A few years ago, I was seeing a guy and now, and realized that if I continued to be with him, I would have been abused. The signs were all there…

This person exhibited a series of microaggressions towards me.

On our very first date, he “playfully”punched me out of nowhere when he saw a squirrel. This isn’t grade school. I was thrown off when he punched me on the arm and yelled squirrel. This was a 29 year old man who was university educated with a nursing degree.

He proceeded to call me names. He liked to call me a bum a lot as a joke and a pet name. Do you realize how damaging to one’s psyche and self-esteem that would be to be called that almost everyday? How would he feel if I called him “small dick” as a pet name?

Thank God, I safely left him. At the time, I didn’t know that these were microaggressions and it could escalate into something worse.