This is probably the most frequent question I get asked: "why did you stay in an emotionally abusive relationship for as long as you did?" I don't know if I will ever really be able to properly explain the thoughts that flowed through my mind throughout those harsh and rough years, but I will try my hardest to do so.

He was my first love and my first everything. When he and I first met, everything just clicked and when we locked eyes, I knew in my mind I was going to fall in love with him instantly. Which I did, the love I felt for him was nothing I had ever experienced before in my entire life. Even at the young age of 16, I planned out my future with him and the different sacrifices I was willing to make with my future in order to make sure he fit into it as well. The beginning was amazing and when everything in my life started falling apart, I knew that I could rely on him to be there for me when I was feeling weak. He always knew how to make me laugh and I always went to sleep with a smile on my face knowing the next day when I woke up, I would look over at my phone and see a long message about how much he loves and cares about me. This is where it got dangerous, I began to rely on him for happiness.

One day, everything started to change and was heading into a downward spiral. The excuses as to why he couldn't see me some days started to increase and the phone calls were no longer there. I felt this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that our "honeymoon phase" was over, and I was right. Not only was the relationship getting more difficult to hold onto, but the attitude that resonated from him affected me greatly. If he were to have a bad or stressful day at work, he would take it out on me and start to pick a fight that made absolutely no sense. The fights I could handle, but when the attacks on my physique came into play, it tore down my confidence even more.

My butt wasn't toned enough for him, he would tell me almost every single day that I needed to do squats. He would poke fun at the peach fuzz on my upper lip always demanding me to get it waxed and to this very day, it is something I constantly obsess over. The tearing down of my physical appearance took a gigantic toll on how I saw myself as a person, yet I continued to still love him each and every day. Why? Because I became extremely reliant on him. Just like a drug, he became an addiction.

The cheating, the lying, the emotional and verbal abuses that I faced still didn't drive me away from him. He was all I had, and I didn't want to lose him. He made me feel as if no one was ever going to love me, so I felt deep down that I had no choice but to stay. I always forgave him whenever he slept with other people, but I still to this day do not think he knows how much stress and pain his actions put on me. I was never put first, I was treated like the trash you see on the side of the road, and I still continued to love him.

Emotional and verbal abuses cause internal scars that you can never fully repair. Whenever I am feeling down about myself, I can still hear his voice in my head saying, "you will end up just being a whore in a crack house." When I am feeling stupid I still hear his voice saying, "you have no common sense. You're an idiot." One thing I will never forget is when I felt accomplished in getting accepted into the school I am in now, he shot down the excitement by saying "anyone could get into that school, it doesn't make you smart." I am still recovering from the brutal beatings of his words.

I stayed out of fear. I stayed for "stability". I stayed because I didn't have the strength to walk away at the time. I stayed because I didn't know what a healthy relationship consisted of. I stayed because I thought it was love. I stayed because I didn't know how to be my own person anymore. I lost that sparkle in my eye and the glow on my face. I turned to him for approval in everything I did. This is not to try and make him look like a terrible person, he is who he is. I am writing this purely for the people who always tend to ask, "why didn't you ever just walk away?"

I have learned many lessons from staying with such a toxic person for more time than I would have liked. I now know what to avoid in future relationships and will hopefully never feel as low as I did before. I still have much work to do with truly learning how to love myself again and rebuilding the confidence that was torn down by him. I stayed for quite some time, but once I left... I never turned back.