I was abused emotionally and physically by my exGF

Hey everyone, as the title says, I (32m) was abused emotionally and physically by my exGF (27f). We were together for just over a year before it all came to an end. I don’t want to bore you with all of the specifics, but just want to provide enough context so that it makes sense. I still go to therapy regularly, but honestly, I just need to vent.

The abuse started small - name calling, character attacking. I always just wrote it off as “well, she’s just hurting from how she was treated before and I need to be patient”. I never saw her as someone who was hurting me, I saw her as someone who was hurt and that’s just how she let her emotions out.

There were many instances of abuse, but there are two things I want to talk about specifically.

1. She would regularly tell me “the fact that you haven’t killed yourself yet proves how selfish you are as a man”. She led me to believe that no one in my life, friends or family, loved me and that I was a burden on all of them. I came to believe that I truly was unloveable and that I brought everyone’s lives down by just existing. I felt so low about myself that I lost joy in all of the things that once brought me happiness and every day just became a struggle.

2. This is a recount of the worst night of physical abuse. We’d broken up about a week or two prior, but we were still living together. She was drinking and started getting aggressive again so I went into my room and closed the door. I hear her in the kitchen begin to break dishes and destroy anything else in her sight. I walked out into the hall to tell her to stop, when she threw a batter pack at me. I ducked, it missed, and I ran back into my room. She chased me and got into the room, so I went into the bathroom and locked myself in. She began to pound on the door while screaming at me. She eventually started breaking and destroying things in the bedroom. She went into the kitchen and got a barstool and came back and started beating down the door with the stool. She finally gets in and starts punching me and hitting me. I ran out into another room and closed and locked the door. She leaves for a little bit, but then comes back and breaks through the door and throws a half empty bottle of whiskey into the room, which shattered. She gets on the bed, bites my leg, then begins punching me and slapping me. I realize at this point that I am not safe in the house, so I run for the door. Wearing just some pajama shorts, I grab my phone and keys and make a break for it. She gets to me at the door and jumps on my back, tackling me to the ground. She then wraps her legs around my neck, choking me, while pulling my hair with one hand, punching me with the other, and calling me some horrible names. I finally am able to pry her off of me and get out of the house. I drove away, parked, took pictures of my wounds and slept in my truck.

Now, I don’t want to get into anything beyond this as far as the abuse goes, as I said before I am just here to vent. That all happened over a year ago.

I felt a significant amount of shame as a man for having gone through that. I’ve worked through that in therapy. And I will say, I am happier where I am now in life than I have ever been before and I am so grateful for where I am now. However, I still have nightmares and I still think about it daily.

I appreciate your time, and thank you for reading if you chose to do so.