WOAH….so it’s been about a year since I have posted anything….oops…sorry all!
This post is probably going to be one of the longer posts that I have written…I advise that you grab a cup of tea or coffee, use the restroom, find a comfy place to sit and strap in! 🙂
TRIGGER WARNING! THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SENSITIVE TOPICS!!!! Topics include, but are not limited to: sexual assault/rape, depression, anxiety, self-loathing, and heartbreak.
Stay tuned till the end to see an epic thigh tattoo!
JANUARY-MAY
January 1st of 2019, I had the opportunity to ring in the New Year with my (spoiler alert) ex-boyfriend (the one from my post “An Xbox Love Story”. By this point, my ex had been living with my family and I for about 7 months. I moved out my ex-boyfriend in July of 2018 to California from South Carolina. He was dealing with some family issues and I decided to move him into our spare bedroom.
My ex-boyfriend was working at Target, seasonal part-time (aka about 8 hours per WEEK). I had bought him a car when he moved out here in order to find work and be able to go to work without burdening anyone. I had paid for his car with car insurance money I had received from my car accident back in 2016. I wanted him to be able to have a sense of freedom and the opportunity to work and explore his new living environment. He was living with my family and I rent free and grocery free….he had it made in the shade. I began to get annoyed when he stopped making noticeable efforts to find another job, help around the house, or even spend time with me.
I had started my spring semester of college in January and I was taking 17 units. This equated to about 5 classes and a lab for me. For those of you who do not know, a full-time undergrad student consists of taking 12 units. Needless to say, I was stressed, sleep deprived, and spread thin. I commuted to school 4 days a week and two of the four days I was at school for about 9-10 hours (it’s about a 40-55 minute drive depending on traffic). I found myself coming home around 10pm, tired, hungry, and stressed. The first thing I would do is see my ex for comforting hugs and kisses, but as the weeks went on, he began telling me that I have to wait until he was done playing with “the boys”. He started to put video games and his online friends before me…after everything I sacrificed for him.
This was the beginning of the end. There are many factors that ended our relationship, including him repeating the actions of an abusive situation that I had faced in my past, that he knew about. When I saw there was little remorse for his actions when I confronted him about it, I knew I was in trouble. His demeanor began to change but only behind closed doors. He always wanted more from me. I decided to break up with him February 13th (I know…the day before Valentine’s Day….and also my mom’s birthday…UGH). By this point, I was struggling to keep up with my classes and exams because of all the stress going on at home with my ex. I had called my mom to explain the situation because I was at school and I was in tears. I hate crying in general….but I was crying at college….Twenty minutes before my 3 hour night class. I had told her how miserable I was and how I was ready to be over this relationship. My mom was shocked by my decision because I had never fully told her what was happening behind closed doors. So naturally, her response was “are you sure? Right before Valentine’s Day??? He did something really sweet for you.” At this point I was like, yes i’m sure, I do not want to be the girlfriend who waits for the day after Valentine’s Day to break up with her boyfriend just so she can get gifts.
SIDE STORY THAT IS IMPORTANT: Two days before Valentine’s Day, my ex and I had gone to Big Lots to browse around and I came across giant teddy bears holding hearts with creepy ass eyes…. I HATE….No, I LOATHE stuffed animals and plushies that do not have fully black eyes. As a child I would take a sharpie and fill in the eyes. ANYWAYS, I had turned to my ex and I said “I do not understand how girls like these giant ass creepy teddy bears….their eyes FREAK ME THE F*CK OUT!”
So….I come home from my long day at school and head straight to my room around 11pm to see what my ex had done…Yes…You can see where this is going… I walk into my room and see a cute Valentine’s Day sign hung up on my ceiling light, BUT that’s not all folks! Sitting on my bed, surrounded by my other plushies, sat the SAME EXACT TEDDY BEAR FROM BIG LOTS THAT I SPECIFICALLY TOLD MY EX NOT TO GET ME. There was NO card, NO other gift, JUST the BEAR.
*okay I need to take a breather*
At this point, I was livid. I stormed down the stairs and into his room (with the gift I had made him in hand, which happened to be a hand painted gum-ball machine bank that had date ideas written on each gum-ball that I created) and said “your boys can wait, we need to talk”. As soon as his game was paused, he looked at me with the smuggest smile and my heart dropped to my stomach. This is when I knew that I had been played by a sociopath.
To clarify, my ex used to joke around about being a sociopath and how he learned at a very young age how to mimic people’s emotions and such….I thought he was just joking (all the time)..
An even longer story short (because I have so much to cover in this post) I broke up with him and he eventually decided to drive the car I bought him back to his family (which ended up being in Texas now) along with all the possession my family had bought him, including the Nintendo Switch I had bought us for Christmas….Totally not bitter still…. But when I went into the room that used to be his, after he had left, I noticed he left behind all the scrapbooks and memories that my mom and I had made him under a desk on the floor, for me to deal with.
After the breakup, I did not deal with the stress, depression, and manic episodes very well. I ended up downloading dating apps and just trying to fill a void within myself that felt like a gaping blackhole of pain and heartache. About two or three weeks after the breakup, I had started talking to a Marine who lived on Camp Pendleton. When I decided to finally meet up with him, he ended up telling me a lot of deep stories and life events that he had been through. Since I am an empath, I empathized with him and eventually agreed to go back to the barracks with him to play video games (he knew I was a gamer girl who played Xbox) and hang out. When I walked into his room, I noticed a massive military knife on his bed. The first thing he did was walk to his bed and put the knife on the corner of the dresser next to his bed. We were alone. His roommate was on leave. Long story short, I had gotten myself into a predicament that I should not have put myself in and I was raped. After he raped me, he looked at me and said “I always feel bad when I finish and the girl hadn’t gotten off….I feel as if I just used them like a dirty old cum rag”…. he then proceeded to tell me that “the rumors are true, Asian women really are loud in bed”….I was “loud” because I was trying to get someone to come in…I was “loud” because I was in pain… I was “loud” because everything in my body did not want this to be happening but I was afraid to do anything because he had told me about his anger management issues and there was a military knife less than two feet away.
After this incident, I ended up meeting a really sweet and genuine guy who I ended up dating for two months (end of March into May). I was in love. He was smart, sensitive, caring, and goofy. Unfortunately he decided to call things off because he got accepted into Cal Poly SLO and he could not deal with a “long distance” relationship and he was afraid because this was his first relationship. Needless to say I was heartbroken… I know two months isn’t a long time, but we had been seeing each other every week after our first date, despite that we lived an hour- an hour and a half away depending on traffic (sometimes longer). He was one of the first people I told that I was raped and it was on our second date (a week and a half after the incident). He just held me as I cried and told me that he would never want to do anything to hurt me and that he respected me too much to ever do anything that would make me remotely uncomfortable. Since our breakup, we have talked very little and continue to live our separate lives. I continue to miss him and our relationship.
JUNE-AUGUST
Need a break? Because I need one😅
Moving forward….This summer I had a tonsillectomy, at the ripe age of 23…. My surgeon told me that this was the absolute worst age to get this surgery and that recovery would be rough….rough was an understatement, but I had to get this surgery because my body started to become immune to antibiotics and I started to need steroids as well in order to get rid of my tonsillitis. The recovery process after the surgery was horrendous. I was on a Percocet and a half + 800 mg of Motrin every 4 hours because of the pain. There were mornings where my body was shaking/convulsing from the amount of pain I was in. I had never wanted to die more in my entire life. I would have rather broken all the bones in my entire body. The pain from my tonsillectomy was unbearable.
After I fully recovered, I was ready to start my fall semester! I decided to cut myself some slack and only take 16 units 😬
But before this semester started, I had lost two friendships and was manipulated by one of those friends into doing sexual activities that I did not want to do. I was guilted into performing acts that I did not want to do and spiraled into a world of self-loathing and confusion. This person had known about my sexual assault, my past history with toxic relationships, and all my insecurities.
Once the new semester had started, I immediately regretted the amount of classes that I decided to take. This was one of the most difficult semesters because I had to do volunteer work, a multitude of group projects, presentations, and papers, and commute 4 days a week again.
September-December
During this past fall semester, I got myself into a new relationship that lasted less than a month (because he was an absolute mess), I contemplated taking my own life several times, and my “brother” figure who I have known for over 7 years moved to Oregon. He was one of my biggest support systems and he was more of a brother to me than my biological brother. When he left, I have never cried more in a week than when I was first born. It was rough, because during this time, my kickboxing gym that I had been going to since January shut down out of the blue (they gave us less then a weeks notice). My two sources that I went to in order to deal with stress, anxiety, and depression were gone in the matter of a couple weeks.
I also found out this semester that my college screwed me over and I cannot graduate with the major I wanted to graduate with, because academic advising messed up my major. Instead of graduating with a Psychology Degree, I will be graduating with a Social Science of Psychology degree. If I wanted to graduate Fall of 2020 (like originally planned) I had to stick to a major in Social Science, otherwise I would need to take 16 more COURSES and spend another 2 and a half years at the university I am at now.
This was the most difficult year of my entire life and to top it off, I just came back from a date tonight, 12/23, with a guy who confessed to being 19 years old… He lied to me about his age up until we met in person. After confessing his age, he told me I can either accept it or kiss his ass 😁 Mind you, I turned 24 this year and instead of kissing his ass, I sent him to the block party.
Believe it or not, other events happened in-between all the events that I did mention in this post, but I will probably turn them into small posts next year. If I were to have mentioned EVERYTHING that has happened this year, this would be a 20 page blog post.
As I sit here reflecting upon this year, I can’t help but tear up, smile, laugh, and shake my head……I made it.
In the end, I finished both semesters with all A’s, made some incredible friends, and got the invitation to be apart of one of my professors’ research teams. I have discovered strength in myself that I never knew I had and fought inner demons almost everyday. I have wept, laughed so hard my stomach hurt, gone mentally crazy from lack of sleep and stress, and woken up with swollen eyes more often than not.
For those of you who have lasted this long, thank you. Thank you for taking time out of your day or night to read my post.
I hope to post more in 2020, but until then, I hope you all have a blessed holiday season and an incredible 2020. I know 2020 is going to be good. I can feel it. It’s going to be my year! I also got this tattoo to remind me of how strong I am and to keep going. I dedicate this tattoo to all of you who have supported me from the beginning and to those who happen to stumble upon this post and find that you wanted to continue to read my blog.
“Sometimes I feel like giving up, but I just can’t, it isn’t in my blood” – Shawn Mendes
The ribbon with the two different colors are dedicated to domestic violence and sexual assault victims. Anyone who has gone through traumatic events, you are not alone, your story is important and I love you. We are in this together, #metoo.
May God Bless and Watch Over YOU Always ❤
-Jen
Believe Me, It Gets Better 