Well, you guys don't know me, but I'd like it if someone actually did.
The worst years have been the past 3 or 4, but it's only in the past year or so that I realized how my entire life shaped my future.
Apparently I was a happy little kid, but that changed at some point. I don't know, I remember being little and crying alone in my room and repeating "nobody loves me" over and over to myself.
I probably won't be able to explain this very well because I am still coming to terms with it. I guess I just never trusted my parents. If I was upset about something I just got yelled at for it. If I cried I was threatened to be given something to cry about. If I tried to be kind I would be mocked for it, or even worse, punished because I did something "stupid".
Eventually I changed. I became adversarial. School bored the living fuck out of me. I was always praised for how smart I was, yet I was expected to be satisfied with proving I can read year in and year out. They told me in 4th grade that I read at a college level. Then they'd hand me a children's book and tell me to read it and prove that I could comprehend it. For an additional 8 years in a fucking row.
So I found better ways to amuse myself. Making jokes, mouthing off, challenging the (to me) fake authority of teachers and other adults who crossed my path. I never hurt anyone, but that was enough for me to be labeled a "bad kid". I was told I would end up in jail, I wasn't allowed in classes with my friends, I was constantly being attacked at home for things I did in school.
This went on for years, and still I never hurt anyone. I just made jokes. Until one day when I was 15 I got suspended and my mom told me I wasn't getting Christmas. Well, Christmas and my birthday were the only times I was given ANYTHING, and I sure as fuck didn't get anything else from my parents besides material things, so I got pretty pissed. I think I threw our home phone down the stairs, actually.
You have to understand, there was no way to talk to them. If I had an issue my mom would just say "I'm done talking about this". She's the same way to this very day actually. There was never a hope in hell of your feelings being validated. This eats away at a person. There has to be some outlet, and if you can't find a positive one you will take a negative. That's reality.
So I threw the phone down the stairs, and probably mouthed off quite hard while I did it. In response my mom pounded blows on my back and shoulders for about 20 seconds while I hunkered down on the floor. I don't know HOW I ended up in the floor to begin with. Regardless, as she was doing it I was realizing she no longer intimidated me physically. So when she finally relented, I raised my head, smirked at her in disdain, and spit in her face. That was it.
Well, the police were called, I was charged with assault, and I spent two years on probation. So at that point I wasn't just a bad kid, I was a criminal kid.
There were no adults I could trust. I don't really know how you could have looked at me and not instinctively known the problem was that I was abused at home, but somehow they had everyone convinced that the problem was me. That somehow I was born with the desire to fight my whole life. Whenever I even tried to broach the subject I was told "that's your family" or "don't talk about your mother that way".
It mattered less as I got older, and I just spent all my time with my friends. I barely even saw my parents because I was out all the time. Then I moved out when I was 19 and it mattered even less. Then my parents got divorced and suddenly my mom was really nice for awhile.
I got into a relationship with an older lady when I was 24. She was really kind, and helped me a lot. Unfortunately I had many unresolved issues that I wasn't even prepared to consider yet, and our relationship was hell for her. We moved in together, but I only had a broken family as my example, and I had been conditioned to believe all of our issues were my fault as a kid, so I modelled my behavior after my parents. Needless to say, our relationship fell apart. I regret a lot of what she went through because of me. She didn't deserve any of it.
I bounced back after a few years. I moved across Canada to be with my best friend in Calgary, and I landed a decent enough job that became a good job as I got promoted. I was pretty happy with myself. I was dating and it was going well enough, until I met someone I really liked and fucked it up. I realized there was an emptiness inside me. On paper everything was going great, so why did I still feel so terrible all the time? Why was I so desperate, and not even knowing what I was desperate for?
To her credit, that woman convinced me to go to therapy. Not for us to reconcile, but just for my sake as a person. We stayed good friends, she did care for me, and I managed to hold onto a normal life for a few more years.
It took over a year of bi-weekly sessions for me to truly open up in therapy. My therapist eventually told me that she was considering cutting me loose as a client because it didn't look like I was ever going to take it seriously.
Well, I met someone else. Her name was Anggi, and she was like nobody else I'd ever met. As clever and funny as me, smart as fuck, sexy as fuck, and it turns out just as damaged. I was head over heels, but we both had trouble connecting on a deeper level. We were both guarded as fuck, and after a few months she randomly broke up with me. I don't know if she would have been honest with me had I met up with her when she requested, but I refused and shut down, and we went our separate ways.
I'm not afriad to admit I took this pretty hard. I didn't think I was, but looking back at the following months it's pretty obvious. I was drinking a ton, picking fights, serial dating, and smoking a pile of dope and playing endless videogames. It was also during this time that my good job started turning really toxic, but since I had never had a good job before I was terrified to leave in case I never did that well again.
I never really stopped thinking about Anggi, but I had deleted her number. I tried Facebook messaging her, but we were never friends on there so my message just got relegated to that secret folder nobody checks. It was a total fluke a few weeks later when I stumbled across an accidental screenshot I had taken of a text conversation between us, and it had her number at the top.
It felt clear to me that she didn't see a future between us, but we definitely had chemistry as friends and sex partners. So I reached out to her and offered a friends with benefits situation. She turned that down, but still wanted to see me, which was the better outcome in my eyes anyway. We got back together.
This is the part where I need to talk about my narcissism. We will come back to it later, but it informs the way Anggi viewed me. I always treated her amazingly, but I know she wasn't thrilled with how I dealt with everyone and everything else. Apparently she was very on the fence about me, while I fell further in love with her.
She told me at one point that she had a concern that I only got back together with her as some sort of elaborate revenge scheme. I realize now that this was more of a reflection on her and her experiences than me, but it really hurt. I actually did love her. It hurt that I was failing to make that obvious.
She started acting a bit sketchy, and this made me a little crazy. It came to a head one day when we made plans for me to BBQ ribs and have a big feast at my house. We planned it days in advance, but when the day came I couldn't get ahold of her. I proceeded to get everything ready, assuming she would appear. She never did. I was very hurt. It took me 4 years before I ever BBQ'd again.
The next day I woke up and still hadn't heard from her, so I got worried. Her family didn't really know me, so if something had happened to her, I wouldn't have been informed. Her phone just kept going straight to voicemail. So I told my work that Anggi seems to be missing, and I gotta go make sure she's ok. They understood. I went to her work, and there she was, showing up for the day, everything fine.
She seemed upset to see me, but I was mostly just relieved. I asked her what happened, and she told me some story about her losing her phone and it didn't add up really but when I asked more questions she got defensive so I dropped it.
That week was hell. It didn't feel right. We had lunch together once, and then by the weekend I decided I would hide my number and call her. She answered, and said she couldn't talk. She later sent me an email saying we were through, and that she wouldn't respond anymore.
I knew I didn't have the full story, and it drove me a little crazy. I didn't know what I had done to deserve being treated that way, but I truly believed it was all my fault. Months passed, I dated another girl, but I couldn't move past what had happened. I didn't get closure, I didn't get answers, nothing.
I emailed Anggi and asked her point blank if she had cheated on me. She said she had been flirting with another guy, but nothing happened. That was enough of an answer for me, so I took it and tried to move forward. My job was getting really bad though, and I was really hurt, and I started feeling kind of suicidal.
One day I posted about it on Reddit, and I get a private message saying "don't be dumb, shithead". It was Anggi. She also emailed my therapist about her concern for me. It turns out she had figured out my Reddit username long ago and had been sort of stalking me. I didn't really mind, I was actually touched.
This began an endless back and forth via email between us, with us both opening up to each other for the first time. It was really nice, and eventually we met up, and it went well for like a week but my trust had been broken and I couldn't keep it under wraps. We went our separate ways again.
She liked salsa dancing, and I had started to learn how so I could participate in her hobby. I was browsing the local salsa dancing community on Facebook when I found an event they had held the day Anggi didn't show up for the BBQ. There she was. She wasn't with her daughter, she hadn't lost her phone, she had just chosen to do something else and concocted a big lie instead of just telling me. All the craziness and pain I had been through, it was all for nothing. All the opening up we had done and trying to be honest with each other, I still wasn't ever told the truth.
It broke me. I lost my job almost immediately because I started missing time because of my deep depression. I was lost, and truly started planning suicide. I confronted Anggi about the lies, but she just ignored me. After a few weeks I decided to go ahead with it.
I got really drunk, waited until a night Anggi was supposed to be at dance, and sent her a good-bye email. She immediately texted me, and pulled me back from the brink. For the next few weeks she essentially babysat me, and even visited me in the looney bin. Eventually I got back on track, started to feel immense guilt for what she went through because of me, and tried to cut ties, in a grateful and loving way. I blocked her.
Except there was a flaw there. I could look at my phone bill and see incoming texts from her. I felt bad, so I texted her and told her I knew she was reaching out and I am sorry, but she should stop.
This went on for months and we got back together eventually. It seemed like this time it would really work out, and she was really putting the effort in and the difference was obvious. Except then she started acting sketchy again, although not in a way where she was hiding something, just being a bit dishonest and her actions weren't really matching her words. I broke up with her out of frustration at still not being able to be open with each other.
Somewhere during all of this I learned about being a narcissist in therapy. I barely registered as such on the test, and later on I actually didn't register as one on the same test after some work. I took it hard though. If you Google narcissism, all you will get are tons of people calling you a monster. I read up on how you become one though, and it all fit. I didn't have parental love so I built up defenses, and they resulted in me becoming narcissitic.
After I broke up with Anggi I entered a low level depression. Work was going fine and I wasn't overtly suffering, but I was eating ice cream and playing videogames all the time and more or less living in darkness. This went on for a few months until one morning I woke up and saw redness all around my mouth.
I had been on Accutane previously, and had actually only stopped it maybe a month before this. One side effect of Accutane is chapped lips. Well, my lips were red and sore and peeling and inflamed, so I took this as some sort of crazy side effect. I went to countless doctors but I was always trying to keep the dead skin off and the redness only got super bad when I ate, brushed my teeth, or cried, so usually when I saw them they didn't actually look bad. The dermatologist who gave me Accutane seemed to only be concerned with assuring me it wasn't the cause. The funny thing is, I had seen him a few months ago about a bit of redness around my mouth, and he assured me then it was nothing.
I was told to use Vaseline, use an anti-fungal cream, or that there wasn't even anything wrong. Except I knew there was because my lips were red, dry, and burning much of the time. This went from March all the way up to October before I started contemplating suicide. I felt I couldn't date, I found accounts from others online who never found a solution, and there was really nothing else good going on in my life. I could not move past this problem, and people in my life telling me there was nothing wrong was making me even crazier.
By December I decided since I was suicidal maybe I should go to the hospital, explain why, and maybe I would be taken seriously and somebody would help. Instead they told me I had body dysmorphia and that nobody would help me with my lips. Whether or not I had body dysmorphia was irrelevant to me because there was definitely something wrong with my lips. I told them to go fuck themselves and left the hospital, but I had been committed so they sent security after me.
I ran from them, but they cornered me so I stopped, and one of them punched me in the face and broke my glasses. They tackled me and started shouting "stop resisting stop resisting" while they slammed me on the ground. The first thing they said to each other was "get his phone". Eventually the real cops showed up and they scurried away.
The real cops took me back to the hospital, where I inquired about where my glasses were. I was told they broke them. I lost my shit and started screaming at them. They dragged me to a room and the cops pinned me against the wall, facing it. Some security guard cunt is going "he tried to hit Jared!" which was a blatant lie but when I turned around to confront her for it I was told I was being aggressive. What a fucking joke.
The real cops left and I was locked in a room. I was not calm. I tried breaking the door down, and did actually fuck the window up. The same security thugs opened the door and told me to turn around and lay on the bed. I turned around and started walking towards the bed and they tackled me anyway. They started asking me questions while one of them put me in an ankle lock and started punching my ankle. I told them I wasn't telling them shit, but then I started making fun of them for being cowards. They're like "I thought you weren't going to say anything" and I smirk and reply "well, nothing productive". Eventually they drugged me, threw me in a different room, and I drifted in and out of consciousness for a few days.
When the drugs finally wore off I was put in isolation for 5 days. I recieved no help of any kind, I was simply a prisoner. I had to stay for the weekend because no psychiatrist was in until Monday. They did give me a message that I had been fired from my job though, so I got to deal with that in solitary confinement as well.
When he finally showed his face on Monday I was like "oh hey bud! How was your weekend?!" but we had a meeting and by that point I had decided I needed to get out and start preparing to sue my former employer. He did release me, 3 days before Christmas. I spent Christmas alone in my apartment plotting revenge.
I filed complaints with the security team, and got my glasses paid for and replaced. I did sue my employer, and I had a very satisfactory result. However, I was completely lost and my lips were still fucked, a condition I now knew was Exfoliative Cheilitis. It seems likely that I caused it by chewing the flakes off my lips while they were chapped from Accutane. Perhaps the SPF lip balm I had been using contributed as well. I will never know.
I asked my mom if I could move home and stay with her for awhile. She knew how much I had been through, how suicidal I was, etc, and let me come back. The day after I finalize it all, I get an email from Anggi. I see it come through, and I take about 3 hours to cry in my bedroom before I answer.
We meet up twice. I tell her about what I've been through, she tells me she's doing great, and supports my decision to move home. The thing was, she wanted to be friends but I still had a burning desire for her, and the fact that I was leaving only intensified it. I told her I just couldn't be friends, and why, and she accused me of abandoning her and that was the last thing she said to me.
I moved home, only to immediately find out nobody wanted me there. My sister began the attacks immediately, telling me I can't be there, it's not fair to mom, blah blah blah but when I ask my mom why this dumbass thinks she has any say on a deal between the two of us I get no reply.
My sister pretends she can't use the bathroom at mom's because I am there. There is no reality to this claim, nobody in the world has ever had that opinion, including her until the day she randomly decided it. She calls me racist because I date other races? When I tell stories about my jobs she exclaims "YOU had employees?!?!" as if everyone didn't already know this for a fact.
I don't defend myself. I know better. It's pure nonsense anyway, so what do you even say? You're insane? Yeah, that'll go over well. Nobody ever stood up for me anyway so I knew I would have no back up if I pushed. I knew my mom would throw me out if I pushed back against her beloved golden child.
Mom's birthday was in September and my sister asked me to throw in on an Apple watch for her. I said sure, but I messaged mom to make sure that was what she actually wanted. It didn't make sense to me, but she said it was fine, so I threw in on it.
My sister invited us over for dinner on mom's birthday, and when I showed up they had already given her the gift. I honestly didn't care, but then it came up how I double checked to make sure she wanted it. My sister flips out screaming "You are such a piece of shit! You ruin everything! WHO KNOWS HER BETTER? WHO KNOWS HER BETTER?". Again, there is really no way to argue with this insanity, and neither my sister's husband or my mother stood up for me, so I just finished my food and left.
So I just take it, and spend a lot of time crying to myself asking why I even came back, and why they even let me. I tried to express this hopelessness to my mom, and she tells me "I can't be that person for you". That's when it all really clicked that I was abused as a kid. She could never be that person for me, I never had that person in my life at all.
So it took a few months to find work back here, then a few more months to really get any income and start breaking even, and by then I knew I didn't want to stay here. Everyone hated me for still being there, but I wasn't going to get an apartment and furnish it when what I actually wanted was to leave. It took a long time, but I eventually realized I could get back out west by working in the oil and gas industry. There was one problem though. I needed some courses, and I REALLY needed to get in shape.
I had enough saved up that I was able to quit my job in September and focus on getting back in shape. The years of office work and eating Blizzards for supper had really fucked my body up. I spent about a month and a half doing the things I needed to do, and just as I was ready to leave, I messaged my niece to make sure she was ok.
You see, everyone in my family is fucked up, and it's been passed onto her. Her mother is a maniac, and my niece has crippling anxiety and cuts herself. I talked to her about our cycle of abuse, and made sure she knew I saw it and would always be there for her.
Well, she came over and stayed with mom and I for weeks. I wasn't expecting that, but I sure as hell wasn't going to leave when she so clearly needed me. My mom had taken to attacking me and gaslighting me a lot too, so I was desperate to leave, but my niece comes first.
So December rolls around and I have essentially been parenting my niece for weeks. My dad messages us all and says he wants us all to come over for a Christmas gathering. I tell him I don't want to come, but I will make sure to see him individually.
That day my sister also comes over, and it comes up, and I again just say I won't be coming. It's me, my mom, my niece, and her sitting there. She launched into a tirade "ohhhh I am sooooo happy you're not coming! It will be sooooo much better!!!" Etc etc and I just turn to the others and say "and that would be why" except instead of understanding my mom smirks at me and says "it appears to be mutual". Well, that's not what mutual is. I didn't attack anyone, I just wanted to avoid a shitty situation.
Anyway, I just leave. I'm so tired of this fucking nonsense at this point, but I'm driving around and I'm thinking "this is so stupid. I am a grown man. I don't need to run, this is resolvable simply by talking". So I come back, and I ask my niece to take my dog for a walk. She misunderstands my intent, and says Gizmo has already been walked. I clarify "no, I mean I need to talk to Casey and Nana".
Well, my life hasn't been the same since. Casey replies "oh fuck that man! I'm out of here!" and I say "no, you sit down and listen motherfucker".
Both Casey and my mom jump up and come at me shouting at me to kill myself, I am a piece of shit, I am old and all alone and I haven't done anything in my life (they like to pretend my entire life in Calgary never happened), and then my mom decides I also need to be kicked out of her home. I am only replying with "I am not a piece of shit" but when I say that they laugh in my face. My niece has fled to the bathroom with my dog by this point.
They manage to push me all the way back to the front door. They're still shouting at me that I am garbage, Casey is randomly screaming "I AM IN THERAPY!!!' which again doesn't seem relevant to anything since we all are, for essentially the same reason. Eventually I just lose my cool. I wanted to have an adult conversation, yet now my family is telling me to commit suicide and I am homeless, and I still haven't done anything. So I smack Casey in the head, and tell them "I SHOULD kill YOU!!" in response. Casey starts screaming that she is calling the police, and I know she will, so I just leave.
As I'm driving away I call my niece's parents and give them a brief description of what happened and tell them to head over and make sure she is ok. After while I get a text from her mom, my other sister, Nicole, asking where I am. I tell her I can't tell her that because they are sending the cops after me. She replied "nobody is calling the police". That was a lie.
They tell the police I am suicidal, so the police track my phone to a parking lot and arrest me. THEY tell ME what happened, and of course it's missing almost every detail. When I try to fill in the blanks they just stop talking to me. I am charged with assault and uttering threats, and released on an undertaking.
Hey, did you know that if you are charged, it will show up on background checks even if you haven't been convicted? Yeah I didn't know that either. Did you know almost every job does a background check now because it's so easy? Yeah, I didn't know that either.
So I'm homeless at this point. I am suicidal, and I have my Nembutal. I live in my car for a few days, and when I decide to end my life I tell my friends, and say a ton of shit that I was too afraid to say before. Except one of them sends me $500, so I stay in motels for a few days.
My family won't talk to me. They got what they wanted. I am gone, and they get to have the upper hand morality wise because I was charged and they can pretend this was all my doing. I sit in the hotels with my Nembutal in hand, trying to figure out a path other than suicide, but I really can't. When I tell my friend Rob what I am doing he calls the police, so I am forced to flee so they don't get my N. I only have one pair of clothes with me, so I finally tell my mom I am coming back for shit.
She tells me to contact my dad and ask if I can stay with him. Well, he never offered when I told him what was going on, so I assumed that wasn't an option. I mean why would he let me live in my car if he was willing to take me in? Anyway, I ask him, and he agrees, and I feel like I can probably get out of this legal situation so I dump my N as a sign of good faith.
I start looking for work so I can get a lawyer, survive, and finance my trip out West. That's when I discover that I am already a criminal as far as background checks are concerned. It shows I assault people, threaten to kill them, and am suicidal. So obviously I can't pass. I can't even drive for Uber Eats or Skip the Dishes. I can't do anything. I have lost 3 job opportunities to this so far, and not applied to countless that mention a background check up front.
Even if I am not convicted, I still have to convince the police to destroy the record, or else it will show up forever. I applied for legal aid a month and a half ago, and I am still two weeks away from being able to talk to them about whether I am even eligible or not. While all of this drags out, I have to keep driving to the city to tell the courts to keep adjourning the matter. I have no money left, my credit cards are maxed out, and I don't know if I will ever be able to get a job again.
Innocent until proven guilty. Uh huh.
So that's my story. I doubt anybody read it all, and I'm sure if they did there are some questions I failed to answer. I just wanted to put the whole story down somewhere. I don't know if I will make it much longer. I have SN now, and every day I have to fight with the hopelessness of the situation, and everything else that has gone down over the past few years.
In the end, I guess my psychotic family got me. That's what dad keeps telling me. He can't tell me why though. I thought we had been on good terms for nearly 20 years now. I certainly didn't do anything to any of them, but somehow while I was gone for 7 years they decided I was the worst person in the world and deserve to kill myself.
The end.
The worst years have been the past 3 or 4, but it's only in the past year or so that I realized how my entire life shaped my future.
Apparently I was a happy little kid, but that changed at some point. I don't know, I remember being little and crying alone in my room and repeating "nobody loves me" over and over to myself.
I probably won't be able to explain this very well because I am still coming to terms with it. I guess I just never trusted my parents. If I was upset about something I just got yelled at for it. If I cried I was threatened to be given something to cry about. If I tried to be kind I would be mocked for it, or even worse, punished because I did something "stupid".
Eventually I changed. I became adversarial. School bored the living fuck out of me. I was always praised for how smart I was, yet I was expected to be satisfied with proving I can read year in and year out. They told me in 4th grade that I read at a college level. Then they'd hand me a children's book and tell me to read it and prove that I could comprehend it. For an additional 8 years in a fucking row.
So I found better ways to amuse myself. Making jokes, mouthing off, challenging the (to me) fake authority of teachers and other adults who crossed my path. I never hurt anyone, but that was enough for me to be labeled a "bad kid". I was told I would end up in jail, I wasn't allowed in classes with my friends, I was constantly being attacked at home for things I did in school.
This went on for years, and still I never hurt anyone. I just made jokes. Until one day when I was 15 I got suspended and my mom told me I wasn't getting Christmas. Well, Christmas and my birthday were the only times I was given ANYTHING, and I sure as fuck didn't get anything else from my parents besides material things, so I got pretty pissed. I think I threw our home phone down the stairs, actually.
You have to understand, there was no way to talk to them. If I had an issue my mom would just say "I'm done talking about this". She's the same way to this very day actually. There was never a hope in hell of your feelings being validated. This eats away at a person. There has to be some outlet, and if you can't find a positive one you will take a negative. That's reality.
So I threw the phone down the stairs, and probably mouthed off quite hard while I did it. In response my mom pounded blows on my back and shoulders for about 20 seconds while I hunkered down on the floor. I don't know HOW I ended up in the floor to begin with. Regardless, as she was doing it I was realizing she no longer intimidated me physically. So when she finally relented, I raised my head, smirked at her in disdain, and spit in her face. That was it.
Well, the police were called, I was charged with assault, and I spent two years on probation. So at that point I wasn't just a bad kid, I was a criminal kid.
There were no adults I could trust. I don't really know how you could have looked at me and not instinctively known the problem was that I was abused at home, but somehow they had everyone convinced that the problem was me. That somehow I was born with the desire to fight my whole life. Whenever I even tried to broach the subject I was told "that's your family" or "don't talk about your mother that way".
It mattered less as I got older, and I just spent all my time with my friends. I barely even saw my parents because I was out all the time. Then I moved out when I was 19 and it mattered even less. Then my parents got divorced and suddenly my mom was really nice for awhile.
I got into a relationship with an older lady when I was 24. She was really kind, and helped me a lot. Unfortunately I had many unresolved issues that I wasn't even prepared to consider yet, and our relationship was hell for her. We moved in together, but I only had a broken family as my example, and I had been conditioned to believe all of our issues were my fault as a kid, so I modelled my behavior after my parents. Needless to say, our relationship fell apart. I regret a lot of what she went through because of me. She didn't deserve any of it.
I bounced back after a few years. I moved across Canada to be with my best friend in Calgary, and I landed a decent enough job that became a good job as I got promoted. I was pretty happy with myself. I was dating and it was going well enough, until I met someone I really liked and fucked it up. I realized there was an emptiness inside me. On paper everything was going great, so why did I still feel so terrible all the time? Why was I so desperate, and not even knowing what I was desperate for?
To her credit, that woman convinced me to go to therapy. Not for us to reconcile, but just for my sake as a person. We stayed good friends, she did care for me, and I managed to hold onto a normal life for a few more years.
It took over a year of bi-weekly sessions for me to truly open up in therapy. My therapist eventually told me that she was considering cutting me loose as a client because it didn't look like I was ever going to take it seriously.
Well, I met someone else. Her name was Anggi, and she was like nobody else I'd ever met. As clever and funny as me, smart as fuck, sexy as fuck, and it turns out just as damaged. I was head over heels, but we both had trouble connecting on a deeper level. We were both guarded as fuck, and after a few months she randomly broke up with me. I don't know if she would have been honest with me had I met up with her when she requested, but I refused and shut down, and we went our separate ways.
I'm not afriad to admit I took this pretty hard. I didn't think I was, but looking back at the following months it's pretty obvious. I was drinking a ton, picking fights, serial dating, and smoking a pile of dope and playing endless videogames. It was also during this time that my good job started turning really toxic, but since I had never had a good job before I was terrified to leave in case I never did that well again.
I never really stopped thinking about Anggi, but I had deleted her number. I tried Facebook messaging her, but we were never friends on there so my message just got relegated to that secret folder nobody checks. It was a total fluke a few weeks later when I stumbled across an accidental screenshot I had taken of a text conversation between us, and it had her number at the top.
It felt clear to me that she didn't see a future between us, but we definitely had chemistry as friends and sex partners. So I reached out to her and offered a friends with benefits situation. She turned that down, but still wanted to see me, which was the better outcome in my eyes anyway. We got back together.
This is the part where I need to talk about my narcissism. We will come back to it later, but it informs the way Anggi viewed me. I always treated her amazingly, but I know she wasn't thrilled with how I dealt with everyone and everything else. Apparently she was very on the fence about me, while I fell further in love with her.
She told me at one point that she had a concern that I only got back together with her as some sort of elaborate revenge scheme. I realize now that this was more of a reflection on her and her experiences than me, but it really hurt. I actually did love her. It hurt that I was failing to make that obvious.
She started acting a bit sketchy, and this made me a little crazy. It came to a head one day when we made plans for me to BBQ ribs and have a big feast at my house. We planned it days in advance, but when the day came I couldn't get ahold of her. I proceeded to get everything ready, assuming she would appear. She never did. I was very hurt. It took me 4 years before I ever BBQ'd again.
The next day I woke up and still hadn't heard from her, so I got worried. Her family didn't really know me, so if something had happened to her, I wouldn't have been informed. Her phone just kept going straight to voicemail. So I told my work that Anggi seems to be missing, and I gotta go make sure she's ok. They understood. I went to her work, and there she was, showing up for the day, everything fine.
She seemed upset to see me, but I was mostly just relieved. I asked her what happened, and she told me some story about her losing her phone and it didn't add up really but when I asked more questions she got defensive so I dropped it.
That week was hell. It didn't feel right. We had lunch together once, and then by the weekend I decided I would hide my number and call her. She answered, and said she couldn't talk. She later sent me an email saying we were through, and that she wouldn't respond anymore.
I knew I didn't have the full story, and it drove me a little crazy. I didn't know what I had done to deserve being treated that way, but I truly believed it was all my fault. Months passed, I dated another girl, but I couldn't move past what had happened. I didn't get closure, I didn't get answers, nothing.
I emailed Anggi and asked her point blank if she had cheated on me. She said she had been flirting with another guy, but nothing happened. That was enough of an answer for me, so I took it and tried to move forward. My job was getting really bad though, and I was really hurt, and I started feeling kind of suicidal.
One day I posted about it on Reddit, and I get a private message saying "don't be dumb, shithead". It was Anggi. She also emailed my therapist about her concern for me. It turns out she had figured out my Reddit username long ago and had been sort of stalking me. I didn't really mind, I was actually touched.
This began an endless back and forth via email between us, with us both opening up to each other for the first time. It was really nice, and eventually we met up, and it went well for like a week but my trust had been broken and I couldn't keep it under wraps. We went our separate ways again.
She liked salsa dancing, and I had started to learn how so I could participate in her hobby. I was browsing the local salsa dancing community on Facebook when I found an event they had held the day Anggi didn't show up for the BBQ. There she was. She wasn't with her daughter, she hadn't lost her phone, she had just chosen to do something else and concocted a big lie instead of just telling me. All the craziness and pain I had been through, it was all for nothing. All the opening up we had done and trying to be honest with each other, I still wasn't ever told the truth.
It broke me. I lost my job almost immediately because I started missing time because of my deep depression. I was lost, and truly started planning suicide. I confronted Anggi about the lies, but she just ignored me. After a few weeks I decided to go ahead with it.
I got really drunk, waited until a night Anggi was supposed to be at dance, and sent her a good-bye email. She immediately texted me, and pulled me back from the brink. For the next few weeks she essentially babysat me, and even visited me in the looney bin. Eventually I got back on track, started to feel immense guilt for what she went through because of me, and tried to cut ties, in a grateful and loving way. I blocked her.
Except there was a flaw there. I could look at my phone bill and see incoming texts from her. I felt bad, so I texted her and told her I knew she was reaching out and I am sorry, but she should stop.
This went on for months and we got back together eventually. It seemed like this time it would really work out, and she was really putting the effort in and the difference was obvious. Except then she started acting sketchy again, although not in a way where she was hiding something, just being a bit dishonest and her actions weren't really matching her words. I broke up with her out of frustration at still not being able to be open with each other.
Somewhere during all of this I learned about being a narcissist in therapy. I barely registered as such on the test, and later on I actually didn't register as one on the same test after some work. I took it hard though. If you Google narcissism, all you will get are tons of people calling you a monster. I read up on how you become one though, and it all fit. I didn't have parental love so I built up defenses, and they resulted in me becoming narcissitic.
After I broke up with Anggi I entered a low level depression. Work was going fine and I wasn't overtly suffering, but I was eating ice cream and playing videogames all the time and more or less living in darkness. This went on for a few months until one morning I woke up and saw redness all around my mouth.
I had been on Accutane previously, and had actually only stopped it maybe a month before this. One side effect of Accutane is chapped lips. Well, my lips were red and sore and peeling and inflamed, so I took this as some sort of crazy side effect. I went to countless doctors but I was always trying to keep the dead skin off and the redness only got super bad when I ate, brushed my teeth, or cried, so usually when I saw them they didn't actually look bad. The dermatologist who gave me Accutane seemed to only be concerned with assuring me it wasn't the cause. The funny thing is, I had seen him a few months ago about a bit of redness around my mouth, and he assured me then it was nothing.
I was told to use Vaseline, use an anti-fungal cream, or that there wasn't even anything wrong. Except I knew there was because my lips were red, dry, and burning much of the time. This went from March all the way up to October before I started contemplating suicide. I felt I couldn't date, I found accounts from others online who never found a solution, and there was really nothing else good going on in my life. I could not move past this problem, and people in my life telling me there was nothing wrong was making me even crazier.
By December I decided since I was suicidal maybe I should go to the hospital, explain why, and maybe I would be taken seriously and somebody would help. Instead they told me I had body dysmorphia and that nobody would help me with my lips. Whether or not I had body dysmorphia was irrelevant to me because there was definitely something wrong with my lips. I told them to go fuck themselves and left the hospital, but I had been committed so they sent security after me.
I ran from them, but they cornered me so I stopped, and one of them punched me in the face and broke my glasses. They tackled me and started shouting "stop resisting stop resisting" while they slammed me on the ground. The first thing they said to each other was "get his phone". Eventually the real cops showed up and they scurried away.
The real cops took me back to the hospital, where I inquired about where my glasses were. I was told they broke them. I lost my shit and started screaming at them. They dragged me to a room and the cops pinned me against the wall, facing it. Some security guard cunt is going "he tried to hit Jared!" which was a blatant lie but when I turned around to confront her for it I was told I was being aggressive. What a fucking joke.
The real cops left and I was locked in a room. I was not calm. I tried breaking the door down, and did actually fuck the window up. The same security thugs opened the door and told me to turn around and lay on the bed. I turned around and started walking towards the bed and they tackled me anyway. They started asking me questions while one of them put me in an ankle lock and started punching my ankle. I told them I wasn't telling them shit, but then I started making fun of them for being cowards. They're like "I thought you weren't going to say anything" and I smirk and reply "well, nothing productive". Eventually they drugged me, threw me in a different room, and I drifted in and out of consciousness for a few days.
When the drugs finally wore off I was put in isolation for 5 days. I recieved no help of any kind, I was simply a prisoner. I had to stay for the weekend because no psychiatrist was in until Monday. They did give me a message that I had been fired from my job though, so I got to deal with that in solitary confinement as well.
When he finally showed his face on Monday I was like "oh hey bud! How was your weekend?!" but we had a meeting and by that point I had decided I needed to get out and start preparing to sue my former employer. He did release me, 3 days before Christmas. I spent Christmas alone in my apartment plotting revenge.
I filed complaints with the security team, and got my glasses paid for and replaced. I did sue my employer, and I had a very satisfactory result. However, I was completely lost and my lips were still fucked, a condition I now knew was Exfoliative Cheilitis. It seems likely that I caused it by chewing the flakes off my lips while they were chapped from Accutane. Perhaps the SPF lip balm I had been using contributed as well. I will never know.
I asked my mom if I could move home and stay with her for awhile. She knew how much I had been through, how suicidal I was, etc, and let me come back. The day after I finalize it all, I get an email from Anggi. I see it come through, and I take about 3 hours to cry in my bedroom before I answer.
We meet up twice. I tell her about what I've been through, she tells me she's doing great, and supports my decision to move home. The thing was, she wanted to be friends but I still had a burning desire for her, and the fact that I was leaving only intensified it. I told her I just couldn't be friends, and why, and she accused me of abandoning her and that was the last thing she said to me.
I moved home, only to immediately find out nobody wanted me there. My sister began the attacks immediately, telling me I can't be there, it's not fair to mom, blah blah blah but when I ask my mom why this dumbass thinks she has any say on a deal between the two of us I get no reply.
My sister pretends she can't use the bathroom at mom's because I am there. There is no reality to this claim, nobody in the world has ever had that opinion, including her until the day she randomly decided it. She calls me racist because I date other races? When I tell stories about my jobs she exclaims "YOU had employees?!?!" as if everyone didn't already know this for a fact.
I don't defend myself. I know better. It's pure nonsense anyway, so what do you even say? You're insane? Yeah, that'll go over well. Nobody ever stood up for me anyway so I knew I would have no back up if I pushed. I knew my mom would throw me out if I pushed back against her beloved golden child.
Mom's birthday was in September and my sister asked me to throw in on an Apple watch for her. I said sure, but I messaged mom to make sure that was what she actually wanted. It didn't make sense to me, but she said it was fine, so I threw in on it.
My sister invited us over for dinner on mom's birthday, and when I showed up they had already given her the gift. I honestly didn't care, but then it came up how I double checked to make sure she wanted it. My sister flips out screaming "You are such a piece of shit! You ruin everything! WHO KNOWS HER BETTER? WHO KNOWS HER BETTER?". Again, there is really no way to argue with this insanity, and neither my sister's husband or my mother stood up for me, so I just finished my food and left.
So I just take it, and spend a lot of time crying to myself asking why I even came back, and why they even let me. I tried to express this hopelessness to my mom, and she tells me "I can't be that person for you". That's when it all really clicked that I was abused as a kid. She could never be that person for me, I never had that person in my life at all.
So it took a few months to find work back here, then a few more months to really get any income and start breaking even, and by then I knew I didn't want to stay here. Everyone hated me for still being there, but I wasn't going to get an apartment and furnish it when what I actually wanted was to leave. It took a long time, but I eventually realized I could get back out west by working in the oil and gas industry. There was one problem though. I needed some courses, and I REALLY needed to get in shape.
I had enough saved up that I was able to quit my job in September and focus on getting back in shape. The years of office work and eating Blizzards for supper had really fucked my body up. I spent about a month and a half doing the things I needed to do, and just as I was ready to leave, I messaged my niece to make sure she was ok.
You see, everyone in my family is fucked up, and it's been passed onto her. Her mother is a maniac, and my niece has crippling anxiety and cuts herself. I talked to her about our cycle of abuse, and made sure she knew I saw it and would always be there for her.
Well, she came over and stayed with mom and I for weeks. I wasn't expecting that, but I sure as hell wasn't going to leave when she so clearly needed me. My mom had taken to attacking me and gaslighting me a lot too, so I was desperate to leave, but my niece comes first.
So December rolls around and I have essentially been parenting my niece for weeks. My dad messages us all and says he wants us all to come over for a Christmas gathering. I tell him I don't want to come, but I will make sure to see him individually.
That day my sister also comes over, and it comes up, and I again just say I won't be coming. It's me, my mom, my niece, and her sitting there. She launched into a tirade "ohhhh I am sooooo happy you're not coming! It will be sooooo much better!!!" Etc etc and I just turn to the others and say "and that would be why" except instead of understanding my mom smirks at me and says "it appears to be mutual". Well, that's not what mutual is. I didn't attack anyone, I just wanted to avoid a shitty situation.
Anyway, I just leave. I'm so tired of this fucking nonsense at this point, but I'm driving around and I'm thinking "this is so stupid. I am a grown man. I don't need to run, this is resolvable simply by talking". So I come back, and I ask my niece to take my dog for a walk. She misunderstands my intent, and says Gizmo has already been walked. I clarify "no, I mean I need to talk to Casey and Nana".
Well, my life hasn't been the same since. Casey replies "oh fuck that man! I'm out of here!" and I say "no, you sit down and listen motherfucker".
Both Casey and my mom jump up and come at me shouting at me to kill myself, I am a piece of shit, I am old and all alone and I haven't done anything in my life (they like to pretend my entire life in Calgary never happened), and then my mom decides I also need to be kicked out of her home. I am only replying with "I am not a piece of shit" but when I say that they laugh in my face. My niece has fled to the bathroom with my dog by this point.
They manage to push me all the way back to the front door. They're still shouting at me that I am garbage, Casey is randomly screaming "I AM IN THERAPY!!!' which again doesn't seem relevant to anything since we all are, for essentially the same reason. Eventually I just lose my cool. I wanted to have an adult conversation, yet now my family is telling me to commit suicide and I am homeless, and I still haven't done anything. So I smack Casey in the head, and tell them "I SHOULD kill YOU!!" in response. Casey starts screaming that she is calling the police, and I know she will, so I just leave.
As I'm driving away I call my niece's parents and give them a brief description of what happened and tell them to head over and make sure she is ok. After while I get a text from her mom, my other sister, Nicole, asking where I am. I tell her I can't tell her that because they are sending the cops after me. She replied "nobody is calling the police". That was a lie.
They tell the police I am suicidal, so the police track my phone to a parking lot and arrest me. THEY tell ME what happened, and of course it's missing almost every detail. When I try to fill in the blanks they just stop talking to me. I am charged with assault and uttering threats, and released on an undertaking.
Hey, did you know that if you are charged, it will show up on background checks even if you haven't been convicted? Yeah I didn't know that either. Did you know almost every job does a background check now because it's so easy? Yeah, I didn't know that either.
So I'm homeless at this point. I am suicidal, and I have my Nembutal. I live in my car for a few days, and when I decide to end my life I tell my friends, and say a ton of shit that I was too afraid to say before. Except one of them sends me $500, so I stay in motels for a few days.
My family won't talk to me. They got what they wanted. I am gone, and they get to have the upper hand morality wise because I was charged and they can pretend this was all my doing. I sit in the hotels with my Nembutal in hand, trying to figure out a path other than suicide, but I really can't. When I tell my friend Rob what I am doing he calls the police, so I am forced to flee so they don't get my N. I only have one pair of clothes with me, so I finally tell my mom I am coming back for shit.
She tells me to contact my dad and ask if I can stay with him. Well, he never offered when I told him what was going on, so I assumed that wasn't an option. I mean why would he let me live in my car if he was willing to take me in? Anyway, I ask him, and he agrees, and I feel like I can probably get out of this legal situation so I dump my N as a sign of good faith.
I start looking for work so I can get a lawyer, survive, and finance my trip out West. That's when I discover that I am already a criminal as far as background checks are concerned. It shows I assault people, threaten to kill them, and am suicidal. So obviously I can't pass. I can't even drive for Uber Eats or Skip the Dishes. I can't do anything. I have lost 3 job opportunities to this so far, and not applied to countless that mention a background check up front.
Even if I am not convicted, I still have to convince the police to destroy the record, or else it will show up forever. I applied for legal aid a month and a half ago, and I am still two weeks away from being able to talk to them about whether I am even eligible or not. While all of this drags out, I have to keep driving to the city to tell the courts to keep adjourning the matter. I have no money left, my credit cards are maxed out, and I don't know if I will ever be able to get a job again.
Innocent until proven guilty. Uh huh.
So that's my story. I doubt anybody read it all, and I'm sure if they did there are some questions I failed to answer. I just wanted to put the whole story down somewhere. I don't know if I will make it much longer. I have SN now, and every day I have to fight with the hopelessness of the situation, and everything else that has gone down over the past few years.
In the end, I guess my psychotic family got me. That's what dad keeps telling me. He can't tell me why though. I thought we had been on good terms for nearly 20 years now. I certainly didn't do anything to any of them, but somehow while I was gone for 7 years they decided I was the worst person in the world and deserve to kill myself.
The end.
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