It’s a long story

I think it’s about time to put this out here.There are many people in the world who I love dearly but I’ve been keeping my trauma a secret because I didn’t want to feel like I’m over reacting OR I’m just seeking for pity. I hate to burden people and I also know that at the end of the day— I’ll be okay anyways. But after hearing my dear friend share her story, it changed my perspective. Firstly, it did not feel like she was seeking pity at all. Secondly, instead of burdening people it actually saved me. Be warned that it is a really long story. Like a really really long story.

Let’s rewind back to my college days. I started dating a guy I met through friends online. I’ll refer to him as AT. We played League of Legends together all the time. AT was charismatic, funny, and really good at the game. He was popular among our group of friends so I felt special when he told me that he wanted to be with me. We got along pretty well and I was so happy to be part of this group of friends along with him. After I graduated from university, I decided to pack my bags and moved the California to be with him and our friends. 

Things went downhill really fast. Right as I moved, so started to see many weird things. 1st, I found that he’s been lying to me about going to school, he quit awhile ago to work at a local restaurant. 2nd, I found out about is family’s questionable profession that he didn’t bother warning me about before moving in. 3rd, he started to take me for granted and never helped me with anything (living expenses, chores, family business, LIFE). Aside from being treated poorly in the relationship, the most traumatizing part was when I found the nasty messages between him and other girls. AT would flirt with girls he met online and with some of them, he also manage convince them to have sexual relations (phone sex, nudes, rps, etc). On top of that, he would offer to “boost” these girls on League of Legends for explicit photos in return. It was that stereotypical nudes for ELO meme that people would joke about. I felt so disgusted that I was in love with someone like that. I started hating not just him but all these girls who would even agree to do such a thing. I will never understand. It was so embarrassing that I was dating a guy like that ….

What’s sad is that AT is also friends with many big female streamers. Like pretty darn big ones that I will not name. I don’t know if these streamers are also involved in his dirty desires but I can’t help but feel disgusted by all the things people would do to accomplish a darn number in a game and those taking advantage of it.

Even with all that going on the I still cared about him so much I’d do anything for him without asking for anything in return. Perhaps the only thing I ever asked of him is to stop playing video games late at night because I needed to sleep to wake up at 4AM in the morning to go to work. But even something as simple as that, he could not do for me. His reason? “Because no ones online in the morning.” Well, fuck you too.

The ‘cheating’ and him manipulating these girls was not a one time occurrence. We dated for over 4 years and I’ve caught him red handed about 5-6 times, and there was probably even more times it happened that I didn’t even know about. I tried breaking up with him so many times, but it was complicated. He grew up in a broken family and had many problems. His mother would sometimes sit down and talk to me about all the things he went through. His aunts would always thank me for taking such good care of him. I loved his family very dearly and I wanted to be a part of it. I kept using that to help convince myself that perhaps I can help AT change. We continued to date and he followed me back to my home in Washington.

After moving to Washington, I spent most of my time job hunting while he spent his days playing video games. After 2 months of job hunting, I finally landed a full time job downtown. Because I finally had more stability in life, I offered him to go to school instead of working if he wanted to. I told him that I he should apply for financial aid and/or I’ll be willing to support him if he decides to go. He tells me that he wants to go to school, but he never did anything to take that step. It got to the point where I created an email address for him and started applying to jobs for him and even emailed schools to ask them if we can set an appointment to talk about suitable programs (because he said he wants to be a doctor). Even after landing interviews for him, he did not want to go to them. Though, eventually he did get a part time job on his own.

However, after working at the part time job for a few months, his car broke down. And because of that, he stopped going to work. Back when we lived in California, I would be the one paying for the car’s repair fees whenever it broke down. But this time around, I decided to hold my stance and not pay for the car repair fees because it wasn’t like I needed a car to get to work anyways. He could afford it, so why doesn’t he pay for it? He didn’t, and left the car broken like that and went back to spending all his time playing video games again. 

One day while I was working, I received a text message from the a high school friend. She asked me if this guy she connected with on Tinder was my boyfriend. She sent me a photo of his profile and the chat they had. Just by looking at the way he talked to her in that same flirty, dirty, disgusting tone he did with all the other previous girls, I knew right away that it was AT. You think I’d be numb about it all since this was probably the  6th time in our relationship I caught him cheating, but no, I wasn’t okay at all. This is when I first learned what it was like to have a panic attack. My heart was racing so hard, I started sweating, it was hard to keep myself calm, I felt like I could have lose control of myself. When I got home and confronted him about it, he told me that he wasn’t going to actually meet up with ‘her’. And that It didn’t mean anything and he was just feeling lonely/curious about dating apps. He started to justify his actions by blaming me for not giving him the attention he needed.

I broke. 

You would wonder why I didn’t breakup with him. I’ve tried so many times but it wasn’t easy. He refused to break up with me. He still lived in my house. We start getting into abuse that wasn’t just verbal, but also physical. There are times when I wanted to run away to go upstairs to hide where my family was at, but he would grab on to my arm so hard that I couldn’t move. There are also times he would shove me and even hit me, but it was “ok” but it was just with a pillow. It wasn’t actually hurting me or anything. I was scared, but I also couldn’t blame him for the physical abuse because I was also doing the same thing as him. I would sometimes scratch him because I was so angry. Even with all of that going on, he would not leave. I felt trap. I couldn’t do anything about it and I was too embarrass about it to tell my family. 

Thankfully in 2017 I became friends with an amazing group of people on Twitch, the Sugar Mods. The day Dana invited to join the mod Discord will forever be one of the top 10 happy moments in my life. I love every single one of them but I never really told them about what I was going through in my daily life because I didn’t want them to worry. In that group of friends, there was a guy I will refer to N. I got along with N very well and we always have a good laugh every time we hung out. Eventually I opened up to N and the Sugar Mods about my relationship issues. They encouraged me to finally break free from this relationship. Which was a really heart breaking process but I successfully did. AT and I broke up and he moved back to California. Shortly after my relationship with AT ended, N asked if I’d like to date him. I was hesitant at first because I didn’t like the idea of hopping straight from one relationship to the other. But I really liked N, we got along, he was nice, so I thought… if it’ll happen eventually, then why not? So N and I started dating.

As N and I dated, he started to show more of himself around me. He wasn’t the competent, reliable, nice, mature person he portrayed himself to be. He was always insecure, lonely and entitled. Every time he streamed, I felt obligated to be there because he would always message me and asked me where I was if I wasn’t in his chat. Especially during times no ones is at his stream to chat with him. Not to mention the fact that he used a third party chat program to monitor chats from other CHs I visited often. He would check if I was active on THEIR chat instead of HIS. He would often get upset with me if I was active on someone else’s chat instead. Particularly a streamer friend who I watched BECAUSE he played different games from N. It was also fun chatting with him because we both worked in the same area and we both love love love talking about food. The thought of things going beyond friendship never even crossed my mind because I was already in a relationship? 

With that said, I always thought things like that were just typical relationship problems. Boyfriend gets jealous, starts being overly protective… whatever. I wasn’t up for another stressful relationship so we would talk about it. Of course it wasn’t something the resolved in a day, but we both slowly worked on it. Actually, whenever we had problems in our relationship, we would just talk it out. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but I was happy. After all, all the problems we had was NOTHING in comparison to my relationship with AT.

Then in early 2019 things started happening. You can read a more detailed story of the events my friend Heartstar wrote here: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr9rlo.

I remembered when people in the community were slowly distancing themselves from N. He would complain to me about why did this person unfollowed him. Why did this person stop coming to their stream. I tried to comfort him by telling him that whatever the reason is for them unfollowing you, you can’t change anything about it. Sure it’s upsetting, but it’s their rights and the best you can do is to not dwell on it.

However, as more and more people started to distance themselves from him, it became more obvious that something was up. He then started to isolate only the people he ‘trusted’ by creating hidden channels in his stream Discord. While this was happening, I asked him if he did anything that would give people a reason to spread rumors about him. He denied it. But after more and more people started to distance themselves from him, he told me to stop trusting Heartstar because he thinks she’s the mastermind of it all. It was very confusing to me because I thought him and Heartstar were such good friends and it made absolutely no sense that she would want to take people away from. I then asked him clearly if something happened between them. But he couldn’t give me a straight answer.

Nothing made sense to me at all until one day I received a message from one of his trusted mods. The message was an angry message about how terrible of a person N was and that I, too, should remove him from my life. 

Once again, I broke.

I was so confused and shocked but at the same time not surprised? Many of the things he was doing to Heartstar was something I was also experiencing in our relationship. But I thought it was normal because we were dating. I was so disgusted that I was yet again dating the kind of person who would take advantage of people for their own selfish desires. I was so angry I initially broke up with him right away and did not want anything to do with him. 

But a thought crossed my mind. I knew that if I left him he would have absolutely no one left on Twitch. I could easily tell the Sugar Mods everything and I knew that they would absolutely not tolerated his actions… but I didn’t. I started to feel sorry for him and thought that perhaps I could help him reflect on his actions. After all, he never really did me wrong in any way, right? (wrong). When he made the decision to move to Washington, I hated it so much. I told him off. I couldn’t handle it…There was already so much I was dealing with at the time. I should probably mention that at the time, AT moved back to WA and has been stalking me at my work place, harassing me by calling me non stop, emotionally manipulating me by threatening me with suicide, etc. I was going crazy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve begged AT to “leave me alone.”

Leave me alone

Leave me alone

Leave me alone

Leave me alone

I’ve even tried to file a case with the police, but every time I went— things fell through. No one ever guided me towards the right direction. I went to the police office and they tell me I need to go to the city I live in. I got to the office where I live in, they tell me I need to take it to the court downtown. I went to the court downtown they tell me I need to report it to the city he lives in. I didn’t have the time or patience, or the mental capacity to try figure it out, so I dropped it.

While all of that was going on, somehow I became okay with N moving here. While N lived near me, we would hangout often and we had a good time. But honestly, even on good days, I would always be upset about something. It was so easy for him to trigger me and I would get so angry about everything he did. It was so hard for me to explain to him why he made me so angry. I can’t help but feel uncomfortable around him because he was the epitome of the kind people I hated the most on the internet. I couldn’t tell him that because I tried really hard to not hate him. I didn’t want to hate, but sometimes it’s so hard to even look at his face.

It just got worse as time went on. I felt like a monster because he would be so nice to me but I would still get angry at everything he did. Every time he compliments me, I felt gross out because I felt like he was fetishizing me. Every time he gave me gifts, I hated it because it felt like he’s only doing that because he’s only doing it in hopes of getting something in return. Every time he praised me, it felt like empty words to me and he’s only trying to get on my good side. On my birthday earlier this year, I made a very clear statement to him that I wanted nothing and wanted to do absolutely nothing. But of course, he had to make my birthday about HIMSELF by giving me a series of gifts so HE can feel special  about HIMSELF. That made it clear that the nice things he was doing for me, wasn’t actually for me but for his own self satisfaction. I’m sure there was still good intentions behind it, but it still made me upset.

Why is it so hard to remove these people in my life? I cared deeply for both of them and I always try my best to understand their position. But by caring for them… I was also slowly destroying my own mental health. A part of me didn’t want any of it. All their apologies, them trying to make it up to me— I didn’t care for any of it anymore. I just wanted to be left alone. I was so tired of it all. I wanted to run away to a place where they couldn’t easily follow me— so I did.

Although after I moved to Japan, I continued to keep in touch with N because he was still in our friend group. But it was so much easier to not have to talk to him because I was so busy most of the time anyways. When I saw that he started to become active on Twitch, I got a little anxious. “Is that a good idea?” I often thought to myself. But seeing that he was so happy reconnecting with old friends and making new one, I thought… maybe it wasn’t my problem to worry about.

But then one day Heart decided to share her story on stream. It was so heartbreaking hearing her story. Although I knew most of it, there were so much details I was missing. I thought that he didn’t realize what he was doing was wrong, but that wasn’t the case at all. That’s what he wanted me to believe all this time. He knew what he was doing and he should have known it was wrong. The saddest part is, what he did with Heart wasn’t even his first time. He also was doing it to other before Heart too. They TOO were minors. It just shows that he has no remorse at all. When his victims starts to expose him, he would isolate people, play the victim with them and use them as a shield to hide. I feel terrible for being that person to create a big shield for him. I played along with his story and listened to him didn’t even tell the truth to my closets friends. Once he got comfortable, he did the same thing. He tried to go back to a place he didn’t belong. 

I don’t think he understands the amount of pain he has caused people.

The scars he created on these young girls. Those scars are called scars because they’re going to have to carry it for the rest of their life.

I’m very sorry to my friends for deceiving you.

I’m sorry to the victims for shielding your predator and creating an unsafe environment for you.

Lastly, I’m very very sorry to my family for everything. 

There was so many I left out, but this story is already too long to get my point across. Thank you for those who took the time to read this til the end. With all of the events that happened in the past ~7 years of my life, I was completely broken. I’m working my way on picking my pieces up. It’s strange that even though I wasn’t someone who was directly sexually abused, having these abusers right under my nose still affects me. When I happen to come across the topic of sexual predators, I would sometimes get a panic attack. It’s a hard topic for me to discuss. Even in this log I can’t get myself to talk about it directly. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever be able to trust anyone anymore.

With that said, I’m happy to say that I’m in the process of healing. I’ve been happier and I feel much freer than I ever been in the past 10 years.

My heart goes out to all of those who have been affected by abusers. Whether it be emotionally or physically– no one should have to deal with abuse… ever.