u/TomatilloFar2531

Now that bully has released and people have listened to it, what comes next? Bully felt like a good reset before his next album but what do you think? Will he be able to do something different with his next project or is this it?

This is going to be a long, painful post, but here it goes.

Three months ago, I clawed my way out of an abusive relationship, and I’m still drowning in the aftermath, feeling utterly miserable.

I met this guy through a friend, and when we started dating, I naively trusted him enough to share my past traumas. At eight, I was gang-raped, and at fourteen, my dad was murdered (his story is too horrific to recount). After that, there were attempts on my life and my family’s, leaving me paranoid and unsafe my entire life. My dad was my safety anchor as a child, but after the rape, I felt a distance between us, and after his murder, my safety vanished completely.

For the first time, I felt safe with someone, and that was my ex. I bared my soul to him, and despite knowing everything, he went through a bizarre phase where he threatened me, threatened to leave, changed his numbers, and I suffered eight seizures in a single day. He initially promised never to pressure me for sex until I was ready, but a week into the relationship, he performed oral sex on me, and I complied out of fear that he would abandon me. I felt nothing; I was numb, frozen. When he couldn’t make me climax, he stopped.

After that, he constantly shamed me for having a “wrong-coloured dick” and a “too big” tip, suggesting surgery, and turned me into an emotional dumping ground where he poured in affection without taking any responsibility.

I remember two days before I finally ended things, I was suicidal, and when I told him, his response was, “Let’s talk about this tomorrow. I’m feeling sleepy right now, stay on call because I want to sleep.” I cried and hung up, and he called back just to abuse me, then asked how he was supposed to know I was suffering if I didn’t tell him. I had clearly expressed my feelings, yet he still did this.

I summoned the courage to break up with him, and after it ended, a week or two later, a mutual friend told me how we processed the breakup. His exact words, “I went through a manwhore phase even though it was with one guy, but we did it after we met in a parade.” I still can’t comprehend it. I feel utterly used and discarded. Our values were irreconcilable; he wanted love and sex, while I craved love and safety.

I understand that relationships often require sex, and I’m not saying I’ll never have it, but the relentless pressure he put on me from day one, constantly reminding me that “I ovulate” and “sex is important in a relationship, and if we can’t have it, then it might not work,” created an unbearable burden. I don’t understand how I’m supposed to move past this because, honestly, it’s not even about him.

I don’t even miss him after he made me convulse, cry, and have seizures or shamed me and my body, but the fact that his actions, after making me feel safe for the first time in ages, were so devastating has made it incredibly hard. My mind is desperately searching for safety, but I can’t risk ending up with the wrong person again.

I’m 20. I’ve tried socialising, medications, and talking to people, but nothing has worked. I’ve tried to better myself too. I write, I cook, I listen to music, I play. I do so many things, but at this point, nothing brings me joy because, for some reason, he still haunts my thoughts. Not in a way that I miss him or want to text him back, but just why? I desperately want to find a good person and it’s not because I’m 20 and it’s because everybody needs a person. I want to find a person because my mind felt safety for the first time in years and is desperately trying to find that safety as the will to live inside me has been slowly being fading away and some part of me is fighting to stay alive. I’m not trying to make it the responsibility of a person that my whole life depends on them but I just want to feel even a little bit safe enough that I can fix myself. But I fear that everyone I’ve met has been sex-driven for some reason. I don’t go clubbing or anything; these were all through friends.

The only glimmer of hope I see for feeling less miserable is if I immerse myself in more creative hobbies, so I’m thinking of joining art clubs, literature clubs, and maybe book reading clubs if I can find the time, because I’m writing my own book too, and it’s a struggle to manage. I hope I get to live long enough to find happiness in my life but the struggle for the past 12 years has been really exhausting.