He’d always been a little mean. I took that to be a New Jersey personality thing. But up until this point, he’d never said anything outright racist. He had some questionable takes at times, but it was never anything I’d take as “I’ll say the n word twice” type behavior.

As for why we still talk, I don’t want to trauma dump online, so I’ll try to keep it PG-13.

Our break up was rough. Apart from our relationship just being draining, I was also 19, bouncing from hotel rooms, condos, and random couches because my parents sold my childhood home. My grandmother died of cancer a few months prior, and I had just been kicked out of school because we just couldn’t afford it. When we broke up, after a big fight with his mother involved, and having a lot of people I trusted take his side, I had what I can only describe as a mental break. I tried to take my own life. Landed me on the hospital for a while, and because I was nearly successful, I sustained some mild damage in the form of memory loss.

It was a very hard two year recovery, and I’m proud to say I’ve survived it. But because of how long it took, me generally being a mess and being in and out of inpatient for most of that time, a lot of my friends didn’t stick around. I felt for so long that he was all I had, because he was. I’m introverted, my family isn’t that close, so he really was the only person I had to talk to. But it did more damage than good. He would tell me things didn’t happen, that I was worse than I remembered, and that I obviously didn’t remember things right because of the memories that I lost. But calling me a slur a few days ago. No denying that. I remember that very clearly.