emotional abuse - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

Break my legs and demand I run. Crack my fingers and scream at me to write. Steal my food and demand I stay in robust health. Poison my water and scorn me for vomiting. Create fear in my brain and demand that I have clarity of thought and vision. Malevolent or dumb, I don’t care. Go. Go. Go and hush all that you are.

My dear,
Take caution,
Of those who take,
Through the core shun,
Who take the time,
To see the angelic you,
The dear one,
So that they,
Can cost you dear,
To take and control,
All of you,
As you seek for their seal,
Of approval,
A thing,
They wield as weapon,
So take caution,
Of the core shun,
My dear.

If I am a house, it is built of love, and the floor is my faith in who I am. Your cynicism ate away at the walls and hit the floor until one day it cracked. The perfect house everyone knew and loved fell completely. Recovery was the biggest challenge I have ever achieved, and only possible because I love my family, community and nature. I rebuilt my house, a brick at a time; I put in new floors and polished them to a homely brown. There are times I still find that there is a brick missing here and there, or perhaps the floor needs bringing back to a shine, but I made it.

Nothing is ever free, is it, my love? Everything you ever give me is a debt, "remember who gave that to you, remember I did that for you." Every conversation is a subtle competition you are never prepared to loose, for even the smallest of infractions can bring on your anger. You take all the love I give you like it is your right to have it, and in return show only the most superficial of understanding. You dominate me, hurt me, wage war, when all I only ever wanted was love, understanding, peace. After your tantrums you make me work for your affection all over again, make me beg, taking my self esteem and burning it to ashes. I need your "permission" to be friends with people, you get antagonistic if I laugh too much. Is happiness offensive to you? Am I only allowed a certain quota before you drag me down once more?

In conversations you set out for victory, switching topics, portraying yourself as the victim, showing no empathy. In truth you are the bully, instilling fear, obligation and guilt, anything to fog up my mind, cloud my thinking. You manipulate, showboat and vent. You only allow appeasers and ego strokers into our lives. I have bitten my tongue these many years, poured love into you as the fixer-pleaser personality type I am, always wishing I could do more to help you. It is in these dark days, with heart smashed upon the floor, that I know you aren't capable of real love and you never were. I can't fix you. I can either stay in misery or find a way out of this life that is killing my soul.

Every time I go to leave, you "improve" and suck me back in like a damn vacuum cleaner. It's always temporary, just enough of your damn skinny love and no more. You understand that with my background, with my childhood trauma, I need affection like a drug and you abuse it, feeling powerful. But know that one day my side of the bed will be empty, that I will find a way to walk out and make a chance for a life with real love. This prison is fear and I will be brave.

Your lack of eye contact should have warned me, it isn't natural to avert your gaze from one you love. It gave you distance from my heart and soul, enough to allow the mean behaviours and the power trips you crave. In those moments I felt dehumanized, made just another part of your life to be controlled, to perform a function you required. Lover, it hurts. It hurts more than any physical pain I've endured and I've had my share. So, my beloved, take the part of me you stole for pennies and go. I'd rather be alone than with your sickly love. I'd rather endure this truth than take your band-aid pseudo-remorse, your regrets that last as long as summer rain.

I could have lived and died happily, never knowing what "gas-lighting" is, let alone lived in the knowledge that you did it to me and enjoyed it. I gave you my whole heart, my life, my love, everything I could give, and only wished I could do more. Now I have to know that the person I loved never truly existed, that our life was never what it appeared to be, that you lived with anger in your heart. Conversations were just talk to me, competitions to you. I sought to heal, you only wanted to "win." And so what is it you did? You told me you could hear my thoughts, told me things I knew to be false were true and vice versa. You said I had a twin and questioned me on the subject for hours, I have no twin. You said I had lost three years and asked where I had been. You saw me suffering, my mental health in decline and you made damn sure I fell in the hole. That wasn't all though, was it, lover, beloved? You questioned me about reality, took me to movies like Inception. You peered into my eyes and asked for the "real me" to come back. Now you have the gaul to say you didn't drive me crazy, that it was just my "genetics." Then there were the times you attacked my painful past, blamed and shamed me for family ties. You attacked my parenting, the very thing that keeps me afloat, my pride in being a good mother. The line you must be most proud of is when you said that if I wasn't crazy we'd all be murdered, the kids too, shot and left in a hole to rot. When I got medication you said it was poison, that I didn't know what it would do to me... and then you made damn sure I took it, checking that my mouth was empty after.

You aren't my saviour, though you would like to be, you are my abuser. You cycle from abuse to reconciliation and back to abuse, build me up enough for the next stress-relieving power trip take-down. But I've got news for you, lover, I have walls. I have walls against you with locked gates and there's no way back in. Knowledge can indeed be power.

Liesel you are a skilled abuser. I hear your talent, how proud your father and mother must be. If I am suffering you present yourself as such. If I cry from deep sorrow you say I am to blame for your misery. When I hurt you amplify your own to become my "victim" and should that not be sufficient you invent hurts of others I "inflicted." Your avert your gaze, temper raised, and I know you will up the ante until I am expelled from your life entirely. I do not suit your ego, prefering real conversations to mindless flattery and tongue biting. Though I am nice to you it will never be enough because of the way I look, because of the way you look. You are your own poison, Liesel, and it leaks through your skin into those unfortunate enough to share your life. I only have to catch a glimpse of your eye to see the scared monster within, the one who thinks it is just fine to hurt others in order to satisfy yourself. That isn't normal... and it certainly isn't okay.