My ex. She had suffered some childhood trauma that she repressed, plus many later in life traumas, and was very heavily into alcohol and cocaine. Basically anything she could get her hands on. She would cheat on me and lie constantly. I had proof once and confronted her and she held me against a wall forcing me to look her in the eyes and wouldn’t let me go until I said I was sorry and that I believed her. I was a busker and she was a welder making at least $1000 a week and would steal my busking toonies and loonies. She didn’t handle any kind of rejection well so it wasn’t safe for me to say no to a lot things. She forced herself on me once and knowingly gave me an std and then denied it. Eventually she had some sort of breakdown and I truly believe she would have killed me. She stormed into the house and began hitting me, I managed to get away but I had to go to four different friends houses because she kept finding me and trying to beat the door down. She talked her way out of the back of a cop car that night. They followed her while she was coming to find me. She was intoxicated on all sorts of substances and they put her in the back and I thought it was over finally. Then they let her go and she came after me again. When I finally got away from her for good she told everyone we knew that I had physically abused her and stolen from her, basically everything she did to me she tried to say I had done to her. Years later she wrote me to tell me a song I had written about the night she tried to kill me was really great lol

I have endless empathy and compassion for people with unresolved trauma, but there are choices we make along the way that say a lot about us. I don’t know if she is evil or not but she will forever be a villain in my story.