As a kid, I was labeled the quiet one. The “good kid.” I was the daughter my parents didn’t have to worry about, the one who followed the rules and kept everything together. But being “the easy one” came with a cost. I learned to hide pain behind a smile and to “fake it ‘till I make it.”
When something was wrong, I pretended everything was fine. I didn’t want to lose the image of being good and easy to handle. That habit followed me into my relationships, and it hurt me in ways I didn’t expect.
My first boyfriend claimed to trust my friends and I, but went behind my back, telling friends not to talk to me. He spread rumors that isolated me from everyone I cared about. When I finally ended things, he yelled at my best friend because I blocked him and hinted to others that he should have “handled me,” as in get up and hit me to shut me up. That experience shattered my sense of safety and trust.
After that, I had two talking stages that both ended painfully.
The first guy made me feel special. He called me “darling” and “my love,” but suddenly ended things, saying he “wasn’t good enough” for me. Later, I found out he was fooling around with three other girls. Even though we weren’t officially dating, I felt used. My emotions had been a game to him.
The second guy seemed sweet and genuine. He picked wildflowers for me and told me I was beautiful, smart, and talented. I trusted him with my deepest insecurities: that I wasn’t enough. Then, out of nowhere, he told me I “deserved better.” We talked it out and decided to try again, but, two days later, he said he wasn’t attracted to me and wanted nothing to do with me. He used the same insecurities I’d confessed against me as a reason not to be with me. That cut deeper than anything I’d experienced before.
That’s the thing about emotional manipulation: it doesn’t always look like yelling or control. Sometimes it’s disguised as care or kindness. And when it ends, you’re left doubting yourself instead of them.
Not long after, I started dating someone new. I wasn’t ready, but I wanted to believe not every guy would hurt me. Instead, I found myself in another controlling situation. He pressured me to FaceTime constantly, got mad when I spent time with family, and asked me to sneak out of the house. He even pushed me to drink when I said no.
One night, at dinner with his family, he touched me at the dinner table in ways that made me deeply uncomfortable, even when I pushed his hand away. I smiled through it so I wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his family. But when I left, I cried the whole way home. I felt dirty and trapped, like my boundaries and my comfort didn’t matter.
He made me feel powerless in my own body. To this day, I still struggle with touch. Sometimes I pull away from people without meaning to. I tell myself it’s silly to still feel that way, but trauma doesn’t follow a timeline.
I’ve never been physically abused. But I have been manipulated, controlled, and made to feel small. My emotions and sense of self were twisted until I didn’t recognize myself anymore.
People often talk about mental health as if it’s only depression or anxiety. But sometimes it’s quieter than that. Sometimes it’s the inability to trust after being hurt. It’s the fear of vulnerability after being used. It’s rebuilding confidence when someone else has chipped it away.
Mental health is learning that boundaries are not “too much.” It’s realizing that being cautious doesn’t make you cold; it makes you self-aware. It’s rediscovering who you are after being made to feel like you’re nothing.
I’m still healing. Bit by bit, piece by piece. My confidence isn’t perfect, but it’s growing. I’m learning to love myself again, to speak up, and to trust that I deserve better. My experiences can be seen on the lesser side of the trauma scale, but, in the end, it is still my experience. Everyone has different trauma, and none of it is better or worse than the other because it affects them in one of the worst ways it can.
Mental health isn’t always about surviving the worst thing that happened to you. Sometimes, it’s about learning how to be free again after someone made you feel trapped.
