The common narrative of recovering from abusive relationships always frames it as though once someone is no longer actively being harmed by their abuser, as though abuse is just a rainstorm that leaves little evidence once its over.

It’s weird, in a way, that we seem to think that being raped will destroy you permanently but once you’ve left an abuser everything is hunky dory, especially if you started dating someone “good.”

But, like, both of those ideas are wrong?

I was telling a friend that I think my recovery from abuse had three major parts:

1) leaving my abuser
2) loving myself again
3) learning to trust people again

For me — and this, and everything that follows, is just about me — number 1 was the easiest. My abuser dumped me; he’d already identified his next victim and was bored and ready to move on.

Although we had some contact after our breakup, there’s only one time I can recall that really felt like him trying to reel me back in: basically, he emailed me asking for advice about how to handle some family stuff, saying only I could help him process it.

Fortunately, when I got that email I was in a place where I felt confident enough to tell him to go fuck himself (I mean, I did give him advice, because that’s who I am, but then I told him to leave me the fuck alone).

2 and 3 though. They were a lot harder.

I had it in my head that I was just going to get myself a nice boyfriend and then everything I’d gone through would be undone, that I just needed to prove to myself I was “worthy” of love or whatever and everything would be fixed.

I almost definitely told partners they were helping me fix my trust issues, or something like that.

That was a lie I kept telling myself.

I don’t quite know what it took to get me to start liking myself again (it didn’t help that I had low self esteem prior to the relationship)

I know it took time, though. I know that three years after my break up I was still really anxious about singing in front of people — something I had always loved to do! — because my abuser had convinced me I was tone deaf and unpleasant to listen to.

I know I felt desperate to prove that I was desirable and worthy for... a pretty significant amount of time. Not all of that was a reaction to abuse; some of it definitely was though.

Probably one thing that helped, though, was admitting, at the age of 29, that I was still hurt

I know eight years after my break up I sought out therapy specifically focused on post-abuse trauma. I don’t remember much about the experience aside from the fact that it lasted a few months and included EMDR, but it probably helped somewhat? Just recognizing my pain helped.

This brings us to bucket 3 and here’s the thing: I’m still working on it.

It has been over sixteen years since my breakup, and I just still feel guarded and aware of abuse as a possibility. I’m not, like, worry someone is going to steal my stuff if I take a shower worried.

But I’m definitely not, “I’ve known someone for two days and he says he loves me and we are meant to be!!” trusting, like I used to be.

Or even as trusting as some of you are!

And some of that is because I experienced things post-abuse that flared my concerns again.

And some of it’s because, like, I dunno, I think a lot of what people think of as “normal” trust is actually extreme naïveté?

But the fact remains that I am different in this regard than people who haven’t experienced abuse. And maybe I will always be different.

And that’s not something that ever seems to make it into discussions of the depiction of abuse.

Also always bears repeating that a lot of the damage of abuse is invisible and if you left a relationship feeling demeaned, demoralized, and undesirable then you may well have been a victim of abuse, regardless of any obvious red flags.