Toxic Love

By Rashi Kaushik

During my first year at engineering college, I met this guy named Abhishek who was friend of my roommate, Garima. Pretty soon we fell for each other. I never had any relationship in past so that feeling of first love was ecstatic. He was good to me, loving, caring but within three months of relationship he started giving me all kinds of red flags that I completely ignored because I was blinded by his love. He had anger issues and used to insult me abuse me when angry or drunk and apologised later when in sense or things were done his way. I thought its okay because nobody is perfect and we should learn to accept people with their flaws. He used to check my Instagram, facebook, whatsapp and even my contact list. He removed all my male friends and I was not allowed to talk to them even formally. This behaviour definitely did hurt me because I loved my friends and I believed in friendship as much as in love, yet I blocked them all to save my relationship and keep it peaceful. Things weren’t good enough yet. He always had something to be angry about at me. I was sad all the time, and lost my smile. He even stopped me from talking to my female friends about my relationship because it had to be kept personal. Eventually after cutting off almost everyone from my life, he was the only one left but unavailable emotionally towards me. Reduced number of calls and late replies on texts made me completely lonely. Garima asked me several times if I had any problems but I never shared

anything with her. I respected our privacy. One day, one of my school came to my city and contacted me to meet. I was overjoyed with the idea and went to meet him. While I was talking to him, Abhi called me and asked where I am. I didn’t have the courage to tell him I was with a friend so I told him I was alone. He said he knows everything and if I don’t go back at that very moment, he will leave me. I didn’t think anything further, left my friend and rushed back to my flat crying. When I reached, he started using yelling at me, accusing me of being unfaithful and when I raised my voice, he slapped me. I felt like I had lost my self-respect and my confidence. I had completely lost myself. In that moment I hated him and parted my ways with him. That relationship was no less than a nightmare but a great lesson that I learnt the hard way. The man who can’t trust you, can never love you and also, the man who wants to change you can never completely accept you. Women should never justify man’s insecurities and anger. They should ask for trust and peace instead. Pure love sets you free. If someone controls you, its not love.

By Rashi Kaushik