I’M BACK BITCH (men are trash)
Back on Tumblr to get things off of my chest.
I dated a psychopath from 15-18. It was damaging and traumatic, but every single day I heal and move beyond that time in my life. Some days are a lot harder than others. Today is one of those. I am now 25 and he continues to try and haunt me and my loved ones.
This morning I woke up to find another fake profile somewhere in my notifications, this time on Instagram, that this psychopath has made to keep tabs on me, keep tabs on the people I interact with and love. This is nothing new. Every few months it’s something like this. I block, document and report. I tell my friends to do the same. It’s not hard work to do that, but it’s incredibly hard to continue the rest of my day like I don’t have an unstable psychopath still trying to harm me. It’s hard to explain to people when I haven’t told them about my past. It's hard for me to not get anxious and scared and feel hopeless. It’s really consuming every time this happens.
In the past things were worse. Maybe those things are still happening, I don't know, they probably are if I’m being honest. He would take inappropriate photos of me from when I was a minor and send them to people pretending to be me. In a sense, revenge porn of a minor. This kid is fucked up. He gets off on pretending to be me and then having really inappropriate conversations with people I know and strangers. I have no idea how many times it’s happened, who has seen what of me, or who thinks it was actually me and not a psychopathic guy. It took me a lot of time to come to terms with what he was doing. I felt embarrassed, shamed, violated, exploited, but most of all I felt enraged.
I came to be aware of that this was happening because I had multiple people who knew me or knew of me reach out to me personally asking if I was talking to them from another number, or giving me a heads up that they knew it wasn't me, but someone was doing it. I didn't have to question it, I knew who was behind it. I knew what he was capable of and how sick he is.
One time in college a baseball player at the school approached me in the dining hall and asked why I was such a tease and a slut. (First of all, fuck him) I had no idea what he was talking about, but I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach that Ryan Samuels was behind it. He said that I’ve been teasing him over text and sending him all sorts of pictures, but now I wouldn't even acknowledge him in person. I was mortified.. I tried to explain that he hasn't been talking to me and he was actually talking to a guy. At the time, my weak ass was still dating the psychopath, but I knew it was toxic and he was horrible. I tried to explain to this baseball player that I was in an abusive relationship. I tried to explain that he was actually talking to my abusive boyfriend and that I was sorry he was involved, but he should stop contacting me. This boy did not believe me. He got really aggressive and said that there was no way he was talking to a boy and that I’m just a slut. All of these terrible things. It really weighed on me. Every time I passed a baseball player in the dining hall, in the commons, anywhere on campus, they would give me this judgemental look or smirk and I knew they’d seen pictures, heard rumors.
One time an ex-boyfriend (not the psychopath, just a scrub) had to tell me that a girl friend of his was receiving sexts and images from “me.” He knew it wasn't me, he knew it was my psychopath other ex. He was kind and angry for me. But it was still fucking embarrassing.
The whole relationship was hard for me. I never wanted to tell people what was really happening, what I was really going through. I thought I could fix things, he would change. I would make every possible excuse for his actions and abuse. I was embarrassed that I could find myself in the situation that I was in. I tried to hide everything and protect him, but there really does come a time in abusive relationships where you realize if you don’t get out soon, you’ll die. That's what happened to me.
The end was hard. Things had gotten so bad that I didn’t know how to get out. It had been over 3 years. I was young, impressionable, and so desperate for love that I somehow found myself in a nightmare of a relationship. The end was scary, but at that point in my life, I had to hit scary to realize just how bad it really was.
We were at beach week with some friends from high school. He was drunk (his usual state) off of something like 40 shots of bottom shelf vodka. I was upstairs talking on the balcony with my friend Haleigh. There’s no way to rationalize what happens next, but Ryan thought that I was upstairs talking to a guy. Next thing I know he’s running towards us with the biggest kitchen knife in the house and he had slashed his bicep with it 3 times, really deep. He was screaming like a madman. He’s also a very large person, 350lbs of drunk abusive rage was running at me with a bloody kitchen knife. Thankfully 2 of our guy friends that were there were also large and could hold him back as I ran far away from the house and tried to call friends nearby to pick me up. It was the first time that it clicked in my mind that if I didn’t get out of the situation, I would probably die soon. (Note this is not the only time he’s run around with kitchen knives slicing his arms up in front of many people to get an emotional reaction out of me.)
Because I hid a lot of the abuse from my friends and family, I don’t think they were all that worried when I called that night for help. No one would come to get me. I made it home safely a few days later, had to wait for him to sober up and not have any weapons and broke up with him. I had hit my point. I don't think he knew I had one because I had put up with so much for so long.
The stalking and manipulation started when I ended things, but that’s a different story.
Little did I know, that would not be the end of my torment. Here, 7 years later, it is still happening in small ways. This post only contains about 4% of the abuse and trauma that took place over the course of our relationship and his psychotic actions after we broke up.
I needed to make this to remind myself how fucking far I’ve come and how fucking strong I am. Sometimes these profiles and notifications from him really shake me up and put me back in the scared mindset I had that night at the beach where I really thought I might die. Abusive relationships don't end at the break up. That’s a sad truth, but I needed to make this to remind myself that he has absolutely no fucking power of me anymore. He cannot control me, scare me, embarrass me or harm me anymore. I am stronger and more powerful than him now. He’s a sad little psycho stuck in the personal hell he’s built around himself and I escaped. Try as he might, but I will never be a victim to him again.
I used to say that one day if I decide to get married, he’ll show up and kill everyone at my wedding (morbid, I know). He still might, who knows. The point is, I’m not going to live my life in fear of him. He is nothing. I am everything.
