I laced my braid with thumbtacks as a self defense tactic

So this is from a few years ago. I was 19, I was dating this guy and we had been seeing each other for about a year. He had slowly been pushing boundaries further and further, trying to convince me to send nudes, trying to convince me to have sex with him (we did it once and he got mad that it wasn't good so I never wanted to do it again). He got mad at me for not shaving my head, and he got mad that my hair fell in ringlets sometimes and looked like natural curls.<br><br>The nail in the coffin was when he exploded at my friend that she was "making it look like he hit her" because she had a purple eye shadow on her eyelids. (He had been pushing her to do my eye makeup because it was trendy at the time and he thought it would be hot if I looked like that, which is another red flag on its own). I confronted him about it and he called me a stupid bitch, and that he was "just stressed out with school and stuff". I tried to break up with him and he wouldn't let me, he kept arguing that everything he did was justified and was my fault for making him angry. This argument ended with him pushing me onto my bed and holding me there, his hands around my wrists, until he left for work. <br><br>This was a turning point for me. I knew he was going to hurt me if I was alone with him. I knew I couldn't defend myself, but I didn't want to call the cops or get him in trouble (he was a little smaller than me but he was also the type to go for the jugular if you tried to fuck with him in any way). I didn't want to hurt him, but I wanted to protect myself. I was going to a concert with him that weekend (he had bought the tickets, and that's why he was so mad I was breaking up with him) and I decided what if... I got my braid and wove thumbtacks into it, leaving the pointy ends sticking out, as a way to protect myself. This was the middle of summer, so I was wearing tank tops and shorts and my hair was too hot to wear down anyway. <br><br>He never really looked at my hair and if he did I could just tell him I was trying a new style with beads in it. But that night I went out clubbing with him. I drank a little too much, and he took me back to his place to let me sleep it off since it was only 2 blocks away from the club. I have no idea why I didn't just go home instead of to his apartment, again he was pushy. I only remember bits and pieces but he was getting pushy and I tried to scoot away, he grabbed me, I tried crawling away and he grabbed me again. Then I remember waking up, confused and groggy, and him on top of me, trying to pull my underwear down. I remember trying to sit up but he had his arms holding me down, and with all my might I slammed my head into his temple. <br><br>I don't know if he would have actually raped me, but he backed off and got mad at me, asking what the hell I had in my hair. I left his apartment, I don't remember how but I remember walking home and my head throbbing in pain, and I never spoke to him again. I told a few close friends what had happened, including the hair thing, and none of them believed me, including my best friends since childhood. They thought I was making it up as an excuse to dump him and that i was just being dramatic.<br><br>This is the first time I've mentioned this to anyone in years, and I thought about it recently because I did something similar when I was at a concert and some guy grabbed my ass. I elbowed him in the side of his head and I think he might have passed out for a second, because he didn't get up. Anyway, that's my story.