Seven Years With an Abusive Alcoholic

by Lisa
(Washington State)

I met my now ex when I was 16 yrs old. When I met him it was like love at first sight, he was everything that I was looking for in a guy ... sweet, caring, funny, all around nice guy ... or so I thought. It was great at first, he would buy me flowers every week, open doors for me, etc.

After about a year of dating we decided to move in together, I knew that he drank, but I didn't realize how much and how often he did until we lived together.

Within the first month, I started noticing a change in him, that he was drinking almost on a daily basis. I really didn't think much of it though, he would just drink and be happy then pass out. After a couple more months went by that's when he started to get angry when he was drinking. He started calling me names, any bad name that you could think of he would call me that. I stuck around and dealt with it, thinking that it was a phase, that things would get better.

Months passed and it just seemed to get worse, that's when he started putting his hands on me. I would have bruises on me all the time and when someone would see them and ask me what happened I would make stuff up. He would get drunk and angry almost every night, I wouldn't say or do anything to him for him to be angry, but he blamed me for his anger.

Years passed and I was still with him and I couldn't figure out why, maybe I was scared to leave him. When I threatened to leave him he would say that if I left him he would kill himself, he actually carved my name into his chest with a knife, which scared the crap out of me.

He did horrible things to me when he was drunk - he choked me, bashed my head against a wall, punched me, kicked me, dragged me across the floor by my hair, he even broke my hand one time.

You would think that I would have left him after all that, but again I was too scared of him to do that. I started not to care about myself, I let myself go gained about 100 lbs, didn't care what I looked like, started hating myself because he would constantly call me names, and tell me how worthless I am its like I started believing it.

I went through 7 years of abuse because of him drinking. He was never like that when he wasn't drunk, I loved him when he wasn't drunk.

I offered to help him to stop drinking, in any way that I could help him, but he didn't want it, he didn't want to stop. He would tell me that he is never going to stop drinking.

I finally decided that I could not deal with it anymore, and with the help of family and friends I finally got him out of my apartment. We have been broken up now for almost a year. I feel better about myself now, I have lost the weight that I gained, I realized that I am not worthless.

I just wanted to share my story because I never realized how much alcohol can take over someone's life like that, how someone could be that dependent on it, like they cant function without it. I dealt with it for a long time and it was tough, very tough. Coming out of that relationship made me a stronger person though.