To The Woman Who Has Been Abused For Years And Still Thinks It Is Her Fault

If you have been abused for years, you do not always look like a victim.

You look like the strong one, the understanding one, the one who always sees both sides, the one who keeps the family together, the one who can handle it.

From the outside, people might even say you are lucky.

They see the photos. They see the kids dressed nice. They see the wedding ring. They see you smiling.

They do not see the part where your stomach drops every time you hear their car in the driveway. They do not see the conversations you rehearse in your head and never say out loud. They do not see you crying quietly in the bathroom holding the sink so you do not fall apart.

You do.

If you have been abused for years, you become good at holding two realities.

The one you show everyone else. The one you live in alone.

You know every detail of their trauma, their childhood, their stress, their triggers. You could give a whole presentation on why they are the way they are.

Ask yourself a question.

Can you give the same depth and compassion to your own story?

Or do you go blank when you ask what you need?

This is not because you are weak. It is because you were trained to do four things over and over: Understand them. Excuse them. Fix them. Blame yourself.

You learned that your value is in how much you can carry.

So when they scream, you try to be calmer. When they lie, you try to communicate better. When they cheat, you try to be more attractive or less emotional. When they withdraw, you try to chase less, to not be "clingy."

You run experiments on yourself instead of on the relationship.

You keep thinking "If I can just get my reactions under control, we will be okay." "If I can just heal my attachment issues, he will stop treating me like this." "If I can just be more patient, she will stop raging."

Years pass.

Abuse is not always a punch. Sometimes it is the slow erosion of your sense of reality.

The constant message that you are too sensitive, you are too dramatic, you remember wrong, you took it out of context, you should not feel that way.

So read this as if you were listening to your best friend, not yourself.

If your friend told you "My partner calls me names, then says it is a joke. They flirt with other people and say I am insecure. They scream or stonewall for days when I bring up a concern. They threaten to leave every time I have a boundary. They use my diagnosis, my trauma, my emotions as proof I am the problem."

Would you say "Girl, maybe if you communicated better it would stop?"

Or would you say "You are in something that is killing you?"

You already know what you would say.

You are not confused because the situation is unclear. You are confused because the answer hurts.

Leaving means losing the fantasy, losing the image, losing the good moments, losing the version of them you were in love with, losing the life you thought you were building.

Staying means losing yourself in slow motion.

You are not stupid for staying this long. You were loyal. You were hopeful. You were doing the best you could with the knowledge you had.

There was a whole education you never got. No one taught you what healthy felt like, what respect looks like, how a regulated apology sounds.