What Love Hid

This is my story, told in my own voice, because silence almost buried me alive.

I met Richardson when I was still learning how to believe in good things. He was gentle in the beginning soft words, steady attention, promises that wrapped around my loneliness like warmth. He said he loved me, and I wanted to be loved so badly that I ignored the small discomforts. The moments when my instincts whispered be careful. Love, I thought, was about trust. So I trusted him.

Richardson liked control disguised as care. He chose my clothes “to protect me,” decided where I went “because the world was dangerous,” poured my drinks “so I wouldn’t drink too much.” I didn’t know that love shouldn’t feel like slowly disappearing. I didn’t know that danger sometimes sleeps beside you and calls you baby.

The first time I lost time, I blamed myself. We were at his place with his friends men who laughed too loudly, who looked at me for too long. Richardson handed me a drink, kissed my forehead, told me to relax. The room tilted. My body felt heavy, like it belonged to someone else. When I woke up, my head throbbed and my body ached in places I couldn’t explain. Richardson said I drank too much. He said I embarrassed him. He said nothing happened.

I wanted to believe him. So I did.

It happened again. And again. Each time, the same pattern: a drink, a smile, darkness. I began to fear sleep. I began to fear his friends. I began to fear myself why was I always confused, bruised, broken in ways I couldn’t remember? When I asked questions, he got angry. When I cried, he called me dramatic. When I tried to leave, he reminded me how much he loved me.

Love should not hurt like that. But I was trapped in the version of love he taught me one where my voice didn’t matter.

The truth came in fragments. A careless joke from one of his friends. A look exchanged when I entered a room. A message I wasn’t meant to see. My body knew before my mind accepted it. Richardson had been drugging me. He had been giving me away like I was nothing. The man I loved had turned my trust into a weapon.

When I confronted him, he didn’t deny it. He laughed. He said I wouldn’t remember anyway. He said no one would believe me. He said I should be grateful he “kept me.” In that moment, something inside me shattered completely. Not just my heart but my belief that the world was safe.

I tried to live after that. I tried to breathe, to wash the shame from my skin, to speak. But trauma is a stubborn shadow. Nights became battlegrounds. My body flinched at kindness. My mouth filled with words I could never say out loud. The justice I hoped for never came. The whispers were louder than the truth. He walked free. I carried the weight.

People tell survivors to be strong. They don’t tell you how exhausting strength is when you’re bleeding inside.

In the end, the tragedy wasn’t only what Richardson did to me. It was how completely it stole my future. Love became a language I no longer understood. Trust became impossible. I survived, yes but survival felt like a quiet kind of death.

This is my autobiography. Not because I want pity, but because I want my truth to exist somewhere. He took my voice for a long time. Writing this is how I take it back, even if the ending is broken.