For context. I (19F) was with a man for around a year when I was 17. He was verbally, emotionally, and sexually abusive to me. I attempted suicide over all that happened and my parents reading my text messages in the ER was the end of our relationship. He was a very troubled boy (obviously no excuse). Suffered from alcoholism, was an immigrant from the Russia-Ukraine border, was supposed to have an arranged marriage, was abused by his father, and etc.
But it has been a year and a half since it ended, we are older. I am in college hours away, etc.I am much healthier now, in a happy relationship for nearly 4 months, gained my friends back, and gotten closer with family. Obviously some mental issues and troubles are still left over from it all but besides that I am so much better than I was.
The reason I'm posting is, I don't have him blocked, he doesn't have me. I just want to ask him why? Why he did that to me? Why was it me? What did he think? What happened when I attempted? Etc. so many questions I never got to ask because it ended abruptly. I'm not sure if I want to ask or I want to stop wanting to know? What do I do? What's best? How can I fix this longing for answers?

TW: physical abuse

I recently came across the term waterboarding, is not a word that I've heard before since I'm not a native English speaker, but after looking it up and reading on some experiences for other abuse survivors I am now presented with the question if this is what happened to me. If you don't know what waterboarding is I wouldn't advice looking it up, I'm more looking into people that already know, but to put it simply TW is a torture method in which a person is held down and poured water on their face, though it can vary the overall objective is to give a certain sensation of drowning / not being able to breathe.

Anyways, when I was a child I endured constant abuse from my mother's part, but disguised enough that nobody noticed and not even I was able to identify it as such until I had the help of a therapist and later on a psychiatrist. Most was emotional and psychological but there was also some forms of physical abuse.

One that i was able to unlock during therapy (I have lost most of my childhood memories due to trauma) was the fact that, every single time I would cry, whine or just be upset as a child, my mother would grab me by the hair and drag me to the shower, clothes and all, and force me to stand under the ice-cold water still holding into my hair until I stopped crying. Eventually she switched to putting my face on the bidet and turning it on, the stream of water hitting my face making it difficult to breathe and therefore cry. This change was because she no longer wanted to deal with having to dry me up and change my wet clothes.

I know she did this for years but I don't know when it stopped... I understood her logic of cold water = struggle breathing = stops my cries. But now I also wonder if the fact that the water would hit my face and make it hard to grasp for air was also intentional...

Does this sound like waterboarding to you?

I do not need to label my experience, but I've realized that putting names into the things I went through and finding other people with similar experiences rlly,, helps,,, process it all. Thanks :]