Downer

Don't read this. I wouldn't advise it, anyway.

It's the day before Christmas eve. It's a very stressful time for me. I should be the happiest I've ever been, but there are a lot of stressors in my life right now. I keep realizing more and more how abusive a past relationship was.

I've been anxious since I left it. Now I've started having dreams about it. I wake up from them thinking about things that really happened. It's hard to explain without a lot of backstory.

But basically, I have terrible eyesight. I voluntarily gave up driving on the highway because I didn't feel I could drive safely at high speeds. My husband at the time knew this, yet there were occasions when he would ask me to drive on the highway, while he drove another vehicle. In panic mode, I would follow him, carefully obeying the speed limits, trying to make sure I didn't lose him or drive into anyone. He would call me on my cell phone and tell me I wasn't driving fast enough. I'd be driving 65. He'd be going 80. Anyone who's seen me struggle with visual things would get that I shouldn't be driving that fast. I could see fine, but I couldn't read signs at high speed and I had to really pay attention to things on the periphery because my peripheral vision is quite impaired. He would yell at me to drive faster  or he was going to leave me behind. How did I stay so long with someone who made me feel so unsafe?

At the end of one of these drives, he'd be angry with me because I didn't drive faster automatically.

I've been away from him for three years and it's only now hitting me how badly he treated me.

I see this relationship as similar to the way the government treats people. People stay. They accept. They don't know any better.