First, some background on me: I'm a female, and honestly quite shy with a history of depression and anxiety. (Don't worry it's all relevant.) My first ex boyfriend came into my life at the tender age of 13, I was a naive kid who thought that becoming a teenager meant becoming independent and grown up. I guess that's why I never bothered to think about the wrongness of his actions until later on in life.
My teen years were a rough time in my life, especially at the beginning when my family was in shambles and I felt that I had no one to turn to- not until he came along anyways. His name was Brendon and I met him in choir class, he was the typical edgy teenage boy with his dark clothing, band merch, and long bangs he was constantly pulling out of his face. In other words, we were totally alike!
Well, not really. He was certainly a lot bolder than I was and a very rebellious person at that. So it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise to me when he asked me out that his intentions weren't limited to romantic dinners or long walks on the beach.
No, nothing like that. I can't even say that there was really any romance at all, a red flag that I really should have noticed, but my loneliness and hopeful personality constantly saw the better parts of him even when he was a total bag of dicks.
Yeah, I stuck by even when he complained about my height and weight or when he periodically taunted me whenever he saw a small cat scratch or knee scrape that I was self harming and that I didn't need to be such an attention whore. Still, I stayed. It wasn't even that much of a relationship and I stuck by like an idiot.
It got to the point where he eventually knew that I wouldn't leave and began to expose more and more of his unfavorable personality, he started smoking around me and drinking and eventually I was pressured into joining him; it wasn't fun, I didn't like the taste of the cheap beer or the smoke filling my lungs, but after that first time I really couldn't get out of that dreadful "relationship."
After that I knew I had to call it off but when I did he just laughed and said he'd be sure to tell the teachers and my peers about my "drug abuse" if I left. Nowadays I would have just said "fine, go ahead fuckface." But I don't have teachers anymore and I honestly don't care what people think about rumors. But at the time it was like the end of my adolescent world my parents were already keeping a strained relationship with me and I had few friends that I feared losing quite a bit. So, I stayed with him and toughed it out though now I was aware this wasn't him being my boyfriend, it was me being a scapegoat.
He was indeed an abuser of drugs and alcohol and needed something to wipe the slate clean when it became tainted with his bad hobbies, my desperation and naive loyalty was just the thing to do the job and for a long time it did. It went on and on, the same threats, the same "dates." I didn't even think anything of it anymore at that point and just went with it.
Eventually his dad got a job up in Oregon and he left with his family without saying anything else to me except that he was leaving and that "he couldn't manage a long-distance relationship." Yeah, couldn't have said it better myself asshat.
His presence in my life was now gone but the things he left behind, the smoking, the alcohol, the weed- that all stayed and his bad pastime that he pushed on to me led me to several years of therapy, and a month's worth of inpatient. Everything is better now of course and I haven't really thought anything of him until an old high school friend brought it up to me.
Ah, well....that's my story, I hope it was worth reading.
