Catharsis

As the title suggests, I am writing this as a sort of catharsis. I realized today that I've kept so many things bottled up, and it hurts my efforts to form meaningful relationships, now. I want to make it very clear that the purpose of this is not to get attention for myself; the purpose of this is for me to be honest, with myself mostly.

As someone who prides herself on her ability to write, I think the greatest irony is that the aftermath of an abusive relationship left me unable to put things into words.

For three years, I dated a boy who drank heavily. It was a mistake in and of itself; I was just twelve when we started dating. He was fifteen. For the first year, though, things were peaceful between us. Oh, we had our knock-down, drag-out fights, but it never escalated to physical violence, and we always made up afterwards. I thought for sure that things would never change between us.

When I was thirteen and he was sixteen, though, they did.

He started hitting me. It was always when he was drunk, and I told myself that it was only because he was drunk. Surely, he wouldn't hurt me when he was sober. Under this logic, I spent two more years with him. I spiraled into a deep depression; I began self-harming. I attempted suicide several times, and all of this, I kept from my mother. I told myself that she wouldn't care if she knew; realistically, I knew that she would, of course. It just made me feel more self-reliant to keep that from her. I think it kept me sane. My secrets were the only things that I had continued control over.

It's been about two years since I got out of that relationship, and I still struggle with the aftermath every day. I am still afraid to get close to guys; I still feel horribly insecure and pathetic and down on myself much of the time. My suicidal urges have not and probably will never go away, even though I've stopped hurting myself. There are still those days where I find myself back in that dark place that I've now escaped and even getting out of bed is a struggle for me.

Worst of all, until now, I was unable to put any of this into words.

I am a writer by vocation, so the idea of not being able to explain something is horrifying to me, but I couldn't. People ask me why I stayed with him; I don't know. They ask me about my continued self-hatred; I don't know the answer to those questions, either. It's not an attention-seeking behavior. I think that it's a defense mechanism, but, again, I'm not sure.

The important thing for me and anyone else that's been in that place I'm talking about is that you keep moving forward. If you let yourself sink, you'll never swim. There will be some days where all of those demons that you're carrying around manage to pull you to your knees; as long as you get back up, that's nothing to be ashamed of. The best of us are, at the end of the day, still just human.

It's important that you find a safety zone, be it the arts or just talking to someone, and that you are able to retreat to that safety zone when it becomes necessary. Little by little, you'll learn to live again, trust me.

If you need to talk, feel free to approach me at any time. I know how hard it can be to reach out to a complete stranger, but, sometimes, you have to try.

With that, this part of my catharsis is complete. I won't be posting anything else as a blog addressing this, because it is physically painful and I'm not yet ready to deal with that pain. I think that I needed to do this, though, and my heart feels lighter even as it aches. Thank you for your time.