FAMILY.

I NEVER WANTED TO TELL THIS PART

Before I continue, there is something I want to make clear.

It genuinely pains me to have to talk about some of this.

I am a private person.

Telling strangers the details of my personal life does not come naturally to me.

If anything, I would've preferred to keep most of it private and never have to explain any of this publicly.

I'm not doing this because I want attention.

I'm not asking anybody to feel sorry for me.

For a long time, I believed the best way to deal with everything happening around me was to remain quiet, not react and continue with my life.

I wanted to move on.

I wanted to raise my son.

I wanted our life to feel normal again.

I didn't want these experiences to become the centre of my existence.

Silence just didn't give me the peace I thought it would.

IT WAS NICE

For a brief period of time, it was nice.

I don't want to rewrite that part simply because I know what happened afterward.

We went out together as a family.

The kids naturally got along.

There were ordinary moments inside the house that felt good.

And for the first time in a while, I started to feel like I had something resembling a full home.

There were kids in the house.

Family outings.

People around.

Something that looked a little like the picture I'd been promised.

And I liked that.

He could also be charming.

And despite all the questions I'd had before moving in, somewhere along the way I started developing genuine feelings for him.

That's important for me to admit too.

Because it's very easy to look backward, knowing what I know now, and flatten an entire relationship into one thing.

It wasn't one thing.

There were moments when I liked being around him.

There were moments when I cared about him.

Because even during the good moments, the strange incidents around me didn't completely stop.

They happened even inside his house.

And that left me with a problem I still couldn't solve.

Was it him?

Was it somebody else?

At one point, I even wondered about his tenant downstairs.

Honestly?

God knows.

I certainly didn't.

All I knew was that I'd moved into the home of the person I'd originally suspected might somehow be connected to what was happening...

and somehow I still didn't have an answer.

THE MASK DIDN’T STAY UP FOR LONG

It wasn't long before I started seeing another version of him.

Maybe a month and a half.

Maybe two months.

Not long.

There would be sudden bursts of anger directed at me.

Arguments that seemed much bigger than whatever had started them.

And texts.

A lot of texts.

Long messages while we were literally inside the same house.

Arguments.

What he expected from a woman.

What I should be doing.

What he wanted.

Honestly, I can't remember most of the specifics anymore.

I remember the volume of it.

It was a lot.

At some point, I started considering moving out.

But I had basically just moved in.

My son was there.

My belongings were there.

I'd moved my life into this house.

Leaving wasn't as simple as packing a suitcase and driving twenty minutes away.

I'd need help.

A truck.

Someone to move everything.

And then I'd have to take all of it back across the water on a ferry.

I had literally just done this.

So I tried to be patient.

I told myself he was stressed.

Maybe living together was an adjustment.

Maybe things would settle down.

And there was something else keeping me there too.

I had started caring about him.

That's the uncomfortable part about looking backward.

You can recognize that somebody's behaviour was unacceptable and still acknowledge that you had real feelings for them while it was happening.

Those things can exist at the same time.

Mine did.

THE PUNCHING BAG

Sometimes he was stressed about money.

Sometimes it was something else.

Whatever the problem was, increasingly I felt like I was the person standing there absorbing his emotions.

Like a punching bag.

There are moments from that period that I still remember with uncomfortable clarity.

One of them was when he spat on me.

I can still see it.

That's one of those images I haven't been able to get out of my head.

There were comments too.

Things like:

“You should die.”

“You should just become a drug addict.”

And other comments involving death.

Enough that death-related comments almost became their own category.

I don't remember every sentence precisely anymore.

I'm not going to manufacture quotes I can't remember.

I remember enough.

And somehow, I kept forgiving things.

I wish I could give you some brilliant explanation for what was going through my mind.

I can't.

I was exhausted.

I was already trying to process everything else happening around me.

I'd moved my son and my life into this house.

I'd developed feelings for him.

And I think somewhere inside all of that, my ability to recognize when enough was enough had become completely distorted.

Present me can look backward and see things that past me kept trying to work around.

Maybe that's what exhaustion does.

Maybe that's what constantly trying to make sense of chaos does.

Maybe part of me was still holding onto the version of the home I'd seen at the beginning.

Probably all of it.

But whatever explanation I gave myself at the time, there were moments that should never have happened.

Spitting on somebody isn't stress.

Telling somebody they should die isn't a bad day.

There are lines.

And some of them had already been crossed.

THEN CAME THE MONEY

Not long after the relationship began, the financial picture started changing too.

There was the client.

According to what I was told, the client couldn't pay him for a project.

He'd already spent money.

Then there was the car accident.

The car was supposedly totaled.

Now he didn't have a car.

The person I'd originally met had presented himself very differently.

Busy.

Experienced.

Financially capable.

Remember, this was the same person who had once talked about putting $100,000 into my wellness business.

Now he was struggling financially.

And gradually, I started covering things.

Groceries.

Rent.

Ordinary necessities.

It wasn't one dramatic request where suddenly everything changed.

The direction of the money gradually reversed.

The person who had entered my life talking about investing money into something I wanted to build...

was becoming somebody I was financially supporting.

At the time, I was looking at each problem as it arrived.

A client who couldn't pay.

Money already spent.

A totaled car.

Stress.

Life.

Things happen.

Looking backward, though, I see the sequence differently.

Because the money problems didn't end there.

And knowing where the money eventually went next...

that matters.