Ready to hope

Everyone meet Ted. Ted meet everyone. Ted has been my not-so-secret secret since coming into my life late last year. It was a slow burner of a relationship, he was really there for me at a point in time that I needed something more than my lot but knew when to allow me time to myself too. And as is healthy in any relationship, he gave me the space to enjoy nights out with friends, relaxed weekends and meals with family, and to succeed at the job I love, all the while knowing he would still be there for me. I suppose the signs were there for me to see, should I have wanted to acknowledge them, but he gave more than he took and any relationship involves compromise, right? Plus, he made me feel stronger and more confident, capable and successful than I had in a long time. Things started to really change around January this year. I realised that trying to sustain this (all-encompassing relationship, as it had become) had left me physically and emotionally bereft. I'd always been the strong one, I'd learnt from too young that sometimes you have to cover up the vulnerable, 'I'm not really coping' face with a perhaps colder, 'look how in charge and grown up I am' mask. But suddenly I had no energy to put on this facade anymore, it was written all over my face, in my dead eyes and aching, fragile body. Ted had taken over and I'd willingly, though without realising it, handed him the reigns. To the point where he dictated that I wasn't able to work anymore; I was to choose being with him over plans with anyone else, safer in his embrace than with friends; the relaxed weekends with family were replaced with strained faces and hushed conversations on how best to help me leave him; and an empty weary Katie who just wanted to fall asleep. Those god-awful, abusive relationships you read about and can never quite place yourself in, where boy meets girl before he steadily grooms and manipulates her to abandon all areas of her life in favour of being with him, regardless of how much he hurts her. I was there. Today, we're nearly six months on and I'm still with Ted but learning to push him away, bit by bit, day by day, choosing my health and a future he won't be part of. I wish I could say that every day I'm strong enough to ignore his hurtful words, urging me to deprive and neglect myself, I'm not there yet and so still the days sneak up on me when I want to be left alone with him and his persuasiveness can make me believe I can still have him and the life I so desperately want back. But these days and moments are diminishing slowly. Progress. I know we can't be together in the long term. He's toxic, abusive, and if I allowed him he would control me and my head entirely. And so I'm working hard and digging deep to find the strength (real strength, not the 'paint a face on it' kind that had become my default setting) to be without him altogether. Because I'm ok, just being me is good enough. And I choose life and living again, over him. X