161. The day I learned that I had to save myself.

Nobody else could save me from the abusive relationship I was in.

I remember calling my dad, asking him to come meet me outside, away from the house, to finally tell him—or more like show him—what I’d been going through for the last four years of my life. I say four years, but in reality, it was three because every abusive relationship has a honeymoon period.

I was fourteen when I met the boy that would break me into a thousand pieces, and I was nineteen when I met the person that would choose to delicately gather all of those broken pieces and slowly put them back together.

I was in a physically and psychologically abusive relationship from the age of fourteen to the age of eighteen. I spent three years stuck inside a deep hole I’d dug for myself, and no matter how many people tried to heave me out of it, I wouldn’t be able to crawl out of it until I truly understood that only I could save myself.

When I look at my current relationship, with the love of my life and the best thing that’s ever happened to me, three years have passed in the blink of an eye. I often stare at my camera roll, wondering how time has gone so fast and asking myself why we keep forgetting to make more of a conscious effort to live in the present moment before it’s all gone. Time flies when you’re having fun, they say. Well, the exact opposite happens when you’re trapped in a waking nightmare. Three years feels like an eternity. I remember feeling like I was going to die at any moment. I never wished I were dead, but I think it’s because I already felt dead inside. I don’t think I believed that things could get any worse.

There are a lot of terrible things about being in an abusive relationship, but one thing that keeps you trapped in it is the abuser forcing every person you care about out of your life. Your family becomes the enemy, your friends become bad influences, boys become threats, and other girls become terrible words I won’t ever repeat out loud. You’re made to believe on a cellular level that the only person who truly loves you and cares about you is the abuser. Everything they do is for you. They hurt you because you need to learn. They punish you because you need to remember not to make the same mistakes again. They ban you from doing things for your own good. They make you cry to then hug you and, slowly but surely, keep you trapped, craving more of the love you receive in tiny droplets here and there.

Another terrible thing about being in an abusive relationship is seeing how its effects expand like the blast radius of a nuclear bomb. Every single person that had some sort of contact with me throughout those three years was affected in different but equally terribly sad ways. A lot of these people suspected that strange things were happening, but nobody but the abuser and me knew how bad it truly was. A lot of these same people tried time and time again to save me, but you can’t save someone that doesn’t want to be saved. Or worse yet, doesn’t feel like they need to be saved.

A part of me wanted to be saved. There were moments of clarity when I realised that things had gotten bad and that I needed to escape. I think that everyone going through a terribly traumatic and difficult period of life has certain moments when it becomes clear that things have gotten out of hand. But how do you escape the spiral that keeps spinning no matter how hard you try to stop it? An abuser is like a gravitational force that pulls you back; no matter how far you walk away, you will always be pulled back in. There is no middle ground, no grey areas; it’s all or nothing.

I used to cry awake at night, begging any God that would listen to me to please save me and make it all end. I wanted it all to stop, and then it suddenly did. The abuser punched me in the face, hitting my nose in the perfect spot to break it and dislocate it in two different places. This wasn’t what I’d imagined when I pleaded for God’s help, but it worked. That was the final blow I ever took from him, and it was what catapulted me into leaving that reality far behind.

When I called my dad to ask him to meet me away from the house, I remember him looking at me and without me saying anything, understanding it all. Everything else is a blur, but there’s one other moment that I remember clearly. My dad, my brother, and I were standing in the living room while they tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and I remember understanding with every bone in my body that I had to go to the police. Me, who had been undercover, hiding her reality for the last three years, had somehow found the courage to say enough is enough. In that moment, I understood that nobody could save me, just as they’d never been able to save me before then. I had to be the one to speak up and take action, so I did. Looking back, I still don’t understand how I’d been able to suddenly stand in the light, with my broken nose and swollen face, take off my mask, and hold my head high before everyone I’d spent years hiding it from.

Life works in strange ways, and sometimes when certain events happen, they seem tragic, and you wonder if you’re cursed, like me and my badly broken nose. However, I now understand that I needed to receive that final blow to the face. I needed to truly comprehend that it was now or never. Today it was my nose, but tomorrow it may have been much worse.

Looking back, I’m able to see that I could have done many things differently, and I wish I had. But when you’re living it for the first time, in the present moment, with no events to look back on and connect the dots, it’s not an easy game to play. There are so many things I would have done differently, but I didn’t, and I can’t, so the only solution is putting those demons to rest and forgiving my broken heart, while hoping that everyone that was affected somehow by knowing me has also been able to forgive me and themselves.

We’re constantly trying to save the people we care about because we fear them getting hurt. Parents take full responsibility over protecting their children from the dangerous world they’ve brought them into, but life will reach them one way or another, and hurt people will hurt people, no matter how hard you try to protect them. My dad tried every idea possible to keep me away from the abuser, but the harder the enforcement, the harder I tried to break free from it. You can’t force the hurt and pain out of someone; you have to let them walk through it while you hold their hand.

Healing takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. Being able to look back on this part of my life without shame has taken a lot of inner work, revealing different lessons as I progress. However, the day I walked into the police station, I learned that I can save myself no matter how messy life gets. I can always save myself, and I will continue to save myself no matter what.

I’m a strong believer in community, real raw messy honest community, where people deep dive into their feelings and hardships, knowing that pain is not something to be carried individually, but collectively. Our society is becoming more and more individualistic; however, I know that my people will help me carry the weight. That we will all carry each other’s weight in turns. That being said, there will be a moment when only you can take the step.

As I told the police officer everything that had happened for the last three years of my life, I felt strong and empowered. Not because I was filing a report, but because I was deciding to change my life, and shit was about to hit the fan like it never had before, but I was ready for it. I was calm. This was the calm after the storm. The storm had been the silence and the masquerading. The truth was easy and light. There were no shadows and no more characters to be portrayed.

Violence and abuse isn’t romantic, and having to drag yourself out of the depths of hell isn’t a hero's story either, but my only focus at this moment is to remember that I saved myself from the biggest monster in the storybook, and I now know in every cell of my body that if I ever needed to again, I could slay the dragon.