I finally blocked him, not that long ago–my mental health has only improved, in subsequent weeks.

During our final conversation, I told him that he’d had no right to start a relationship with someone who was mentally ill, unless he was willing to make the sacrifices they needed in order to continue improving their mental health.

He argued with me for an hour, I’d guess, accusing me of everything from saying mentally ill folk don’t deserve romance to lying about my motives. The sum total of his words were: “how dare you not accept the crumbs of my attention I’m willing to give you, the weeks or months of not talking, and then not be thrilled to hear from me when I finally deign to reply to your message or send one of my own–my girlfriend is mentally ill, and her needs come first.”

Throughout the entire conversation, he kept making references like the above, which let me know: he thought I was talking about when he began his relationship with his current girlfriend, who has Borderline Personality Disorder.

He never once understood that my words were an indictment against the years he spent deceiving me, lying to my face, and pretending that I “deserved” to be treated that way (abused, in a word) because he didn’t agree with the morality of some of my life choices.

I wasn’t talking about her, you pure-blind narcissistic idiot–the person you’re looking at is not necessarily the person at the top of everyone else’s thoughts.

I was talking about me: about the suicidal ideation that you were bored of hearing about (in pretty much those words: bored, tired of, doesn’t make an impact anymore….) the self-harm that I tried to hide from you (yet you *still* shouted at me for doing it, after following me into the bathroom to watch me shower) and most of all, the insistence that it wasn’t abuse to scream obscenities at me, call me ugly names, shove/restrain/throw things at/hit me, or coerce me into sex when I was so obviously stiff and scared and not in the mood.

I’m sorry for her, because she’s not equipped to deal with you, and you’ll take advantage, because that’s what you do… but, as ever, until I finally gave up the fight, I wanted you to just once acknowledge how you treated *me*.