I should never have let him into my life, but I suppose that is one of the issues with hindsight - you can't actually fix your mistakes, you just have to learn from them.
And I made so many mistakes.
I took a deep breath and wrapped the aprong strings around my waist. I didn't have any experience or qualifications, so living on my own away from his control was hard to start off with. No job, no money, no where to live. But I survived. I have a job now, I'm good at it.
I have friends. Good friends; not toxic ones. I've moved on from him. I haven't seen him in about 4 years now, and he was in prison for three of those. I still think about him a lot, but that has more to do with the fact his band managed to take off while he was locked up.
Now he's away touring the world, and his first proper album came out last week. And every single one of the songs is about me. But that was his problem, not mine.
Until he walked into the cafe I worked at and fucked everything up.