Forced out of Love

I decided to write my first blog about something that has had a significant impact on my life, my first love, and everything that caused it to end, unwillingly. 

I have been quite open about my sexuality and my sexual interests ever since I came out as gay, and I was always clear on what I was interested in, typically, straight boys (a.k.a.every gay boys “type”). I came out in 2017, and was new to the whole dating boys thing. I wont get into the ins and outs of it all, but I met this guy,’him,he’. I won’t reveal his name, for privacy reasons, but he was a significant part of my life. 

I met him in school, he was pretending to be straight (as most ‘masculine’ gay boys tend to do), and I found it even sexier that he was hiding such a huge secret, little did I know, this was one of his most toxic traits. He and I would talk all day, every day. He gave me them butterflies that you never want to stop feeling, he gave me the attention I was missing, the attention I was needing, and to me, there was nothing better than him. 

Shortly after the ‘honeymoon period’ our friendship went downhill quickly. I began to see a side to him that I never thought he had. He was emotionally abusive, he was manipulative and he constantly made me feel as though I was never good enough. When I say emotionally abusive, I do not throw the term around lightly. He would have a normal conversation with me, maybe a bit of dirty talk, and then out of nowhere, he would block me. I would message him, begging him to tell me why he had done it. I would beg him to tell me why I was never good enough for him to stay interested in me, I would ask him why he would do the things he did, and he just ignored my plea for answers. A few days would pass, and he would add me back, as if nothing had happened. He would message me as if he hadn't done anything wrong, and when confronted about it, he would urge me to change the subject, or displace the blame onto me. He would do this time and time again, until it became clear that the reason why he would do this to me, is because he was talking to numerous people at a time, leading on several people, and he felt as though he was in control of these people, he felt as though he had the power to come and go whenever he pleased, the power to break hearts and come back to fix them with the same lies, the same pitiful excuses. But as time went on, I looked past all of his mistakes, I looked past his past, and gave him the benefit of the doubt. I gave him the chance to show me that he had changed, the chance to prove he was more than his mistakes.

Without getting into the details, I trusted him enough to fall for his lies over and over again. When we were in a good place, he would let his promiscuity get the best of him. He would tell me he loved me, then go and sleep with someone, and hide it from me, hoping I wouldn't find out. It got to a point one day where I had endured the pain long enough. I had been tired of waking up feeling ugly, going to bed, feeling unwanted. I was tired of loving somebody who was loving more than one person. I was tired of giving my everything to somebody who gave me their bare minimum. There were times where I would cry myself to sleep because I knew that I was doing everything in my power to love him, to care for him, to be the one I thought he deserved. But regardless of how much I tried, how much I bought, how much time I gave, he was never going to feel the same, he was never going to treat me the way I longed to be treated, I had no choice, but to leave. 

Leaving him was something I had never imagined doing. When times were good, we would stay up into the early hours of the morning and talk about how we would always be in each others’ lives, how we would never give up on what we had, how we would always find a way back. The hardest part of leaving him, was knowing that we would never have those conversations again, we would never have our long drives again. I would never be able to look into his dark brown eyes and admire him again. His taste, his smell, his touch, they would all be distant memories. That was the hardest part, him becoming a memory.

It took me a while to pluck up the courage to leave, and I endured a lot of pain, emptiness and heartache when I left. I fell into a huge pool of depression, and collapsed under the fast moving earth. I wallowed in self pity, hatred and anger for weeks. But it was all worth it. I look at myself now, in a position I never thought I would be in. I look at the growth within myself and am in awe of how strong I was throughout everything that was going on. There were times where the world was so heavy, I was ready to give up. But then I tasted reality and opened my eyes to realise that I was not going to let this person take away my confidence. I was not going to let this person take away my stability, my strength, my happiness. I was not, and I will not, let this person take away who I am, and neither will you. 

No matter how hard it may be to leave somebody you love, if they are no good for you, if they are toxic and make you feel less than what you are, then leaving is the only option. And, when you do leave, do not go back, because, you cannot and will not heal in the same environment that broke you. 

Granted, the love you feel/felt will not disappear, you will not wake up suddenly and be over them, yet, with time, and with lots of self love, the pain of losing them will slowly fade away, you will be okay. Someday it will make sense, I promise.