Realizing you suffered abused 7 years after the fact

Firstly, I will start this post by stating that I am mostly writing this for catharthic reasons.  I’ve read many posts on abuse over the years (both on this site and on others).  It’s an obviously troubling issue that I wish no one had to suffer through.  I always considered myself to be one of the lucky ones that never went through it.  Because of (possibly) unrelated issues, I have been going to therapy, and as a result, I have been doing a lot of soul searching and digging into my past for possible explanations for current behaviour patterns.  I have found the experience to be both liberating and painful. 

While doing some of this exploration into my past, I kept coming back to one relationship which seemed to have left a mark on me.  Whenever I thought about that relationship, I realized that I still carried a lot of anger in me and I still have not forgiven myself for staying in it.  He was definitely an asshole and he was defintely the worst boyfriend I had ever had, but I pretty much just left it at that.  But then I started to think about why I felt that way about him.  What were the behaviours he exhibited to warrant that label?  That’s when a light clicked and I feel like an idiot that it didn’t click before.

I started to think about the times when we were “play” fighting.  Except it wasn’t “play” for me because I usually ended up yelling at him to stop and I usually came out with bruises on my body.  I remember the time he “playfully”, in front of other people, had me on the floor on my back and “played the piano keys” on my upper chest (meaning that he was forcefully hitting his fingers against my skin, just below my neck).  I also remember fighting back tears because it hurt so much and I felt as if I was being humiliated in front of his friends.  I sucked it up though, held back the tears enough that I don’t think anyone noticed and said nothing.  My shirt was able to cover up most of the red marks.

I remember staying overnight as his mom’s house and his mom often
mentioning her concern that she could hear me yelling “oww”, and yelling
at him to “stop” when I was over there.  For some reason this never
clicked as something significantly wrong.  The first time I remember
thinking that maybe he was getting too much pleasure out of my pain was
the time towards the end of our relationship when I drove a couple of
hours to visit him at the hotel he was staying at out of town for work. 
After dinner we went down to the pool for a swim.  They had a
waterslide and the pool was empty at the time.  We both went to the
slide to take turns going down.  I went down first.  We were fooling
around and trying to stop ourselves partway down the slide.  The last
time I did this, despite knowing that I was stopped in the middle, he
thought it would be “funny” to go down the slide anyways while I was
stuck.  I freaked out, knowing that if I didn’t move FAST, he would hit
me with the force of his entire body and that would hurt like hell
(especially considering that he was 6’4″ and 225 pounds).  I managed to
get myself moved before he hit me and I tried to get down the rest of
the slide into the water as soon as I could.  I almost made it but not
quite.  Right at the end his feet hit my back with full force.  He hit
me so hard that it knocked all of the wind out of me.  I fell into the
pool and I couldn’t breathe.  I was jumping up in the down in the pool
just trying to get some air in.  All you could hear were horrible
gasping sounds which were amplified and resonant in the pool room.  What
did he do to help?  Nothing.  He stood in the pool watching me struggle
and gasp for air, laughing hysterically.  He thought it was the
funniest thing that he had ever seen.

Now, anyone reading this is probably thinking that these are clear
signs of abuse.  This however happened 7 years ago…and it just clicked
for me this week that I may have suffered physical abuse.  Why is it
that when things like this happen we somehow rationalize it as normal
and acceptable?  Why was I susceptible to this?  Why did I stay?  Why
wasn’t I the one that ended the relationship?  Why was I so crushed when
this asshole who deserves only the worst in life left?  These are
questions that I still don’t have the answer to.  This is the first time
I have admitted to anyone that I was abused by a boyfriend.  It just
took me 7 years to realize it.