TW: addresses personal and sensitive issues about an abusive relationship.
Nobody teaches you how to love again after an abusive relationship ends.
‘You’re finally free again’ are the main words you will hear over and over until you feel like your ears are about to bleed. But what if you don’t ever want that freedom again? Being trapped was the best sense of security you ever had.
2 years later, you’re still lying awake at night, wondering if you will ever feel love again, the kind of love you left when you were with him.
He’s long over you, in what seems to be the perfect relationship, with the girl he told you not to worry about. You still fear for her, what if he is doing the same things to her, the things that he once did to you?
Then the far more terrifying alternative arises.
What if he’s treating her with kindness and respect, the only two things you ever asked for, the two things he seemed incapable of giving. Maybe after all, you were the problem.
“That’s the thing that will set you free, knowing there is still a life out there for you.”
You begin to give your body to a stranger, a new stranger every night, hoping to feel the euphoria that you did when you were with him. The night always ends the same; staring out of the window in the taxi ride home, feeling just as, or even more empty as you did before.
Every failed attempt at yet another relationship after him takes away a bit of your soul each time, until you feel like there’s nothing left at all. However, one thing remains; the dawning realisation that love and possession are not the same things. Maybe, just maybe, he never loved you. That relationship was never love, and your first love is still yet to be experienced. That’s the thing that will set you free, knowing there is still a life out there for you.
By Niamh Maguire
Featured image courtesy of @alvaroserrano via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
