My mind is going in every direction. For two years there has been push and pull, physically, mentally, emotionally. I was in love, not just with the good, but also fixing the bad. Feeling needed, like I could fix him. Letting him fix the bad in me.

He would constantly belittle me, for reasons he wouldn’t explain, ‘work stress’, a lot of career challenges he faced, he was short and impatient, mean and critical. But successful, productive, and I thought I could learn a lot from him.

I guess because of his mean behavior, instead of supporting him, I demanded he act differently. There were good and loving times in between, but sometimes not for days. With time, I grew used to the dynamic, and learned to leave him alone, not all for my needs for love and kindness to be fulfilled. After I left him a few times, he would begin to slowly change. I tried so hard to ignore rather than feed the fights.

I played my part of course. I was fed up, and rather than asking for change from him, I demanded it. So he would be completely cold, lock me out if the house, tell me to go away, break up with me, take me back, I raged to demand he change. Or he stay would stay so upset for days, I would spend nights begging for his love and forgiveness even when I felt that he was the one who wronged me. That he withheld emotion, and when I asked for it, he would remain in coldness and anger.

I would demand his love, hold him physically so he would just show me love. He would push me off violently. This is where the physical abuse started escalating… From throwing my things, to throwing small things at me, to squeezing my neck so hard from behind. I kept going back, feeling like I made him do this.

There breakup was terrible. We had JUST gotten into the groove of treating each other nice, and I felt something was off. I let the anxiety from quarantine hurt him despite, his sudden change to nice behavior. Then I stupidly looked at his phone, betrayed his trust, and I found the reason he wasn’t sleeping with me. He was on tinder… I went into a crazy mindset, pushing him while he tried to pretend to sleep, while he ignored me demanding explanation. I physically tried to grab his phone and he sat up and punched me in the chest hard. I immediately messaged this to my brother, and he tried to take my phone away. He jumped in top of me and told me in my ear that I was crazy as fuck and a little shit. He said we were done, he grabbed a knife and said it was too defend himself against me.

I’m writing this, I can see how far I’ve come from what I dream or imagine I deserve. Yet, I don’t feel a victim. I feel I contacted this scenario, I’ve turned into the abusive one. Or certainly with unhealthy need to ‘change’ him, to make him see me, love me, to demand what want mine to demand. I was willing to accept so little, I lost my ability to communicate like an adult and I began to get physical with him.

Now… 3 days later, all I want is to apologize. To hear an apology I’ll never receive because his response to me will be cold and angry as it was before. In the past, we would take a week or two and get back together. My heart wants this so badly, to erase the terrible feelings that we exchanged… To create something I dreamed of that was only there sometimes…

But I know this is the opportunity to stop once and for all and make real changed in my life. I have cried and cried, but I still only feel a heavy empty pain in my chest.

Does anyone have any resources for healing the toxicity within us, forgiving ones self? I don’t know what to do, as I blame myself. I want to face it and become a better person, rather than finding a different version of the same thing in someone else. He was successful, handsome and we shared a passion for nature and science. I now idealize this like crazy, feeling like I don’t have any value, it as he put it, I am just a useless 34 year old with no career and no direction. A loser without him.

I know the world is going crazy, but because of this, I want to walk out the door and disappear…

Help. Please.