FML

So I’m not sure how familiar everyone here is with a website/app called “FML,” but I’ve been using it and reading FMLs every day for years now. This is the brief description of FML (taken from www.fmylife.com):

“Fmylife.com is a collection of user-submitted stories, likely to happen to anyone, which we then publish on the site. Simple. This is a place where you can let it all hang out and unwind by sharing the little things that screw with your day, and maybe realize that you are not alone in experiencing day-to-day crap. There now, don't you feel better?”

Believe it or not, it’s actually pretty hard to get one published, so imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and saw that the one I’d submitted last night had been posted! This is it:

I’ve been struggling to come up with an idea for the blog this week, so I’m going to tell you guys a little bit of the story behind this. I guess it is kind of relevant, after all, since we’ve discussing controlling/abusive relationships and things like that before.

I started dating a guy named Austin during my junior year of high school. At first, he seemed absolutely perfect for me in every way- I was so happy with him. He lived about 30 minutes away from my town, and he didn’t have a car (his mom was crazy controlling with his money, surprise), but I didn’t mind making the drives to see him a few times a week. He was pretty clingy though, which bugged me. He constantly had to be touching me when we were together, and started telling me that he loved me, wanted to marry me, etc., really early in our relationship. I would see all of those things as huge red flags now, but at the time I was only 16, and of course thought it was all pretty flattering.

A few more months into our relationship, I was starting to lose some of my tolerance for the things that he did. He was constantly talking about getting married now, and was always paranoid about who I was texting, hanging out with when he wasn’t around, etc. Other people had noticed these things, but they just took it as him really caring about me a lot. I guess to them it may have looked that way, but I saw something else. I knew that he got extremely angry very easily, and also got violent when he was angry. In one instance, we were texting, and he had upset me. I told him that I just wanted to take the night to cool off, and asked him to please stop talking to me. I stopped replying to his messages, but he repeatedly texted me and called, leaving me tons of voicemails. He kept telling me that he loved me, didn’t want to lose me, that this fight was making him physically sick (he was throwing up, crying, etc.), trying to guilt me into talking to him. I eventually gave in. That night he actually ended up re-breaking his collar bone (he had broken it previously and it was still in the process of healing at the time), and pushing it back out through his skin, because he had punched him solid oak door in his anger with me. I’m thankful I wasn’t there that night, because I’m really not sure what would have happened to me.

I could tell you guys a million other stories like this one, but we’d be here all day. So I’ll just say that eventually, he got to be too much for me to handle. He told me that I wasn’t allowed to participate in my upcoming beauty pageant, because the rehearsals for it would take away from my time with him, and that I was not allowed to be on prom court (it was my senior year by this time, and I got voted to be on court) because it involved me having to slow dance with another guy which apparently “wasn’t something that I should be a part of.” That was the last straw. The same night that he told me that, he also told me he loved me as he was leaving my house. I stood in the doorway, and I had no idea what to say, so I didn’t say 

anything. I shut the door without a word, and he went home. I broke up with him later that night.

In the following weeks, he would text me every day, alternating between being extremely nice and extremely rude to me. In one text he would tell me that I was beautiful and strong, then in the next he would call me a bitch and a slut. Eventually, I had to change my number because of him, and luckily he hasn’t gotten ahold of my new one yet. I thought that maybe he was over me by now, but last night I found out that he’s obviously not- my old tumbling coach, who was at one time good friends with Austin and his family, had run into him, and he told her that he and I were still together, and getting married as soon as I graduated. What kind of insane person does something like that?!

Anyway, though, just thought I’d share my crazy, interesting story with you guys. Happy Friday!