the beginning

Hi friends, it's been a great while since my last post, sorry about that. I've been meaning to post something for the past couple of days, I have probably 5 different drafts of what to post. Each draft is about something entirely different, and I'd get about halfway through and stop cause it didn't feel like what I should be writing about. In fact, I'd been kidding myself trying to work around what's been tugging at my heart. I have a goal to keep things positive in my posts, but if I do write about something negative, I really try to write about it in a positive light. The last thing I want is for anyone to come out of reading anything I write more down than before they read it. I'm not sure really how well I'm going to be able to keep things positive here. In fact, it's going to get pretty intense and very detailed. I didn't want to share with everyone what I'm about to write, but for whatever reasons I've felt like I need to share it. So, here we go.

I've been pretty open about how I suffer with severe depression and anger issues, but I've never really gone into details about why, or really how bad things have gotten. How low I've gotten emotionally, how well I've hidden it, and how overall it's changed me. You're about to find out all of these things. I pray I can portray this in a way you can all relate, and I hope you can gain some understanding of these conditions and be able to be there for someone you may know, or if you yourself are suffering from the same things.

Some time ago, I was in an abusive relationship. There wasn't any physical abuse or sexual abuse, but there was everything else. Emotional, mental, and verbal. Let me give you some background so you understand a little bit more of what happened before things took a 180 for the worst. He was my first love, my first best friend, my first everything. He took great care of me, was a textbook perfect boyfriend. I felt so lucky, and I was. He knew me better than anyone else, and I trusted him whole heartedly. Then somewhere down the line something changed. The man I knew was gone, but he subtly led me to believe what I had been fearing for some time. While there wasn't any physical abuse, I feared for my safety a lot. He had a terrible temper, and when he was angry… there was no stopping him. Looking into his eyes I could see when he left, and the sweet caring man I knew wasn't there anymore. Just a man who would yell at me till his face turned blue, and till his veins nearly burst.

When we would be out in public, I'd see him looking at other women. He'd comment on how hott they were, if they had a nice body or a pretty face. He had used to call me beautiful all the time, but then it got to the point where he was giving me looks like I needed to improve. I stopped believing him when he'd say I looked pretty, because his eyes were vacant, his voice was dull, and his mouth was dry. I was too afraid to lose him, and he told me that I'd never find anyone else who would love me as much as he did. If I left him, I'd just be his left overs. What man could ever want a broken person like I was? As stupid as that sounds, I believed it. I believed him and every word he said, because I was still completely and totally in love with him. So, to show I loved him, I thought I'd become more beautiful if I lost weight. So I stopped eating. I lost over 20 pounds in a month… and I looked horrible. I went down 5 pant sizes. To me at the time I thought I looked great. I was super skinny, had a flat stomach and a nice thigh gap. So after the weight was off, I was desperately hoping he'd look at me like he used too. Guess what? He didn't. I still wasn't good enough, and I never would be.

Do you know what not eating for days at a time does to you? I'll tell you. You sleep all the time because your body has nothing to make energy off of. Your hair becomes brittle and dry, as does your skin. You're weak as ever, for me picking up a glass of water at times was hard… You can't focus to save your life, so academically I started to decline. Imagine feeling like you had just gotten done running 20 miles straight everyday…. this progressed for a year. A year I felt like this physically. Don't worry though, I'm at a healthy weight now and I have been for quite some time. But mentally, I'll never look at my body the same way ever again. Part of me still thinks being that skinny is what's truly beautiful, and our society today doesn't help with that.

Before things turned bad, we'd laugh all the time. I'd always be smiling. I was the happiest girl ever. But, it got to the point where I hardly laughed anymore, if I did it was fake. I was so desperate for his attention, for his love and affection. I craved it. He wouldn't hold my hand, and he hardly ever kissed me. He started saying things like, "You're so lucky to be with me you know that? I could leave you at anytime and not look back. But I won't. I care for you Kenz so I'll stay with you." Yeah… like hell you cared for me. He started criticizing me, picking at things like the bump in the bridge of my nose, how my ears poke out, and how my hairline was weird. He started saying those things to me so much that now I hate every single one of those things about myself. If I had the opportunity to get plastic surgery, I'd get a nose job and remove the bump. How messed up is that? I went from being this confident girl, to now I didn't think I was appealing in any way.

This relationship continued for quite sometime. Until I finally grew a pair, realized what had been going on, and how low I'd gotten. I broke up with him, and I yelled at him twice as loud than he ever yelled at me. Usually I try to be the bigger person, but I won't lie, that felt really good. I thought breaking up with him was going to be the hardest part. I was wrong. The coming months… years after, would be the hardest part of all.

… I'll continue in my next post.