I couldn’t sleep. 

I was rubbing my boyfriend’s back before bed – a regular occurrence in our nightly routine – when suddenly, I was consumed by anxiety. Abruptly, I was anticipating for him to turn around and say something cruel; something that would cut deep into my heart- or reveal to me unhinged anger that he had been keeping a secret. These speculations didn’t make any sense; these are things he would never do. He loves me very much. He is always kind to me and considerate of me. 

But my ex wasn’t. 

My ex would scream at me for hours on end, nearly every day, threatening to hurt me or to end my life. My ex would blame me for his aching soul, and he would isolate me, revoking my freedoms and confining me into the prison of our relationship.  

That was five years ago. 

Five whole years. 

So, what the Hell is going on today? 

I felt my anxiety surging into an attack, so I started practicing my techniques to ground myself again. When the first few failed to relieve me, I resorted to one I learned in counseling many years ago, and that is to feel the emotion in your body, find where in your body the emotion is located, and then address the emotion, identifying and confronting it directly.  

I allowed myself to focus on my body, and I tried to discover where the emotion was resting, but it kept bouncing back and forth between my chest, stomach, and throat. It moved so quickly that for a while, I was unable to address it before it relocated, and I struggled to keep up. Finally, I captured it, and I found that it primarily consisted of anger and fear. 

I asked myself a series of questions and waited on my body’s response for an answer. When I asked myself why I was feeling this, I got no response. I asked myself what I wanted to do, and I felt a surge through me when an answer came to me in a thought: 

I want to drown him. 

That’s dark – bear with me. 

I asked myself why drowning specifically, and here’s what I came up with: 

I Want Him to Shut Up. 

I want him to shut up – for him to be silenced. The endless screaming throughout our relationship clung to me ever since. Like tonight, I still feel that anticipation that it’s coming again soon, though it doesn’t often feel specific the way it did tonight. I was so on edge all the time back then, and his anger floats like clouds in the back of my mind, and like clouds; sometimes they gather to be heavy and dense, where they become dark and looming, and it’s difficult to navigate through such weather. 

I want him to shut up. I’ve seen him say the same lines to all the girls he claimed he loved; that they had always been his best friend, that no one understands him the way that they do, that they’re strong, and it takes someone strong to be with someone like him, that he couldn’t stand to see them fill in blank and he took it upon himself to fill in blank, that he will do fill in blank despite what anyone thinks, and that he swears that they are his forever. I’ve seen him say the same lines, yet I allowed myself to feel special when he said them to me. I allowed myself to feel special, despite the countless times he said “I’ve never hit a girl before, but right now…”  

Underwater, he would be silent. 

I Want Him to Fight. 

I want him to fight for himself. He’s a fucking leach that clings onto any source of compassion so long as the host allows it to be sustainable. He casts blame and believes in it so intimately that he dismisses his responsibility for fault entirely – it’s the only way he knows how to keep himself moving forward. He wears an armor of false confidence and portrays himself as indestructible and ruthless, but he avoids accountability and that has made his character weak and faulty, and the consequence is his pattern of assigning someone else to burden the fault is that he never, ever fights for himself. 

I want him to fight for himself because I hold onto hope that he could become a better version of himself. If he fought to be whole, I could finally be at peace knowing I was the last one to endure his wrath. The idea that he may be suffocating someone else the way he did me still often keeps me up at night. I feel crippled – like I am responsible for protecting anyone else that may endure the same horrors I did, and despite my rationale telling me I did all I could back then, and that it is reckless and inappropriate to reach out to the people in his life now, I can’t help but feel that it is my duty to prevent my experience from being anyone else’s.  

With his head below the surface, his body would thrash. He would fight for himself. 

I Felt as Though I was Drowning. 

I was underwater through the entire duration of our relationship. I was desperately gasping for air at every faint opportunity I was granted to catch a breath. I was always afraid, and my life’s end truly felt plausible at any moment. I was exhausted by battling to remain at the surface and I never knew how much more I could take.  

His body in the current would reflect my experience with him.  

…Why do I have to drown him specifically? 

I Never Got Closure. 

I never got closure, and it is so tough enduring an experience like that without ever getting closure. I got to break it off with him, which probably did a lot of good for my soul, but it still feels incomplete. Back then, even after all I had undergone, I still didn’t feel ready to let go when I left. I still cared for him immensely and it is excruciatingly difficult to walk away from someone you care for. I know it’s difficult to understand how someone could care for that type of character, but maybe if you had the full story, or perhaps if your heart was mine… I saw good in him. I believed in the potential of who he could be, and I longed for the relationship I had been dreaming about before we had ever made it official. The idea of what could have been made it sickening to walk away. 

I never got closure because an entire half of our relationship was fabricated. He never loved me. He just needed somebody that loved him; someone he could mold into being what he believed he needed so he could carry out his fantasy and continue living in the bubble he trapped himself in. He had no grasp on what love is supposed to be, and so he believed he had to chip away at me and break the foundation of my spirit for me to stay. He learned enough about what works to hold a person’s attention, he strung me along through a series of mind games and ping-ponged between heartache and validation, and then he relied on nostalgia, routine, and guilt to keep me at his side. He figured that the more I lost my confidence and forgot my worth, the more likely I was to stay. 

If it were not my hands on the back of his skull, I would remain void of closure. 

I Want to Help Him. 

If I witnessed someone else gripping his face below the surface, it would be my instinct to pull him back up. I wouldn’t be able to understand why someone thought they could play God over his life, and I would be angered and saddened by such a terrible attempt. I would help him catch his breath and offer him a blanket, and a towel to dry off, and I would tell him that I was sorry something so horrible had just occurred. I would be angry that someone would so carelessly treat his life with such fragility.  

If he drowned, I would never get to know what happens next. I would never know if he does begin the journey to become whole, and I would never get the chance to see who that man could be. I would never know whether he could demonstrate genuine love, or how it would impact him to receive and understand it. He would never find success, fulfillment, or happiness, and I could never bear witness to that. I could never know for sure that I would have been the last one to endure his wrath, and with that, I would never get my closure. 

I don’t really want him to drown. 

It has been five years since I broke free of that cage, and I still find fragments of grief for it. I still worry that he will reach out – or come for me, and I still experience knee-jerk reactions to situations that don’t really exist. Though, I know it won’t last forever. 

I know it won’t last forever because it’s fading every day. My panic attacks are few and far between, and my compulsion to know what’s going on in his life is scarcely prevalent anymore. I have filled the cracks in my foundation and every day, I am becoming increasingly more whole. I am in a relationship now that is full of honest love, and with him, I have been given the opportunity to understand completely what that kind of relationship should feel like. I have rediscovered my worth and regained my confidence, and with that; I have been equipped to create and build my dreams.  

Over the last five years, I have battled to become the version of myself that I love the most and am the proudest of. If you’ve been here a while, you know how important that is to me. Through loving myself, I learned how to love others. When I discovered true love, I found out exactly what love is supposed to be. 

I learned that I never loved him either. I just loved the idea of him – the one that made it so hard to walk away – but he doesn’t exist.  

I am proud and certain that today, I can say that I have found love that does exist. I am proud of the man I love, and the love I have for him, I am certain of. 

I’m going to go to sleep now. 

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