Exes and Why’s – TW: abusive exes, low self esteem, SH

A note from Desi to any who read this: it is long. It is traumatizing. There are many many triggers here, so please do not read if you feel you can not handle it. Jess wrote this to journal our some of her past trauma and work through some other feelings of lingering self esteem problems and self hate. This is not meant to be a pity post or for attention. This is simply a way for Jess to translate some of her past horror out of her mind and purge it. We appreciate any who might read and sympathize, and would be happy to discuss with others. We do not, however, write these words for anything but a way to let go of the past and heal. Thank you in advance.

Jess here. Today, I’m feeling like ranting about my exes. The original host, Maria, is gone, but I got all of her memories, and it all feels very personal (of course, it also includes a stark feeling of imposter syndrome, but meh). But she was gone in roughly 2013 and after that, I was the host.

Okay, so first up were a variety of high school boyfriends. Those were all more or less sucky, but in a way that was a childish love, like puppy love. I thought I knew what love was, and I thought I knew heartbreak, but no, I was kidding myself prior to the adult kind of love and loss. Sometimes I wish all my heartbreaks could’ve just stayed a safe and silly variety like those high school boyfriend days.

Then we have college, my first college boyfriend, my first real adult relationship. (Names will be omitted, I’ll just use initials to keep some extent of coherency.) Z was so cool. And sweet. And funny. We had sex outside on the lawn in front of my dorm room. Z was exciting. Z was a womanizer and didn’t really care who knew it. I had the hottest body of my whole life in college, but I still felt like not enough in a size 12 compared to size 4 A, or size 2 C, or cheerleader model Barbie, or actress Scarlett Johansen lookalike… I punched a brick wall after I caught Z flirting with some girls. I still to this day don’t know if I broke something, because poverty yay, but it bruised, swelled up, and I couldn’t use it for weeks. The worst part, when Z dumped me, he moved on with a girl who looked eerily like me, but size 20/22ish. My jealousy and rage was over nothing but blind paranoia and stupidity, the guy clearly couldn’t care less about looks.

After college, (I only had one semester, couldn’t afford it after that and the student loan debt from just that had me paralyzed with fear) I met a guy online. E was charming. He wasn’t classically handsome, but he was tall, and funny, and he paid for a bus ticket for me to go meet him. My entire life had crashed around my ears anyways, so I was running entirely on mania, loneliness, rejection, and Red Bull. When I made it there, he introduced me to his other girlfriend and I felt a record skip in my brain. I’d definitely been into girls before, and in all honesty the first girl I ever kissed in high school was followed closely by the second girl, her girlfriend, so yes I’d sort of been in a situation like this before. But not long term. And I didn’t know if I could do it without jealousy. But I was there, and had two weeks before I had to go to my mom’s, so I did what I do best, and tried out a new thing, hoping it wouldn’t be like the time I gave wasabi a try.

K was beautiful. After getting to know her a bit, I adored her. She kissed me with little nibbles at the end, and bit like a piranha, but my entire body felt aflame. She has the most gorgeous heart shaped ass I’ve ever seen. E was slowly being pushed aside I guess, and tried to regain control in the way only a man knows how, through domination. When kink got brought into our relationship, or more accurately, I was dropped headfirst into it, I was thrilled and terrified in equal measures. The flogging made me feel alive. The fire cupping made me feel electric. The submission to E made me feel safe. The bondage made me feel cared for. But eventually, like all good things, it went south pretty quick.

We regularly attended a kink community event, a Rocky Horror Picture Show event, where they played the show on a canvas projector but had people in front of it reenacting the show in hilarious ways. There were also other kink things going on, like a rope master tying people up, groups of people handing out floggings and canings like candy, and various other huddles of people in various states of dress doing various things to each other. It was in this moment that Andi was born. It was a hedonist’s paradise, with the ticket counter selling alcohol, and E made sure that we were always at least tipsy. Tipsy for me meant easy access for Andi to get out.

Andi was the life of the party, participating in everything she could, flirting outrageously with anything with a pulse. We met J there, a terrifying giant of a man, who was naturally a cuddly bear of a man, and we also met B, who had piercings in fun places, and we met a girl whose name I forget, but she tried to free us from what she saw was a clearly abusive relationship, and Andi did her best to take advantage of the girl’s concern. Now, all this comes back to E and K, as of course, Andi’s outrageous flirting made them both jealous. It’s fine to talk the poly talk, but few can actually walk the poly walk. Myself included.

After we got home, K locked herself in the bathroom with a razor and insisted she was going to kill herself. E and I tried to knock the door down. For a shitty apartment, those doors seemed like they were made of brick. When we finally got her to open the door, she’d only cut across, not up and down, but there were a lot, and some were deep. We bandaged her up and took her to the in care intake the next day. I discovered then that she was undergoing a process that made me beyond outraged and not a little terrified my own self: Electro Shock Therapy. She was practically a zombie when we picked her up. She twitched, often. She couldn’t remember things. She slept a lot. E and I fought, with him saying this was making her better, and I hadn’t been there long enough to understand, and me saying it was disgusting and monstrous, and turning her into a vegetable. Shortly after, I had to go to my mom’s, and E dumped me when he dropped me off at the bus station. His parting words were “you’re just too much to deal with”. These words would become a constant hurtful mantra in life until recently.

K hadn’t dumped me, but long distance wasn’t working out much, so we went out separate ways. I got a job at a shitty McDonald’s inside of a Walmart, a special hell of a place. While with E and K, I had met another guy, I’m going to call him A/N because he went by two different names at different times in our lives, and he’s kind of important to this story. We met at a munch, which is basically just a lunch or dinner party kinky people attend, but no kinky events or clothing so as to be allowed into a nice restaurant. A/N was gorgeous. Tall, blue eyes, a poet for gods’ sake, pouty lips that could do despicably amazing things… In the words of an alter we once had that was a ’50s era housewife, he was a dreamboat.

A/N stayed in touch with me when I went to my mom’s, and eventually got a bus ticket to come visit. He asked me to marry him, in the McDonald’s where I worked. It was cheesy, and dumb, but my cheesy dumb romantic heart adored it, so I said yes. In retrospect, I believe it was at that moment I would begin to learn; when a girl says yes to a guy, unless they’re a good guy, they believe they’ve got her then, hook, line, and sinker, and they quit trying. The romance dries up awful quick, and eventually turns into “get my beer woman!” and we become the side piece to their videogame addiction. A couple weeks later, I ran into a guy while working late to avoid A/N and the rest of my shitty family. Misery and BPD made me stay to hang out with the guy. Andi agreed to the date with him.

Naturally, A/N was not pleased by things after that. Was it cheating? Without a doubt. Andi wasn’t always the one in control, only when I was drinking did she come out. The rest was my own fuckup. But A/N had already mostly given up on us by that point, we were just a bed to crash on, a ride to the GameStop so he could get new games, a house to hook up his Xbox and play games. I felt ignored. With A, the new guy, I felt beautiful. I felt sexy and fun again. 

I wore a slutty corset top and jeans to our first date, and went home with him. His dad thought I was a hooker. I had a fight with my mom’s boyfriend about being out overnight, as if I were his teenage daughter. He kicked me out when I told him I wasn’t, in fact, his teenage daughter. I stayed with A. Of course, A/N wasn’t happy with this at all. I told him to go back home and I’d mail him his ring. He told me where to stick it. I flung it into the darkness of the Walmart parking lot. Hopefully, some girl would come along and be a happy scavenger with a new shiny. It was fake anyways, and turned my finger green.

Life with A was wonderful at first. We had sex all the time, in interesting positions I didn’t even know I could bend into. I joked that I was a human sex pretzel. A played videogames also, but he included me, and found it the funniest thing in the world when I got so obsessed with Final Fantasy XVIII that I kicked him off his own Xbox for days until I finished it. He adored Pokemon, so I drew him a little booklet with all his favorite Pokemon, and one of me and him in Pokemon trainer outfits with a baby Pikachu. Life was great, and we were happy.

Then, our first fight happened. I can’t even recall what it was about. I just remember that it was bad. When A got angry, he got violent. That’s when Desi came out. She grabbed what she could carry in her hands, called my grandmother, and took off walking. She walked us out of what had descended into an abusive situation. And like a dumbass, when A called a week later begging for forgiveness, I walked us back into it. A is the person who made me believe for the longest that people don’t change. A cycle of vicious abuse played out, I would run back, he would hurt me, Desi would leave, he would call and apologize, saying he’d changed, he’d gotten help, he loved me, please come back, and I did. I fell for it every time. For over six years, off and on.

In between that time, on an off time with A, I moved back to the state where I met E and K. A/N was also from here, and at one point we reconnected. But first, let me talk about M. She was amazing. When we first met, she was in the closet and went by he. Over time, she reintroduced herself, and of course I was accepting. I don’t judge, I just want people to be happy with themselves, however that may look like or be called. M was funny, and nerdy, and wore a trench coat, drove a shitty Honda that had seen better days, and liked Repo the Genetic Opera and anime. She took me to comic stores and game nights with friends, and inspired my love for table top gaming and World of Darkness. The sex wasn’t always the best, her dysphoria would hit her at awkward moments, but she knew I had DID and loved me even still. I talked her into shaving and wearing pretty outfits and she talked me into being more accepting of my broken parts and letting the alters have their free time. M is the first and only partner Desi has ever had. It was a mistake letting M meet Desi.

M was poly also, and at one point we dated K. Yes, the gorgeous ex with the heart shaped ass. That area was such a small world. K had lost her figure, but by then, hell so had I, so we met again and fell back very much in love. This time around, though, I began to learn that things weren’t quite all they seemed with K. First off, K had divulged to me of her many SA encounters. I had actually met one of the alleged abusers, and was horrified. I cut all contact with him immediately. E had also apparently abused her in various ways, they’d had a kid together, but her parents had the child and E was trying to pursue custody. K also divulged to me she had DID as well. This is where things get very murky for me. K had previously never displayed a single sign of DID. Now, suddenly years later, and she exhibits every single sign, in over the top and dramatic ways, all the way to having a full on seizure before a switch. Her switches would also correspond with mine; Alli would come out and K would have a little alter switch out, Andi would come out and K had a wild party animal switch, I had a male alter at one point named Andre that would come out and of course K had a male alter that came out to play videogames with him. All of her alters had names similar to my alters. Alison was her little, Andromeda was her party animal, Anthony was her male, Destiny was her version of Desi. I didn’t know then what to think of it, nor do I know now. I do know, according to people I’ve spoken with about her since, she has not had any signs of DID since being with me. It’s… A lot.

Back to Desi and M. Desi left for a two part reason: number one, K made her very uncomfortable, being an escort but refusing to divulge whether she took treatments after her jobs or get a screening done to ensure M and us were safe after having sex with her. Desi strongly suspected she had gotten herpes somewhere along the way and insisted we cut off sleeping with her until this was divulged and addressed, which consequently caused a fight and the break up. Number two, M began using Desi as a sex toy. No, I wish I were joking. 

M began paying attention to things that would trigger Desi out, and manipulating her into coming out in order to have sex. With her and only her. I was ignored and neglected. I fell into a very depressed state when I realized that’s what was happening, feeling the imposter syndrome worse than ever. I couldn’t give M what she wanted, I always triggered her dysphoria. When I was out, M would ignore me, if I tried to initiate even cuddling, she would jump up and insist she had things to do. I began to self harm at a rate even I found mildly alarming, but I felt beyond numb and didn’t care. Desi began to feel used, and would take scalding hot showers and scrub our skin until we bled. She had enough and left, checking us into a facility. This would be our second or third voluntary intake, but the most important one, as we had a breakthrough and finally got diagnosed.

After the disaster with M and K, we went back to my mom’s. We got back with A for a time, and got pregnant. This was a disaster. Mom had a lot of people staying at her house at the time, one being a couple that we all knew. The girl was about a size zero, had flaming red hair, and wore the sluttiest clothes she could find while prancing around A. Naturally, he was drooling quite a lot. During my pregnancy, I was diagnosed with preeclampsia, a condition which caused a lot of swelling and could cause seizures among other dangerous complications. I weighed 305 lbs the day before I had my daughter. This girl flirting with A was public enemy number one in my book, and A was a shithead for telling me he was allowed to look, just not touch, considering I had looked and even touched when I was with A/N and got with A. Apparently in his eyes, once a cheater always a cheater.

Once the baby came, I was placed on a variety of medicines. I couldn’t breastfeed anyways, I’d had morphine running through my bloodstream when I first had her so she was bottle fed, and wouldn’t latch on after that. Yet another reason I was a failure in everyone’s eyes. I began taking Lithium, Tegretol, Halydol, and some other medicine that helped me sleep. I was constantly nauseous, constantly tired, and couldn’t focus on a thing. I barely ate, and slept a lot. Sometimes I would sleep through the baby crying for food or a change and A’s family would treat me like I was a drug addict. They limited my contact with the baby, always taking her from my arms, worried I’d drop her. A ignored me. I’d discovered he was cheating on me multiple times already, and while it hurt, I had fallen into an “I deserve this for leaving him, and I cheated on A/N with A so I’m a cheater too” mentality. My self worth was at its absolute lowest point.

I got ready for bed one night and took a large fistful of each of my meds.

When I woke up, I had a tube down my throat and bandages on my arms. Apparently, Andi had decided to add insult to injury, and cut our arms to practically pieces with a kitchen knife after I’d lost consciousness from the pills. I began a month long stay in an inpatient care. When I was released, A broke up with me, and kicked me out. His parting words were “you’re just too much, I can’t deal with this”.

I could return to my mom’s roach infested home that had already been raided by SWAT for the druggies living there, be homeless, or accept the offer of staying with a friend. None of these were conducive environments for caring for a child. I had a terrible nomadic abusive life growing up and wanted so much better for my baby. I signed papers with A’s sister, granted temporary custody until a time where I could house and support my daughter properly without question. When I left to stay with my friend, my daughter, 2 at the time, clung to me and wailed for me not to go, to take her with me. I have never felt more heartbroken in my life than that night.

My friend was, you guessed it, a new boyfriend. I hadn’t intended it to happen, he was just a friend to start with. His name also started with an E, so we’ll call him E2. He was one of those guys that masquerades as a gentleman but has a smile like a shark. The sense of danger was alluring. Of course, Andi always did like playing with fire. E2 also had a girlfriend, living in another state, B. She was the opposite of both him and K like night was to day. B was soft, naive, snuggly, bright, bubbly, cheerful. She was sheltered, and I absolutely adored her. She practiced natural remedies for all ailments, but did firmly believe that doctors needed to medicate sometimes, like for vaccines, and cancer, etc, but St. John’s Wort could and would help with my depression. E2 was… Well he was crazy in a way even Desi hadn’t expected. We were together for only a few months, and it was passionate and wild and carefree. B had visited, but gone back home to her state, and it was just me and E2. One day he said that he had to go sit time in jail for some moving violations he had so he could get his license reinstated. He left all his belongings behind. I waited the two weeks he said that he’d be gone. He never called. He never let me know when he was out. We’d made plans for me to pick him up. I left countless voicemails.

Three weeks and two days after he’d left to clear his name, he finally answered. I was a buzzkill. He’d been picked up by one of his friends and been partying the entire week since his release. He had gotten a ticket to go move in with B. Would I be so kind as to mail his clothes and laptop to her address? Oh, by the way Jess, really you were just such a handful, too much really.

Those words ate away at me. Too much. I was too much. I was a handful. I was too much drama. Too much insanity. I was always too much.

I returned to A/N and M. It turns out, K was a bit of a mess herself, and had decided she needed a wheelchair. Why? I really couldn’t tell you. She’d taken an elective surgery and insisted she needed one of those bags that empties her stomach, and could barely walk on her own, oh and by the way K is now J and goes by they/them, and was SA’ed by M, and me, and several others, and was going to Britain to be with the love of their life. I still don’t regret that I shook their new partner’s hand and thanked them for removing J from our shores. The feeling of revenge for being falsely accused of assault was worth it a million times over. M and I didn’t last terribly long. I had picked up another girlfriend along the way, trans R, who was clingy and needy and also more than a little bit racist. That also didn’t last long, when R attempted to come between me and M. Shortly after, M spiraled into a complete mess and attempted to kill herself while I was trying to manage us moving, her having been in a car accident, and maintain our jobs and therapy. I left her in the intake facility, telling her she needed to focus on herself and for my own mental health, I couldn’t be a part of that.

A/N had me all to himself. He insisted we move to a neighboring state, where he had friends that would get him a job in security and he could make good money. Rekindling our relationship has been a bad idea. Like, the mother of all bad ideas. He treated me as if I ought to be grateful he’d taken me back after what I did to him. He felt it was his right to treat me as a belonging, not a person. I was not allowed to make my own choices, and he was not obligated to take care of me in any way. One night, he put his hands around my throat until I blacked out, continuing to have sex with me despite me being unconscious. He had punched me several times and I woke up to several bruises, and bleeding in intimate places. After that, I only slept with him if I was drunk or high, having picked up smoking pot to dull my anxiety attacks. I was constantly gaslighted by him. We would fight, and somehow he would end up forgiving me. Andi came out at some point and insisted on taking a trip to see a friend in a different state, which of course caused massive problems with A/N. Andi didn’t care of course, she hooked up with several people and partied the week away. I came home hungover and A/N telling me he wasn’t going to pick me up from the airport. He eventually did, but only after letting me sweat for several hours that I might end up homeless.

Around this time, I began talking with the most amazing man I’ve ever met, my current fiance. His name starts with a K, but I refuse to call him K2 because the first K doesn’t deserve that recognition, so we’ll  call my fiance KH. He messaged me on a kink website Desi has made a profile on in the hopes of finding someone fun but not like M, and I was beyond smitten. He was sweet, polite, and talked about his cat and how he would give anything to be someone’s everything. Of course, A/N hated him. But he had little say, since he had broken up with me this time, so I was my own person. KH and I stayed up stupidly late hours talking. We shared music, poetry, literature, movies, pictures. He was funny, and sweet, and caring, and passionate. He told me that he’d never treat me the way others had. Never lift a hand to me except in love. He accepted my alters and various mental illnesses and told me I was so much the stronger for them, that I might see them as a curse, but he felt they were a blessing, because they made me me, and he loved all of me.

Naturally, this was around the time A/N realized he was going to lose me forever, and then he’d have to find a new punching bag. KH and I talked it over, but he was terrified for me, and when he spoke, my brain translated his fear into controlling possessiveness. A/N won, and KH and I had a messy breakup. It was the most unfortunate timing for my self preservation instincts to kick in. A/N began to treat me with kindness, and spoke of getting his dream job as security ensured, getting us a house, a car, that I wouldn’t have to work if I didn’t want to and I could just indulge my hobbies and volunteer (I have wanted to volunteer for several causes for a long time now). He began romancing me again, and life was pretty good. I worked at a temp agency and took gigs doing catering and working in a college cafeteria. We were very poor, and I picked up smoking cigarettes when the pot ran out. We visited food pantries and slept in our shitty half broken down truck in parking lots and parks.

One day, I went with him to the food pantry. We were out of cigarettes and I offered to take the truck and pick up my check and some cigarettes while he waited for our turn to get food. The likelihood that I’d be back before our turn was incredibly high. A/N decided I was going to hook up with someone and ditch him. We fought. He snatched the keys and ran to the truck, saying I could stay, and find somewhere else to sleep that night instead. All my things were in the truck, so I ran to stop him. I grabbed my purse and phone, and tried to stop him from leaving. In the process, he knocked me in the cheek with his elbow, leaving a bruise, and clawed my shoulder (I still have the scar). After pushing me down in the parking lot, he slammed the door and began to pull out. I tried to get out of his way, but he continued swerving as if to run me over. I only managed to not get hit because I stumbled over a rock in the parking lot. He sped off and didn’t return.

A man and his wife had witnessed the entire scene. The man gave me some smokes and the wife helped clean the blood off me, then they convinced me to call the police. The couple stayed with me while I gave my statement, then took me to get my check, get some cigarettes, and dropped me off at a women’s shelter, wishing me the best of luck. I wish I knew their names or numbers to call and thank them for changing my life completely. The shelter helped me get back on my feet. They secured some assistance for the trial against A/N. The attorney told me since it was such a vicious abuse case, I could just give a written and video statement and not have to face my attacker in trial. My mom arranged for me to move back in with her. She was dating someone new, and he wasn’t an abusive shithead like her ex. Somehow my mother had her life together more than I did. I sent a pitiful message to KH telling him he was right, A/N did terrible things to me, and I was beyond sorry for how I’d acted to him. He didn’t respond.

Several months went by and I got back my own feet. I found a new therapist, visited my daughter as often as I could, and got a job I actually enjoyed. The only downside was, while mom’s boyfriend treated her like a queen, he hated me. One night, he kept me up until 4am, screaming at me for not taking care of my mom or the apartment, and how I was an ungrateful lazy loser. Lovely, when they constantly drained my bank account going out to bars every weekend, leaving me broke.

Months had gone by and KH finally responded. He had moved on in his life and become the leader of a spiritual pagan Facebook group and did tarot readings professionally, so he had been busy and not seen my message. We reconnected, tentatively at first, and rebuilt a friendship. Over the next several months, that flame from before was rekindled, and we began to talk about a relationship again. We had matured individually in our time apart, but it became clear we both still felt something for each other. I was amazed.

Eventually I left my mom’s and moved in with KH. We have had our ups and downs, our bumps in the road. Witnessing my DID long distance was one thing, but witnessing it in person was harder, and for a time that caused some problems. I have nearly left him at one point, not due to abuse or being cheated on, but because I was scared, so so scared, that I would manage to fuck it all up somehow and he would see me like all the others, as being too much. When I told him that, he sat me down and held me and talked.

He said “you could never ever be too much. You aren’t perfect, but neither am I, and you still love me, flaws and all, as I love you. Those other guys saw you as too much because they were jerks and assholes. They didn’t really think you were too much, it was just what they said to justify mistreating you, make it your fault and not theirs. You will never be too much for me, and I’ll be by your side until you don’t want me anymore, hopefully when we’re old and grey and you can whack me with your walking cane and push me down a hill in my wheelchair.”

I knew then that KH was indeed the love of my life then. No matter what, we would pull through. We may argue, but we talk it over once we’ve calmed down. He never has raised a hand to me in anger. He has not once cheated on me, and in fact has told me any time a woman tried to hit on him. We attempted poly, but some of my traumas from it came out and he called it off immediately and focused all his attention and devotion on me. I have nothing but endless gratitude for him and know that I’ve finally found my home, my safe place, and am healing from my past exes and why’s.