I went through something rough. I let myself get put through something rough. It is my fault for staying in an abusive relationship but the abuse is not my fault.
I am writing this as a warning to those of you who are in or may find yourself in what I have just escaped from. Those of us who have grown up in abusive relationships know how to "get to the next day." This is quite different than those who have tough times with someone they are with. This skill is getting to the next day after being brought down a bit as a person. Every day you get brought down by the abuse and then you figure out how to find enough happiness to go on the next day with the life you are in, despite the abuse. You find ways, almost in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way, to find something positive in the person abusing you that you can hold on to for hope that one day they will stop, they will get it, they will come to realize that you do not deserve how they are treating you. And then you end up learning how to "get to the next day" and the next day becomes years. But then what you find is that even after you muster the courage to leave and you have left, the abuse continues. You hear unbelievable things this person is saying to other people and you have no way to defend yourself. The other people don't know the person you have been living with for all those years. They don't know what it is like to have that person take all of their issues out on you. They see the surface, the facade that is put upon the true structure of a person who drove you to have to leave them.
Everything in this blog adheres to that purpose. Please read and realize that if you are experiencing something similar, you must leave. Do not get to the next day. Do not find a way to squeak what is left of your person through that narrow channel you are allowed to live in just to find yourself again the next day trying to navigate, mitigate, apologize for abuse you are suffering. Get out!