This week, I have invited someone I know to write an article for me! She has wanted to share her story for a very long time, and has not had the opportunity to do so. She wants to stay anonymous, but we both hope you enjoy her story. These are all her words. I find this topic just as important as she does.

Finally out of high school and onto my first day of college. I saw him standing there and I knew my life was going to change. He asked me for my number and I could feel the butterflies. I was excited to be asked on our first date. Which I later would realize would be our only date. We dated for nine months and I convinced myself that I was in love. Seven days before I turned 19, I broke up with him. I didn’t know until I got home but I was in an emotional and physically abusive relationship.

I was stupid, my friends were not good enough, and he controlled my every thought.

I thought that since I had been in an abusive relationship before that I would be able to tell that I had been in one again.

The truth is, this one was different from the other one. This one, lets call him Robert. Robert was amazing. Brought me flowers, told me I was beautiful, and said everything I wanted to hear. For the first month Robert wanted to know what I had done, how my day was, if I had a good night sleep, all a part of the honeymoon phase. But the questions never ended. Robert got jealous of my best friend whom I had been friends with since diapers. If I talked to any male, I would hear about it. But I would tell myself, its ok, he got cheated on in his last relationship, he just needs more reassurance and trust.

I rarely ever saw him.

Things changed in our second semester of college. His friend hit me. A guy who easily weighs 50 pounds more than me hit me. It felt like a freight train. Robert did nothing about it. However, when we were at a concert, a guy we didn’t know pushed me, and Robert went to my defense. He only got protective of me because a stranger was encroaching his territory. His friend was not because his friend knew who I “belonged” to.

I broke up with him because he looked at me dead in the eyes and said, “When you do that it makes me want to hit you.” I was livid. All I did was correct him on how to say something properly.

“Jason”, the one before Robert, he was the stereotypical bad boy that every girl has an encounter with in her life. We had loved each other for six years and we were finally able to do something about it. Until I found out I wasn’t the only one he was seeing.

He always told me I was his number one and that he knew once he dated me he was done dating. We had planned our future. But he would never be with me, but he always gave me some sort of hope. He said we couldn’t be together because of my anxiety and because he couldn’t trust the guys I would go to school with.

It was my fault that we couldn’t be together, my diagnosed severe anxiety.

He told me that if I talked to any other guy while I was talking to him that he would leave me and never talk to me again. But if he talked to a girl or even dated her while he was with me, it was ok. I thought I deserved this. I thought this was my worth.

We were on and off for a year. My depression worsened when I was with him. I became the person I never wanted to become. I ended things July of 2015. I recently got back into contact with him and I was finally able to get the closure I truly deserved.

Emotional abuse is not always seen. It starts out perfect because why would you go out with someone who says on the first date “I want to hit you”. In reality you wouldn’t. You would go out with the person who brought you flowers and told you ‘you were his number one and always will be’. Emotional abuse increases over time: it starts out with little comments and escalates to controlling behavior.

It turns out that I am worth so much more than what Robert and Jason made me feel. I deserve to be loved the way I love.