FCYU-Feature Story

Beyond the Pain
Searching for Real Love

By Abelee M.

How do you know when it’s safe to trust someone with your heart? It can be hard to figure that out, especially when you’ve been let down by loved ones. If you’ve experienced abuse, neglect or abandonment by the people who were supposed to care for you, it’s easy to put up a wall to try and keep from getting hurt again. It’s also hard to find a healthy relationship for yourself if you haven’t ever experienced one.

What exactly is a healthy relationship? For most of my life, I didn’t know the answer to that. I was sexually abused, and, like many abused kids, I got used to being abused. It was the only thing I knew, so I thought it was normal. The problem was, I lived my life the way I’d been raised. I felt dirty and unworthy of love. I did drugs to escape the pain and went from guy to guy, sometimes even two guys in one day. I didn’t care, because at the time no one seemed to care about me.

Then I met a guy who treated me different, in a good way. He noticed who I was, and he didn’t judge me for what had happened to me in the past. He was someone I didn’t have to pretend around. Of course, after all that I’d been through, it was hard to trust him, and it didn’t happen overnight. But soon I realized that I had found a healthy relationship.

My boyfriend and I have been together for more than a year now, and like all couples, we do have our little problems. We get on each other’s nerves sometimes and we don’t always get along. But we talk, we listen to one another and we work things out.

In this issue of Represent, we write about trying to find loving relationships after being let down by the people who were supposed to be there for us. Each story is unique, but we have some things in common. Each of us is searching for honesty, trust, support and respect.

Sometimes we face confusion about what a meaningful relationship really is. We want to be rescued, but worry about giving up too much of ourselves to a partner. We fear giving our heart away to someone who doesn’t love us back. Most of all, we want to be true to ourselves, and to find someone who understands and accepts us for who we really are.

Write a letter in response to this story. If selected, your letter could be published in the next issue of Represent.