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Few things feel shittier than aimlessly driving around at night, because you don't feel safe in your own home.
We need to be better at modeling and honouring boundaries - with ourselves, and others. And I'm about ready to go off about male victims of abuse. Enough silence.
We need to be better at modeling and honouring boundaries - with ourselves, and others. And I'm about ready to go off about male victims of abuse. Enough silence.
This beyond difficult for me to talk about, but I've been in two abusive relationships. Both ended with me covered in cuts, bruises, and more deeply affecting than either of those - shame. Shame that I had somehow caused this. Shame that I, as a "man", was abused by a woman.
Both of those relationships didn't start with the physical abuse. They started with the small, seemingly benign manipulations and controls.Determining who I could associate with, one time even threatening to end the engagement if I attended the funeral of one of my oldest friends
Going so far as to use my social media to catfish other women in my life, to try to see if I was faithful. Making decisions which jobs I could pursue. What hobbies I pursued. And as these controls escalated, I lost myself more and more and more.
I lost all confidence in myself, I gave up on my career, and retreated. And as these relationships deterioted, so did my role in them . For a guy who grew up in an abusive home, left at 15, and never had any role models, I lacked emotional intelligence and coping skills.
It's taken me forever to understand my role in my relationships, and to take responsibility for my own toxicity and abusive behaviors, but now that I have been doing the work, it scares me to see how common place these behaviours are. I want us all to do better.
I had forgotten how quickly all those feelings of fear, uncertainty and insecurity can come to the forefront again. I am home again, safe, and calmer, and know I wasn't necessarily in physical danger. But the very threat of showing up after multiple requests and threatening to...
...call the police, have that ignored, is enough for me to be taken right back to sitting in front of a police officer, bleeding and shuttering, too scared and ashamed to press charges. All because I'm a man, and the version of masculinity that I was taught, is so fucking flawed.
I might fucking delete all this, I don't know. But I know right now I just needed to get this off my chest. Please don't worry, or be offended if I don't respond to anything soon. I'm going to pack a bowl, pour a dram, and go look at the stars until I'm centered again. 
