I would say that I am open about who I am. With the students back at home they know most of what makes me who I am. I have been, for the most part, an open book about my story. I keep saying “most” because there is one thing I haven’t really talked to anyone about besides one or two people. This was until this past week when I shared my testimony with my team. I know this one part of my story plays a huge part in who I am today, so I knew that the Lord wanted me to share this dark chapter. It was extremely liberating and has caused me to think about a lot this past week. I knew that there would come a time on the race when the Lord would address this season of my life. I knew that He would use this season to show His glory and to help others who may find themselves in a similar situation.
This story I am about to get into may be a little dark and graphic, but it plays a huge part of who I am today and my walk with the Lord. This is the first time that I have talked about any of this publicly. If you have any questions about feel free to reach out to me personally and I would love to answer anything.
My senior year of high school I thought I had met the one. I started dating this girl who was cool and helped with the buddy club at school. I loved this having a special needs sister. Things started out great. She would help with my sister and it seemed like my family liked her. Fairly quickly though my family picked up on some things I did not see. Being “in love” I listened to everything she said like it was the Gospel. I did everything she said and allowed myself to get manipulated into doing things I should not have been doing. My family tried to talk to me about these things and I didn’t take it well and she took it even worse when she would find out. This manipulation quickly turned into emotional abuse. It started out as her just having me do things for her to her putting me down and telling me how awful of a person I was. I loved her and thought she loved me too, so I began to believe what she said was true. I didn’t know my worth as a human, so I did nothing to change my situation at the time. These abusive outbursts started out very infrequently but that slowly began to change. I loved her and wanted her to get the help she needed so I stuck through the hate. Again, I also believed what she was telling me. I didn’t realize that this was not how a relationship was supposed to be. As things got worse so did my mental state. Before this relationship I had a little anxiety but nothing different than most people. At some point within the first year or two of dating I had bad anxiety and started feeling depressed. I was taking medicine for both things. This helped a little bit, but the anxiety and depression were situational, and I was doing nothing about my situation.
I wish that I was able to say that the emotional abuse was the bad part here. It was not. This relationship caused a huge rift within my family. Even though I lived at home I would go weeks at a time without talking to them sometimes. When I did talk to them my girlfriend wanted to know every word that was said. If I forgot something or left something out, she would get upset and angry. One day my dad and I drove down to eat dinner with my grandparents and back to Augusta in one day. She wanted me to talk about something (I forget what) with my dad in the car since it was going to be about 3 hours. When I got back to Augusta I went to her house and we started talking about what my dad and I talked about. We were driving around town like we did often just talking about this conversation. It was a long conversation, so I didn’t remember everything that was said. I also get a stutter sometimes when I get nervous and that was happening a little bit here. Every time I would not remember something or would stutter, she would get more and more angry with me. This was not abnormal, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then it happened. She got so angry she snapped and hit me. I remember her saying she was just trying to knock some sense in me. When we got back to the house she apologized and said it would not happen again. Because of the emotional abuse I believe that I deserved this and let it slide. I didn’t think it would happen again, but I was wrong. Much like the emotional abuse it started out infrequent. Before long though these violent outbursts began to happen more frequently, and they would get more violent. Every time though I believed her when she said it was my fault. She would also threaten to hurt herself and I would be to blame for that. Suicide attempts were not something new in her family, so I believed this. I knew deep down that this was not right, so I was careful not to tell anyone about these violent outbursts. As they got worse the devil used shame more and more to keep me trapped in this situation. There were times where she had hit me so hard my glasses broke. I would get bruises and bumps all over. Each time was worse than the last. There was a time when we were driving to church and something set her off and she started hitting me repeatedly while I was driving down the road nearly causing an accident. She hit me so hard one night that I nearly passed out and fell onto the floor.
Finally, I found a spiritual mentor and he began to pour into me how much the Lord loved me. I began to see value in myself. This dude made me realize that if she did something to herself then it would be because she did not accept help, not because of something I did. I never went into details about what was going on in my relationship, but he showed me love in a way I was not being shown. He was just there and ready to be a friend with whatever I had to talk to him about. In August 2016 my girlfriend and I took a break. It was only for a week or so, but it showed me a few things. I was afraid my family would not accept me back because of the rift we had. This was not true. I also learned that I could be happy without her in my life. After this week though I didn’t want her not in my life, so we got back together. I believed her when she said that her outburst would stop, and she was going to seek professional help. Unfortunately, these things did not happen. About a month later in September 2016, 4 years after we started dating, the abuse finally stopped. The night before a big day at work I wanted to go home early so I got a good night sleep. She wanted me to stay until she fell asleep because it was too hard to do without me. After she would doze off, I would try to leave, and she would get upset. This happened a few times before I just had to leave to get a little sleep. She got violent with me and started to fight with me. She was saying how she was going to hurt herself if I went home and how it would be my fault. I tried to reason with her, but nothing worked. I finally left the house and she blew my phone up the whole way driving home. She texted me multiple times saying how she was going to kill herself and blame it on me. I knew this was not the case, so I was just going to let her calm down and talk things through in the morning. The next morning, I texted her trying to see if she wanted to talk before work. I got nothing back. At lunch I texted her again a little worried about her and got no response again. After work I was going to go by her house to make sure she was alright. Right when I walked out the door at work my phone rang and it was her. She told me she didn’t respond on purpose because she wanted me to think about what I did wrong last night and that she had spent the day hanging with her friend and I needed to go hang out with them. This was the final straw for me. I told her how messed up it was not to respond to me after telling me she was going to do something and that I needed space. I spent four years with her and had no idea who I was as a person. My identity was tied up within her. Most of my friends at the time were friends of ours and did not like my decision to break up so they stopped talking to me. Luckily within a couple weeks I attended CSRA Men’s Tres Dias where I was given a great group of men who showed me the love of Christ and wanted to do life with me. The void I was left with was filled tenfold. These dudes where there for me whenever I needed anything. They showed me what it was like to really feel love. They also showed me for the first time in a long time what it was like to have GOOD friends. They saved me.
I can honestly look back on this period and say it was a living hell. There have been countless times where I have had nightmares about this time period. Every so often I will get a flashback and feel like I am back in that dark pit. I would never wish what I had to go through on my worst enemy, but I am extremely grateful for those trials. It helped make the Matt that everybody knows and loves today. This period gave me an opportunity to learn a ton about life. It gave me a chance to learn about what I need to look for in my future wife. Knowing now the plans that the Lord has for my life I can see how Satan was trying to keep me down. The Father was constantly looking out for me though. When I decided to live in God’s will for my life, I could feel the chains fall off. I will never forget the moment I felt this Saturday night at Tres Dias. It completely wrecked me in the best way possible. I am still dealing with things that happened in this relationship but each day I get better. Opening up about this time in me life has freed me from shame and taken a huge burden off my shoulders. I know that somehow God will use these trials I went through to show his heart to someone and to hopefully save them from going through what I had to.
If you have any questions about my story please feel free to reach out to me on Facebook, Instagram or any other way. I would love to share anything else or answer and questions you may have. Also, if you are in an abusive relationship in any way know that you are worth far more than that. Nobody deserves to be abused emotionally or physically. Please reach out for help. It is not easy, but it is worth it.
