Poison Ivy
He presented himself to me ordinarily, without suspicion or hesitation, my hands eager to touch this unknown field of nature until the itch of deception began to burn and burn and burn…until the poison finally became a part of me.
Going through something, like what I went through, is so hard to express because no one really understands it completely. It’s not easy to explain something that you felt in your body…something that disrupted your mind…something that crushed your soul without having really lived it. No matter what, it’s still important to open up and talk about it. It doesn’t matter how crazy you feel or how much shame is attached to it. Your experience is valid. Your emotions are valid. Your reaction was survival. To the ones who listen to people’s painful experiences, please hold space for their grief and realize that you may never fully understand the harm that happens when emotional abuse or any type of abuse takes place. We are all individuals with unique life experiences, with specific sensitivities. We are all connected by our humanity, but our minds and hearts are tailored uniquely to each soul. Have grace and understanding. You have no clue what an empathetic friend during times like these can do for someone who is suffering. I’m lucky enough to have been surrounded by friends who were there for me during this dark era of my life. Without their support and empowerment, I’m not sure what would have happened. Thank you for not questioning me. Thank you for listening to me.
Before I get into it, I did want to give you all a little bit of background about myself. I grew up in a strict Latin household. My parents were good people, but they had expectations and rules that didn’t help me grow as a person or experience life in a way that was normal and healthy. Despite being in my 20s, my dating, love, and sex experience was waaaaay below that. I was a virgin, never had a boyfriend, and was just awkward around men. I was terrified of them. I had never really gone on dates except this one time, a guy had asked me. I was so nervous that I begged my girlfriend to come with me and we ended up doing a trio date. I know…cringe. That’s how bad it was. I also had crippling insecurities due to reasons like bullying and being overweight, but I slowly saw things starting to change the older I got. I became more confident and accepting of myself. My self-love grew.
Then, I met him.
It was 2020. I was going through some of the loneliest and darkest months of my life. Not only because of the pandemic but because I was going through something exceedingly difficult with my family. During that time, a friend had posted on Instagram about this guy who wrote this one-person show and who had uploaded it on YouTube. I decided to watch it because I was craving a creative outlet. I loved it so much, I decided to look this guy up on Instagram. He was so unique. An artist; no even better, a writer. I read the poetry he had posted on his account and was fascinated by his work. He expressed himself so beautifully through his writing. I respected his talent and appreciated his bravery to put himself out there, so I decided to randomly message him to tell him how much I enjoyed his one-person show. He was grateful and I ended up asking questions about his creative process. From then on, we kept messaging for a few weeks, and I noticed the messages got flirtier and flirtier. Eventually, he decided to ask me if I was down to meet up. After some hesitation, I said yes. I thought it would be nice to meet someone since new connections were rare during a time like this.
Meeting him was unfamiliar but comfortable. I wasn’t physically attracted to him when I first saw him nor even after the first few hours of hanging out. He had one of the most enigmatic personalities I’ve ever encountered. He was mysterious and dark but there was something enticing about him. We had decided that I would drive to his apartment (which was an hour away from Miami) and just hang out inside his car in the parking lot. We sat there in the dark and talked for hours. I had never been so open and vulnerable with someone I barely knew, but it was so easy with him. He asked so many questions and he was a GREAT listener. He seemed to really care about what I was saying, and he had this need to know more. Conversations took turns so quickly, I barely registered that they were happening. I ended up telling him so many intimate details about my life, my childhood, my non-existent sexual experiences. I remember telling him “I have a fear of intimacy,” at some point in the conversation…that’s how deep we got. I don’t know why I was so open with him, but he had this sense of making me feel like I could tell him any secret and he’d keep it without any judgment. During our conversation, the idea of him teaching me how to kiss came up. I had only ever kissed one or two guys before, but I was drunk and those didn’t count. So, we joked saying that he’d eventually be my first sober kiss. After that, his body language changed. The energy in the car had completely shifted. I felt sexual tension, which shocked me because it was an unfamiliar sensation. I liked it. I remember feeling confident and brave in that moment. I took a deep breath, kicked any fear of rejection or intimacy to the curb, and asked “want to kiss right now”? Then it happened. Yeah, we ended up kissing a lot that night and to my surprise I was actually really good at it! Finally, around midnight I told him I had to go because I had a long drive back. He texted me the second I got in my car, “I could have spent the whole night talking to you,” and that’s when it started.
Despite having what I thought was a romantic night, I still had my reservations. He, on the other hand, became obsessive. He texted me every day, asked to facetime all the time, and we started seeing each other more frequently. The more times we hung out, the more we started exploring ways to be more physically and emotionally intimate. Our relationship moved so quickly…way too quickly. We shared first experiences, we talked about our dreams, we had deep existential and philosophical discussions, we opened up about our childhood and our traumas. I told him things I had never told anyone else before. I wore my heart on my sleeve and allowed him to read me like an open book. It felt like he was doing the same. I felt safe around him and so, so beautiful. He would tell me I was sexy and how I didn’t realize how beautiful I truly was. He helped me feel more confident about myself and made me feel like I wasn’t weird or “too much.” He understood me and never judged me. I felt so worthy.
After four months of seeing each other and being so intimate and vulnerable, I developed serious feelings for this guy. So, I continued to open up to him. I told him the real reason why I had such a fear of intimacy. I told him about my sexual assault and how it changed me and my relationship to my body. I told him about how sacred virginity was in my culture. How I was conditioned to believe that it should be given only in marriage and how my parents fully expected that. I explained to him the guilt and shame attached to sexual acts and how sometimes it was hard to be sexual with him. I told him how I’m an emotional person. How I would get attached if I were to have sex with him. “Don’t worry I’ll be there with you every step of the way,” he said. He was so tender and compassionate. He understood me and reassured me. He said all the right things and so finally for the first time in my life, I felt safe and comfortable enough to take that step. I trusted him, and so I had sex for the first time.
I hate when stories get predictable but here we are. I got attached and he got distant. The love bombing stopped. Instead, he started giving and taking. He’d be very communicative for a few days, then he would randomly stop, making me crave his connection. He would make me feel so secure in what we had and then that feeling would be gone in a matter of seconds. His behavior was unpredictable and unstable. He became more selfish and secretive. I started realizing he only wanted to hang out when it was convenient for him, and I would be the one driving an hour to see him every time. He knew I was hooked, and I was. He stopped caring about how I was feeling because he knew I wouldn’t walk away. He was right. My friends started telling me how selfish he was, but I didn’t want to listen. Of course, I would always tell myself that they didn’t know him the way I did. They didn’t know that he struggled with depression, and that sometimes he acted out of character because of it. As someone who also struggled with it, I understood, and I wanted to help him. Looking back, that was just me justifying why I was putting up with shitty behavior.
Then comes more justifying. I started noticing the red flags, the selfishness, the games, the manipulation, the lies, the gaslighting but I kept excusing them because of those beautiful moments of intimacy…moments where I felt alive. He brought excitement to my life. He made me feel accepted, attractive, intelligent, talented. He would be disrespectful but then complimentary. My mind couldn’t figure him out and it was addicting. I couldn’t help but feel so much affection towards him. Back then, I thought I loved him, but now I realized it was just a sick addiction; maybe it was trauma bonding or codependency. I don’t know, but I remember telling him how I felt. I told him I wanted to be more than friends. I wanted to be his girlfriend. I didn’t want to just fuck and leave. I wanted it to be like it was before: real friendship, a real connection. He would always find a way out of the conversation. He would say things like “Just because I can’t be your boyfriend now doesn’t mean I won’t want that in the future. I can see it happening…. just not right now.” So, I held on to that hope, “just not right now…eventually.” Months passed. My feelings grew deeper. I was completely consumed by this relationship. I thought about him all the time. His inconsistency was driving me crazy, and my mental health was not doing well. Eventually, I found the strength to set boundaries with him even though I didn’t want to. I told him I couldn’t see him anymore because it hurt too much. I was so in love, and I could tell he didn’t feel the same way. I set boundaries and he ignored them all. The game became exciting for him again, another challenge. He broke down all my boundaries and didn’t allow me to even have the slightest chance of getting over him. Whenever I showed signs of doing so, he’d reel me back in. This continued for a while.
It had been 8 months now of our relationship. The highs and the lows. The love growing during the highs and the darkness taking over during the lows. Then one day, he posted on Instagram. He tagged a girl in his post, and I remember clicking her profile because her name seemed familiar, and we had mutual friends. I’ll never forget that feeling…that guttural, visceral reaction after clicking her name. She was his girlfriend. There was cute “couple” pics of him and her together all over her page. According to Instagram, it had been four fucking years of a happy relationship. In the moment I didn’t want to believe it. The reality of the situation was too painful to accept. I was in denial. “Maybe those were old pics,” I thought. “Maybe they broke up and she decided to just leave her ex’s pictures up on Instagram, some people do that, right?” I did more investigating and found her YouTube channel. Guess what? He was there again. She had a four-year relationship with a guy and that guy was him. It was so hard to believe because his Instagram had no pictures of her. No one knew he was in a relationship, not even mutual friends. How could I have had a fucking eight-month relationship with someone who had a fucking girlfriend? Then I saw that she lived in Orlando and that they were long distance.
I don’t even know how to describe what I went through after that. It was dark—really, really dark. I don’t think anyone prepares you for that type of betrayal. It wasn’t easy to process. I was already feeling grief due to personal family reasons and the pandemic happening, and he was an escape. He was, what I thought, my slight moments of happiness, of pleasure, of connection…but I was wrong. He became a disappointment, the source of my pain. I wish I could say that after that the cycle ended. It didn’t. I was bold enough and felt comfortable enough to tell him to his face that I knew he had a girlfriend and even after that fact he tried lying and saying that they were “on and off.” He didn’t want to lose me. He wanted to break me. I think now in hindsight that a part of him enjoyed hurting me. I don’t know, every time I tried to get away from this hurt—he’d bring me back or I would come back, and he would let me. He knew I was an easy target because I loved him. He knew he could get sex with me whenever he wanted because again, I loved him. He had taken all those months pretending to be someone he was not, observing me, telling me what I wanted to hear, learning my habits, my insecurities, and my vulnerabilities to then use them against me.
Then came the months where he would talk shit about his girlfriend. He would say how unhappy he was and how she didn’t understand him. He told me how he would try to break up with her many times, but that she threatened to kill herself if he ever left her. So, he stayed because he still cared about her. He told me he cared about me too. That he wanted me in his life. That he would do anything to keep me in it. I didn’t want to lose him, and I believed him when he said he wanted to leave her. So, I stayed, and I battled my deep feelings of shame and guilt for something that was not my fault and out of my control. He presented himself in a certain way and then the truth of what he was broke me. I was deceived and lied to. It’s one thing to lie to someone and not mention having a girlfriend. It’s another to lie and then coldly rob them of their first time. He knew my fears and my issues trusting men in an intimate setting. He knew my trauma, and yet he still decided to do what he did. That goes beyond being selfish. He wanted to cause damage. He did what he wanted, and I was the only one who was left feeling like pure shit.
We tried being friends after I found out he had a girlfriend and I know what you’re thinking. How the fuck could you be friends with a guy like that after what he did to you? Easy. Low self-worth, manipulation, and denial. I couldn’t process the reality of what was truly going on. I didn’t want to believe he was who he actually was. So, I told him we could stay in each other’s lives, but we could only be friends. That got messy…quick. We were stuck in our toxic cycle, but I was the only one carrying the shame. I was the only one suffering. I’ll never forget one time during the middle of having sex with him, I completely broke down. I cried and cried and cried…and he felt nothing.
This kept going and there were periods of time where we wouldn’t speak for months. One of us would give in and we’d start the cycle all over again. Finally, we were both forced to be physically separated because I was going to film a reality tv show in Austin and he was going back to NYC for grad school. The last thing he told me before we left was that he wasn’t going to leave his girlfriend for me and that I had to find someone else so that I could get over him. I told him he couldn’t text me again. So, he didn’t. It wasn’t until then that I had time to process and research what I had been through. A lot changed for me after that, and surprisingly enough he recently texted me. He said he was sorry for hurting me and that he wanted to apologize for betraying my trust. He said that he wishes me happiness and for good things to happen in my life. If only it were that easy. The old me would’ve loved to think that that was a sincere apology. The old me would’ve responded, risking that I would be sucked back into our ways. Him and I have been there before. I don’t ever want to go back. I didn’t respond, and I don’t intend to.
Sometimes I wish that night in his car would’ve played differently. I wish that when I asked him if he wanted to kiss, he would’ve politely said no because he had a girlfriend. Maybe then I could’ve gained a new friend, an artistic collaborator, or even just an authentic connection…but no, instead I got a lesson.
I won’t sit here and pretend that what happened to me didn’t hurt me or fuck with my mental health. It did. For a while, I was in a dangerously dark place. I was depressed and bitter. I lost hope in love and developed even bigger trust issues when it came to emotional and physical intimacy. I had to get a therapist and build myself back up. With the help of my friends and family, I started seeing the beauty in real relationships. I worked on bringing my confidence back. The light that was dimmed by his darkness came back brighter than ever. I grew. I became self-aware. It showed me that I needed to love myself, and that I am the only one who can fix me. I’m still healing, and healing is not linear—it’s messy and dark and hard and heavy…. but I refuse to give up. I have come so far, and I have learned so much. I’m going to keep my heart open to love, but I’ll always be cautious. Not everything is what it seems, but I’m grateful because I know what I deserve.
