My mother says I was such a vibrant person before I met my ex-boyfriend. Now I don't even remember what kind of a person I was. I met my boyfriend when I was in high school and we were together for about five years. The first few months were beautiful. But now when I look back, I realize that he was obsessed with the whole idea of possessing me and I mistook that for love and perhaps I enjoyed the kind of attention I got from him.

I still can't pinpoint how and when the relationship turned abusive, but by the second year, he had convinced me that all my friends were taking advantage of me and that he was the only person who understood me and loved me. Since I’m an only child, he also made me very conscious of the fact that after my parents died I would have only him to lean on. During that same time, we both moved to a new city far from our parents to study in our respective colleges. He used to live in the other end of town but made it a practice to visit me once a day and to call me at least twenty times a day. I began to depend on him emotionally and didn't notice that he was actually keeping track of all my actions. Soon, it came to a point where he could read my mind and I couldn't do a single thing in the other end of town without him knowing about it. I was not allowed to forge new friendships, not allowed to go anywhere alone.

Then I remember, he began to make me feel bad about my own body. I have a slight hand deformity, and he would make me conscious of how he had chosen me in spite of it. He made me aware of how my body was sexually unattractive. He made me grateful for being his girlfriend. I don’t know how, but I ended up becoming almost like a slave to him, catering to his every need. When he started going around with other women, I never had the power to say anything to him because I was so grateful to him and so dependent on him.

Around this time, we both tried smoking grass together and I got hooked. I don’t blame him for it at all. I’m just mentioning it because it soon became an important part of the relationship. Often, when I felt stuck in the relationship, I wondered whether I went to him only because he was my source of grass. I’m just trying to be honest here.

What makes me ashamed of being controlled by him is that there was very little physical abuse till the last year. He used to control me with threats. Sometimes, he would threaten to kill himself, sometimes he would threaten to beat someone up, and I used to actually believe that he meant all that. He only became scary towards the end, when he began to break things around me, push me around, pin me against the wall and sometimes stick a knife to my throat. He gave me the impression that he was on the brink of losing control and actually killing me.

All those six years, I kept thinking the relationship was not bad enough for me to quit, and that it was the best thing that I deserved. What made me finally break up with him was when we had an accident on his motorbike. We had just had a fight, and he was very drunk and I was, as usual, stoned. (I know this was irresponsible behaviour. I still feel guilty about it). My foot was badly injured, and I was shocked by the way he treated me. He refused to take me to the hospital because he didn't want to be accused of drunken driving. I remember that he took me to his house and kept me there for three or four days. I stayed there till my cousin, who wanted to borrow some money from me, came looking for me, and that is when my parents forced him to send me back home. By then, my wound had got infected, and I almost lost my leg. Lying in the hospital, I decided I had to change the way my life was going. I broke up with him, and he reacted by threatening to kill me or get me gang-rapes by his friends. I got a restraining order against him, and now I’m free.

It’s been six years since then, but I still feel scared, angry and guilty. Angry about the things he did to me, but guilty that I let it happen, guilty that I enjoyed a part of it, indulged in an addiction. I don’t think about it all the time, but I see that I have lost my confidence, I've lost interest in most of my hobbies, I don’t make eye-contact very easily, I sabotage my own relationships, I still feel that no person can ever like me. And sometimes I feel like I’m living in a dream, and can’t get a hold on what’s happening around me. And yet, sometimes I feel I’m being self-indulgent. Something that’s six years old can’t still effect me, I should just snap out of it and move on. The only problem is that I can’t.

Phew! That was a long post! Thanks for reading.