers. As quickly as the rage had entered him, it was gone. We went into the kitchen where we sat down at the table and signed the papers. He hugged me, then left. I cleaned up the mess he had made, so the girls wouldn’t see it in the morning. Then I went to bed, where I cried myself to sleep.
It took me a few days to recover from the impact of seeing him so angry. I deeply mourned the end of the marriage we could have had.
But one day, about a week after signing the papers, I realized I was done. I no longer wanted anything to do with him. I was ready to move on and make a new life for myself.
This will be long …for me at least (A.D.D. will start soon..)
If you have read my stories, you will know that I don’t forget faces, especially those from relationships. And if you have read my stories, you know I talk about one specific girl in my stories – “Marie.” She put me in a downward spiral of self hate, self harm, and no self worth.
School recently started. I saw her, but I didn’t recognize her. Me, the one who never forgets a face, never gets over a girl, and I forgot! I got over her. I wanted to start crying, breaking down. For some reason, my life had frozen. I didn’t try to look for her like I used to. I had forgotten her, forgot it all. I didn’t just forget “Marie,” but the rape, the hate, all of it.
I forgot everything except the hate. People hate me because I have screwed up. I am angry. I have unimaginable rage. Right now, even the computer I’m typing on is angering me so much, but I resist. I resist the urge to lash out.
So, I met a girl. She is the sweetest girl, and she just stops me. I know I will regret saying this, but I really do love her. She is my world. When “Brina” just caresses me and holds me tight, she stops the rage and anger …and the self harm.
The earlier generations don’t seem to understand. To them, depression is a mood, not a mental illness. We didn’t choose the pain, self harm, or anger, we were born with it. We grew up faking the smile, hiding it until some sees a cut, the scar tissue, the hole in the wall, the pure hatred of society.
We struggle to simply wake up in the morning and function as a human beings, yet we still wake up. We get up, even though there is no motivation, our faces tear-stained, our hearts beating for that one girl or boy we like. We want that one special person to know the pain, the quirks, the oddities, and unknown anger. We want that one person to look into our eyes and know our hearts beat for love.
I want that one girl to see me and know that my eyes see only her. I want her to see why I wake to an ever-beating heart deep in my chest.
I found that girl. And she saw me…
My anger is clashing with my feelings of love and affection! Please help me. Reach out to me. I want to start changing my life!
My stepfather was not always an abusive alcoholic. He was simply a man who loved a glass of scotch in the evening before bed during the early years of my childhood, the years I called him “Daddy.” He was kind-hearted and taught me the life lessons that a girl needs in order to become a compassionate member of the human society.
No, he was not always an abusive alcoholic but he is now.
Don Mustard has been my dad since I was eighteen months old. I was not fond of men as an infant, especially those I had never met. Despite this, on the day we met, I ran straight to him and begged him to pick me up. We became inseparable for the next several years.
I owe most of my character to this man. My love for animals, my passion for hunting, my need to be around horses, and my unconditional love can all be attributed to the years I spent at his heels. I learned the value of hard work by taking care of orphaned cattle from the rancher that employed him. I woke up in the wee hours of the mornings to answer the cries of a calf searching for breakfast and did so without complaint. I had no friends during my elementary years because I smelled like animals, but I cared not. I had a family who loved me. I had a large variety of animals that were much kinder than humans for companionship. I was happy.
I was entering junior high when I began to notice that there was a problem. The bottle that had taken my dad a few weeks to finish now needed to be replaced once a week, and soon after, twice a week. As a family that was struggling just to keep food on the table, this seemed like a luxury that we just could not afford. However, my mom discovered that being unable to provide this bottle was a much worse problem than the money that was being spent on it. Dad would become irritated without his “nightcap,” but we just brushed it off as crankiness.
Then, the irritation was turned my way. Suddenly, nothing I did was right. I was an honor roll student and worked right beside the cowboys on the ranch from dusk until dawn, with the exception of school hours. Still, it was not enough. I was the entire reason for his and my mother’s marital problems in his opinion. I was called a mistake or “that bastard child” on more than one occasion. I would fall asleep many nights in tears. I worked harder to achieve more, aching to hear him tell me he was proud of me once again. It never came.
My mother sat me down during my freshman year of high school and explained our situation to me. My once loving dad was sick, and until he would admit it, there was nothing that she or I could do to make him happy again.
I did my research, like any good student. I learned everything I could about alcoholism, not only about the physical effects, but the psychological effects as well. I learned that the man who spat such ugly words at night was simply not the man who had taught me to ride a bicycle and tie my shoe. Sadly, he might not ever be again.
I wanted to be angry with him.
After all, he was the one who had taught me that allowing anything or anyone to have such a hold over your actions made you weak. The night his anger turned to physical blows, I might have grown resentful, had I not been able to remember one cold morning in a deer stand so many years before. I had proven myself to be a near perfect shot, after years of practice, and I was being rewarded with my very first hunting trip. The excitement of the next morning kept me awake most of the night, and I jumped out of bed the moment my mother woke me. I entered the living room proudly wearing my new gear. That warm camouflage uniform was prettier than any dress in my personal opinion. I tucked my bright red hair into the baseball cap and double-checked the gun that I had lovingly cleaned the night before. My mother handed my dad a lunch box with sandwiches and jerky, and we were off. He drove patiently and carefully through the field while his daughter was unable to stop talking in bubbly excitement over the possibilities of the day.
My dad did all the talking once we were in the deer blind, keeping his voice down to a barely audible whisper as he spoke about the feeling of sighting a deer through the sights of your gun. He warned me about the possibility of freezing up once my sights were lined up and told me how to fight through it. Soon, those words of experience soon turned to wise lessons of life and love.
I valued these lessons and tucked them away for later years, but it was his speech about unconditional love that would eventually turn that little girl into the woman I am today. He told me, “when you love someone, be it your family, an animal, or your husband, you must love them unconditionally. Everyone makes mistakes and we always hurt the ones who love us the most. Love is worthless unless it’s unconditional. You must always forgive those you love without hesitation. If it isn’t unconditional, then it isn’t love at all.”
Many years later, I would forgive him instantly for his abuse. This abuse increasingly grew more violent, and by the time I moved out of my parent’s home, I was grateful to be free of his anger and bitterness. I kept the lessons he taught me in the deer blind close to my heart but added my own touch to it. I decided that while love was worthless unless it was unconditional, that did not mean that a person had to stick around to be abused and walked on. A person could love unconditionally while doing so from a distance.
My dad’s drinking grew increasingly worse after my mother passed away. Today, his mind is half gone from the booze and the evidence is apparent even during the sober moments of the daytime. He has become an empty shell of a man. He is deeply affected by depression and seeks to fill his emptiness with women who could never hope to fill the shoes my mother left behind. He has yet to admit that he has a problem. I still love him unconditionally although I am sure he would tell you otherwise.
I will always be grateful for the earlier years that I spent with my dad. I am a woman who always seeks a brighter future because of these moments. More importantly, I know how to love someone with everything I have, no matter their crimes against others or me. Experience has taught me that there are not many souls out there who can say the same. Most people speak their love without ever knowing exactly how to show it. My Daddy taught me that showing it is more important than three empty words and my children will learn this as well. That is the greatest gift any man could have passed down to his daughter.
I have lost hope that he will ever seek the help he needs to change but on the day of his funeral, I will proudly stand there and speak of the man before the disease. I believe that on that day, I will finally receive his pride as he watches my eulogy through eyes unclouded by booze. Maybe then he will realize that I learned my lessons well and grew up to be everything he had once hoped for. Alcoholism will have finally released its hold on my dad. I will not speak of the horrible deeds or the years I spent as his victim. After all, love is worthless unless it is unconditional.
