Nicole confession of abuse

My story

Hi my name is Nicole but some of you might know me as neekolul. I wanted to come out and

talk about my abuser and the 7 years of abuse he put me through from 15-22. I’m lucky that I’m

now in a loving and stable relationship but I felt like I needed to come out as it has weighed on

me for years and I never truly addressed it. This is going to be super long so the TLDR: it came

out a while ago but was recently brought up again that I got in trouble for hitting my abuser, and

some people have characterized me as an abuser... For 7 years leading up to that moment I

endured beatings, verbal and mental abuse, social isolation, public humiliation and more. I know

some people just get a kick out of trolling me and saying I’m an abuser or crazy, but I hope this

will clear everything up for anyone out there who actually thinks I’m a bad person... I’m tired of

being quiet and people thinking the person who beat me for years deserves sympathy.

The abuse started when I was 15 years old. It included emotional, mental and physical abuse.

He started out by accusing me of cheating for simply wearing a skirt or speaking to a male

classmate - he used this as an excuse to hurt me, which at first started out as pushing, shoving,

and twisting/pinching sensitive areas of my body. From the ages of 15-18 the abuse escalated

as time went on: slapping, choking, slamming me, threatening my life at knife point, threatening

his life, threatening to hurt both of us (ex. Driving violently in the car threatening to crash it),

gaslighting, taking my belongings and breaking them (phones,things of sentimental value etc),

and public humiliation (ex. trying to make me look crazy or dumb to other people to isolate me),

and so much more. I don’t know what other things you classify as abuse but this is also around

the time that he started to take advantage of me financially which only escalated as I grew into

adulthood.

Something that I’ve seen people say to abuse victims is “why didn’t you tell anyone?” As toxic

as that question is, I tried. As a scared teenager it was hard, and in the end I felt a weird need to

protect him. When he broke my glasses out of anger I tried to tell his mom, she insinuated I was

lying... I got scared and out of not wanting to get him in trouble and I changed my story and said

we both probably broke them. When I showed his dad that he slapped me with a picture as

proof, he proceeded to act like he cared but in the end his dad only took away his phone for a

couple of days and it was brushed under the rug.

I told the police at one point that I wanted to press charges with picture proof and text

messages. The officer’s words still ring in my head that “you are too young to be going through

this, you should rethink if you want to do this” I responded that I still wanted to press charges

and he still tried talking me out of it, saying something along the lines of “Are you sure? Really

think about it” as a scared teenager I thought he must know better and I didn’t pursue it further.

Lastly, at a church youth retreat I invited him to, my abuser publicly manhandled me out of anger

in front of the group where the youth leaders noticed. They asked me what was going on and I

decided not to say anything as I was scared. I just said “he’s mean to me sometimes” despite

this they still decided there was probably abuse going on... instead of speaking with my parents

in a private caring manner, they decided to have a very public discussion, with 15 or so people,about whether I was being abused or not. This caused an already humiliating, somewhat private

situation to turn into a large public humiliation that created stress within my family which made

me dig deeper into my hole, wanting to hide my abuse and pushing everyone further away.

From the ages of 19-21 the abuse got far worse - everything i mentioned above but more

severe and more frequent. He started closed fist beating me almost every time he saw me, we

were breaking up and getting back together every other week. He would strategically hit me

behind my head to avoid visible bruises. Some hits would slip so I would get a small bruise on

my cheek or arms.

When I decided I finally decided I needed to break up with him for good the abuse got even

worse. He was especially threatened at the possibility of me actually truly leaving bc I had been

pouring my free time into streaming so I had company no matter what. He couldn’t push my

community away from me and I had something to always look forward to that wasn’t him. He

began harassing me endlessly all day, non stop for weeks....my phone was literally unusable as

it was constant calls and texts from him. He got tired of this so he decided to come to my home

while my parents weren’t home and harass me in person, banging on my front door screaming,

threatening to run his car through my door. He had done this multiple times in the past, he would

show up and then leave...but this time he wouldn’t leave, he stayed at my door screaming even

though I told him to please leave as my parents would be home soon. I was frantically trying to

get him to leave, I put my hand through the door (my hand was between the mental door and

the doorframe) trying to push him away as he banged on the door, begging him to please leave.

When my arm was half way out of the door he grabbed my arm with one hand and the door with

his other hand and started slamming the door into my arm multiple times as it was caught in the

door frame. At this point I was so scared, I called the police directly (not 911) and I told them

that there was an abusive ex boyfriend who was harassing me and I felt in danger. Still

protecting him, I told them I just wanted the officers to tell him to go away but not arrest him...

this was because he didn’t have the financial means to get out of a situation that lands him in jail

and I didn’t want that for him, I just needed him to leave. Officers came shortly and asked him to

leave. They asked if he had abused me before and I told them yes and they just made note of it

and got him to leave. Even after this incident he still continued to harass me, spam texting and

calling me constantly for weeks... I finally gave in and I stupidly decided to hear what he had to

say. After agreeing to meet and talk he decided to ditch me and instead went out with people

and ignored me. After harassing me endlessly the moment I decide to hear him out he ignores

me - this is the type of mental manipulation I was used to. He hurts me, harasses me until I

break down and agree to talk, then once he has power back puts me down and let’s me know

my place. I made the decision to confront him as I had been through so much and this showed

that he still didn’t care - I should have never even bothered but I did.

I went to his house to confront him about this as he was just arriving home. When I got there I

was visibly upset - silently crying waterfalls and I said I just wanted to talk. I asked him why he

was doing all this, what’s the point of manipulating me and harassing me for weeks to just act

like I’m nothing but a chew toy to tear up and mistreat, treating me exactly like he was treating

me that led me to leave in the first place. And he ofc had a “this is a bother and I could careless” attitude. This was so upsetting and the conversation turned into an argument that

escalated... he raised his arms and I felt threatened due to everything I had been enduring. I

wasn’t going to just get beaten again so I hit him to which he called the police and I ended up in

jail in my pajamas for 5 hrs. After all these years of receiving abuse I’m the one who ends up

getting in trouble... I’ve seen a lot of people saying crazy stuff online but my only punishment

was 12 classes of anger management and 1 yr of good behavior and it would be dropped. The

judge took into consideration my situation - everything I had been through and saw I wasn’t a

dangerous person. He even removed the automatically applied restraining order which is

apparently very rare which I think shows people recognized I wasn’t the one causing problems.

Even after ALL OF THAT, in my terrible mental state I decided to try and work things out with

him. This obviously caused a ton of issues at home, my parents of course wanted me to have

nothing to do with him but here I was, still with my abuser after all this. Before the incident my

parents didn’t know very much but by this time my parents knew everything. His abuse towards

me stayed mostly mental and emotional for the couple months after the incident. During this

period I was in a limbo/shock still recovering from the mental impact this whole situation had on

me. I registered for my anger management classes and before I began them there was a

therapy session to evaluate my thinking etc. and after that session it was like a switch turned on.

The therapist told me “you can’t control others you can only control yourself” and I’m not sure

why that just stuck with me with such clarity. I left that session ready to leave him... shortly after

that I broke up with him for the final time. After this we went through phases where he’d try and

get back together with me and there were times that I felt bad and helped him out emotionally or

financially, even letting him live with me for a short period - it just goes to show how bad of a

mental place I was in... it got to a point where he continued harassing me and trying to isolate

me from my stream and new friends, that I threatened to call the cops to get a restraining order.

Like always I decided to protect him as he had his “dream job” and that would ruin it for him, so I

didn’t follow through... I told him this was it though, that I couldn’t do it anymore and never

wanted to speak to him again, I changed all my passwords, my phone number, everything.

I felt like I needed to talk about my experience as a victim of abuse in hopes that abuse is taken

more seriously. Victims are manipulated or scared of their abuser so sometimes they stay silent.

Abuse like the domestic abuse I was receiving puts you in a literal mental prison that took a hold

of me from a young age. Violence is never the answer and I should have never stooped to his

level and I wish I stood up for myself and left for good sooner. My desire to be silent was the

reason things got bad for me, I couldn’t speak up. I was looked down on by peers and adults

that were supposed to be people you can count on and should look up to. A lot of the times I

tried to speak up I heard “why don’t you just leave then” which at the time I didn’t know how to

answer and it made me feel like why even bother I’ll go through this myself. I get comments

“have u hit ur new boyfriend yet”... comments like these are extremely hurtful, the time after I got

arrested my abuser showed me the pamphlets and flyers he was provided (abuse victim

materials) where he could get help as an abuse victim... and I don’t think ever in my life I felt so

wronged and let down, to this day I feel disgusting thinking about that. I decided to speak up

today because1. I refuse to have people think I’m this violent abuser who hurt someone for no reason

2. I refuse to give my abuser the power of my silence for another day and have people not know

my story.

3. This is my big step into my healing process and going into therapy.

I know this was super long and thanks for reading if you’ve gotten this far even if you skimmed

it... In conclusion I know there will be people out there that won’t believe me. I don’t have

evidence for most of this, my own parents didn’t know about the abuse for years. I felt like not

speaking out about my story, seeing how times I fell silent, dug me into a deeper cycle of mental

pain and at the end of the day I deserve to live in peace and I won’t let anyone invalidate me

ever again.

Thank you,

Nicole

Source:twitter neekolul @neekolul