I found one of my “Arizona journals” yesterday which I haven’t read since I moved home in 2014. This one was started in 2013 during the year before I moved home, the day after I turned 27. It had some really great moments and it felt good seeing myself with an inner light, even though I was in a really dark moment of my life.
I’ve always wanted to be that person, and I’ve always written encouraging words to myself, but I can remember how miserable I was then and how hopeless and alone I felt, and it’s great going back and seeing that I never gave up on myself.
Even in the middle of being with someone who was cold, pessimistic, sociopathic and narcissistic, I still believed in love. I still believed that someone could love me and I could love someone. I believed in happiness, in the future and in myself. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship but I still held onto the tiny scraps of myself that the relationship left me with.
We probably had sex a total of 15 times over the course of 4 years. I weighed 150 pounds and he blamed it on me being “overweight” when in reality, it turned out he had erectile dysfunction.
He didn’t touch me, he didn’t include me in his friendships, he manipulated me into believing I was a problem even though I worked for $11 an hour and he stayed home and played video games all day pretending to look for a job. He would purchase things on my card and pretend he forgot to tell me, and he cheated on me.
I was in such a state of low self-esteem and confidence (something fairly foreign to me) and felt trapped in a black hole, 1700 miles away from my family and everything I’d ever known. So, I created this person named Paul, and I would talk to Paul when I was alone. In my head, he was this perfect person who loved me and all of my flaws. He liked the same music, the same movies and thought I was smart. It sounds crazy because it is crazy.
Paul may not have been real, but he was the pillow I clung to at night because I was so lonely, that even fabric stuffed with cotton held more warmth than the actual, breathing person who claimed to have loved me. It sounds so stupid, but it was so necessary in order to keep myself pushing forward. I can’t explain it, but this imaginary person helped me love myself for 2 years because I couldn’t love myself in my real situation. I had to completely detach myself from my reality in order to survive it.
It sounds so stupid, but it held me together. I’m definitely not one of those women who feels the need to tell other people about my “abusive relationship”, because I knew I wouldn’t be there forever, I just found a weird and childish way to survive my environment. I have no PTSD or trust issues, I simply gave 4 years of my youth to a shitty person, nothing more and nothing less. It has defined my strength and not my ability to love people.
I finally did reach out to my ex in the middle of last year (I’ve known him since I was 15, so I was really curious about his life and his family and I forgave him shortly after moving home so no hard feelings), and he apologized and said the thought of the way he treated me still tormented him. I tried to tell him I appreciated it, but he had nothing to apologize for because I was happy now and the experience made me a better person.
He then tried to tell me my family was taking advantage of me and talking shit about me behind my back (after telling him I was taking care of my grandmother with dementia at the time) and he kept asking me why I referred to my family as a “we” when it was all me and they were reaping the benefits.
He was still the same, miserable person he’d always been. Only slightly more self-aware and conscious of what a shitty person he’d been most of his life. I felt so sorry for him. He’d lost all of his friends, he’d fallen deeper into a world of conspiracy paranoia and idolized the member of a popular UK activist hardcore punk band from the 80s who is now working some shitty job in a warehouse (I think). My ex was talking about flying out to England to hang out with the guy, as they’d become friends via Facebook and talked about how fucked-up the government is and how everything was created to manipulate people. Cool.
These were paranoias I’d experienced when we were together and in my mid-twenties. Do I still believe in conspiracies? Yes. Do I care? Nope. I just want to go about my life and be happy, write and travel; I don’t want to live in some post-revolution anarchist society where people kill each other for fucking water and we have no entertainment but have to work and work to create a society and world we’ll never get to enjoy. Fuuuuck that. Label me a conformist and let me worship my Spotify subscription.
I realized as he talked on and on and on that he clearly has a mental illness that worsened after I left and I am so grateful for getting out of there.
He somewhat begged to talk on the phone again the next night and I conceded. That night, he talked about YouTube for an hour and a half and then told me he was glad he had someone he could relate to, that he missed me.
What a guy.
In all honesty, I hope he finds someone and treats her like a saint, I find no joy in his decline and I hate that his illness has manifested into paranoia and depression.
As for me, I’ve kept a journal since I was 14 years old. Having that reminder that even in the deepest, darkest wells of my life, I still believe in me. That is pretty much the best feeling in the world because I know that I’ll always be enough and that it takes a lot more than a shitty experience to break my spirit.
Whitney is wrong 