After our relationship ended, I thought the noble, virtuous thing to do was to keep a vow of silence (lest someone accuse me of being a drama stirring, shit-talking spurned ex-girlfriend) and not to try out him as an abuser, or humiliate him, or shame him publicly. I felt that I was being a good person by extending empathy to him. I wanted to think of him as helpless rather than malicious. Mentally ill and untreated, rather than intentionally, calculatingly unkind and cruel. This way of thinking also helped me to see myself as less of a victim and more of a magnanimous soul capable of loving and forgiving anyone—as someone who saw the world with way too much nuance to ever think of another person as a monster.

After all, you can’t be a victim if you’re a bitch sometimes. You can’t be a victim if you’re a brat sometimes. You can’t be a victim if you’re selfish sometimes. You can’t be a victim if you are a bully sometimes. You can’t be a victim if you are conniving sometimes. You can’t be a victim if you are calculating sometimes. But the truth is you can be anything, you can be worse than all of those things and still be a victim who deserved better.

I couldn’t be a victim because I didn’t want to see myself that way. Because I wanted to see myself as too smart and too strong and too capable and too good to be a victim. But in order to be free from him, I had to think of him as a monster—the minute I started feeling sorry for him and making excuses for him, trying to see his side of things, was when I would become susceptible to his manipulations again.

Our relationship ended in stages, and in the most predictable way—over an argument about racism. Scott was a self-professed progressive when it came to issues of feminism and racial justice. He said that, unlike his ex-girlfriends, I had the right ideas about patriarchy and racism, ideas that closely aligned with his own (“Thanks, man!” I should have said. “I’m glad my views on racism and feminism are almost as good as yours.”) When I finally summoned up the courage to be vulnerable enough to open up to him about my experiences with racism and misogyny in the poetry community, he became furious and defensive.

“Are you calling me a racist?” he said, even though I hadn’t called him anything, and was only talking about myself and my life and my trauma. Once he invoked the dreaded concept of white fragility, which always manages to trump black and brown pain, the conversation was over. He wasn’t interested in hearing about my experiences with racism. He was interested in talking about how despicable it was that I could even imply that he was anything but 100 percent NOT A RACIST.

Two weeks later, even though we hadn’t officially broken up, he was in love with another girl, someone whom, he said, “I could see marrying one day.” He had depleted me as a resource and moved on swiftly. When that relationship ended, he moved on to another person, and then another. That was when I realized that my silence wasn’t noble or virtuous, and my feeling sorry for him and worrying about him, even after I decided he was an abuser, only enabled him to target other girls and do to them what he did to me, and that made me sick.

After we broke up, I lurked online forums for people who were getting out of similar emotionally abusive relationships. I read a lot of posts that were something to the extent of: You have to harden your heart. Even if he says he is going to commit suicide. EVEN IF HE COMMITS SUICIDE, you can’t look back and blame yourself for any of it. The only way someone like that can change is if they hit rock bottom, run out of resources, and realize no one will enable them anymore. When they reach that point, they will either end their lives or finally seek help.

I remember crying at my computer, thinking, So who is supposed to love someone like that? Doesn’t that kind of thinking imply that there are some people who can’t or shouldn’t be loved? Are we just supposed to abandon them? And how can I accept a world where that is true?