Have you ever been in a relationship with someone you genuinely really care for but caught yourself thinking about breaking up for no particular reason — or because you felt too messed up to keep going?
During my middle school years, I was completely infatuated with the idea of love and being in love. Hours after school would be spent scrolling through Tumblr and Facebook, looking at pictures of couples and quotes about love and what it meant to be in love.
When I was 13, I got into my first relationship. It lasted three months.
While it was incredible at the time — I had my first kiss, first cuddle — I thought I loved this kid. And when he broke up with me after coming back from a three-week vacation, I was completely and utterly heartbroken.
Slowly getting back on my feet, I continued my quest to find the love of my life in high school. I met a cute nerd my freshman year, and after a couple dates, we became boyfriend and girlfriend.
We said I love you a week after we started dating just because we couldn't wait, and everything was perfect.
Everything was perfect until around month two when he started ignoring me and cutting me off when he had a bad day or I said something that he didn't like.
After going on an unsuccessful week-long break, we got back together, and I promised I wouldn't be difficult - because all I really wanted was for him to love me and me to love him.
A few more firsts and we were inseparable.
It wasn't until just before our six-month anniversary, after being sexually assaulted, that I fell into a deep depression. Panic attacks slowly began to appear and evolve and became an active part of our relationship as we grew to be more intimate. In times of highest stress, I resorted to cutting.
Our relationship grew toxic as I began to depend on him for my happiness, and he pushed me away.
He would constantly hang out with friends who he told me he liked as crushes in order to make me jealous. On occasion, he'd yell at me and tell me to "fuck off" if I became "too much."
A little over a year passed, and as my mental health fluctuated day to day, I began to realize that I had become so dependent on that relationship for the support that once my boyfriend left for college in the fall, I couldn't see myself without him.
And he left.
And we broke up.
And I tried to end my life.
I ended up in the hospital, then a mental hospital for a week.
After being released from the mental hospital, I tried to reach out to the boyfriend who I had once depended on for so much for over a year and a half.
I got nothing but silence.
So I continued on with my life and gained a new perspective on everything after reflecting on my long relationship and the short stay in a mental hospital. My ideas of love had been challenged — for it was impossible for me to believe that someone who had supposedly loved me for almost two years could just stop after I had hit rock bottom. That wasn't the kind of love that I had dreamt of for the last four years.
Life drew on. I tried hard in school, focused heavily on myself and my mental health.
When I entered college, I was the best I'd ever been in terms of my mental health. I made friends I now couldn't imagine my life without. I finally loved myself more than I ever had before and wasn't actively seeking love like I once was in middle and high school.
I am currently in a relationship with one of the sweetest, smartest guys I've ever met, and I couldn't be happier.
But I'm honestly terrified.
While I'm thankful that I haven't been actively seeking "The One" as I was in middle school, I don't know what a normal relationship is supposed to feel like.
While I think I'm doing things right this time around, there are moments I wonder if I'm allowed to feel this happy in a relationship. Because I was so miserable in my longest one, this sense of happiness feels wrong.
It's hard for me to grasp a feeling of security because of the distrust in my old relationship. I really don't want to lose him.
As hard as I try, I can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that I am now in a healthy relationship that makes me happy.
Will it always be like this?
Will I ever be completely at ease with someone or have my relationships ruined me from ever being with someone happily?
