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You didn't know you were so beautiful.

Your grandmothers had told you so, but your own people finding you so doesn't mean much; everyone loves what's theirs, it's the most normal thing in the world.

When he arrived, everything changed. Among all, he chose you and wanted you for himself. What a surprise, to discover yourself desired in the eyes of someone so different, so glamorous, with so much class and style!

At first, you still found it hard to believe; it was new to feel important, you had always had rather low self-esteem. He would look you over, search every corner of you, and you, incredulous and amazed, would open yourself up, unashamedly, to the tickle of being so desired, holding nothing back for yourself. You thought that this definitive, intense, and devastating love needed these concessions, and you offered them with sweet resignation, yet he loved you, and making sacrifices for someone so attentive to you is necessary.

Thus, not without a certain regret, you gave up that purity and grew in his arms, while he whispered in your ear, 'I choose you, you are special, you are for me, there is no one like you.' What a thrill, to hear your name spoken by lips like his, amidst those new and strange words!

You began to think that you had been born for this, that everything you had lived before had been a long preparation to reach him, that this was your reason for being.

And it wasn't long before he told you, 'Don't worry about money, you are mine, I will take care of you so you never lack anything.'

Didn't you see the danger? Everyone who falls in love thinks that what is theirs is forever. And that's why you gave up any activity that, while it would have given you economic independence, would have diminished your availability. If he loved you and took care of everything and would always provide for you, what harm could there be?

I would say that your grandmothers were the first to see that it wasn't right. You, wild and happy, weren't afraid, but you were forgetting everything you had been before him. And you did it to please him more. Little by little, however, he began to find fault with you. He found that wild and natural beauty that had made him fall in love to be excessive. He wanted you domesticated, urban, multilingual, different, as if everything that had enchanted him at first now bothered him. And you were entirely his, and you were terribly afraid he would abandon you for someone else, and you didn't want to see what this relationship was doing to you.

And I told you that you spoke badly, and you tried to modulate your voice. Everything was aimed at him not being uncomfortable, at him being comfortable in your arms, and if that meant not being available for yours, they would understand anyway. No love is built without effort, you repeated to yourself, without asking yourself where he was making an effort for you to be well.

It was like a mustard seed: you began to feel that the sacrifices you used to make willingly were excessive. You thought he was your whole world, and you were afraid of upsetting him, and that's why you first wanted to ignore it, and then you told him with a bit of hesitation: I need space, you whispered, I'm a little saturated. You were afraid of his reaction, which was furious, aggressive, sick. "Don't you understand I'm not okay?" you said. And he answered you: "What more do you want? I give you everything, I have you on a pedestal."

You started to think that the problem was that he had you where he wanted, that you weren't in your place, but in the one he had reserved for you.

And the discomfort grew, until you were strong enough or in a bad enough state to repeat that you needed to stop this vortex that was consuming you.

And he looked at you, proud. And with disdain he told you: "And where will you go?", and he reinforced it with the devastating phrase: "You are no one, without me".

You still don't know where you got the strength to tell him that the problem is that, with him, you have stopped being you.

But perhaps the point is not to go anywhere, but to return to yourself.

There comes a moment, in these types of relationships, when you know it's over. That you will never be happy, that you have to leave. Some part of you has already made the decision. But you keep trying to make work what you know isn't what you want. It's very scary to break a relationship where you've put so much, so much of yourself, and after so many years, you wonder if it's possible to function without him. You've been so possessed, you've molded yourself so much, that you can't conceive of the possibility of getting out. You've adapted so much to the other, that it seems impossible to do without them.

I know you are at this moment, and you know it too, we all know it, even if we try to pretend we don't. No one knows if you'll make it in time, but we all see that you can't go on like this. You don't know if he'll understand, but for dignity, for self-respect, for loyalty to yourself, you have to think and get out of this spiral of sick possession that is destroying you.

Yes, I'm talking to you, Mallorca. And I'm talking about this abusive lover you have, tourism.