In this months #plus40fabulous it was the lovely Cathy that picked the theme and chose to hear what all of us are proud of.

I'm proud of many things in my life like being a mum to a beautiful and clever girl, achieving my Master's Degree in my 30s and moving away from home as a 15 year old and still being able to take care of myself and be independent. All these things has made me who I am today and is something I look back on with pride and a smile.

Something that I look back on with pride is something much more serious and what made me really grow up.

When I was a teenager I was in a relationship that was less than healthy. It was my first love and I was head over heels in love, or what I thought was love back then. Looking back now, it was more the feeling loved and wanted that was the driving force of the relationship as we were very different. We should have realised that this relationship was a disaster just waiting to happen, but unfortunately not.

He was around the same age as me and very charming. Let me call him P from now on to make it easier. Musician and so self confident and he blew me off my feet with his charm and jokes. I was a very inexperienced and easily led young girl that had struggled with the lack of self confidence since being bullied in school just a year or two before. So all this attention was something I needed very much as I didn't feel attractive from the opposite sex. I had had a few casual flings before, so he wasn't my first, but he was my first proper boyfriend.

The first few months was like a dream and we moved in together really quickly. I moved from my little bedsit where I had lived since I moved away from home to the capital of Norway, Oslo. The change was dramatic both in size and in surroundings. I went from this little place with 3500 people to a city of  500000. I didn't have any friends in Oslo and no family. My mother lived around an hour outside of Oslo, but in Oslo I was on my own. But I didn't care, cause I had him! I had the guy that loved me and made me feel special. But the happiness soon came to an end. After living in Oslo for about a month I realised that I had done something very stupid as our relationship was far from great! P was controlling and manipulative and had objections to me going to watch football matches and even talking to my dad. Things gradually became worse and worse and he started systematically to mentally suppress me and make me so scared and belittle me that I really believed that I couldn't survive without him.

I had always had a loving family who showed me lots of affection and gave me praise, so being together with someone who treated you like you were nothing worth made me doubt myself massively. I started thinking that I was just not better and couldn't get anyone better. I hated the way he always told me how much prettier all other girls he saw were than me, everyone seemed more interesting and if I as much as talked to another man, all hell broke lose! P carried on like this for a few months and the mental abuse became worse and worse. I came into an evil circle of lies to try and live as normal life as possible which proved very hard.We split up a couple of times, but not for long as he kept on getting in touch. And he always kept repeating that "we will always meet again". On a few occasions we had drunken fights where we literally had fist fights with each other and one time P pushed me down a set of stairs so I miscarried the baby I was carrying as he didn't believe that it was his baby. He threw me out and I had to walk along the streets more than once with nowhere to go. This was a game for P as he knew I would come crawling back to him, cause I was too proud to tell my dad as I didn't want to lose face or admit that he was right since he had warned me about this boy all along.

I went back to him time after time after time, but after about one and a half year I had managed to get myself into a big web of lies so my boyfriend didn't believe what I was saying any more. His response to this was to lock me up, doors and windows, when he went to work and also remove the phone so I couldn't call anyone for help. I was literally a prisoner in my own home. I was dead scared cause what if something happened, like a fire, what would I do then? A few days went past and I didn't know what to do or how to get out of this situation as it was so difficult. One night he was going to his mum's house for dinner I lied and complained that I was in agony and had to go to the doctor. He had promised his mum to come and help with something so he couldn't stay behind to help me to the doctor so he trusted me with the keys after I had assured him that I would take a taxi up to his mum after I'd seen the doctor. As soon as he left I quickly packed the stuff I had into a couple of suitcases and left. I didn't know where to, but I knew that I had to cause it had become too dangerous for me. I didn't know if P would have done something more serious to hurt me, but I feared for my life.

As I was walking down the street toward the city centre of Oslo I came to think about the women's refuge as I had been there once before when I had to flee. And I thought that this was the only place I could go. When I came there I was met by a lovely woman who took me in and I was so scared and I said to her. P will come here to get me as he know I will be here. She assured me that everything would be ok and that he wouldn't be allowed in there and if he was being threatening they would call the police.

The next day they called me from the reception up to my room and they said that P had been there to take me back home and he had told them that I had no reason to stay there as he hadn't hit me. That was the truth then, he hadn't hit me, but he had been abusing me in a different way that is just as bad as physical violence. And as I told them, he had been harming me physically before as they had in their papers from the time I stayed there before.

I stayed in the refuge for about 4 months and found out that the best thing for me was to move away from Oslo. I moved to a place up north in Norway called Fauske where I moved in with my best friend Marianne who I lived with for a month till I got my own place. I stayed up there for almost a year. This year was like an escape for me. I lived like any other 19 year old would do. I partied, I spent time with friends, I met a lot of new people and I had other boyfriends that actually made me feel attractive.

In August, one month after my 20th birthday I was seeing this boy, D, who lived in Oslo and since I was up in north of Norway I started getting tired of a long distance relationship so I decided to move back to Oslo again to be nearer to D. This was a bad move for me cause for some reason I got in touch with my ex again despite I had a lovely boyfriend that was besotted with me. Things went from bad to worse and P started getting a grip over me again and got me to think bad things about D. P said that my D was probably just using me for sex while he was looking for something better as D's ex girlfriend was a typical beautiful Scandinavian girl while I was more of an alternative girl with multi coloured hair and chubby. I believed P and things got really bad between me and D as he felt so tired of having to justify why he was with me all the time, so things ended. This made me think and made me realise that the root to all my troubles was P and his manipulative ways of treating me to think that I wasn't good enough for anyone else than him. And this was a person who said that he didn't find me attractive, but that he felt like I was more like a sister to him. Who in their right mind sleeps with their sister?? All these thoughts I had was a big revelation for me and for the first time since I met him I did a bold move. I lived on my own in Oslo in a little flat and I invited P around to watch a movie, but I wanted to tell him exactly how I felt. I wasn't scared cause I knew the guy in the flat next door and I left the door open so he could hear if we started fighting. I had warned him beforehand. P came around and I started talking to him how I felt and how he made me feel. He had his own way of always trying to talking me over and trying to "win" a conversation, but this time he was in for a fight, cause I had been spending a lot of time thinking about this and the anger I felt inside myself made me very strong. I had just wasted over 3 years on and off with being scared of him, being controlled by him and letting him having this manipulative grip over me. I told him exactly how I felt and how I wanted him to disappear out of my life. He didn't get angry, he got more cocky and had a smirk on his face as he left my flat saying "we will always meet again".

When he left I was so shaky and empty that I fell to the floor just crying unstoppable. I have taken a lot of learning from these years of my life. I felt so strong and so proud of myself that I had finally dared to face my fears and stand up to him and be true to myself. Since then I haven't seen him and this is more than 20 years ago now.

If you want to read what all the other girls have been proud of please follow the links under.



Cathy: http://www.southernyacht.blogspot.co.uk/ 
Christy: http://www.sprintingwithscissors.blogspot.co.uk/ 
Daisy: http://daisysays.co.uk  
Kath: https://fatheffalump.wordpress.com 
Kellie: http://www.bigfashionista.co.uk/  
Leah: http://www.justmeleah.co.uk  
Lee: http://www.pinkybellesshed.co.uk/  
Lisa: http://www.kitandkoboodle75.blogspot.co.uk/  
Nikki :http://www.nattynikki.com/  
Perelandra: http://www.pamperandcurves.com/ 
Sarah: http://www.plussizeproud.co.uk  
Steph: http://www.misskittenheel.com  
Vicky: http://www.therandomnessoftwee.blogspot.co.uk
Yvonne: http://woosangwashere.blogspot.com  - See more at: 


Xxxx