Where do I begin? I suppose this is just a rant because I need to get this off my chest and I'm looking for a bit of advise about what to do next.
From April 2013 I got involved with a guy. We'll call him A (for ******** maybe
) He seemed charming at first. I was going through a rough patch with my mental health and he told me he was having family problems. It seemed at the time that we were bonding by confiding in each other.
He'd moved in with his cousin who I was friends with at the time. They seemed to be getting on alright but then things changed.
I noticed A would flip out at everybody. I'm not just talking a bit of shouting, I talking full on screaming fits, making dents in the wall by banging his head against it (?!)
A told me that he had to go to court for assaulting his brother with a metal pole. He could of faced a prison sentence and was very lucky to get off with a fine and 6 months community service. He'd known about this for some time but didn't tell me until a week in advance.
Looking back it seems he kept a lot of things from me.
Anyway in August of that year, A had asked me to to drive him up to go and see his mum.
For some reason known best to him, he starts flipping out on the way back. I wasn't in an amazing state of mind on the way back and we ended up having a screaming match whilst I was driving. I almost lost control of the car and driving into a wall at high speed.
And then when we got back to his cousins place it was all hugs and apologies.
Things were going reasonably Ok for a couple of months when he moved into a new place. It was a complete **** hole and the two other guys living there were on drugs.
By this point I was completely exhausted all the time, and didn't want to do much bar sleep.
My close friend comes up to visit. She says she noticed I wasn't myself and that I seemed to be in another world.
She had to go home in the evening and I'd fallen asleep for a couple of hours.
A comes in the room and starts forcing himself on me. I'm in no state to say no. I did bite him and I was crying which in my eyes is kind of enough to say stop it. I don't think it dawned on me until after we'd broken up properly that this was what it was.
I broke up with him for the first time after he had another screaming fit at me the next week. This lasted about two days.
New year rolls around, they have a party at his house and I didn't go because I didn't want to.
He finally gets himself a job.
I go round the next weekend and some girl turns up at his door step who his flat mates seem to know so they let her in, then A goes ape **** and she starts screaming at him that he's a dirty little bastard. What was this about? He denied knowing her.
Anyway screaming fits continue, general remarks about how I was mad and shouldn't be allowed near children continue, he humilates me, dowses me with freezing cold water, his attitude towards other people swing from one extreme to another, he tries banning me from doing things I actually enjoy continue. He chucks me out the house one night after he orders a **** load of food from a take away and I said I couldn't finish it. I didn't have time to grab my shoes.
Then he gets in fight with another of his house mates and then makes up with him but steals his camera and gives it to me saying he'd bought it off him.
Housemate is ****ing livid and threatens to kill him. A moves in with me. He insists I drive him too and from work everyday. No matter where he's working. At one stage he was working on the far side of the city which is like a 40 mile trip there and back. He never gave me money for petrol. He ends up owing me in excess of five hundred pounds otherwise, some of which I'm convinced went on cocaine and other drugs.
He screamed at me when I made his food in the wrong way. If I knocked knives off the working surface or any small things like that here we go again more screaming.
My birthday came around that year, my mum and dad were away leaving me and A with the place to ourselves. My friend was meant to be coming over but he was so ****ing angry she left as we were having more screaming matches. He practically banned me from seeing her and got really jealous when I did, making out like I was cheating on him with her.
And that evening he loses his **** again. He threatens to burn down the house and said "I'll blow your families heads off!" He gets me cornered and I ended up scratching him on the face. I was ****ing terrified and feel like an absolute monster for doing it. I've never attacked anybody before in my life. He lies in bed pretending to shake and flinch away from me.
New year comes again. Afterwards he's quit his job. I' drove him to an interview, then we decide to go to town and he throws a wobbler and I walk off. He accuses me of being manic and that he's going to spend a night in a hostel then changes his mind. I practically beg him to leave me.
On the way home he he's screaming the entire way and says something really horrific to me about my past. "Which you
lied about." That's too much. I attack him again. There's a police car behind. I end up getting arrested after having the cop phones an ambulance because at that point I have a major break down. My dad comes along with my meds and gets me out of there.
Next day A is yet again all apologetic, I get off on the ground that police suspect that this was probably retaliation. I say this because the questions I was asked afterwards sounded like they suspected I was being abused by A.
SO same old hissy fits until September when I do an art fair. My car died a few months previously and I do pretty well. I plan on putting my money towards a new car.
A week later i look in my purse and the whole lot's gone. I question A about this. He gives a response like, "It's you and you lose things all the time."
A few days later, we break up for good but he's playing clingy so doesn't move out until February after we have a screaming match, I end up almost self harming and mum and dad say that's enough.
He tries stealing my card on exit but I catch him.
He worms his way back in the guise of being my friend, I don't think he understood that it was over.
Come March mum and dad go away again and A comes round. He wakes me up in the middle of the night looking all bad tempered and huffy and insisting we have sex. I refuse and he has a strop. Then he asks if he can borrow my tablet and I'm like, whatever.
20 minutes later he comes back in screaming at me that I've been talking to other people online. He continues to verbally abuse me to the point where I end up seriously injuring myself.
I tried to drag him out the house and he called it assault and phoned the police, saying I had a knife. I didn't have a knife.
He called my sister too saying I was trying to murder him. Both my sister and the police were seriously pissed off with him.
He got chucked out, me and my sister end up at the hospital and 4 hours and 17 stitches later we arrive back at the house. The find A asleep in the front bedroom with his shoes on.
Then he asks my sister for a lift back to the city. She refuses.
I find out he's been looking at my e-mails over this period.
I kept speaking to him after making it clear a few months after that incident.
Then at the beginning of last month he goes apeshit at my friend for trivial reasons.
I've not spoken to him since. The phone calls have now stopped but only recently.
Sorry for the essay. That's not even half the crap that happened. I feel so ****ing idiotic. It took all that and the final straw was something really minor in comparison to the rest of the events that took place.
What do I do next even? It's like I'm finally free from the bastard but I still hear his voice and his words and I think I'm getting flashbacks of the events that took place. He seems to have really made a mark on me. Do a lot of abusive partners cling like this or am I just weak? Do people retaliate often in these situations?
