by Anonymous_181008
It was the fall of my sophomore year of high school, and I could feel changes in myself, and these changes drove away a lot of my friends (through no fault of their own). My depression hadn’t ever been so bad. This was the beginning of one of the darkest periods I have experienced, and even now as a junior in college, nothing comes close to the suffering I endured.
I had spent the summer apart from most of my friends, and I had broken up with my boyfriend just prior to the start of summer. I was lonely. I was sad. I was angry. I often resorted to harming myself, or smoking pot to numb myself to the state of my life. It worked.
I was completely numb for months. From June of 2014 to January of 2015, I was trapped in a perpetual fog-like state, with occasional moments of emotional outbursts, overwhelming sadness, and irrational anger. My ex-boyfriend was doing the same exact thing. He was tortured for the entirety of our relationship, and I wanted to help him, and that drove him away from me, I think. Initially, he was kind and loving, but his own illness just kept getting worse, which prompted our breakup in May of 2014. I couldn’t shake the attachment I had to him. I wanted him back as a friend more desperately than anything. He was the first person I had ever developed romantic or sexual feelings for, and I wanted to keep him close.
It was October of 2014 when we started talking again. I had been following him on social media, longing for him to start talking to me again, I wanted to be noticed. And he did. He reached out to me after running into me in the high school band room. Initially, he didn’t want to be around me, we both knew I was a clingy boyfriend.
He walked in, promptly turned on his heels and left, hoping not to be seen by me. He reached out later that week and apologized for abruptly leaving and we started casually talking again. He asked how I had been, and I didn’t tell him how terrible things had been, and he didn’t either. We were both in the same exact spot, and we both lied. Nothing was okay. We started hanging around each other in school, he would shoot me looks at lunch and he would always try and be alone with me. I felt special again, like I had a friend. And that was all I wanted.
It had been about a month. It was now Halloween. We were both sitting at lunch and he invited me over for Halloween since some friends had canceled on him last second. I was ecstatic. I lied to my parents and told them I would be at another friend’s house. A girl. I had come out to my parents, so they knew me being with a girl wouldn’t be an issue.
By this point he had told me that he was smoking pot regularly and I had told him I was too, we planned on smoking together that afternoon. I was excited to be at his house again, I was excited to play video games with him, excited to watch television, excited to walk, but the drugs were the least of my concern, and so was having him back as a boyfriend. I wanted a friend because I had so few. I had driven so many of them away, with my depression being as bad as it was. I pretended everything was perfect when I was with him, I didn’t want to lose him again.
I snuck onto his bus home so the bus driver wouldn't kick me off. We sat in the same seat and he passed me an earbud. We listened to music, and he put his head on my shoulder.
It felt nice to be close to someone again, but I didn’t want him like that, not anymore. We arrived at his house and he knew something was wrong. He asked me if I was okay, and I broke down. In the month we had been talking I feigned happiness and contentment. I started crying, I told him that my depression was the worst it had ever been. I was harming myself, using drugs, and contemplating suicide.
He pulled me close and hugged me and told me everything would be okay. He told me he would be there for me, and I felt safe. But that didn’t last for more than a few moments.
He kissed me, and I pulled back.
I told him I didn’t want him like that, and I apologized. He was okay with it. He apologized, and we moved on. We decided to go out into the woods to smoke, we got high and came back inside.
We laid down together on his bed and we watched television. I was higher than I had ever been, I took some of his Adderall too without telling him. I dozed off. I awoke a few minutes later and he was on top of me, unbuckling my belt. He asked me if he could keep going, and I was so far gone that I just let it happen.
I don’t remember how far he went, but I later realized it was too far. I know that I reciprocated. I woke up a few hours later with only a vague idea of what had happened. All I knew at the time was I said no when I was sober, and he did things to me when I was high.
I didn’t think too much at the time, I didn’t care. I felt so apathetic and dulled that it didn’t even occur to me what had happened. I moved on and neglected myself, just like I always had. We went trick or treating together that night, and we drifted even closer together.
To this day I have no idea why I decided to get back together with him. So many negative tendencies I had were amplified when I was with him. I was trying to fix someone just as sick as myself, and I found myself caring more about him and less about myself with every passing day.
More months passed, and it was the same old thing repeatedly. We would smoke, have sex, and do nothing of importance. I knew he was in pain and I tried to fix him with reckless abandon towards myself. But, somehow, something had changed. I felt excitement. I felt joy in abandoning myself, like my problems were inconsequential.
He had stripped my cares and worries from me, and my mental state began to accelerate. That intoxicating feeling was mania. Years of repressing my emotions and my depression gave way to mania. I started to do more drugs. I smoked weed, I popped Adderall, I stole and sold things for money, I sold some of my own belongings online, I stole things from the mall, and I didn’t care. All of this was to have money to buy drugs.
I even started to have sex more often and with more people. I met other classmates for sex as well. I began to study harder, my grades were even better than they already were, and I started sneaking alcohol at home. I grew even more attached to him. I was convinced the excitement and the thrill I was experiencing meant I was doing better, suddenly everything felt better. It was an exhilarating rush of energy and I had no regrets about the bridges I burned. I thought the only way that feeling would last was if I was by his side.
We were exacerbating each other’s conditions. He grew angrier, and I grew more manic. He started to become forceful and aggressive when we were together and when we had sex. I was being hurt physically and I didn’t care, I felt I owed him for liberating me.
All of my inhibitions vanished, and I had no idea anything was wrong. I didn’t want to believe anything was wrong. I spent November to December in a frenzied manic episode. When I crashed that December, my mother could tell. I was somber, tired, reclusive and irritated, so I agreed to see a therapist. This therapist didn’t listen to anything I said.
I was textbook bipolar, and she prescribed Zoloft, a medication that exacerbates mania in bipolar patients. I was sent into an even worse manic state. I continued all the same behaviors for the next month, except this time I was hardly eating. On January 17th, after not sleeping for two consecutive days, I crashed again. I had studied relentlessly for midterms and my manic energy faded.
Everything felt dark. Everything felt pointless. I felt that nothing mattered anymore. I took a month’s worth of Zoloft and nothing happened. I took a handful of Ibuprofen, and nothing happened. I went upstairs. Zombified, empty, and beaten.
I told my mother I needed to go to a hospital, I told her I wanted to be dead and that I needed a hospital. When I arrived at the emergency room I was defensive, I was drained, and I was fearful. I lied to my doctors to try and escape at the last second. I told them everything was fine, I told them I didn’t do drugs, I lied about my promiscuity, I lied about it all.
They saw through all of it. They saw a thin, pale, empty-eyed child who couldn’t bear to live in his own skin for a moment longer. They recommended inpatient to my parents, and they talked me into it. The second I walked through those doors of [inpatient psychiatric hospital] I broke down again. I felt the urge to escape once more, and I lied even more to accomplish this goal.
The intake nurse looked me in the eyes and said she knew I was lying to her, she had all the paperwork in front of her. My drug screening, therapist’s notes, and physician’s notes. She knew everything, and I still lied right to her face. I was absolutely out of my mind, and everyone except for me knew it. I would’ve done anything to get out.
In the hospital, I was diagnosed with bipolar and was prescribed an anti-psychotic. It was quite literally a sobering experience. I got counseling, I got rehabilitative therapy, and I met people who were in my shoes.
That entire time, all I wanted was my boyfriend.
But my parents had gone through my phone, they knew all about what I had been doing, and they knew he was the cause. They refused to let me speak to him. They were right in doing so, and I refused to believe their intentions. After a week and a half, I was released and decided to immediately return to school. To him.
His reception to my return was lukewarm. Like he couldn’t be bothered. He wouldn’t even kiss me. That hit me like a fucking car. I was so angry. The anti-psychotic had dulled my senses for over a week now and for the first time in so long, I was angry. I left the table as fast as I could and went to the bathroom. I screamed. I slammed the doors. I punched them. And then I cried for at least 10 minutes.
I realized just then what had happened. I was propelled back to Halloween and I realized that’s when it had all started.
I was raped.
The medication had sobered me enough to bring back all the pain that I repressed. The repressed sadness and anger turned into apathy, and apathy gave way to mania. He took advantage of me at my lowest point, and that broke me. My spirit, my mind, my body.
He had been using me for months. I was nothing more to him than a warm body. He didn’t love me, and I realized I never loved him. I loved the mania I experienced when I was with him. It was the only way I felt something other than pain. I endured nearly four months of abuse and neglect at his hands, and I was left to pick up all the pieces on my own. I had to mend my relationships with my parents, the friends I lost, and all the people I lied to. People wanted to help me, and I pretended for so long that everything was okay. Teachers wanted to help, my friends and my parents too, and I refused it all.
Repressing the pain instead of facing it was one of the worst things I’ve ever done to myself. Repressing the memory didn’t make the pain go away. It merely took another form, and it nearly destroyed me. My life had never been so bleak, and I had no idea what I had to do to fix it.
I was so young. Too young to be so broken and battered. Too young to know it was okay to ask for help. Too young to know how to even get help. Too young to seek justice. If I was able to report what happened, I would’ve done it. In a heartbeat. Trauma makes us do terrible things and makes us feel destitute.
Reporting what happened would’ve been the first step to healing, but I skipped that step and I spent the next several years regretting it. I spent so much time beating myself up. If I had reported I could’ve started seeing a therapist much sooner, I could’ve changed schools, I could’ve started living my life again.
Taking control of your trauma is the only way to start over. It’s the only way to start living without regret and scorn.
Two years later, he contacted me. He called me from rehab my senior year of high school, and he did something I never thought he would do. He apologized to me. For all of it.
It took my entire being not to just lay down and cry. I was feeling relief, anger, and joy. I was angry that it took so long, but I was happy for him. Happy that he was finally healthy, and because I finally felt vindicated. My pain was real, it wasn’t just some memory that I had conjured up while taking psychotropic drugs.
Everything was real.
He took responsibility, and I am so lucky to have been able to experience that. So many victims never hear those words, and I was blessed to be one of those who did.
To other survivors, trust yourself. You must trust that your pain is valid.
Even if you never can confront your abuser.
If you can only vaguely remember what happened, you must trust yourself.
Even if you said no when you were sober but agreed while you were drunk or high, you must trust yourself.
If you are doubting if the pain you’ve endured was an assault, you must trust yourself.
Even if no one else does, your fellow survivors will.
I trust you, and I believe you.
Published as written, with light proofreading, line break adjustment, and redacting.
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