This is a nonfiction recollection of events as experienced by me; used with permission.
One of my girlfriends had very odd views about relationships. At one point, she bought me some clothes and would only let me wear them when she was around. I wanted to share what I went through to see if anyone else thinks it's as ridiculous as I do.
My girlfriend was roughly my age and this happened in my early 20s. We were living together in an apartment and she was slowly becoming more and more mentally unstable. She had a mental health condition going on but at this time it was just starting to get bad.
I barely had any clothing since it all got stolen a few months before I got back with this particular ex of mine. She wanted to help me get more clothes so she bought me a few shirts with video game characters on them since I'm really into gaming. However, the first day I had one of the shirts on, she made me give it to her so she could have it while she went to work.
It was confusing to me why I couldn't wear the shirt so I asked about it. She explained that because they were cool shirts that I looked good in, only she could see me wearing them. She would ask where the shirts were for a while so she could put them in her car on the way to work.
After she took the shirts and put them in her car, I decided that I wouldn't wear them at all. She would frequently come home from work and ask me to wear the new shirts. I would tell her that I would only wear them if I could have them on all day. This didn't work for her and she would keep this going for months.
Her mental health was taking a nosedive at this point but I knew that was the case so I didn't make a big deal out of this new clothing rule. However, I did need new shirts since I only had a handful and I didn't want to wear the same things every day. This is why I bought my own shirts, and I wanted to wear one she got me so I bought myself a copy of it from the same place she got hers.
When she saw me wearing the shirt I bought that she already bought me she said I had to give it to her when she was leaving for work. I told her it was a copy of the shirt she got me and she said that's silly. That's when I told her to keep her shirts but I'm wearing whatever I want. I also told her not to buy me anything to wear from then on.
This caused an argument and I ended up changing into another shirt so she'd leave me alone. After this any time she wanted to put money towards something that was going to be for me, I would find a way to pay for it all myself so I didn't have to deal with her.
These days I look back on that relationship and ask myself why I didn't just walk away. It's difficult to leave someone, especially for me because I was working from home and needed to be able to have a place to work and things like the internet. I probably could've found a friend to live with at the time but I kept telling myself her medications would make her better and then our lives would be good.
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