This Is the Reason I Finally Hit My Boyfriend Back

I have always hated myself. I would look into the mirror and throw insults at my skin, at the way it looked patched and uneven. I hated my eyes, the way they bulged, my ears, everything. School made it worse. School was where comparison lived. It was where I watched other girls, the ones the fine boys chased after, and I learned exactly where I stood. Far away from them. So I hated school.

Home did not feel better. At home, I felt unseen. I felt like an outcast, standing outside the favour that seemed to come so easily to my siblings. I carried a deep belief that I was ugly, unworthy of love, and fundamentally unfavoured. Nobody could change it. It felt etched into my very being, carved there by my own thoughts. Maybe adolescence played a part. Maybe it was all in my head. But I was convinced my mother favoured my brother and sister.

Major must have smelled my insecurity from afar. That is the only way I can explain what happened next.

After class one day, I tried to rush away as usual. Major was there, standing in my way, smiling. Over time, I grew attached to him. I loved the way he held my hand while talking to other students in class, like I belonged to him. I loved how he sat beside me, how he looked at me like there was no other girl in the room. Every time he told me I was beautiful, something inside me softened. When he said things like, “I bought this dress for you. It will look so pretty on you when we go for dinner,” I believed him.

With Major, I felt alive in ways I never had before. So when he asked me to date him, I jumped at it. In my head, I had won the jackpot. I thought I had found a man who made me feel loved, who made me feel beautiful, even just through his eyes.

Six months in, Major started asking that we do adult things. He used the same line every time. “If you loved me as you say, it would be easy.” I could not counter it. I had given him so much already, so my body felt like the next thing he was entitled to. He had made me love it, so it became his.

It happened in his apartment.

Does it count as being lured when someone says all the right things but your spirit does not feel right about it? Because that was how it felt. I did not feel settled on my end. Afterward, the shame came crashing down. I imagine it was how Adam and Eve felt when God came looking for them in the garden after they ate the forbidden fruit.

I felt dirty. I felt shame, pain, and anger all at once. It felt like work. It felt wrong. I kept asking myself why it had to feel that way when I loved Major. Somewhere inside me, I think I knew I had done it with the wrong person.

Not long after, I broke things off with him. I could not live with the nightmares anymore.

What I did not know was that he had taken photos. Photos of me naked. Photos of me in his bathroom, on his bed, sleeping in a shirt. I did not know he had them. I did not even know when he took them.

The day he sent those photos to me, something inside me shattered again. It hit me, painfully, that I did not fit society’s idea of beauty.

Then the threats started. He told me that if I did not return to him, he would post them. He said he would tell the world how I slept, how I was not even a sleeping beauty. He said he would post them in our department group, ask his friends to forward them, and soon I would be everywhere. Blogs. Snapchat. Telegram. He swore he would make everyone see me naked before he let me go.

So I stayed.

I thought about it over and over. My parents seeing those photos. My siblings. My neighbours. What people would say. What I would become afterward. I knew I could not survive it. I knew it would kill something in me, if not all of me. I told him, “The only reason I am with you is because of those photos. Nothing else.”

That was when the beating started.

He said he owned me now because of those photos. “Whatever I want to do with you, I will,” he told me. He said he could beat me as long as he liked and no one would do anything to him. He threatened my existence. He controlled where I went, who I spoke to. I could not even be seen with a colleague. If he got angry, he beat me. Afterward, he begged for forgiveness and blamed the devil, said an evil spirit had entered him.

That was my entire life in school.

Until one day, the last time he raised his hand to hit me, I fought back. I beat him. I stood my ground. He never raised his hand to me again. I still do not know where that strength came from. Maybe hitting him knocked something loose in his head. Maybe he finally saw that I was not as powerless as he thought.

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The day I collected my certificate from school, I blocked him everywhere. I left all our group chats. I sent him one message. “Post the pictures if you like. I’m done.”

That did not stop him.

He begged from different numbers. Every morning I woke up scared. Sometimes he begged. Sometimes he sent videos of himself crying, on his knees, rolling on the floor, sliding down the wall. “If you leave me, something will happen to me. I will die,” he said.

When I did not respond, he turned to threats again. This time he said he would send the photos to my workplace’s social media pages. And he tried. He actually did it, not knowing I had already left that job. That failed attempt exposed his IP address, and the manager connected me to a helpful police officer.

That was when I finally told someone.

I told my mother. I finally told my mom, and finally, I could breathe again. It was like the world’s weight had been lifted from my chest. I could sleep without waking to anxiety, even though telling her felt like risking my last shred of dignity.

When I told her, everything changed. She looked at me calmly and asked, “What do we need to do?”

When Major realised I was serious about going to the police, and that I had kept every message he sent as evidence, he disappeared. He took his slippers and ran. Right now, I do not know if he is alive, dead, or hiding somewhere out of fear of arrest.

But I am alive.

And that is what matters.

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