Maybe We Should Go Back

This is a true story (trigger warning)

So there is this YouTube channel I'm obsessed with. It's called Mortis Media, and I've attached the latest episode so you can check it out. Basically, this guy with a beautiful, hypnotic British accent just reads scary paranormal/horror stories that people send in. The stories are "true" (though I'm sure some are made up), and my obsession with anything paranormal makes them ideal for long drives and rainy afternoons. I personally have sent in 4, and he has used 3 so far in his videos. One is a true paranormal story about something I saw, and the other two are strange, inexplicably weird things that have happened to me (he sometimes does these "Glitch in the Matrix" episodes). The last one is a story about my experience with the demonic, which he has promised to use during the next demon episode. I'm debating posting these stories here on Wattpad, but if there is interest I will.

ANYWAY, one of the subjects he does frequently is Crazy Ex's. I've always wanted to write down and send him my story about my crazy ex-boyfriend, because I think it could helps other girls avoid the traps I fell into.

So, here it is at last. The story. It has taken me a long time to get up the nerve to even write this down, though these incidents happened more than a decade ago. Many of them still haunt me, and I am still doing EMDR for some of them. As a trigger warning, if you don't want to read about abuse, rape, sexual abuse or any form of domestic violence, I wouldn't read this. It's not graphic but hints about many of these subjects in a way that could make survivors uncomfortable. Names are changed.

Otherwise, read and (I can't really say "enjoy"), but maybe just learn something:

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I was never popular in school with members of the opposite sex. I didn't even have those cute elementary school boyfriends. At the time I thought I just must be hideously ugly, but now I realize it was simply because I was shy, quiet and had no confidence. In truth, I was quite pretty and wish I could have seen that. I didn't know this back then though. My self esteem was so low you could scrape it off the ground with a spatula. On top of that, my home life was horrible. My parents were both alcoholics and drug addicts. I say all of this not to drum up sympathy but simply to show that I had no supportive or sane person in the coming months to lean upon, which might explain why things got as bad as they did.

I was a junior in high school when I first met him. I will call him Jay. He sat across from me in a "Film and Literature" class, and I was instantly attracted to him. I did what I always did when I had a crush on a boy: I watched him. Sometimes he would catch me looking at him, and one time he gave me a small smile. That smile gave me the courage to actually talk to him, and at some point we agreed to go to lunch together. This was probably two weeks after the smile.

No romantic gestures were made that day, but we became good friends. We started going to lunch together every day. Our school allowed us to go off campus, and we had a full hour and both of us had a car, so we would drive around and just talk. As the weeks wore on, my other friends began complaining that I never went to lunch with them anymore, and in truth I missed hanging out with them too. So I told Jay I was going to spend some time with my friends. He was so angry, hurt and disappointed that I agreed I would only go to lunch with my friends on Thursdays. The rest of the week, we would be together. We were not even dating at this point, and I found his clinginess off-putting, so my initial crush quickly faded away. In my mind, we were just friends and I was perfectly fine with that.

My friends thought it was so weird that I had to make a "deal" with him just so I could hang out with them, and looking back I see that this was totally ridiculous and I should have cut ties with him right then, but as I said, he was the only boy who had ever shown any interest in me, even just as a friend, and I didn't want to give that up. The attention felt good.