Trusting the wrong person over myself, and letting what had been a decent working friendship turn into an abusive long-term relationship in which I was exploited for work and money, berated for and demanded to change fundamental things about myself, alienated from friends and family my partner didn’t like, had every past trauma, mental-health struggle, and vulnerability I’d trustingly shared with this person weaponized against me, and was routinely gaslit to such a degree that I had to start secretly recording our conversations on my phone just to make sure I wasn’t actually misremembering everything later when this person inevitably insisted the talk had gone completely differently.

Even knowing I was being so abused, I had let so much of my life get wrapped up with this person and was so downtrodden in heart and soul that I found myself remaining dependent on the situation and unable to even think about getting out of it. I felt trapped, but unable to do anything except continue to go with it and pretend everything was just fine. This strategy was, of course, unsustainable; it all eventually blew up to the point where my abuser finally got sick of me, whereupon I was dumped, kicked out, and left unhoused and couch-surfing.

It took me a great deal of time to pick up the scraps and rebuild my life, thankfully with the help of some amazing friends and family who were happy to have me back and helped pull me up onto my feet again. After rebuilding my own independence from scratch and taking a long while to work on myself and my own mental and physical health, I eventually began dating again. I met the most wonderful person, and we’ve now been happily and healthy married for years. My shitty ex is long in the past, and I’m content to leave things that way.