Several of my followers (I have more than the site says, don't let it fool you) read my last post and asked me how I could have such a terrible self image and blah blah blah all that feel good stuff people say when they care that never really helps. I appreciate the things you folks said to me, but perhaps it's time I elaborate on WHY I have no self esteem.
Mother, if you're reading this, do us both a favor and stop now. I mean it. Please. There are things no mother should have to know and I'm truly pulling out every nitty gritty detail of my personal life. So if you do read this, at least promise you'll never tell me you did. I don't want to talk about it. After this post, I plan to forget about all of it.
I suppose it all starts with my biological father. He and my mother divorced when I was a baby, got back together and remarried when I was 3, and divorced again when I was 8. He was never really a great dad. He liked to find jobs that took him far away or made him work long hours. Even when he was home he was never really around. I remember on the rare occasion he'd pick me up for the weekend, he was usually drunk. He spent most of the weekend that way too.
He eventually got remarried to a woman who hated me and very long and painful story short, he more or less disowned me when I was 16, choosing his new wife over his children, his sister, and his own mother. I'm sure he'd tell you different but you know what he can make his own damn blog if he wants to tell his side, I'm done caring what he has to say. He tried to come back into my life when I had my son but he just played the same stupid games he played before. My son will never meet him. My mother's husband is my father now, I have his last name. He is my son's grandfather. He's a great man.
But back to why I'm so screwed up.
I've basically never had a truly healthy relationship, dating wise. My first boyfriend was an amazing guy, but I got a little too obsessed and in love cuz I was 14 and it ended in us running away together in his father's car. Not so healthy...still love the guy to death though, he's one of my closest friends to this day. My next serious boyfriend was obsessed with me. I was 16, and a junior in high school. When I finally broke up with him he stalked me to the point I had to involve the high school security officer.
The guy I gave my virginity to cheated on me a week afterwards. I got engaged to the next guy I dated. He was just as messed up as I was, but in a completely different way. I ended that because I knew it just...would have been bad.
The next serious boyfriend after my engagement is one of the 2 I blame most of my problems on. By the time I met him I had some serious issues, and I was very vulnerable. He played mind games with me. He made me think he loved me, and got me to be his "other woman" for quite a while. He was controlling, I couldn't do anything without his permission. He made me think I had no friends, that people only liked me because of him. He also abused me sexually. I was never allowed to say no to anything he wanted. I have difficulty using the word "rape" because I always gave in in the end, there was no way I could fight him. He was violent, he was rough. The only thing he never did was hit me, outside of sex anyway. I couldn't get away from him either, we lived in the same building. The day I moved out of that building was the day I left him. A week later he moved into the same complex of apartment buildings I'd moved to, but I managed to stay away from him with help from a few friends I'd told about him.
After that came another complete douchebag, and in some ways he was worse than the guy i just told you about. This guy was sweet, so sweet. And things were good. Except he disappeared a lot. He liked to ask me to marry him and then dump me a week later. He'd always come crawling back saying he was going through some stuff, and he wanted to spend his life with me and have a family and we should get a house together. Told me he was going to propose to me officially at Christmas in front of his entire family, and he'd have a ring. Dumped me a month before Christmas, came back 2 weeks after. We played that game for about a year, and it took a toll on me.
In between that on again off again, I also dated a clingy guy who needed constant reassurance in literally EVERYTHING he did, and a schizophrenic whom I broke up with via Facebook after he called and said he couldn't hang out with me that day because the voices in his head were telling him to kill me.
Then I met my son's father. Our relationship was far from perfect, he was always quick to criticize me, slow to praise, and never apologized for anything. Better than a lot of the others, but still not good. Everything was always my fault. It's one of the things I told him we need to fix before we could consider talking about getting back together.
So you see, there are many more details I could share but I have a baby trying to bulldoze me off the computer. I have never had a really healthy relationship with a man. On top of major daddy issues, that gives a girl a complex.
