Facing Myself

I don't want this to be the last post I write today, so I guess I'll just write it now.  I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately and I'm finally to the point of owning up to it.

Awhile ago, I read this post about abuse over at the Pervocracy.  It's a great post, albeit one that's a bit hard to  read and face up to.  When I read the post I had a hard time because my dad was pretty emotionally abusive.  But my biggest and worst realization was that I was emotionally abusive to Boyfriend and had been for a long time.

I've always had anger management issues.  I have a short temper and my constant fighting with my dad never helped.  I didn't think it would ever really affect anyone other than my dad, but after I had been dating Boyfriend for awhile, my temper started to slip more and more.  I was picking stupid fights for no reason and saying horrible things.  More horrible than I feel comfortable repeating ever.

Reading Holly's article forced me to face this.  I had already been working on my anger issues at this point and talking to Boyfriend about the things that I had said were sort of the natural next extension.  I haven't blogged about this yet because every time I think about many of the things I've said, I can barely stand it.  I make a point in my life about owning up to the things I've done, but this is by far the hardest.  I don't want it to ever happen again and for awhile I was definitely of the opinion that it would be better if Boyfriend and I broke up.  I didn't want to risk hurting him again and there was no way to adequately atone for the things I'd said.  I talked to Boyfriend a lot about it though and we decided to stay together and see how things went.

I still struggle with facing up to this.  I don't like what I did when I got angry in the past.  I hate it.  I still sometimes feel like breaking up would have been better because I honestly don't deserve his forgiveness.  Things feel really good between us right now.  I'm happy and I'm able to catch myself when my temper starts to slip.  But I still have a long way to go and I just don't want to hurt people again.  It's something where I think I will always be worried about it in the future, but hopefully that will serve as a reminder.