Sometimes the stuff he’s said to me really cuts. It hurts to feel like you do nothing for someone, I mean, do nothing for them. By the end of it, I was asking him, over and over, “Why do you like me? What do you even like about me?” because I couldn’t see it anymore. What drew him to me in the first place even…?

“You eat raw meat” I remember him saying, and on some level it’s a completely shallow thing, an egoic thing, to like about another person. “You like what I like, that’s why I like you” isn’t a valid reason for liking someone, it’s just a way of reinforcing your beliefs when no one else around you will. Who cares that I eat raw meat? Who cares that I do the carnivore diet? What does that have to do with me? That’s not who I am. I eat like that because I have to, because my mind and body deteriorate otherwise. I see my diet as nothing more than my medication. So you’re saying that you like me because I take the same medication you do?

Of course I’m minimizing it to an extent. People who eat the standard american diet are in some ways different from people who eat, say, a ketogenic diet or even a vegan diet. Their diets not only represent their physical health, but their mental and emotional health are impacted by it too.

He said the only replacement for me was a girl who eats raw meat. So, yes, just swap us out. Go find your replacement. Find another girl who eats raw meat and farms and does all of the stuff you want to do, so you can objectify her to fit an ideal of a partner you have in your head instead of respecting her autonomy and all that.

“I hate you less than everyone else” I remember him saying to me one time. That he wanted to kill everyone else and I he could at least stand to be around. Do you hear the phrasing? It’s nauseating thinking about it. That I felt like an object to fulfill his external whims and that my own goals and achievements meant nothing.

“You’ve built nothing. You sort of built your body, but you’re 30 and you’ve done nothing with your life.” I still have the screenshot of him saying that to me, I found it last night. More degrading and not seeing my worth at all, but like I said, he was never a nice guy so how low he thought of me was always made clear. I spent my life in academia. I don’t know what he expected me to build. I could have said the same to him, as I know on some level he was projecting. By the time I was his age, I was in graduate school with two degrees, having lived in 4 countries and was married. I did what I needed to do so I could get a high enough paying job to support the family I planned on having. I went into mathematics so that I would make more money down the line, so that I would be respected for my intelligence and doing that made me happy: that’s what I built. I made so many awesome friends going to college, and I got many scholarships and financial aid that I was able to live in Japan, which was my dream, and I did that on my own. I taught myself Japanese and qualified for a scholarship that got me to Japan.

I did that without anyone else’s help. And sometimes, I don’t value myself enough, or see that I have really lived out my dreams over and over.

I taught myself how to drive stick shift. I taught myself German. I taught myself math to get into grad school. I inspired a lot of people, and then I went on, to create that YouTube channel, to help people with nutrition and health, where I was able to be with the man of my dreams, again.

Say what you want, and yeah the relationship didn’t work out, and yeah it was doomed from the start, but I was in love with Goatis for years. And people mocked me and said I was obsessed and that I was crazy for loving him for reasons. But not only did I get to meet him, I got to be a relationship with him. Even if it was only for two months. Even if it went to shit. I lived out another one of my dreams and I’ll be damned if someone takes that away from me.

And before Goatis, I dreamt again. Until I was backstage with Kendrick Lamar, giving him a book that I wrote.

But my ex told me I did nothing with my life, that I was essentially a loser because I didn’t own land or have my own farm or something, but that was never my dream, that was his dream. Why was he holding me to his standard? I wasn’t him.

He gave me shit for working at McDonald’s for the couple of weeks that I did, but I went to work there because I needed money and they were paying $16/hr to start at full-time hours. I’m not going to pretend like I’m too good for some job if I need money to take care of myself. I’m going to work whatever job I can so that I get paid. And I loved working there anyway. I moved to Pennsylvania that summer, slept out of my car and worked the opening shift waking up at 3am everyday. I did that, because I respected my job and the people around me. I loved the people I worked with and they loved me too. I got along with everyone and I made that place fun and I worked there diligently.

He told me to quit that job to move down here with him, where he would yell at me for not having sex with him enough, get mad at me if I didn’t want to spend my food stamps on him, while talking shit about me having them, like I was a loser because I got government assistance.

I’m not too proud to say when I need help and I needed help to get out of the hell that was my life. If a couple hundred extra dollars a month helps me, I’m going to ask for whatever I can, because I’m going to do what I need to do to survive and I’m going to do it with dignity.

He would talk shit about where I lived in Las Vegas, and he was right to an extent, but I was independent there. I was on my own for the first time in a while. But it was always shit-talking about me living in the city, pressuring me to leave because being in Las Vegas was stupid.

This is what I mean, reader, about respect being the opposite of abuse. If he respected my decisions, if he saw that I sacrificed my life in Vegas to pursue my dream of pole-dancing, he wouldn’t have said my choices were stupid. He would have seen that I was doing anything and everything to make my vision come true. He would have saw that I worked fucking hard for that. He would have seen ME. I work hard. I wouldn’t have been able to get into a math grad program if that wasn’t the case, but one night, he called me a lazy nigger.

I stayed with him even after that. I wanted to prove to him that I wasn’t lazy. But there was nothing to prove. I wasn’t lazy. He just chose to see what I he wanted. He chose to see me as less than him, not valuing me for what I had to offer, or even my innate intelligence.

I want to be a mother and a wife. I should have never defaulted to this guy. I have dumped men for less, and I tolerated so much from him, for what? The last conversation we had, he called me retarded and stupid because I liked him with long hair.

Don’t stay in toxic relationships. Don’t stay with people who belittle you because they have their own problems. Hang around people who will lift you up and make you feel better about yourself. People who value you, not value you valuing them. It’s a difference. “I like you because you like me” is not a valid reason to be with anyone. They have to like you for you. Intrinsically.

I’m mad at him, but I’m more mad at myself. He called me idiot a lot and maybe he was right. I was an idiot. I gave up a lot to be with him, just to be told I did nothing for him, that he was smarter than me and that he was better than me.

Amy Winehouse made a classic when she created this song. I only hope I capture some of that soon.