How to stop being so angry about my past?

Asked by ItalianPrincess1217 (11979) October 28th, 2009 from iPhone

I’m happily engaged right now to a man I really do love and admire. We have a great life together. Before my relationship began with my fiancé, I was involved with a very emotionally and physically abusive guy. From my very first date with him I had a gut feeling that he was bad news. But with some nagging from both his friends and mine I let things progress into a full blown relationship. He moved in with me very quickly and I had to support him. The relationship went from bad to worse when I discovered he had been cheating on me with his ex for a few months. Being the idiot that I was, I still stayed in the relationship with him and forgave him for the infidelity. Eventually he became very abusive. It started with him just emotionally playing mind games with me. I was a compete wreck. Then it progressed to physical abuse. When he drank, it was much worse. One afternoon it all exploded. He started an arguement over me not buying him cigarettes and it ended in me fighting for my life. After choking me, smashing my head on the floor over and over, dragging me by my hair, smashing my cell so I was unable to call for help, and then shoving a pillow over my face trying to suffocate me while screaming “I WILL kill you. Do you believe me now?” To this day I don’t know why he stopped. I don’t know why he took that pillow away from my face. But I thank God that he did. It gave me the opprotunity to run as fast as I could to my car, lock the doors, and drive as fast as I could to a payphone. Of course as I was backing out of the driveway he jumped on the hood of the car and punched a hole in my windshield. But the point is, I got away. The police arrested him that day but let him go within a few hours and the only thing he got was a restraining order to stay away from me for 6 months. Unbelievable. I feel like he got away with attempted murder. But the cops obviously didn’t take it very seriously. This guy is a pathelogical liar and he’s damn good at it. He spent the entire relationship lying to me and I never thought twice about it. So I’m assuming he won the cops over with his charm and good story telling skills. So here is my problem now…I still have nightmares about him. I still hold so much anger inside. I constantly wonder if I had done something differently or made better choices, could I have avoided the situation? I want to live happily ever after with my fiancé but I’m haunted by my past. I hate that this evil guy still has such an effect on my life. He made me have huge trust issues with people, made me afraid, gave me nightmares, made me feel guilty. How do I fully recover? How can I repair the damage that he caused? Will I ever trust again?