*I’m a very easy-going young adult type of a girl, just trying to make it in life. My parents were divorced when I was young and I have seen my dad on and off but he used to beat on my mother and I remember it. I Those facts probably sound weird, but I’m actually a very kind and loving and optimistic person-a hippy, as a matter of fact.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I recently fell in love with a 20-year-old guy and we’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months. We get along really great and he’s truly the sweetest and most self-sacrificing guy I’ve ever known. As a matter of fact, I think that he cares about me more than he cares about himself. We love each other immensely and have a great friendship going on and know each other better than anyone else.
There’s a big problem on my end of the relationship. I think that I might be sadistic or something and I can’t stand myself for it. I get in these moods where I start saying some mean things to my boyfriend and then I start hitting him with hard objects for no good reason. I actually get some kind of a morbid high from inflicting physical pain on him and I hate that. My boyfriend hates it when I treat him bad like that. He always reacts by telling me to stop hurting him and telling me that he’s going to leave if I keep doing that to him. And then he gets mad and walks away by himself because I just won’t stop it. It’ll take me about ten minutes before I am overwhelmed with guilt and shame and go to find him and sob and apologize all over him and promise never to do that to him again. It’s happened about three times now and each time he has forgiven me.*
A part of me thinks ‘why should I stop being angry, you hurt me and I deserve justice’ and the other part of me just thinks ‘this bitter behaviour is never going to help. How do you control it though? I don’t think ‘healing’ is as simple as counselling. I can reflect on my problems on my own. I don’t know if you could call it reactive depression or a disorder. I mean, my life is always so shit that it’s quite likely it is reactive. Bullying, alcoholism, repeated rape, domestic violence from a few angles, an ectopic pregnancy, a heart break and that’s just a précis. The heart break was one of the least eventful situations in my life yet it seems the most poignant. I shake now… I don’t know if it is anxiety, fear, anger and especially in what form. I know the reasons I am angry. I gave someone my world and they destroyed it, literally smashing me emotionally into a billion pieces. I placed all my trust and faith in someone when they were at their lowest when I was already at such a low point. I tried to build their life with all sorts of tactics, to the point we are arguing about the mess ups in his life everywhere else instead of just arguing about us… we just argue. Now I am hitting him too, I HATE VIOLENCE. My head cracked open when I was around 5 as I flinched and fell down the stairs when I saw my dad hitting my mum. Yet now I am violent… I remember episodes in parts of my life prior to this relationship that I would get like this…Only when I am hurt and I recognise that I have every justification to be hurt but the way I am dealing with it is wrong. I literally have no control as my body starts to shake violently and I begin swinging almost blindly, getting enraged more as I hit, thinking about how lucky they are that I am weak and wanting to hit harder and finally become superior. Why do I even fight for this, people don’t tend to think highly of bad people yet I am trying to achieve this in this way. I go to university, sometimes, I study hard for my grades but I don’t feel like I am educated. I am common, I am disgusting. Am I angry at my cheating , spiteful , nasty ex, everyone and every injustice I have ever suffered or myself for letting people close enough to feel like this. I let control go and I am naive, and then it’s like it suddenly kicks in what a mug I am being. The need to make people suffer is so they don’t feel like they will be close enough to hurt me again or will fear the thought of it, either way, avoiding me all together. Am I protecting myself or isolating myself? Maybe that is protection, maybe having a damaged life alters your thinking of normality. I know right and wrong though and I know violence is wrong. I don’t go fighting or arguing with everyone, instead I don’t really bother with people. When I do fall out with them I will ensure that they know how awful and nasty they are. This isn’t even my job but I have to have my say.. Is this being damaged or am I just a horrible person? Either way, who wants to be either or be around either. I vent at people, I listen to music, I try to jog, I try to find outlets but I just see a bitter, ugly woman when I look in the mirror..physically, mentally, emotionally ruined. One of ‘gods mistakes’. I don’t even know if I believe in god. I get to angry and feel so hurt I want to be sick. I tell people I will forget and bring up the same argument again. It never ‘gets’ dropped. I am hurting myself by not being able to move on from where I have been hurt or subjected to pain or inferiority. Even when I want to forgive and forget I simply cannot. I cannot justify my actions either and I consciously know this, yet in the heat of the moment it still happens.
I have gone from a victim to a perpetrator and it makes me sick. The control I finally have to escape my pain makes me feel good but the bitterness lingers as I know it doesn’t make the pain go. People consciously made decisions to hurt me and it feels like justice to put that back to people. As a general rule the only person who deals with being hit and verbally abused is my scummy, cheating boyfriend that I love with all my heart and cannot let go, cant forget or forgive either and just putting us both through torture. I want to apologise for being awful at the same time as inflicting the pain I have felt. I have a hard front and a soft interior that many don’t see…but even more so I have a violent streak I try and keep under wraps. I am struggling to do so more and more each day. Every day is a front: university isn’t enjoyable (I don’t make friends, I just hide away and go home), mirrors are soul destroying and everywhere but I smile and pretend to be fine, the pain and even more the shaking too is getting worse everyday. I’m on self destruct and I don’t want to go down alone. I feel dark and like I am losing control. I can’t keep behaving this way but I just can’t discipline myself to stop. I need help and I don’t even know where to start.
*I just don’t know how to make myself stop hurting him. I don’t want to hurt him any more and I feel awful about it. It’s also putting a strain on our relationship because he’ll probably end up leaving me if I keep treating him so badly. What’s wrong with me? How can I stop beating on my boyfriend* I have stolen a couple sentences from a blog that I read due to the perfect way in which this girl describes the situation. I cannot talk about it so matter of fact. I have put * either side of copied bits to show how I am personally expressing myself. Please help me.
