I don't want to write tonight at all. Possibly because the things on my mind aren't exactly what I want to talk about at the moment. I had another therapy session today and it was a tough one. In addition, I also went and looked at some websites regarding domestic violence. I want to maybe join a group or find a cause that I can get behind. Try and create some semblance of meaning to what happened. I don't know what happens to me though. I look on the sites and I read through some of the signs of domestic violence and I begin to feel guilty because I did some of the things listed to him. Maybe I'm just as much the abuser as the abused.
I'm not an easy person to be with and I know that. I definitely wasn't a good person to be with when I was with him. Reading through some of the signs, I can't deny that I inflicted some of that on him. I yelled at him constantly and said things that were belittling, hurtful, and downright terrible. To this day, I still ask Dave to send me a text when he gets home or gets to work. For me, it's to quell the "he might be dead" anxiety that runs through my mind and when I demanded it from Greg it was for the same reason. I never felt the need to "check up on him" but maybe that was how it was perceived. I desperately longed for Greg to be someone different and I made that distinctively clear in ways that could be and probably would be considered abusive.
Even my parents expressed concern. When Dave and I almost broke up a few years ago, my parents remember how I treated Greg and immediately wanted to make sure that wasn't how I was treating Dave. They witnessed my freak outs at him, the nights I spent screaming and yelling at him through the phone. They heard many of the cruel and awful things I would say. Maybe he too is suffering from PTSD from the emotional torment I put him through. What if he is? Could I have inflicted that much hurt? Did I destroy him as much as he destroyed me? Did he do what he did as his way of fighting back? I belittled him, made him feel like he was worthless and a bum so he took control the only way he knew how. That was his way of forcing his will with a more silent, subversive form of pain.
Yes, I acknowledge that what he did was wrong. Very wrong. But my actions, they were wrong too. I should have never started dating him to begin with. I didn't want to; I wasn't interested. I wasn't even really attracted to him. Something about him made me feel off and I told him so in the most brutal and tactless way even before we started dating. I told him I wasn't all that interested, that I was still in love with someone else, that if we were to date it wouldn't last because I really wasn't attracted to him or wanted to be with him at all. I remember having that conversation specifically. He pursued me anyway. I think I became a challenge. I felt guilty saying no. I didn't want to hurt him so I went along anyway. Then I don't know what happened but it became imperative that I change him. Maybe I didn't want him to begin with but he could become that person. Suddenly it was like that became my challenge and I set out to change him into what I wanted.
It was a lost cause to begin with. Everyone knows you can't change someone. You can't make someone be anything that they aren't. He wasn't stupid. In fact, I still think he is one of the smartest people I know. He read me like I was an open book. He knew how I felt. I can't even begin to imagine being in a relationship with someone who doesn't want you. I started dating him because I felt guilty. I was afraid to hurt him. In the end, I hurt him far worse than I could have ever imagined. There's a part of me that wants to tell him I'm sorry for everything I said but I'm too afraid. Regardless, I still fear him. I don't want him anywhere near me. Not that saying sorry would magically undo all the pain I caused him. If he were to contact me and apologize, it certainly wouldn't ease anything that I'm going through.
No, instead I have to learn to live with how I treated him as my as I have to learn to how to live with the way he treated me. You would think that I might find some comfort in the thought of hurting him while we dated but there's zero comfort. If anything, I feel like it makes everything worse. I'm purposely delaying, I don't want to use the words, "maybe what happened to me is partly my fault." I know what that sounds like but really, who am I kidding? I was not the sweet, soft-spoken, demure little girl who just wanted him to love me and didn't deserve being mistreated at all. I was a downright bitch to him throughout the majority of our relationship. I was demanding and mean and I thought I was better than him. So no, I know how badly it sounds but a part of me still believes it was just his way of trying to deal with me. If I was that girl who loved him for who he was and not for who I wanted him to be, maybe he wouldn't have felt like he had to do what he did. Maybe our relationship wouldn't have been about who had the most power and control.
God, I wish I had the non-abusive dysfunctional teenage romance. Actually, I just wish I never had a teenage romance (if can call what I had a "romance") at all.
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