You made flowers grow in my lungs and although they were beautiful, I couldn't breathe.

I read this quote today and I've never felt more connected to a string of words. I have looked for a way to explain the last three years of my life but have yet to come across anything that really defines the experience, until now.

How do you explain loving someone more than they deserved? People look at you weird when you tell them you dated a complete asshole for three years. A year? Okay, maybe he didn't show his true colors for a little while. But three years? I've seen the look on people's faces and of course been asked, "why'd you stay?" I've never really known what to reply to that. I've never figured out how to make them understand why, so I've always just kind of shrugged it off. I understood why I stayed, but I needed the words that explained it. Not just for people who asked, but for myself. I needed the words that made me feel less crazy for staying as long as I did.

I stayed because I wanted to fix him. I saw a man who desperately needed love and I didn't want to be the one to take that away from him. I stopped loving myself, because if I loved myself then I wasn't loving him enough.

Inside, I was dying. The life was being taken out of me and no one even noticed. You couldn't tell. On the outside, I was 'blinded by love'. Or so everyone thought. They thought that I just couldn't see who he really was. But it came to a point where I knew who he was. I knew exactly how bad he was for me. I didn't need anyone to tell me that. The problem was, I wanted to fix him more than I wanted to fix what he had destroyed inside of me. I wanted so badly to fix what he had destroyed between us. He made flowers grow inside me, and I didn't want to let them die. I was suffocating myself in order to save him.

I didn't care that he made me hate every part of me. I just wanted to make sure that he never felt that way. I wanted to make sure that he knew when he made a mistake, he was forgiven. I never wanted him to feel the way he made me feel. I thought that if I just kept being nice, he'd change and things would get better.

He did the opposite. He made sure that I never forgot the mistakes I made. He tried to make me feel like he was the one saving me.

I can't even remember what changed. I just know that one day, I stopped wanting to fix him. I wanted to love myself more than I wanted him. Loving myself and being with him were mutually exclusive. I couldn't do both. So, I left.

And the best part? I've never been happier.

"We are taught to swallow our protests in exchange for his apologies. When my friends ask me why I stayed so long, why I accepted the roses and ignored the thorns. I tell them it is not easy to wade out the roots he planted in me. I tell them I was so captivated by the house he built for me, I didn't notice the locked door, I didn't notice I was captive to this garden of guilt..."