I had let myself and my old hobbies go, and I’d slowly begun rejecting a lot of what was still left of the old me. I became the enemy for both of us, it seems, since I seemed to be the cause of much of his anger.

He told me incessantly that I was impossible to deal with, that I was impossible to love. He made his points clear. But I was lost in the world we’d built and didn’t know of a way out.

Eventually, after too long of sitting in that toxic mess we’d built, I ended it.

I was sad for a long time. I went back to being lonely, in an empty house, and I felt like a failure.

To be fair, I was young. In the beginning, I suppose more than anything I was just excited not to be alone anymore. In many respects, I was taken advantage of. In most respects, I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to my own fears and make good decisions.

Then, three years later, I met my current boyfriend, Chase.

By then I was strong and independent, with a  great job, lots of dreams, friends, and a strong backbone in relationships. I had spent years processing how I had lost myself before, and I was determined to never go through that again.

But then the strangest thing happened: I started to feel these feelings that I had never felt before. Chase, unlike anyone before in my life, loved me. And unlike anything in my life, I loved him.

I didn’t just love the idea of him or the companionship of being together, but I adored the person that he was. He enjoyed the person that I was. And as I fell in love with him, they were feelings that were brand new.