I listened to Interpol for the first time in over a year.

The reason I had not listened to this great band for so long is because the music and the songs were inextricably tied to the memories of an abusive relationship. Before now, to have played any of this band’s music would have been to consciously drown myself in Trigger Warnings—tw after tw.

I was in an emotionally abusive relationship for almost a year. It took me more than half a year of counseling visits to even regain my sense of self-worth and my confidence. I had to be reassured by a stranger that my own perception of myself was good enough and that my own desire to return to my path of change also enough and good.

It is not a sign of weakness to go to a therapist. It is also not a sign of weakness to lose your sense of worth. What is a sign of weakness is the inability to step away from those who tear you down, or from those who make you feel afraid. And it is a sign of strength when you know you need help to psychologically pull away from something that is poisoning you, and you seek out that help.

A quick image search of the recently popular hashtag #MaybeHeDoesntHitYou could have summarized a billion aspects of my relationship with an emotional and psychological abuser. And this is one reason I never participated in the tweets and uses of this hashtag. There are still too many trigger warnings for me to read them.

It is important that I now identify my past relationship to be one with an emotional and psychological abuser. To identify the person I interacted with as an abuser is to no longer pardon him, or the way he made me feel. It is to no longer buy the excuse that I cannot be trusted because of things he knows nothing about.

I do not believe this to be a form of victimization either. As I listened to Interpol while working, the music prompted me to be brave enough to write something about this, for the first time since the end of the relationship over a year ago.

This person used my past, one that he knew nothing about and had no right to become an active part of, to define me in the present. Let me repeat that: this person used my past to define my present, and to define me, as a tool to make me feel guilty, and to make me feel that I owed it to him to prove myself.

Let me say all this while reminding you that I hate labeling people. I hate saying someone is an “abuser” even if that is exactly what they are, because, in the end, everything is rooted in something — people’s actions are rooted in reasons no one may ever understand. That is what I have compassion for: the roots that are sadly nourished.

But that does not eliminate responsibility for actions.

He had no right to do those things, and that is not love, as much as he wanted to excuse himself by saying how he treated me was out of care and love for me. I was a much stronger person before I met him, and let me assure you that I have become an even stronger person as a result of meeting him.

The patterns I saw surface in myself during our relationship and the reactions I saw triggered by his actions already had a familiar taste. I had been there before, and I had promised myself I would never go there again. But there I was. And it took me a year to step away.

There is probably an Interpol song for every aspect of our relationship. It started with “Leif Erikson” and too many times we were convinced it was “Pioneer To The Falls.” At a hotel once it was “Public Pervert”—“you move with me I’ll treat you right…”—and too often he could have sworn it was “Narc”—“Oh, your history’s like fire from a busted gun…” Always, it was "The Undoing."

Right now though, it may be their song “Safe Without” because I am safe without him.