At 22 I was still a kid in so many ways. I had started meeting a girl, I hadn’t had many girlfriends by that stage, I was a painfully shy person and probably still am in some ways. Anyway it was another night out and I was dropping her home in the early hours. Things kicked off.

on the journey out of nowhere I didn’t know what I had said or done but I was suddenly getting both barrels of rage that kinda shocked me tbh. I pulled over and somehow managed to calm things down and after a while it seemed as though everything went back to normal so I ...

continued the journey dropping her home. Slightly off key after what happened I still wanted to make sure she was in safe, and I was invited in to her parents house. In quietly we went, I sat in chair as she said she would return in a minute... a few mins later the door opened..

she stood there arms held out, red, blood dripping to the floor, what seemed like hundreds of razor blade cuts... something over the next few years I would be become too accustomed to seeing. I can’t remember much else from that point we cleaned up quietly and she explained it ..

was normal and a way of releasing. Now the choice was walk away and not meet again or let the caring side help and carry on.... I carried on, not knowing the toxic relationship that I was after entering into. The longer I stayed and the deeper I got the harder it became to leave

You slowly loose yourself and feel things can change, but they don’t and you get cheated on and get trapped deeper into it somehow. You somehow end up engaged. Life becomes a dark blur on the inside and nobody knows on the outside. You move in together and it progresses all the

time. You manage somehow to get her help. And one day a nurse quietly pulls you aside to chat and you end up realizing this is never going to change, the seed is sown. But trapped here you panic and you think if I leave and something terrible happens then I’m responsible...

time goes by and things continue to deteriorate, and I can’t say I probably didn’t help sometimes in some of the endless arguments. More cheating and a resolve builds next time I’m going to leave. And there was a next time and with the backing of my family I escaped but it’s 6

long years later and you think you have wasted your life. You don’t see how young you are until your older. I find myself again in my local football club and the old but wiser me returns inside (he was mostly there on the outside) and then I found love (online but that’s another

story) I got to have everything I should have and ended up happily married with kids and those horrible days seem to have completely vanished and forgotten in the main. I don’t know if I’ve told this story before and I’m not sure why now but maybe it might help someone else

There is an escape you just have to take it. Find your own happiness don’t try to fix someone else’s at the cost of your own. Some people don’t want to be helped. I was extremely lucky I found myself and then my wife and family. And in some ways it probably made me a little

better as a person. My family get the better me I hope.

PS. My health took a bashing during this time due to stress. My doctor couldn’t figure it out and it was only when I was out and felt better that I knew what it was.

There was more mental torture I probably have buried

or am in willing to go into but if any of this sounds familiar.... you can find a way out.
Be good to each other as you don’t know what a person is going through.