My Toxic Relationship Made Me Stop Loving Myself

I am still fighting with my mind and all those thoughts that are telling me that it is all over now. That he’s gone from my life. Somehow I still feel his presence. His voice is calling for me at night and his hands are touching me. It’s like I am in a dream that I can’t wake up from. I am still waiting to wake up one morning and see that I haven’t managed to run away from him and the horror he put me through.

Even if I don’t want to believe it, even if I still can’t admit it—it’s over.

I have managed to run away from him and never look back.

Even though there are so many things that happened because of him and even though it was never easy to fight the urge to forgive and forget, the worst part about it is that I put him before myself. I loved him more than I have ever loved myself and that’s why I’m still fighting with the aftermath.

What he called love, I called abuse. Those words that only brought me down and all those times his actions made me question my life and the choices I made, were what I had to endure every single day for as long as I was with him. Because there was nothing I could do to change him, no matter how hard I tried.

All that toxicity led to me not being able to love myself. I was broken to the point where I wasn’t even able to look in the mirror because I thought that I would just see all those things he didn’t like about me. I only saw a flawed woman, who shouldn’t be loved ever again. That’s what he made me think of myself!

I was criticizing even the smallest things I did. Everything I was doing simply wasn’t enough. Even if it was perfect I would still hear his voice from somewhere, telling me that I was wrong, telling me that I had made a mistake.

But to be honest, the only mistake I made was to be with him. He only used his harsh words and all those fights to take the blame off of himself. I see it clearly now, he was so insecure that he wanted me to feel even worse than he felt about himself. He never wanted me to succeed because that would have meant that maybe there was someone better out there.

He made me feel worthless, ugly and stupid. After some time, I didn’t even try to make myself look pretty anymore. It was just bothersome because there was no way he would say that I was beautiful or compliment me in any kind of way.

This is what a toxic person does to you. Because of their insecurities, they can’t allow you to be in any way better than them. That would pain them and make them miserable, for they don’t know how to handle criticism or simply have someone by their side who was slightly better than them.

My advice to you? Run! It’s not that hard to see the first signs that someone is a toxic person who doesn’t even know how to be gentle and kind. Be careful and read into them very well, because if you let your guard down, you will end up making them a priority without ever being able to love yourself the same way again.

There is a long road ahead of me but I am not giving up. I love to believe that everything happens for a reason and that this is the perfect way to fall in love with myself once more. I believe that this was just what had to happen to make me see that I had to make myself a priority, that I had to stand up and fight for myself!

I am not a quitter! I will fight for myself until the end. One day I will be able to wake up in the morning and never imagine him again, I will be able to look in the mirror and see who I really am. Until then, I will continue fighting for myself and I will love myself more than I ever did and more than he ever could.