Need to share this somewhere, even if no one cares. Im hoping itll help me...TW

I spent 13 years with someone who messed with my understanding of what choice even means.

For a long time, I didn't believe a husband or boyfriend could rape you. I thought rape was something a stranger did, or something that looked a certain way. I understand differently now.

There were nights I would be dead asleep and he'd yank me out of bed because he wanted sex. I'd say no. Sometimes over and over. It didn't matter. Eventually I learned that my "no" wasn't going to change what happened.

Looking back, one of the hardest things to accept is how often I was treated like a body instead of a person.

But the memories that haunt me the most are my pregnancies.

Twice, I was pregnant with babies I wanted. And twice, I ended up having abortions I did not want.

This wasn't someone calmly discussing our options with me. There were threats. His family became involved. I was pressured and harassed. One time the choice I was given was essentially: have the abortion or be sent back home.

"Home" wasn't some safe place I could just return to. It was a house full of drugs and chaos. I didn't feel like I actually had another option.

So I went.

And I remember everything.

I remember being dropped off at Planned Parenthood. I remember the rooms. I remember what was said. I remember what my body felt like. I remember lying there completely straight-faced and numb while a nurse cried.

That image will not leave my head.

I can replay those days in horrifying detail even though years have passed. Sometimes it feels less like remembering and more like being there again.

Those were my babies. I wanted them.

That's something I've barely been able to say.

And somehow, after everything, I still feel bad for him.

That's the part that makes me feel completely mind-fucked. I can remember saying no. I can remember the threats. I can remember what happened with my pregnancies. I can recognize things now that I couldn't recognize while I was living them.

And some part of me still worries about him. Still wants his approval. Still wonders whether I'm being unfair to him.

I'm starting to understand how much 13 years of this changed the way my brain works.

I have made bad choices in my life. Plenty of them. I'm learning how to own the things that actually belong to me without automatically taking the blame for everything.

But I'm also learning that admitting I've made bad choices doesn't mean I have to call everything that happened to me a choice.

I didn't choose for my no to be ignored.

I didn't choose to be threatened.

I didn't choose to have pregnancies I wanted taken away from me through coercion.

I didn't choose what somebody else did to me.

I'm not writing this because I need strangers to tell me what I should have done. I'm writing it because I've carried it around silently for so long that it feels permanently stuck inside my head.

Maybe putting it somewhere outside of me will help.

I don't even need anyone to know who I am.

I just need what happened to me to exist somewhere other than inside my own head.