Before I begin to write, I want everyone to know that this is not a cry for pity, sympathy, or empathy. This is for other teens to know that they are not alone, and that there are ways you can get help, and that teen abuse is real, and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

What is Dating Abuse?

T.E.A.R defines dating abuse as:
“When one person uses a pattern of violent behavior through means of verbal, physical or sexual intimidation to gain power and control of their partner.”

            I was thirteen years old when I started to date Kyle**. He was one year older than me, a freshman in high school. I was an eighth grader in another school a few miles away. I met him at the local playground playing basketball on the court, down the road to my house. I never felt so alive, in the beginning. Compliments were abundant and fights were few. A month, closer to two, passed before things started to turn for the worse.

            The first specific event that made me realize something was wrong was when he basically broke up with me for the week that I was on vacation. Not only did he alienate himself for that whole week, the day I left and the day I came back, he refused to see me, claiming he “couldn’t bear missing me”.

            On several occasions I was left alone in places where I had no transportation home, but to walk. He ditched me in the middle of a mall, with no friends, and told me to come find him. I walked the mall for a good hour before I realized that he wasn’t at the mall at all, and that he had gone home. I had to hitch a ride from a girl I barely knew back to my house. Another time I was at the mall and we got into an argument, and he pushed me away and so I walked up crying to my good friend and my current boyfriend, (but best friend at the time.) They consoled me and dried my tears. When I tried to go back and talk to Kyle, he got enraged and in anger, slammed a door behind him, trapping my arm in the midst of it. I called his mother to come pick me up, and when she pulled up to the parking lot, as I went to get into the car, I was pulled back and told I wasn’t getting in, and that I had to walk home. Kyle’s mother ended up kicking him out of the car and telling HIM to walk home, in which I was blamed for later. I cried the whole way home.