Him. My abuser. I don’t like to say his name.

Even after four years, his name still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, a kind of sick feeling in my stomach. So we’ll just call him C. That’s how I normally refer to him. Okay fine, that’s the nicest way I normally refer to him, but that’s not the point here. The point is, just like lots of other stories, C started out just as kind and attentive as any good boyfriend should be. Texting sweet good morning or good night texts, dropping a coffee or yummy treat by my work, telling me he can’t wait to see my beautiful face again, oh, and my favorite: he just knew God put me into his life for a reason.Looking back, I guess there were some red flags that I should have picked up on. Honestly, I think I did pick up on them, but taking my faith dilemma into account and my desperation to find some hope and good in people again, I allowed myself to ignore them — the stories that didn’t add up, the intense jealousy that came out over irrelevant things, the extreme manipulation and guilt trips, just to list a few. Either way, what had truly happened didn’t sink in and hit me at it’s fullest until I had gotten out and away. In the meantime, I was so anxious and depressed, I wished myself dead almost every day. I thought that was the only way to get away from him.Come to think of it, maybe God was somewhere to be found in my living nightmare, because the only reason I got away from him was he got deployed overseas. That deployment gave me the space and time needed to realize I could run, and boy, did I run! You see, I had tried to get away before when I had caught him cheating on me. (I’m sure it wasn’t the first time he had, and I know for a fact it wasn’t the last.) I confronted him about the nude pictures and sexting I found on his phone and told him we were breaking up, that I was leaving. The conversation went from denial of the cheating to it being my fault he had cheated and then I couldn’t leave him, he would kill himself if I did. I tried to go anyway. He physically tried to stop me from doing so, and when I tried to pull away, he showed me just how much stronger he was. My shoulder was injured, and will forever bother me for the rest of my life because of that evening. My daily reminder of what I made it through.Things just escalated and got worse from there. He made it his mission to make sure I knew beyond a doubt what a worthless, dumb girl I was, that no one else could ever want me, that he was stronger than me, and always knew where to find me or my friends and family. One day I had complained of being hungry, that I wanted to go home to eat and take a shower. His response was to zip tie me to a bed frame, leave me tied to it while he went and bought food, then brought it back and ate it in front of me. He said he would untie me when I had changed my attitude and apologized for acting how I did. He reminded me that he could just as easily re-tie me to the bed post so I better behave when he cut me loose. When he finally did, he had hidden my car keys and I wasn’t allowed to eat that day.He often would pick at me and dare me to get angry at him. He wouldn’t let up until I did get angry and then he would quickly remind me of my place by putting me in a headlock, forcibly holding me against a wall or, his most common attack, pulling a blanket tight over my head and holding me down by my neck or with his hand over my nose and mouth. He would disappear for days at a time, out cheating and partying and then come back and expect me to make his meals, do his laundry, anything he wanted because otherwise I would pay for it mentally and physically.