I feel like I lost myself after this relationship.

A few days ago, I reached out to my ex after months of no contact. I thought maybe enough time had passed, maybe I’d finally get some closure. Instead, I feel like I reopened every wound I had worked so hard to heal.

The hardest part wasn’t even talking to him.
It was seeing him laughing and having fun with the same friends who verbally abused me. Watching him joke about things that destroyed me, acting like none of it mattered, like none of it ever happened… and never hearing a single honest “I’m sorry.”

I can’t explain how much that broke me.
Before this, I was actually proud of myself. I thought I was finally moving on. I was starting to feel like myself again.
Now I feel like I’m back at day one.
I keep replaying everything. Every red flag. Every lie. Every moment I ignored my instincts because I wanted so badly to believe he loved me.

The worst part is the flashbacks.
Sometimes I’m just taking a shower, washing my hair, completely normal, and suddenly I remember him touching me, the things he told me, the promises he made. For a second it feels so real that it’s like I’m back there. Then this wave of anger and grief hits me so hard that I start crying. Sometimes I scream. Sometimes I hit things or end up hurting my own hands because I don’t know what to do with everything I’m feeling.

I miss the person I was before I met him.
I miss feeling happy without trying. I miss feeling safe in my own mind. I miss not questioning every decision I ever made. I miss waking up and not thinking about someone who hurt me.

I’m talking to my doctor about medications that could help me because I don’t know how much longer I can keep carrying this. I don’t expect medication to make me forget him. I just want my brain to stop dragging me back into a relationship that was never about him loving me, but using me…

Something else that’s been bothering me is this fear that he might occasionally read Reddit posts here. I have no idea if he does, but sometimes I catch myself wondering if he’d see posts like this and enjoy knowing I’m still hurting.
Maybe that’s just my anxiety talking. Maybe he never thinks about me at all. I honestly don’t know.

What hurts is that the person I loved so deeply, the person I trusted with every part of me, now feels like a completely different person. Sometimes it feels like the man I loved disappeared, and in his place is someone who laughs about the pain he caused me, jokes about it with the same people who verbally abused me, and never once thought I deserved an apology.

That’s the part I can’t make sense of.
How do you reconcile the person you thought you knew with the person who seems completely unmoved by your suffering?

I don’t know if he’s actually laughing at me or if that’s just what my traumatized brain imagines. But the fact that I can even believe the person I once loved might enjoy seeing me broken says everything about how much this relationship changed me.