Abuse? or not?

They say that when someone builds you up one day only to tear you down the next, that it's a sign of abuse. I always wondered if Randon was an abuser. Would he think that his behavior was abusive? Would he think that I deserved it because I was extremely co-dependent and clingy with him? Would he think that MY behavior impacted his? He would do that a lot. Tell me how sexy or smart or talented I was one day, only to effectively take it all back the next. There was nothing that I could do or couldn't do to make him stop, short of not talking to him. In hindsight I should have done just that. Being around him always felt uncomfortable. I'd always second guess myself. Thinking way too hard about mundane things, hoping that he would look at what I wore, or heard what I said, or saw what I wrote and think "wow she's pretty cool". That never happened.

I'm the first one to admit that I'm not "normal". I live inside my head, literally.  When I was younger, to get away from my reality, I would read books. Lots of books. I would always take in the most minute details of what I was reading. I could imagine the places, the smells. I could feel the cold or the extreme hotness that the climate brought. I lost myself in books. As I got older I started losing myself in my mind. Because of my active imagination, I could and can say things that don't make sense. A thinking out loud if you will. My true friends just laugh at all the asinine things I say (and I do say some pretty asinine things). "That's just Kerry" and we keep talking. Sometimes my thinking outside my head ends up being really good ideas and saying them out loud gave them life. For Randon, my outside thinking was his way of making me feel inferior to him. He was so much smarter (not really) than me. I was so lost in him and in myself that I never questioned anything he said either to me or about me. He made a comment and I would try not to make the same "mistake" again or be more mindful of what I said. It became exhausting and as much as I thought I loved him (I really didn't), I didn't like the person I was when I was with him. As much as I didn't NEED him, I felt like I did. No matter how much I tried to just be me around him, it never worked. The moment I was in his presence I became this "other" person. Someone I THOUGHT he wanted. All he wanted was someone who was comfortable with themselves and would actually tell him to "Kiss their ass" if he said something that was stupid, offensive, or whatever. I just wasn't comfortable with who I was yet. In some ways I'm still not...