The hurt that has never left

I was sourcing for some ROM images as samples for my brother's coming solemnisation this Saturday when the first Googled page emerged as the ROM website. For some reason, the ROM I had more than 12 years ago came back to me.


With almost no fuss at all, I typed in his name and date of birth on the searching page for marriage registration.

The search showed that he is married three years ago.

I didn't expect him to be a live widow.

We have been freed from each other, after about 9 years of a relationship.

I cried though.

The hurt that was done so many years ago probably has never really left.

In that relationship, all was sweet for the first few months. He bought flowers for me, and told me to let him know when the flowers wither so that he could always get me fresh ones; he asked if he'd returned my call on his pager within five minutes and he'd aim to do just that every time; he said he felt like he was on top of the world when I said yes to being his girlfriend; he didn't even mind if he was a substitute since I was on a rebound.

But after the honeymoon period, the passion turned cold. I tried all ways to retain the relationship. Every possible way. I should have left him. But I didn't.

When I moved to Marsiling, I travelled just about every day to Tampines for our dates. But he often left me crying all the way home, from Tampines to Marsiling MRT station. It was a sure sign that the relationship was doomed but I didn't let it go.

I made a few weak attempts at breaking up with him but I gave in the moment he called.

It took many years of hurt for me to give up on the abusive relationship.

For the years that I broke away from it, I thought all was forgotten and the hurt was gone, but 5 years down the road one day, when I was alone, and remembered how he had hurt me, memories were still vivid and tears couldn't stop flowing.

The hurt was so bad that nothing could make me spend the rest of my life with him, even when there was a baby.

In fact, it was the baby who gave me the resolve to get out of that abusive relationship. I didn't want my baby girl to model her future partner after that Peter Pan.

Today, I still cried. The lost years of youth and emotions are not something that can be easily compensated.

The relationship has left me with a lifetime of regrets and hurt. Each time I recall, the wound feels like it's still fresh. I had held onto the relationship out of fear and insecurity. Not because of love.

Being in an emotionally abusive relationship made me believe that no one else would 'love' me more than he did, even when he would scold me audibly, with despise in his voice, in public,"Useless woman!" and immediately apologised under his breath when I picked up my bag and wanted to leave.

It is this hurtful relationship that gives me the most contrite understanding of quotes about how one should never enter a relationship out of loneliness, else she would find herself end up feeling lonelier, and one who waits for others to give her happiness would never be happy.

There were tons of reasons why I should leave him and just about none that I should stay, yet I was blinded by false emotions. I clung on the past sweet memories of the relationship, thinking that THAT was the real him and when he realised that, he would revert to how he had treated me the way he did when we first got together.

That pathetic relationship made me realise things I would otherwise never be able to:

1. Others will not love you if you do not love yourself.

2. No love is worth your pride.

3. A girl should take time to choose her boyfriend carefully, even the first one.

4. If a man truly loves you, he wouldn't do anything to hurt you. What doesn't break you will make you stronger.

All the hurt do make me stronger. I no longer wait for someone to give me happiness. I go look for it myself.

If anyone is in a relationship I was, my message to her is: waste time not.