I decided I deserved better.
___
Last year I made one of the biggest decisions of my life.
For nearly two years, it would have been two years last May, I had been dating a guy across seas who owned every part of my heart. Love wasn’t and never will be a strong enough word to describe how I had once felt about him. Not the way people use the word these days. Let me just tell you, worshipping the ground this guy walked on isn’t enough to describe how I worshipped him. He didn’t have a flaw, not a one, in my mind. At first…
But as the days passed, I found myself grovelling at his feet. Worshipping his name, that to this day gives me shivers every time I hear it.
When we first met, I was a depressed teenager full of angst ready to drop the world and float away into oblivion. And he found me. He took my broken, fragile little heart and… crushed it.
For the longest time, I credited him with saving me. For the life of me and I can not figure out why the bloody hell I ever believed what he did was saving me. But, I held on to some messed up dream world where he was the god and I was a simple peasant begging at his feet for love, which he graced me with. Ha, was I delusional.
He had this way of building me up, that was actually tearing me down. Keeping me just low enough I would never leave, but high enough my delusional self was happy with him and how things were. Just high enough that I felt like I was recovering, like he was saving me. And he ate it up. He loved the praise, especially when I made videos about how great he was. Oh how his ego grew everyday. And my faith in myself stayed ever so low.
Finally, I began to see the things he was doing to me. It took the 3rd or 4th time of catching him cheating on me to see, but I did eventually see.
And I grew the strength to leave.
Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a cutting cold turkey kind of thing. I had become way too addicted to him and his torture to completely block him and move on with my life, though I know I should have. No, I broke up with him, but continued to talk to him, continued to hope that losing me would make him change. And I was wrong. But one thing echoed in my head.
“You will never be happy without me.”
I began seeing someone else almost immediately; which was a mistake. My foolish self thought that I could recover from a heart break while trying to fall in love. While I did fall in love, my heart still aches to this day for my British angel. Not in a missing him way, but in a “he was such a huge part of my life and I hate not knowing what is going on in his life now” kind of way. An appreciation for breaking me if you would. Because if I hadn’t I would have never believed I deserved better than being walked all over. But, I thought that falling in love would make me forget him.
It didn’t.
And eventually, the honeymoon phase of my new relationship faded away, and I found myself highly unhappy. Things happened, things I will not go into for the sake of privacy of my life and his, but I began to contemplate leaving him.
Those words echoed in my head. “You will never be happy without me.” Though I had tried so hard, I was highly distraught with my new flame. That’s what he was, though I didn’t see it then. We were like matches that eventually burnt out.
Thoughts of my British angel flooded my mind. How once upon a time, I seemed happy with him. Once upon a time, I had convinced myself I could be happy with him. And in thinking about it, I began to convince myself that I could once again pretend to be happy with him. I went so far as to begin to look at plane tickets to see him, because I knew he would never take me back online. It was all planned out in my head. After flying over there, I would get a hotel room to wait. The next day I would get some take away for him and his mother, to convince them to let me in. As well as some crystals for him, to bribe him to let me into his bedroom. When I showed up at his door, his mother would answer. But he would be so nosy he would have to know who was at the door. His mother probably wouldn’t recognize me, because of my change in hair. But the moment he stepped around and saw me he would know, and I would instantly offer the food. Knowing him, he’d laugh in my face, but he wouldn’t reject the food as I begged him to let me in. He always said he pitied me, and that pity would be his excuse to let me in. I’d then offer the crystals as we walked to his room. He would sit on his bed, as he always did when we video chatted, and I would stand there pleading for him to take me back. I would offer to do anything for him if he would love me again.
Then I thought about it.
I deserve better.
My lack of happiness wasn’t to do with him, but with the situation I was.
And I never needed to go back to an abusive ex because I thought it would be better than the current situation. Abuse is never better.
I almost went back to my emotionally abusive ex because I was unhappy, just like he predicted.
But my happiness should never rely on who I am dating. And I am learning to be happy without needing anyone else.
♦◊♦
Photo: Unsplash
This post was originally featured on Courtney’s Voice.
Congratulations in breaking free. This hits close to home.