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Always Google Your Date: The Second Chapter

Dealing with obsessive, predatory behavior while trying to recover from trauma.

By S. L. R.Published 3 years ago 8 min read
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Always Google Your Date: The Second Chapter
Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

After a bomb, there's always fallout. Cleanup that needs to be dealt with. Survivors' wounds tended to, debris gathered, etc. The fallout of a relationship is no different.

If you haven't read my survivor story, now's the time to go back and read it. Check out the link below before reading on.

Now that you're all caught up, we can talk about what happened after.

Honestly, I don't think there's nearly enough frank conversation about what happens immediately after leaving an abusive relationship. People talk about therapy and and other ways of coping, but no one will ever tell you just how ugly it really is.

Healing of this magnitude? It's real ugly. I'm talking waking up screaming in the middle of the night in gut-wrenching sobs ugly. Panic attacks in the middle of your office because someone said your name with just the right intonation and you couldn't run out the back door fast enough for a moment to get it under control. Attempting to journal about it, but your hand starts shaking so hard that your handwriting looks like a kindergartener on a sugar high. Knowing that you need help, but knowing that you're just not ready.

For me?

I was dealing with all of those things while looking over my shoulder constantly.

By Tommy van Kessel 🤙 on Unsplash

When I left Bobby's that day, I called my mother. Because what else do you do? My mother and I have never been close, but she'd never leave me out in the cold. She's a good woman. We just never really understood each other and most likely never will.

So I moved back in with my parents. Exactly what every young woman wants to do after a bad breakup. I can't tell you how lucky I felt at that time that my parents have never really been the type to ask questions or understand me. I didn't want to talk about it and they didn't want to know. I pulled into that large circular driveway, unpacked my car and moved right back into my childhood bedroom, which was now furnished with a much smaller bed than before I had left. Perfect for Roxy, my dog, to curl up as close as possible.

Here's where the fun really began.

It didn't start right away, but that's because I assume he had passed out from being so drunk. My phone was blowing up with text messages. It was Bobby. Begging and pleading with me to come back. I ignored him, not responding to even one text.

At around 11 PM, I remember turning to it and needing to shutting it off. It just wouldn't stop.

141 text messages.

No, that is not an exaggeration.

Bobby texted 141 times over the course of one evening with no response from me whatsoever.

"Baby, please come home."

"Let's just talk about this. Please call me."

"Call me back, baby."

"You can't just leave me like this. You promised you would never leave me."

"I thought we were going to get married? I thought you loved me?"

"You're at your mom's house, right? I'm coming to get you."

"You're coming home soon, right?"

"I'll make you come back. You know I will."

"I'll kill everyone and everything you care about. Is that what you want me to do? I'll drag your a*s back here kicking and screaming if I have to. YOU F*CKING KNOW I WILL, B*TCH."

"I'll just take care of your mom first. Would you like that? I'll teach you not to leave me, you wh*re."

"YOU'RE MINE AND YOU'RE NOT F*CKING LEAVING ME."

It was never ending. I don't think I ever actually read every single one of those text messages. Far too busy throwing up all of the panic bubbling in my gut.

For months and months, I received those text messages and their variations. Sometimes they got worse. Other times they weren't so bad. Some days, he only texted once or twice. Most days it was a minimum of three to five times.

The worst part?

He sent them from a different phone number every time. Until that time, I had no idea that you could get all sorts of apps to be able to text from all different numbers. Every time I blocked a number, there would be a new one the next day. After an exhausting few months of blocking numbers, eventually I gave up. It didn't help anything anyway. At the time, I was still on my mother's phone plan and I didn't want to ask her if I could change my phone number. Too many questions and no answers that I was willing to give to her.

So I allowed it to continue.

Every day he threatened me. My family. My friends. He would drive past my parents' house and take pictures of my car in the driveway, making clear that he knew where I was. Or send pictures when it was just my mother's car there and tell me how maybe that day was the day he would teach me a lesson I would never forget. He knew how to cover it up, make it look like an accident. I was his and he would make me suffer for thinking I could leave him.

Night after night would go by and he would send long messages and leave voicemails that would detail how he was going to hurt me like I had hurt him. It seemed that making me pay had become his singular life purpose.

You know those moments in time when you feel like everything is moving at warp speed and slow motion all at the same time in every direction? When everything around you is so blurry and it's all you can do to take one more step in any direction, being weighed down so heavily by what's on your mind? You feel so lethargic and anxious all at the same time and you don't know whether you want the world to slow down or move faster. Where is up? What is down? How do I get out of here? All you can think about is being swallowed up by the closest black hole and drowning in these emotions that absolutely consume your mind, body and soul.

By Christopher Ott on Unsplash

But then one day, it stops.

One day Bobby just stopped texting. Describing the light that shined down on me when I felt that little bit of freedom... Well, it was indescribable.

Of course I didn't realize it at first. Who would? Something that consumed your thoughts for months, constantly keeping your head on a swivel, clutching your pocketknife in your pocket at all times not only for protection, but for comfort.

Sitting at my mother's kitchen table with the sun almost totally over the horizon, I remember having the most wonderful cup of earl grey tea in my favorite cup that I had purchased some years prior. The local tribune sitting in front of me next to that weeks latest grocery store ad. I was looking out the glass door and thinking how beautiful the sky looked with just a hint of pink still in it, just a couple wisps of clouds drifting by as the day grew warmer. At the time, my mother had the world's most uncomfortable chairs and we were talking about the regretful purchase. Her being the sort who loves to have the newest and best thing, she was already planning her next shopping trip.

It hit me like a truck.

When was the last time I had heard from Bobby? It had been days... hadn't it? Glancing at my phone I realized that it had not only been days. It had been almost two full weeks since I had received anything from him.

Could I really have been so lucky?

After endless nights plagued by panic and insomnia, fearing the worst at all moments... Could it really be so simple?

Turns out it was.

By Colton Duke on Unsplash

Grabbing my cup of tea, I walked out onto the patio. Gulping in the air, I imagined this is what prisoners felt like after being released from prison.

That feeling of a weight being lifted off of your shoulders? One of the loveliest feelings I can say I've ever had. The freedom you feel is like nothing you've ever felt. I wanted to cry. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to fly away to a remote island and live as a hermit with my dog for the rest of my life. The smile on my face couldn't be removed for anything in the world.

That night was one of the single greatest nights of sleep I can say I've ever had. Utter and complete emotional and physical exhaustion will do that to a person though, so no surprise there.

From that moment on, I felt like I had permission to move on. Every day was just a little easier than the last. I decided that I didn't want to be a victim anymore. I chose to get better every day.

Meditation and yoga became my very best friends. I'm no yogi, but beginner's yoga forms did me just fine. Forcing myself to look inward and reflect on what happened to me, making my mind face the monster, accept it's existence, and then crush it into submission, holding it down, defeated.

"You will not win," I said to myself. "I cannot be defeated. You do not define me."

It became my mantra.

The mind is a muscle. I found that putting my mind on the path to recovery was very similar to physical therapy. You have to work it and you have to work for it. Never underestimate its strength and never neglect its care.

The lesson I value the most?

Permission is never needed when it comes to taking care of yourself. You belong to you and you alone. You are free to give and take of yourself however you deem fit.

And you cannot pour from an empty glass.

By Klara Kulikova on Unsplash

recovery
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About the Creator

S. L. R.

~ A little bit nerdy. A little bit mystic. A whole lot of me loving myself. ~

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