I will start by introducing myself. First, I am a twenty-one-year-old female and you can call me Starr. Since I was able to date I have, for many reasons, always felt the need for a guy in my life or have always had one. This never left time to understand myself or what I really wanted. Most times I never went looking for these relationships, having someone ask me on a date has never been an issue. The issue was I never learned to turn down dates to find myself.
So all that said, my path of self-discovery starts with my first attempt to move away and out of a serious four-year relationship, let’s call him Tom. I had met Tom when I was eighteen. He was a manager where I worked and we hit it off fast and began falling for each other quickly. Let me add, I had barely ended my past relationship and therein lies my mistake.
The next four years would consist of things moving too fast, an engagement at nine months in, and me trying to be someone I wasn’t so as not to feel like a failure in my relationship. After the first two and a half years, I realized I didn’t know myself well-enough to be ready for a marriage and what this relationship was offering. I realized that I did not know the man I loved as much as I thought. I would like to say to everyone—take the time to really get to know your mate before rushing yourself; it will save you time, and possible pain. In my situation I had found he lied about many things when we first started out, being too afraid to reveal them or tell me the truth. Also, he was seven years older and belittled me often because of that fact. What started as a passionate loving relationship turned into a series of game-playing and emotional abuse.
So I knew my time to go and escape this relationship while I was still sane and not permanently damaged was at a family Thanksgiving. Tom had felt the need to disrespect my family and call me any chance he had to argue with me when I was out with my mother, who had flown in from California to be with me for two weeks. My mother had finally sensed the time and that I was ready for her to tell me the concern she had for me regarding this relationship. Let me just say—never ignore insight from friends and family especially when a lot of them are all saying the same thing, something I had been doing for some time.
At a family gatherings that did not include Tom, I worked out the issues with my family and decided it was time for some tough love. They had explained that I had been too young for such a serious relationship and had never had time to learn more about myself. Not to mention that being this way made it easy for Tom to try and run my life from family, friends, and even how he thought I should present myself in the world. My family believes me to be a very mature person but in this situation, they saw I had been unwilling to see things the way they were. Tom had been divorced once and it had ended badly, and so he was trying to control as much as possible as to protect himself, and in doing so did not allow me to be me after a while. So after much thought and time, it was time for me to be alone and better understand myself as well as give Tom his space to heal and take care of himself from his past, which he had never done.
So we had agreed I was going to move out and learn to have my own life and that he needed his own time to figure out why he acted the way he did in a relationship and heal and truly get past his past. I needed to learn that it was not okay to take emotional abuse and that I needed time to grow as a person, and that it is okay to be single. Plus, I did not want my chance to pass me by.
Thus I moved out a few months back and got a cute little place of my own. Tom and I am are still seeing each other once in a while; I did not have the strength or heart to let go completely after four years together. We are not a couple but dating as I need to take things slow and do not want to be serious, right now what is important is myself. I have come to discover there are ups and downs to my new life; being alone is something I have never really done before. It is not easy for me but I would recommend it to everyone, it is a worthwhile self-discovery. For right now, I will leave you with this: I find I feel more like myself these days and look forward to the challenge ahead. Please tune in as I tell my story and life lessons, so I leave you with this chapter until next time.