This is everything: “First let’s talk about what that actually means. Are you losing yourself? Are you drifting from who you truly are? Do you no longer like yourself, respect yourself, know yourself? Do you feel invisible and powerless and have no sense of who you are anymore? Do you feel hollow?”

I was in a hideously abusive relationship with somebody who has Borderline Personality Disorder, very isolated in a foreign country (living on the side of a mountain on the outskirts of Mexico City), that it took a year to extricate myself from, and it didn’t end well. But, that’s a different story.

Because I was so isolated, I really had nobody from outside to give me a reality check, and I was unable to distinguish what was reality, and what was my then-partner’s manipulation and controlling behavior. Inevitably, as I already suffer from low self-esteem, I ended up completely losing any sense of who I am.

That paragraph you wrote sums up PERFECTLY, like, absolutely, how I felt. And, it was the hollowness and powerlessness that made me feel incapable of leaving or moving.

It’s a year later now, and I am still struggling to regain my self-confidence and self-respect. (it probably doesn’t help that I lost my job a short time after the break-up, and suffered a mini-breakdown. haha)

Thanks for this post.