I hate to even bring this up to a bunch of strangers, but I feel like it is preferable to making my friends listen to me vent about it even one more time (they already had to listen to me talk about this same thing for almost 4 years, which I appreciate so much).

This guy, who I will call Juan (because I’m creative like that) was… let’s be honest… my love obsession for almost four years. I don’t like to admit it, but looking back now, that’s exactly what it was. He treated me like dirt the whole time that I knew him, insulting me left and right for my weight, my intelligence (or, in his opinion, my lack thereof), my friends, my housekeeping (admittedly very abysmal, but I’m working on it!), etc. I had such trouble with my weight even though I had been eating well enough and I was exercising, many times in his presence. The worst things he ever said to me were that I was less of a person than him because I was not as intelligent and didn’t get as far as he had gotten with his education, and that I was too fat for sex. He also told me to “get over it” after my dad died in front of me, after only a week and a half had passed.
I am partially to blame for this treatment, because I allowed it to continue for almost 4 years… but there is no excuse for treating another human being this way. I’ve always had low self-esteem but I am pretty sure that it was at an all-time low when I knew this guy, and he certainly helped me to sustain that low self esteem. Anyway, we were “friends with benefits” and I confessed my love for him on probably 4 different occasions, but it was not reciprocated. He gave me material things and lent me money a few times, but didn’t give me the emotional support that one would expect from a friend, or even the respect that one would expect to receive as a fellow human being.


We stopped seeing each other about a year and a half ago, and I haven’t spoken to him at all. I got a text from him once that I didn’t reply to and I saw him in public a few times but not a word was spoken (he nodded his head at me to acknowledge my presence once, and I just kept walking). Though I didn’t have any direct contact with him, I often checked his and his new girlfriend’s Facebook profiles, in the hopes that I would see something awful had happened to him so that I could feel better about myself (yes, I know how ridiculous and crazy that sounds). Sometimes I just looked at it out of curiosity. Then, one day, I guess I just stopped looking. I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but I got over him. I no longer cared who he was with, where he was living, or if something negatively impacted his life. I no longer cared about seeing him in public either, which I had feared so much in those first few months, that I avoided the area of the town he lived in like it was the plague. Being over him was an incredible feeling.


I had been feeling like a different person since probably March of this year. I started a new medication and removed another person from my life who only brought negativity into it. My depression had been virtually non-existent, my health improved… things were really, really good for the first time in a long time. They still are pretty good, but my health has gotten bad in the past two months or so because of some stomach pain that hasn’t been diagnosed yet and, in the past few weeks, I discovered that this ex moved to the same tiny town that I live in. Yes, I am over him… but this news has created some emotional stress. I already have so much anxiety about being in public… and now I am concerned that I will run into him and his girlfriend in public. Seeing his face (and her face) has caused some extreme anger to surface, along with some even more confusing emotions that I’m experiencing today. I had several unpleasant dreams about him last night, and I am stuck in a funk. I want to cry and scream and hide… It’s like I have reverted back to the pathetic excuse for a woman that I was when I knew him and was putting up with his emotional abuse. I have only been awake for a few hours, so I am hoping that I will snap out of it soon… I’m going to hop on the treadmill in a few and try to run through the pain, but I’m so upset with myself for even feeling ANY pain because of him. I don’t want him in my life again in any capacity… not even as someone that I occasionally see around town… but he’s here.


I would really, really appreciate some compassionate support and helpful words right now. Tough love… for example, “Oh my god, just get over it already!” …is not helpful in the least, so please… if you can’t be helpful, please just don’t bother saying anything. But yeah, I really need some encouragement. Thanks, guys!