If I had to give a description of myself a few years ago, you would think that I had it all.

I was a straight-A student, 7th in my class and had a 4.6 GPA. I was about to be accepted to my dream university and give the senior speech at my graduation. Everyone really did think I had it all.

Behind all of these "marvelous" accomplishments was someone who was hurting. It all started with an innocent interaction with a guy I barely knew. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was in a relationship with him. He said everything that I wanted to hear and came off as someone I could trust. He was constantly telling me how pretty I was and how he wanted to spend all of our time together. Of course, I fell into what I thought was love.

After a month passed, he knew he had me. He knew I wasn't going anywhere because I thought I had found the guy of my dreams. This is when his true colors came out. No woman wants to hear their boyfriend say his neighbor is hot. No woman wants to hear how you both sat in your driveway, drinking whiskey and talking about life. No woman would be okay with being ignored that night. But I was crazy to be jealous, I mean, after all, they were just "friends."

When we would hang out in a group, he ignored me for his guy friends. I felt like I wasn't a part of their conversations, and I began to get upset because it was repeated every week. I tried to let it go but other issues started appearing. He lied to me a lot, stole from me and constantly borrowed money.

I tried to bring these issues up to him when we were alone, you know like any normal couple would. I was told that I was overreacting, he wasn't lying and that he never stole from me even though I caught him. He told me I was crazy. I believed him.

One day, he told me that he had decided to move several states away. Was the "love of my life" really going to move away from me? When I asked him why he wanted to move away, he said he just felt like it. Now, this would have been totally different if he was going to take care of a relative or do something with the military.

He literally could have said ANYTHING that made some kind of sense and my perspective of the situation would have changed. He said that we could do a long distance relationship, but I wasn't dumb. I thought that if I wasn't enough to make him stay, I would never be enough to make him come back. We had an emotional goodbye. He broke up with me a week later.

Months passed with me not being able to get over him. Then one day I guess he decided to reel me back in. He began texting me about how much he missed and how he made a mistake by leaving me. He once again said everything I wanted to hear. When I tell you that being in a relationship with a sociopath or manipulator is like being brainwashed, I promise you that it's true. So, what did I do after he confessed his regrets of leaving me? I spent my graduation money on a ticket to bring him back.

This is when the really bad stuff started happening.

He moved in with me because he had nowhere else to go and convinced me that it was a good idea to steal money from my parents so he could buy cigarettes. I have an amazing relationship with my parents and he somehow convinced me to steal from them. That is not who I am. He eventually got kicked out, which was good considering we fought every single night.

Sometimes he brought me flowers. Sometimes he tore them apart during a fight. It was amazing how he could take something so beautiful and destroy it.

I had made a cute jar full of notes that said things that I loved about him during the beginning of our relationship. During one of the fifteen billion times he broke up with me, he tried to give me my stuff back. He took the jar of notes and threw it in the street. Glass and paper went everywhere. He then threatened me. He came up with a list of lies that didn't even make sense but were still terrible, and he threatened to send this list to my parents if I broke up with him. I was blackmailed into continuing the relationship.

I went to college. We had another emotional goodbye. He cheated on me the day after. Guess what I did? Took him back. If I had to estimate how many times we broke up, it would be over 100.

Then one day, I decided I was tired of feeling like I wasn't good enough. I was tired of being pushed around. I was tired of what he turned me into. He brainwashed me into only focusing on him and defending his actions even if they hurt me. I had lost myself in finding him, and it was time to lose him and find myself.

We broke up again and this time I cut him off for good. He became the one begging to have me back. He said "I need you back. I'm nothing without you."

That sucks.

He sent the list of lies to my dad. My dad replied with a long message that he won't tell me about.

I escaped the verbal and emotional abuse that I encountered every day, but some of us don't. Some of the thousands of victims that experience this don't make it out alive.

So yes, this stuff really does happen.