It is scary to take a step toward the unknown. From what you've written here and before, what you were experiencing with him became less tolerable than the unknown. You used your power, and now that some of it has been spent, it's natural that the doubts and fears come in. I hope you get the support you need and that you can tolerate this period of not knowing until you get to a place of refuge and stability.
I know how challenging it is to keep going when there is the lure of the slot machine that the abuser will get better or more capable or more live-withable. It may not be the same for you, but I know what it's like to see the potential in an abuser that they just don't meet, rather than seeing them exactly as they are through their consistent actions and to focus instead on the potential in the self to get free and to be self-sufficient. To stop wanting them to get better for my own wishes and convenience, and instead to get better myself to serve my own well-being.
You made the huge first step, and sometimes the smaller steps to continue forward and leave the abuser behind are even more challenging to stay with in order to follow through. I'm dealing with that right now, years away from their influence, and there was recently another aggressive little poke from them, and I'm on that line between trying once again to have an impact on their actions or to keep moving forward and away from them, and let them deal with the consequences of their own shit rather than trying to give them lenses to see the harm they are doing to themselves and wide-reaching impacts it has. What works best for me is to return to the books that helped me in the first place, Boundaries, In Sheep's Clothing, and most of the books by Nancy Evans, and also what has since added to my strength, Stoic writings and the Buddhist texts about defensiveness (the dark chain of causation) and the roots of violence and oppression. The ones that added to my strength I sometimes want to show to the abusers about how what they do is so harmful, so I return to the first texts that helped me break contact and showed me why it's necessary.
Another thing that helps me is to journal here on the forum whenever I feel lured to do something for them or with them as the focus, such as writing a suicide note or responding to the latest aggression against my boundaries when they've historically proven they don't hear me no matter how clearly I communicate. Just as I get support from the books, I get support here. Folks have a strong fuck you response to my parents' actions and sometimes dehumanize them, which I find challenging, but they also remind me that their actions are utter shit and that I need to focus on myself, which was not the norm for me; everything I did was (to them) about them, even when it wasn't, and I was conditioned to defend myself to brick walls and to soothe them. It's hard to break free of that, but with the efforts I've made in connecting with such external supports, I'm moving forward in spite of the discomfort and experiencing small rewards that accumulate into great ones. It takes a first brave step to make that happen. Mine was calling out abuse, as I'd done before, and demanding they take responsibility, which I hadn't done before, and which they rejected, as well as rejected me. They rejected my forgiveness, too, because they refuse to accept they were abusive. And because of that boldness, I am more and more free of them and their insanity and free to define myself and act with myself as the focus. I hope similar benefits for you if that is what you seek. For me, I can say that it has definitely been worth all the effort. I'm not a Christian, but I find value in the wisdom of Jesus's statement, "What benefit to gain the whole world if you lose your very self?"
