"You came to me like relief, and that is what makes it so vile. You did not arrive looking cruel. You arrived looking careful. You spoke softly. You listened as I mattered.
You touched the shattered parts of me as if you meant to protect them. I was already carrying enough grief to drown in, and you saw that. You saw a woman desperate for something gentle, and instead of handling that truth with care, you used it like a weapon. That is who you are. Not misunderstood. Not wounded in some noble way. You are a man who saw pain and recognised an opening.
You taught me before you hurt me. That is the filthiest part. You learnt what made me shake, what made me cry, what made me go quiet, what made me reach for reassurance. You learned where the old damage sat under my skin, and then you built your hands around it. You made me believe you were the one person who would never use my suffering against me, and then you did exactly that. Piece by piece. Calmly. Deliberately. Like you had all the time in the world. You did not lose control. You exercised it.
At first, I thought you were saving me from the cold. I thought maybe life had finally stopped punishing me. I thought maybe I had been given one safe place, one safe man, one safe pair of arms. God, how pathetic that sounds now. I mistook your performance for love. I mistook your attention for tenderness. I mistook your obsession with my wounds for compassion. But you were never trying to heal me. You were measuring where to press hardest when the mask slipped and your real face stepped forward.
You did not start by destroying me openly. Men like you are too calculated for that. You started with little cuts to the mind. A look. A sigh. A shift in tone. A sentence that made me doubt myself long after you had finished speaking. You made me question what I heard, what I saw, what I meant, and what I remembered. You could wound me and then stand over me acting offended by my blood. You could lie to my face and make me apologise for noticing. You did not just hurt me. You made me feel insane for feeling hurt at all.
That is the kind of hell you dragged me into. Not the kind with fire anyone else could see. The kind that lives under the skin. The kind that follows a woman into sleep and waits for her there. The kind that makes her wake with her chest locked tight, her body trembling, her mouth dry, her mind already braced for another blow before the day has even begun. You turned my nights into punishment. You turned silence into a threat. You turned my own thoughts into a place I was afraid to be alone in. Even when you were not touching me, you were still everywhere.
You made me afraid of your moods, your pauses, your silence, the weight of your footsteps, the change in your face, the way the air itself shifted when you were about to turn cruel. I learnt how to read danger in the smallest movements because my safety depended on it. I learnt how to shrink, how to soften my voice, how to swallow words before they angered you. I became smaller and smaller just to survive you. And still it was never enough. It was never enough because this was never about fixing anything in me. It was about feeding something rotten in you.
You wanted me confused because confusion made me easier to control. You wanted me exhausted because exhaustion makes resistance weak. You wanted me starved of affection so that when you offered the tiniest scrap of warmth, I would take it like a starving creature and call it love. That is how sick you are. You did not just crave power. You craved devotion from the woman you were crushing. You wanted me to be grateful for the hand that was suffocating me. You wanted me to thank you while you hollowed me out.
And you did hollow me out. I will not dress it up. I will not call it a difficult relationship or a painful chapter or any other neat phrase people use when the truth is too ugly to say aloud. You emptied me. You took a woman who had already survived too much and made her colder than she had ever been before you. Before you, I still had some softness left, some instinct to trust, some small belief that care might exist without a price attached. After you, numbness felt safer than hope. Silence felt safer than honesty. Distance felt safer than being seen.
You made me hate my own vulnerability because you taught me what could happen when a man gets close enough to it. You made me flinch at kindness because kindness was how you baited the trap. You made me suspicious of gentleness because your gentleness had rot underneath it from the beginning. That is what you leave behind. Not just pain. Corruption. You poison what should have been clean. You leave a woman fighting ghosts in places that should have felt safe. You leave her body carrying fear long after you are gone, as if terror itself learned my name from your mouth and decided to stay.
But let me say this plainly, because I know now what I could not fully name then. You did not break me because you were powerful. You did it because you were empty. You needed to drain someone else to feel full for a moment. You needed to stand over a frightened woman and call that strength. You needed to distort my reality because you could not survive inside your own without control. There is nothing impressive about the way you harmed me. There is nothing grand in it. It is parasitic, cowardly, and vile. You are not deep. You are deprived of a soul in all the places that matter.
I know what you are now. You are the nightmare that first comes disguised as rescue. You are the false safety that turns into a cage. You are the voice that says, " Trust me, while already planning where to cut deepest. You are proof that evil does not always arrive screaming. Sometimes it kneels, smiles, listens, and waits. Sometimes it wraps itself in patience so a wounded woman will open the door herself. And then it feeds.
You made me feel like I was buried alive inside my own life. You made me feel my mind slipping under your constant lies, your punishment, your contempt. You made me feel so alone that even when you were right beside me, it felt like I was trapped somewhere underground, clawing at walls no one else could see. That is what you did. That is the truth of you. Not love. Not passion. No damage to the two people. Torment. Slow, intimate, calculated torment.
And still, for all you did, there is one thing you never got. You never got the final word on who I am. You got my fear. You got my tears. You got years of my life that I will never be able to touch without feeling the cold of you on them. But you never turned your lies into truth. You never made your cruelty sacred. You never made what you did acceptable. You are not the love that changed me. You are the violence I survived. And I will speak of you exactly that way."
-Steve De'lano Garcia
You taught me before you hurt me. That is the filthiest part. You learnt what made me shake, what made me cry, what made me go quiet, what made me reach for reassurance. You learned where the old damage sat under my skin, and then you built your hands around it. You made me believe you were the one person who would never use my suffering against me, and then you did exactly that. Piece by piece. Calmly. Deliberately. Like you had all the time in the world. You did not lose control. You exercised it.
At first, I thought you were saving me from the cold. I thought maybe life had finally stopped punishing me. I thought maybe I had been given one safe place, one safe man, one safe pair of arms. God, how pathetic that sounds now. I mistook your performance for love. I mistook your attention for tenderness. I mistook your obsession with my wounds for compassion. But you were never trying to heal me. You were measuring where to press hardest when the mask slipped and your real face stepped forward.
You did not start by destroying me openly. Men like you are too calculated for that. You started with little cuts to the mind. A look. A sigh. A shift in tone. A sentence that made me doubt myself long after you had finished speaking. You made me question what I heard, what I saw, what I meant, and what I remembered. You could wound me and then stand over me acting offended by my blood. You could lie to my face and make me apologise for noticing. You did not just hurt me. You made me feel insane for feeling hurt at all.
That is the kind of hell you dragged me into. Not the kind with fire anyone else could see. The kind that lives under the skin. The kind that follows a woman into sleep and waits for her there. The kind that makes her wake with her chest locked tight, her body trembling, her mouth dry, her mind already braced for another blow before the day has even begun. You turned my nights into punishment. You turned silence into a threat. You turned my own thoughts into a place I was afraid to be alone in. Even when you were not touching me, you were still everywhere.
You made me afraid of your moods, your pauses, your silence, the weight of your footsteps, the change in your face, the way the air itself shifted when you were about to turn cruel. I learnt how to read danger in the smallest movements because my safety depended on it. I learnt how to shrink, how to soften my voice, how to swallow words before they angered you. I became smaller and smaller just to survive you. And still it was never enough. It was never enough because this was never about fixing anything in me. It was about feeding something rotten in you.
You wanted me confused because confusion made me easier to control. You wanted me exhausted because exhaustion makes resistance weak. You wanted me starved of affection so that when you offered the tiniest scrap of warmth, I would take it like a starving creature and call it love. That is how sick you are. You did not just crave power. You craved devotion from the woman you were crushing. You wanted me to be grateful for the hand that was suffocating me. You wanted me to thank you while you hollowed me out.
And you did hollow me out. I will not dress it up. I will not call it a difficult relationship or a painful chapter or any other neat phrase people use when the truth is too ugly to say aloud. You emptied me. You took a woman who had already survived too much and made her colder than she had ever been before you. Before you, I still had some softness left, some instinct to trust, some small belief that care might exist without a price attached. After you, numbness felt safer than hope. Silence felt safer than honesty. Distance felt safer than being seen.
You made me hate my own vulnerability because you taught me what could happen when a man gets close enough to it. You made me flinch at kindness because kindness was how you baited the trap. You made me suspicious of gentleness because your gentleness had rot underneath it from the beginning. That is what you leave behind. Not just pain. Corruption. You poison what should have been clean. You leave a woman fighting ghosts in places that should have felt safe. You leave her body carrying fear long after you are gone, as if terror itself learned my name from your mouth and decided to stay.
But let me say this plainly, because I know now what I could not fully name then. You did not break me because you were powerful. You did it because you were empty. You needed to drain someone else to feel full for a moment. You needed to stand over a frightened woman and call that strength. You needed to distort my reality because you could not survive inside your own without control. There is nothing impressive about the way you harmed me. There is nothing grand in it. It is parasitic, cowardly, and vile. You are not deep. You are deprived of a soul in all the places that matter.
I know what you are now. You are the nightmare that first comes disguised as rescue. You are the false safety that turns into a cage. You are the voice that says, " Trust me, while already planning where to cut deepest. You are proof that evil does not always arrive screaming. Sometimes it kneels, smiles, listens, and waits. Sometimes it wraps itself in patience so a wounded woman will open the door herself. And then it feeds.
You made me feel like I was buried alive inside my own life. You made me feel my mind slipping under your constant lies, your punishment, your contempt. You made me feel so alone that even when you were right beside me, it felt like I was trapped somewhere underground, clawing at walls no one else could see. That is what you did. That is the truth of you. Not love. Not passion. No damage to the two people. Torment. Slow, intimate, calculated torment.
And still, for all you did, there is one thing you never got. You never got the final word on who I am. You got my fear. You got my tears. You got years of my life that I will never be able to touch without feeling the cold of you on them. But you never turned your lies into truth. You never made your cruelty sacred. You never made what you did acceptable. You are not the love that changed me. You are the violence I survived. And I will speak of you exactly that way."
-Steve De'lano Garcia
