I had a feeling that he wasn’t capable of following through the very moment I talked to him. He emailed me telling me of a relationship that had just ended and how to get over a woman cheating on you.

I gave him advice, told him to learn to be alone and then he asked for my Skype number. We talked for a bit. He would watch my livestreams and ask for further advice and such. One day he offered to replace a laptop battery that I needed and I sensed he was bullshitting. To this day he still never replaced that battery, I replaced it on my own.

Somehow we ended up in a relationship. He would incessantly text me. I guess I mistook the attention as something it wasn’t. Let me note here that he wasn’t consciously manipulative or anything. Maybe he was, but he just seemed like a guy who was way into me.

One day after we had been talking for a couple of months, I told him I needed to step back from him and that I wanted space for a week. He proceeded to blow my phone up, send me threating text messages and emails and continue to call me from various phone numbers until I answered. I don’t know what was going through my mind at the time. Some part of me said, “Oh he just really likes me” damn, I was stupid. Writing this to you now, it sounds insane, and maybe I was. I wasn’t in a good space mentally and was stressed about my rent. I’m not saying this to make myself a victim. Now all I call myself is “idiot” probably because that’s what he calls me when he’s angry.

I tried to break up with him again, this time I threated him to follow through on his word. When he thinks I’m serious or about to leave, he actually gets a fire under his ass to do something. He flew to see me for a month. It was the most annoying and stressful month of my life. Broken promise after broken promise, him requesting and leeching off of me, saying he was going to do this or work on that. Always the same thing. Sometimes he would follow through. It’s like every 1/10 promises that he actually does something. He can’t be a complete failure, because then any sensible person would pick up the pattern and leave, he has to be successful some of the time, naturally.

He constantly critized me for living where I lived. He had a point. I was on drugs and with the wrong crowd. It made sense that I should get out of there, but he was projecting this notion of depression and unhappiness that I didn’t have. I was stressed, yes, because I didn’t get enough hours at work to cover my bills comfortably. He told me that he wouldn’t take our relationship seriously if we were long distance any longer. I wanted to go back to grad school. He said it would be better for me if I moved to the east coast.

One day I left. I kept my apartment, because I wanted something safe to return to just in case it didn’t work, but I was behind on my rent. Half of my belongings were still there. Ugh. I lost all of it, but I suppose we’ll get to that.

I packed my bags and drove to the east coast to visit some schools. I had a better paying job lined up and planned to live out of my car for the first few weeks until I found a place. I stopped by at this McDonald’s 10 miles or so from his house, and that’s when the job offer was rescinded. I was crushed. I was sort of banking on that job. I jumped the gun and assumed they would hire me, since I was such a star employee with the company. That’s what I get, I guess.

I went to see him and told him I didn’t get the job but I needed money to pay for my apartment back home. I applied to that McDonald’s and they hired me on the spot, making more money there than I had at any job previously. Yeah, seriously. At McDonald’s. I lived out of my car when I couldn’t stand to be at his parent’s house anymore because he would hit me every morning when he woke up angry. His parents said that if we were going to fight, that I had to leave…

I wasn’t fighting. There is a difference between fighting and someone literally just taking their uncontrolled anger out at you. I would sit there in silence because I knew that I was at his parent’s house, but I couldn’t calm him down. His mom had the audacity to say we were fighting. No, that wasn’t a goddamn fight, your son has anger and impulse control issues.

So yeah, I slept in my car for about 3 weeks. He would visit me after work and we would hang out. It was actually pretty fun if we didn’t have to live together, because he wouldn’t flip out at me. Then one day he just randomly leaves, and says he’s going down south to pick up his stuff from his place because he’s worried about being evicted and he needed to get his car.

About two more weeks go by and he convinces me to quit my job at McDonald’s and move in with him down south. I needed a place to stay, because men were following me and sexually harassing me when I slept in my car. I wasn’t safe. I had to leave. I didn’t want to worry my mom so I never told her what happened and I went to go live with him again, forgetting how terrible it is to be with him.

I come to this beautiful place. It’s beautiful. It’s truly breathtaking and the most wonderful place I’ve ever seen. The trailer is completely unclean, infested with bugs, mice and flies, but the actual area was phenomenal. I’m very good at seeing the bright side of things. So I come to see him, and he begins again with this hitting me nonsense in the morning. He would just wake up angry and hit me. He hit me harder than he ever has before on my legs, just repeatedly punching me for whatever reason. Usually his excuse is that I’m not laying in bed with him. I was used to waking up pretty early since I opened for McDonald’s at 4am, and he liked to wake up at about 2pm or 3pm. He would be angry I didn’t want to sleep in bed with him all day.

His brother lived at the trailer too, and would hear us “fight.” Any time I stood up to him, I would yell. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It takes a lot for me to get angry, but if you’re being hit repeatedly by an entitled lazy garbage bag after a while your barrier for nonsense starts to weaken. His brother needed to go to the dentist and wanted to leave. I had a feeling it wasn’t just the dentist, but also the combination of living with us. I mean people don’t even want to live with their brother’s girlfriend when the relationship is good, let alone when it was like that.

He decides to go with his brother back up north. He said, “I’ll be gone for a couple of days…” it’s been 6 weeks. He has a habit of doing that. Saying “a couple of days,” or “a couple of minutes,” or “1 or 2 months” when he’s bullshitting and placating. It took me this long before I saw through it, and I consider myself a fairly intelligent woman.

I’ve been stuck in a trailer that he doesn’t pay for with mice and flies and ants and mosquitoes and beetles and spiders and dogs and even possums, which I have a phobia of. I’ve somehow made friends with the vermin, because their silence brings me more peace than being with him ever has. I cleaned the trailer and threw out all of the old food, scrubbed the counters and floors, cleaned the walls, the bathroom, aired out the place, got a dehumidifier and washed the old blankets and towels. It feels livable in here. There are cows across the way that come out at sunset and a donkey I talk to down the street. I’ve become friends with the workers at the local gas station and I’ve managed to befriend the neighbors. It feels peaceful here. I have a semblance of stability.

But we’re still stuck with the unsettling reality that this isn’t my place. And he makes sure of that everyday when he threatens to kick me out or call the cops on me, uprooting any sense of stability or safety I feel. Remember: he doesn’t even pay for anything here. He lied to the landlady saying he was going to pay the rent, but he won’t. And let me tell you how much the rent is: $350. That’s how little respect he has for anyone else, that he can’t even come up with $350. He justifies it by saying that he doesn’t want to pay for a place that is infested, as if he can’t invest in fixing that, or if that nullifies any sort of agreement, or just… human decency. How can you leech off of someone like this and not feel guilt or indebted to them in some way?

He may sound terrible, and he is. But he and I are one in the same.

He calls me a couple of hours ago, after I tell him “Please can we not talk for a week, I just need some space.” Since that message, he’s been calling me at least 12 times a day, because any time I set a boundary, he breaks it. He calls to say that he wants to move to Texas and that I should come with. Just like he told me to move to one state and he left and just like he told me to move to another state and he left. He continues to flee situations when it requires him to put in effort to maintain them. When he can’t get a free ride, he leaves. All of this moving is damaging to my stability and income. I’ve quit 3 jobs so far to support his instability but this time I’ve woken up.

My car broke down. The brakes gave out. I’ve been stuck here at this trailer for 2 weeks. I planned on moving even further south to get away from him but now I need to make an income so that I can leave. It costs about $1000 to replace my front and back breakpads and roters. I remember telling him, “this car doesn’t sound right, I don’t think I should drive it” and him convincing me that I should, that I didn’t know enough about cars to challenge him and to just shut up and listen to him. I didn’t listen to my intuition and it cost me the one assest I have and my personal freedom away from this manchild.

I’m getting wiser. I’ve begun to realize this is all my fault: I should have listened to and respected myself the first time I saw the red flags. I didn’t, for whatever reason. You can say it’s low self-worth, low self-esteem, low self-respect, all of it. I know that now. I didn’t value myself so I didn’t value my own opinion. I let my guard down, which is fine, but I put my life in the hands of someone who not only doesn’t value me but doesn’t prioritize me.

If reality reflects what we feel on the inside about ourselves, then I’ve completely fucked up and I’m completely fucked up. I don’t want to leave this trailer, this so-called “paradise” that I’ve created for myself, but I have to believe that there is something better for me, and it’s not with him. I cannot sacrifice myself anymore.

I’m sorry Jas that I hurt you.