as small as a world and as large as alone

12:43pm September 9, 2014

hatzigsut:

very chilling topic on twitter right now. 

i have my own reasons for #WhyIStayed, and looking through this hashtag, i can see so many women and men who were lost, just as i was.

i stayed because it was the first time i felt important to anyone. he “loved” me. when he said he would die if i left him, i thought it passionate. when he started showing up unannounced at my house, because my friends told him my brother’s friends were over, i thought the jealousy was endearing.

then he tried to kill himself when i left town for two days. he was convinced that i would find someone else, in a town where i knew no one. i came back home, and promised i would never leave.

the manipulation and emotional abuse became physical—but only once. he slammed me against a wall after i made a joke about dumping him once i started college. i hid the bruises from my family, for weeks. that was the moment i decided to get out, no matter what happened. for some people, it only takes one time. others need more than one. and some people never make it out alive.

it is not always easy to “just leave.” it is a blessing if you are able to leave, with no consequences.

I stayed because I honestly believed some weird sci-fi stuff he’d said about a link between us that, if broken, would cause one or the other of us to die or ‘go insane’.  He eventually tried to convince me the link wasn’t real, but I thought he was “trying to break the link” so I clung to the idea harder.  I did eventually leave him, not the other way around.

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