Why did you stay?

How the pressures of the world coupled with prolonged isolation put us at risk for abuse. These are answers and reflections from me asking myself this very question, and how I finally left.

Why did you stay?

The bone break of alone-ness. This is not loneliness. This is the reality of being aware of the constant pressure of extinction and facing it on your own, as you watch the world collapse into something far beyond tyranny, with most of its inhabitants unaware. 

Why did you stay?

I had been on my own in said wasteland for so long. When my former fiancé died, something left my body when his soul left this realm. I never thought I’d feel love again. I had gotten used to, and even surrendered to, having to fight this thing out alone.

No matter where I wandered, people were always revolving doors, and trust was a luxury so unheard of, I didn’t even know people who could feel it— but it certainly wasn’t I. 

Why did you stay?

Trauma based mind control. Any form of abuse is. And you would be shocked what it can do to people who otherwise seem very effective and competent in other areas of life.

This is usually not done in isolation either. Hurt people hurt people. Abusers are usually extremely traumatized themselves. I’ve never met one who wasn’t.

I’ll get into what happened, how I got out of it and what to do if you’re in this situation.

But first, I will give you a song, for anyone who feels in a low, invisible, or inescapable predicament. This is an older one I wrote in 2020. It’s called Quarantine Blues.

I was very down and out at this point, living in a black mold / roach infested box in East Hollywood, with the entire West Coast shut down due to the lockdowns, National Guard was there, curfew was enacted, flash bangs (the stun grenades) all night, you get it.

Unhinged AF and living in a roach infested sh*t hole, somehow this creation still saw the light of day, and I got to speak my piece and PEACE in a world gone mad. Truth is, I was going mad with it.

🚨 Spoiler alert 🚨

Life got SO MUCH BETTER, but it did take a while. Creative expression helped keep me alive. I encourage everyone to tap in with their creativity as much as possible.

🌟 Alright, let’s dive in to causes, conditions, and SOLUTIONS for abusive/toxic relationships: 👇

On the dynamics of abuse… and I guess more on why I stayed… because on a lot of levels, I could relate to the person who was so abusive. And I did feel compassion for him. I saw him as someone who suffered and, if someone would just help him, love him, he could be saved.

Problem was, I didn’t feel any love or consideration for myself. I thought I could love him out of his condition. At the end of the day, Beauty and the Beast is just a Disney movie.

Upon further investigation, a delusion surfaced within my own psyche: I thought if I saved him, I’d be saving myself by proxy. I’d be saving him, and then he’d be the man I needed to feel safe and secure with in life, because I was under the delusion I couldn’t do it on my own.

It took me a while to realize this, but it’s the truth. I was trying to save him into being my savior.

---

The relationship we have with ourselves mirrors the ones we have with others. 

The truth is, although I seemed high-functionting and having my shit together on the outside, if you looked at my insides at this time? Like I said above, I was unbelievably lonely, not even close to healed from having lost 10 people within the past 18 months at this time due to drug overdoses, murder, and two were killed from the covid shot.

One of these people who died was my former fiance, a man I had spent almost a third of my life with. So, I had a scarcity mentality of love and connection - I thought I would NEVER have it again.

So.. when it came along.. it was very hard for me to go away from. I also had a diminished sense of self, felt like a failure in life, so I was much more vulnerable to being treated exactly as such — being treated how I felt about myself, which was like shit.

So, why did you stay? 

I knew the world we lived in. I knew it and I saw it. I wanted so badly for the chance to have a family and people I could survive this shit with, especially after learning as much as I had in preparedness circles and underground communities. I had so much I could offer and share, and I was gearing up for the apocalypse, basically.

While I knew I’d still walk that road with or without anyone, I also knew that lone wolves never survive — you’ll become a casualty.

If that happened, fuck it, but obviously, when I thought I had a second chance at love after my fiancé died, and a second chance at life being that I didn’t feel like I was doing it alone anymore — as I was convinced I was condemned to some sort of eternal loneliness punishment for mistakes from the past, and this strange feeling after my former fiance died that “that was it, your chips are spent, you never get to have that again in your life” — I actually believed that.

So when something came along and I truly did see into that persons core and love them, holy shit, does one have any idea how hard it was to let go of that? 

Did I also love who I saw in that person? Yes, because I saw God in that person. However I now realize that GOD is inside all of us. Some of us just have the ability to see it in certain people easier than others, and I guess we call that chemistry. What I felt for that person was very real.

This persons bad behavior I often excused, because I once was that person, and I also saw their remorse. It only grew to be intolerable and eventually something I fled when the remorse vanished, and the abuse had multiplied tenfold. 

So… why did you stay?

Toward the end, I had lost myself entirely. It wasn’t just about this relationship anymore. It was the compounded effect of EVERY loss and every abusive situation in my life all coming up to the surface, and I felt like I was on a bad acid trip, except completely sober.

I was not in reality. I was not in my mind or body. I had no faith or hope or energy anymore. I was reduced to almost nothing. I couldn’t even look in the mirror. By the time it got that bad, I was close to leaving, but still didn’t (until I did) for another real cute reason (sarcasm inserted here):

I didn’t think I could mentally/physically survive another loss. I didn’t think I could survive leaving this person. I just thought it was over for me. There had been too much, and I thought this relationship was life finally turning around, but instead it was a very dark, old cycle re-emerging after many years, and it brought me to my knees. I was afraid I would take my own life if I had to experience another loss, if we’re being totally honest here.

Thank God that fear turned out to be the furthest thing from the truth, but I did believe it at the time.

So… WHY DID YOU LEAVE?

I prayed one night. I began to see that this was absolute insanity, and if I had any shred of respect for myself left, I had to leave or I was going to die. I was being torn apart. And I knew the version of me that I had worked so hard to get in touch with over these years would be fucking furious and mindblown that I had found myself back in that situation.

So, I prayed.

I asked God the following:

“Please make a path out of this, and give me the courage to walk it.”

That second part was the most crucial. It’s not easy to leave these dynamics. We get all tied up with the hornets nest that a traumatized human psyche (let alone the combination of two of them) can be.

Shortly after, I my pastor called me. He put me up in a hotel room for the night to get away and get some clarity and peace. I knew that if anything went sideways again, whether I wanted to or not, I had to leave. And leave the state I was living in ENTIRELY. I knew I couldn’t survive up there. To be honest, I never liked it.

As you can imagine, shit went sideways again, so I reached out. I reached out to my uncle, who I had been in contact with via phone for the past few years, but I hadn’t seen him “in real life” since I was ten years old. However, he lived about two states south of where I was, which is much closer than the distance we’ve typically had between us.

He said I could come down, so I did. I had no idea what was going to happen. I was scared to see family that I hadn’t really seen in over twenty years, and didn’t know very well. I was afraid they wouldn’t like me. I had no idea what I was gonna do for money or work or living or anything. I had no idea. My entire life turned into a giant question mark… kinda funny, after I spent so much time in preparedness communities… never prepared for this shit haha.

Although I will admit, my bug-out bag came in great handy on the drive, as it prevented me from having to pay for food with money I didn’t have. I had my canned goods and freeze dried supply on deck, along with pistol protection, because I slept in some sketchy areas on the way down. I appreciated that.

I came down. I had no idea what was going to happen. I was terrified. I was at the end of my rope as well. Not just with the relationship, with life in general.

---

Everything.Has.Changed.

When I say leap and the net will appear, what I really should be saying is:

JUMP FOR YOUR LIFE INTO THE ABYSS AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED FOR YOUR RISK ON AN IMMEASURABLE LEVEL.

Everything fell into place. New career, emancipation from the restaurant industry, new creative endeavors, new community, BTW I live in fucking paradise I cant believe how underrated this part of the country is, a safe place to live, and the people I have met so far have been incredibly dope, to say the least.

I am still going. Still going on this new life. But if you can relate to this, if you find yourself in one of those abusive situations that you cannot get away from, I know how impossible it feels.

I know that you probably feel like you want to die.

I know what it feels like to loose all hope.

I know what it’s like to hate yourself and blame yourself and not even look at yourself in the mirror.

I know what it’s like to attempt to take your own life as well.

What I can promise you… is that you will be amazed with how fast things change when you get yourself away from that, and back into your own energy.

One thing I’ll add: aside from a job, my primary target was linking up with a therapist who specialized in treating trauma. I knew I was a walking landmine from what I had just came out of, never mind my history as a whole. I also dove into the local recovery community, as I will never again make the mistake of letting myself get isolated and vulnerable to this type of treatment, for the simple fact that one is so deprived of connection that they’ll allow connections in their lives they normally wouldn’t. Communities build resilience. In many ways.

We will need help in recovering from this, but we can make full recoveries. If I can make a full recovery from drug addiction and alcoholism, as well as several other behaviors that statistics say are impossible to break away from… then you and I, if you are in this position, can do the same.