"Why do you keep falling for him? Why do you let him make you cry? Why don't you pick yourself up off the ground? Will you always be this weak?" These were the questions all asked by my friends. Every time I let him hurt me. I would leave his house almost every night in tears.

This man was my boyfriend of three and a half years. His name was Taylor. He was my high school sweetheart. All I ever dreamed of was finding someone who would love me the way I loved them. Taylor was a drug addict and he drank alcohol every now and then, not very often. He would get very aggressive when he was on his "high." I learned to just let him be when I knew he wasn't in the right state of mind.

One night I asked him to just simply take out the trash. What I didn't know was that he was not sober. He lashed out on me, screaming, "why don't you take it out!? Your a good for nothing, lazy, woman!!!" I didn't know what to do except apologize. By the time he got done, I was down on the ground, crying, with a new, sensitive, purple bruise on my cheek.

He stormed out of the house making sure I knew that he was mad by slamming the doors and kicking the trashcan that was in the front yard. I sat there feeling like all the life was drained out of me. The first person that I could think of calling for help was my sister Jessica. I knew she would judge me for staying with him but I just needed someone to talk to. "Girl you need to leave him. He isn't doing anything for you. He doesn't have a good job, he can't support you, and if he hits you, he will hit your kids later on down the road."

I couldn't give Jessica an answer why I stayed with him. I didn't see Taylor for a couple of days, which gave me time to think of what I needed to do. Well I knew what I needed to do, it was the thing of me getting the courage to stand up to him. I couldn't go on living like this.

When he did finally come home after a week, I could smell the alcohol on his breath and his eyes was blood shot. He had on the same clothes he left in. The first thing he said to me when he walked in the front door was, "I'm so sorry. I've been out all this time thinking about what I've done. There's nothing that I can really say but I can promise it will never happen again." I just shook my head and said, "that's what you said last time. I've been thinking that I need to leave. I mean if you really did love me the way you claim you do then this would never be the way it is now. This is really hard for me to do, but I have to do what's best for me. So this is goodbye."

That's the day that I gained so much respect for myself. I still talk to Taylor every once in awhile. We are are mutual friends. I do miss him but I don't miss the way things were. I decided to go back to college and I moved back into my sister's house. Everything's working out great. I've learned to love life and everything that life throws at me.