I Mistook Control for Love

**Content warning: emotional abuse, manipulation, self-harm, suicidal threats.**

I want to tell you a little bit about the worst part of my story. And I’m starting off with a warning—because this won’t be a pretty story, and most definitely not an easy one to write either. I already feel my fingers trembling, and honestly freaking out because my phone is already buzzing with his notification.

This story doesn’t start when I was a little girl. It starts when I was 17. The year 2022. A year that makes me wish I could’ve skipped it altogether and never lived any of what I was put through—what still follows me to this day.

My whole life I was always a very depressed kid, then teen, then adult. And when work was hurting my health and my mind was poisoning my every breath, all I craved was someone to hold me tight and call me theirs.

I met this guy—sweet, kind, kind of strange. An online relationship. Me 17, he 22 at that time. A secret to everyone else, just not for us.

Six months passed and everything seemed perfect. Empty promises of catching planes. “I would never hurt you.” The kind of words that sound like safety when you’re desperate for it.

Eight months in, my world crumbled. Depression eating me alive—and in his mind, cheating. Breaking up with me, letting me beg for him back for months. Months of him knowing I was emotionally dependent on him and loved him. Months of him playing with my heart, telling me goodbye, then making me beg for him to come back.

Him accusing me of cheating while he was the one on Tinder, while there were half-naked women on top of him, and he told me there was “nothing he could do,” they were “just friends.” Endless hours—days—on video call getting told: either you tell me you cheated or I will leave you. And he knew that would mean death to me back then.

So in frustration I said “sure,” said the worst thing I could say about myself just to make it stop. And as you can surely understand, it wasn’t taken as frustration. It was taken as an admission. And from that moment on, it was like I handed him a script he could force me to read forever.

Since then I’ve been called every name in the book. Threatened to have people beat me if I didn’t say what he thought of me. Threatened to have pictures of me exposed. Threatened that he would tell everyone I know lies that he thought were true.

One night, after hours of fighting, I showed my scars and said, “Look, I stopped for you,” and I got told to go deeper. And even after that—after hospitals, after consequences, after proof that this wasn’t love—I still begged for him back.

From banging my head on the floor while he told me to keep going, to him making me do whatever he wanted—my life became a test I could never pass. I couldn’t take longer than five minutes to reply or it meant I was cheating. I couldn’t breathe without it being questioned. I couldn’t exist without being watched.

Summer 2025 was my breaking point. The point where he lost all control over me and I finally said: I’m done. I don’t want this anymore.

The next days he tried to control video calls—even in the bathroom—until I blocked him. And for the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe. Like my lungs belonged to me again.

Then the next day I woke up and heard he had texted my father, demanding—politely, as he says—for me to unblock him. Then I got a notification from his sister telling me how terrible he was doing, talking about killing himself, asking me for help. Me refusing. Them going on. Him texting members of my family. Her begging me to help him.

And after everything I didn’t want to do, I did what I always did: I went back. I tried to help. Because I was trained to believe that if someone is falling apart, it must be my job to hold them together—even if they were the one breaking me.

He told me he didn’t understand. He wanted a reason. He didn’t accept my no. And when I finally lashed out and told him what I truly thought of him—when I finally spoke like someone who wanted to live—he turned it around.

He hurt himself “for show,” to show me and his sister, knowing damn well how much it would trigger me. I didn’t want to engage. I told him to go to a therapist. And it backfired at me.

Suddenly I wanted to make him kill himself. Suddenly I wasn’t a girl trying to get out of a toxic relationship. Suddenly I was the monster for leaving.

It’s now 2026. Almost a year of him torturing me some more—telling me to tell him how I cheated, names and everything, or he would go to court because I “wanted him to die,” apparently. Him threatening to spread pictures of me. Him threatening to hurt my family. A vicious cycle I have yet to overcome, and sometimes I fear I never will.

So please do not tell me this made me strong—because it didn’t. It broke me. It made me scared to ever trust again. It made me question my own reality. It made me flinch at notifications. It made me feel guilty for breathing without permission.

And if you’re reading this and you’re being mistreated even once—please don’t be like me and stay. Because if he can call you all those names, if he can hit you, if he can threaten you, he will try to kill you in whichever way he wants to. Maybe not with his hands. Maybe with fear. Maybe with control. Maybe by slowly taking your life away until you don’t recognize yourself anymore.

But here is the part I never thought I would write.

I’m still here.

And I’m waiting for a hopeful ending—an ending I never believed could belong to me. Because for a long time, hope felt like something other people got. Other girls. Girls with easier stories. Girls who weren’t taught to confuse pain with love.

I used to think my story would only ever be a warning. A “don’t end up like her.” A tragedy with no soft landing.

But I’m starting to believe something else: that everything happens for a reason—not because what happened was meant to happen, not because it was okay, not because I “needed” it… but because I can choose to make a reason out of it now.

Maybe the reason is that I finally learned the difference between love and control.

Maybe the reason is that I learned my empathy is beautiful—but it needs boundaries to survive.

Maybe the reason is that I learned “staying” isn’t loyalty when it’s killing you.

Maybe the reason is that I learned my life is mine, even if someone tried to convince me it belonged to them.

And maybe the hopeful reason—the one I’m holding onto with shaking hands—is this:

I didn’t go through all of that just to disappear.

I went through it so I could come back to myself.

So I could rebuild a version of me that doesn’t beg for love, doesn’t confuse fear with fate, doesn’t call suffering “romance.” A version of me that can finally sleep without waiting for the next message. A version of me that can breathe without permission. A version of me that can love again one day—not because I’m naive, but because I’m free.

I don’t have the happy ending yet.

But I have something I never had back then: a beginning.

And if you’re reading this and you feel trapped, I need you to know this—your hopeful ending might not look like a fairytale. It might look like silence. Like blocking. Like walking away. Like choosing yourself even while your heart is screaming.

And one day, that choice will feel like peace.

I’m waiting for that peace.

And for the first time, I truly believe it’s coming.

Yours truly 🤍