Tell Me You Love Me

Prologue

I loved him. I trusted him with all of my might. I abandoned my own family for him, which is what I regret the most out of everything that has happened.

The worst part for me of breaking up with an abusive boyfriend isn't exactly the breaking up itself. It's the expected reaction that you'll get from your family and friends that makes you want to climb in the never-ending cave that you came from.

Why didn't you leave him earlier? My aunt Clarrise asks, staring deeply into my eyes and trying to find a way to scold me.

"Why didn't you leave him and come to my house?" My friend Autumn asks, examining the deep scars on my face.

Whenever you see a movie where abuse is present everyone says "I would leave if that happened to me." What if it's difficult to leave because you believe him when he says he'll never do it again.

Does it make me an idiot for believing in human error? Maybe he did make a mistake, the intimidating look that he gave me when he apologized that was somehow filled with love and domination drew me back in.

The words from my own mother. The response that made tears continually trickle down my face when I thought that I was healed.

"You weren't raised that way." My own mother coldly glared at me and slapped me. My heart felt like it was being kicked when it was already down.

I thought that she would be the one to comfort me out of anyone but I was completely wrong. For the past few years, we haven't had the best of times but I thought that she would shed her cold shell off in this situation.

The truth is that maybe I wasn't intentionally raised that way by my mother, but I was by society. After constantly being told how "ugly" you're and you will never find someone who loves you, after all of the traumatizing events the average person would plunge into the arms of anyone that tells her he loves her.

That happened to my case. I just wanted someone to tell me they love me.