This is really difficult to write. For one thing, I've had to convince myself that I owe nothing to the person who did these things to me. My natural inclination is to protect him from anyone, myself included, from saying negative things about him, but I think the truth needs to be exposed. Reading about other people's situations helped me receive a little bit of clarity about my own and if I can help one person from being hurt by him or anyone else, writing this will have been worth it. It's going to be really difficult to be this personal with the internet and I'm not sure I'll ever be ready/willing to share all of it with the majority of people, but I will do my best to share most of it.
The very first feeling I remember pushing down was probably about two years ago. Something he said just didn't seem plausible and it made me think about a few other things he'd said. It seemed like the type of things a compulsive liar would say, things from which he had nothing to gain from lying about, but I decided I was probably overthinking things and that I should just give him the benefit of the doubt. I wish I would have trusted my instincts right then.
He made me really conscious of the fact that I was almost always the one to initiate contact. I remember bringing it up once and him saying, "I don't hear from you enough!" like it was my responsibility to maintain the friendship. And maybe that was just an introversion thing or something, but from the perspective I have now, it sure feels like a way of him gaining all the power in the relationship. Everything was always on his terms, right down to the end. Along those lines, he would frequently end conversations in the middle of them. Not because he became busy, but because he didn't want to talk about it anymore. Or maybe he just didn't want to talk to me anymore because he was busy talking to dozens of other girls. I ignored all this, because he frequently told me I was his best friend and he loved me more than anyone else in the world.
VidCon 2013 came, and that was when things started getting weird. He payed a lot of attention to me in a way that seemed like he wanted more than friendship, but soon shifted his attention to my friend. He ended that week by kissing her while I was right there. He knew I had feelings for him (and had told me he'd had feelings for me) but asked me after VidCon if my feelings were more normal and friendly. I said they were stronger if anything. He had spent an awful lot of time holding my hand and cuddling with me and telling me sweet things. All my friends (including the one he kissed) had pointed out how obvious his affections were for me. He basically said, "Whatever, I like this other girl." Then he made out with me two weeks later and spent an entire day with me just cuddling and kissing until he took me out to dinner.
For the next couple of months, he treated me like his girlfriend, all while heavily flirting with this other girl and making sure I knew I was definitely not his girlfriend. He paid for basically everything we did together, we kissed A LOT, he held my hand whenever we were walking around, he put his hand on my thigh when as we drove places. He told me he loved me all the time, especially while kissing me. I remember a time when we were making out and he tried to touch me somewhere that made me uncomfortable, so I squirmed the other way, to which he said, "It's cute when you squirm." RED FLAG, CHELSEA! People get to decide when and where they are touched. Period. He would tell me that we should stop kissing so that we could have a healthy friendship and sometimes he would stick to that for a week or two, sometimes he would initiate kissing me ten minutes later. I was constantly breaking down in tears and talking to my best friend about this ridiculously confusing situation, but I made sure to edit out any details that would make her hate him. I realise now that if you have to censor the things you say about someone for fear of making them look bad, you should probably not spend time with that person. But I ignored everything, including the fact that his feelings were with another girl, because I convinced myself that he was just confused about what he wanted and that he would eventually realise what we had was way too good not to want.
One of the first times we went out drinking, I questioned if he was okay to drive. He yelled at me and brought up his family history and basically made me out to be a terrible person for suggesting that maybe three or four drinks was too many to have before operating a motor vehicle. He told me he loved me too much to ever put me in danger like that. He made me too afraid to ever question him again and there were definitely several other times he drove us when he shouldn't have. Stupid stupid.
He was incredibly inconsiderate. He knew how I felt about him, but he constantly flirted with other girls in front of me, and not even the girl he was supposedly interested in. He constantly talked about girls and their bodies in front of me and it was really uncomfortable and objectifying.
Everything that ever happened was my fault. I would find myself bringing up a way he had hurt me and he would turn it around on me and make it my fault and I would feel crazy for ever bringing it up. My feelings were completely invalid to him. For example, he constantly flaked on me. He said we were going to hang out but wouldn't show up, wouldn't even take the time to text me and then basically told me I was high maintenance when I brought it up. It is common courtesy to text someone if you're blowing them off. It is not too much to ask for. I told him so many times that this hurt me and yet he did it right up to the last time he would have seen me before I moved across the country. He didn't even say goodbye to me before I moved 3000 miles away.
There were times when I told him I needed to see him because I was really lonely and all he said was, "You don't need me, you just need Jesus." Thanks, I have Jesus. That doesn't mean you get to be a crappy friend. Once, I told him I wish I could shut down my mind and he said, "Your mind is a gift." That is not what a suicidal person should have to hear. That just makes us feel all the more crazy.
Around Christmas, he was being a flake and ignoring the fact that I was desperately lonely and having a really hard time being away from my family. I feel like if my best friend was away from his/her family and had no one around but me during Christmas, I would make every effort to see that person. But he was going back and forth between flaking on plans and just not contacting me at all and I couldn't handle it. I told him that I needed to be away from him until he could be a better friend to me and that I needed him to pray about it until he felt he could be there. About a month later, he told me he had prayed about it and felt he could be there. I was flying home the next day. He didn't help me at all when my ride to the airport bailed, but I decided his excuse was legitimate (is "I'm about to go shopping with my grandma" legitimate?) and continued with fixing our friendship.
The night I came home, he came over at like 2 or 3 AM. I asked if he had been drinking, he said only a little, just enough to make him super cuddly. He made sure I didn't tweet that he was coming over (I'm not sure why I would have tweeted that) so that someone I had supposedly hurt wouldn't know we were hanging out. It wasn't long before he started kissing me (which we hadn't done in a couple of months) and telling me how much he missed me and told me I was never allowed to go away again without taking him. He seemed kind of weird at one point, so I asked if we should stop, but he said no. I must have caught his weird vibe, because I ended up throwing up the next morning. But I brushed it off and thought that finally things were changing between us because he wouldn't have told me he was ready to be in my life again only to treat me the same way he had been.
A couple of days later, I was having a hard time being away from home and was texting him about some bad thoughts I was having. He stopped responding after awhile (which as I mentioned earlier was a thing he frequently did so it wasn't crazy of me to assume the conversation was over) and when I saw he was busy posting Instagrams of silly conversations with the girl he'd kissed at VidCon, I was pretty upset that that was more important than responding to me. Of course, this was my fault and he started yelling at me and said something about how he couldn't handle his best friend (me) not getting along with his girlfriend. Cool, now I was the other women. He had made out with me while dating this other girl. He back-peddled and said, "You're taking that word too seriously, we're just as ambiguous as ever." I asked if he had told her and of course he hadn't and so I had the lovely pleasure of doing it. She certainly thought she was his girlfriend and that there was nothing ambiguous about it. And you know what? It was my fault for not knowing they were dating because I "ran away to California" because that's totally a thing you can't say over text. And then when it all went down and she was upset, I was the one who had "destroyed her" because I told her the truth. And he was all excuses, like, "I was drunk!" which he had told me he wasn't, and it didn't seem like he was, and claiming, "I just missed you!" like making out with me while having a girlfriend is a totally appropriate response to that. He sweet talked his way out of it and promised her he wouldn't hang out with me because I was the source of their trust issues.
About a week after all that, he was texting me for several hours, and told me that he wanted to be a good boyfriend but that he wanted to make out with me. He said he didn't know why God had done this to him: made him love two women. He told me he was with her because she was farther away and I was easier to hurt. He made it sound like he loved me more, but was scared, which had proven what I had been thinking the whole time. But the next morning, he just texted me: "Sorry for being a brat" and when I asked him what he wanted just replied, "Friends plz".
I'm not sure how much time passed after that before he told me that I had been right about his girlfriend situation and that he had broken up with her. It didn't take long before he was back at my house making out with me in the middle of the night. Things had to have changed this time, right? He'd told me he loved me and wasn't attached to anyone. But after that, he went back to being flaky. I asked him if he'd meant it when he said he'd loved me and he said, "I'm sure I did, but what was the context?" Once again, I felt completely crazy. I had a panic attack and had to quit my job.
With the help of stories of manipulation from people like Kristina Horner, I realised how manipulative our relationship had been. I thought if I just mapped out all the manipulative things he had done, he would be able to see what he'd been doing and would be able to change his behaviour. So I wrote it out for him and he just kept asking me what I wanted to do about the Playlist Live situation, if I still wanted to room with him. I was so anxious talking to him that I was throwing up. He told me so much of what I said was, "So far off" but it was entirely things that had happened and how those things made me feel. I can't be off about facts and my own feelings. He told me I was demonizing him because of something I read on the internet. I knew he'd missed my point entirely, that he was continuing to invalidate my feelings, but it took me hours before I could tell him that I needed to be away from him for awhile. I was so weak. I missed him after a week and made the mistake of telling him so. I knew I was being manipulated but he told me he had changed. Well, he hadn't because he went right into telling me about some girl and then blew me off all the time.
Something that gave me pause about him just a few weeks ago was the way he was discussing religion with someone on Twitter. I brought up the concept of empathy and he said, "Sometimes empathy feels like bullshit." Empathy is a really important concept. Those who don't understand it have very serious problems. I should have realised then that he is a sociopath. That conversation turned into him asking me to come to VidCon because he wanted to spend several days being sweet to me and being best friends. Then he asked, "What if we get drunk and do things at VidCon?" He paid for my portion of the hotel room and I'm starting to think that his intentions were less than honourable. He has a girlfriend. In an interesting turn of events, he ended up making out with our other roommate. That was when it really clicked with me that this is a pattern of behaviour far beyond any confusion over his feelings about me, that he actually doesn't care about anyone. Women are just objects to him. He couldn't even take responsibility for his actions. He told me, "It's not true!" at one point and I'm not even sure what that means when I was there and it was definitely at like PG-13 level and he certainly could have stopped it.
Writing this, it feels so obvious that I should have gotten away from him a long time ago. I thought that he just needed my love and forgiveness and he could change. I didn't think I could change him exactly. He has so many issues (although I'm no longer sure how many of those were just lies) and I thought if I prayed enough and was good enough to him that he could see his value and learn to be good to people. So many people tried to help me in the right direction, but I was so blinded by love that I couldn't believe anything bad about him. I was determined that every bad thing had a good explanation, one which he never gave me. I feel so duped and naive, but loving friends have pointed out that he is a master of manipulation. I was watching a John Green video yesterday where he talks about bullying and how it wasn't personal: it was about the bully's issues. Nothing that was done to me was about my lack of value, and I'm going to do my very best to internalise that, and to talk about this for anyone else who may have similar situations. You, dear reader, have tremendous value. Don't let anyone make you feel differently. Your thoughts and feelings are valid. You deserve to be treated well. Trust your instincts.
