Lost

Recommended for people 21+

Content and Trigger Warnings: Language & Profanity, Self-harm, drug or alcohol use; Drug or alcohol abuse; addiction, mental health triggers like social isolation, anti-social behavior, symptoms of depression; social anxiety, panic attacks, manic episodes, emotional or mental abuse, gaslighting, manipulation; narcissistic abuse, fat shaming, fatphobia, graphic depictions of consensual sex

Standing on a Log in a River Stream

After the guy-I-was-in-love-with-for-longer-than-I-should-have-been confessed to me that he had slept with my roommate behind my back multiple times, after he had broken up with me, I had felt so utterly lost.

In one night, I went from being in love with my two best friends to just realizing that I had actually lost them both. How could I trust or love anyone? I had begun to question if I truly loved them and if they truly loved me.

During the tail end of an overnight acid trip that was supposed to bond us, shortly after he dumped me, I had told my roommate that if she ever slept with him, especially knowing how I felt, I would cease my friendship with her immediately. And yet, the one thing, the one boundary I put in place with her, she failed to meet.

You maybe wondering why I had to even say anything in the first place to her… It's because this is the kind of woman that would brag & laugh about how many friend groups she slept through (and later ruined). And earlier on in living with her I had suspected she was interested in him more than platonically. She knew how hard I took the breakup and she knew that I was in love with him and still in love with him despite him breaking up with me in the way he did. Which was telling me he wasn't ready despite initiating "a move" and confessing his feelings "I can't stop thinking about you" he said and than not even 3 weeks later of ups and downs said "he's not ready for a relationship" and wanted to go back to being friends like nothing had ever happened. As if he never opened, and then proceeded to spill an entire can of beans which he never intended to clean up. Especially since I was the only one tripping on them.

Soon after finding out, I mapped out all their lies and manipulative tactics over the course of a few short months. I remember her promising me that she "would never do something like that knowing it would hurt our friendship," (her exact words as she grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes!) but she still slept with him, still did it anyway. After I confronted her, she told me that at the time she had called it off with him just before my birthday in the early fall not mentioning their second tryst that happened more recently until I brought it up. I guess the recent second time around, had been making him feel more guilty.

And she only "called it off" when she liked someone else briefly while the-guy-I-was-in-love-with-longer-than-I-should-have-been and I were struggling to be friends again. I hesitated to get close again obviously, feeling vulnerable with someone who constantly disappointed me and left me heartbroken. But also, I had just really missed our friendship or our connection, whatever it might have been. So then, just as before, we got close again since it seemed inevitable we would (but just to me, apparently.) We were so close that the connection we shared seemed hard to ignore. This time my roommate noticed and witnessed our connection first-hand. She didn't really see how things transpired the first time around because she had been in a really intense long-term relationship with a guy who hated our friend group. (He broke up with her after thinking that she was into someone else, another person, in our friend group. Guess what, she was! She cheated on her boyfriend with him!)

When he and I were first becoming friends, things were different, of course. But this time around, she saw that my connection was deeper than the connection she formed with him when I was out of the picture. And even though he obviously preferred her physically, she just couldn't seem to get him to like her back. This made her so jealous that she slept with him again, after my birthday! But get this, she never thought he would confess to me. She tried to swear him to a lifetime sentence with this secret- obviously a power move that failed.

When he told her about telling me everything just before I got back to our shared apartment to confront her, she got mad at him and blocked him on everything! Like at least he confessed! She wanted to keep it their dirty little secret- even if we remained friends for whatever reason she would've really taken a secret like that to her deathbed. I mean why not? She was clearly comfy lying to my face almost everyday when I complained or cried about him. Like she even tried to warn me about him, "Be careful" she said like babes? You're the warning I needed- I knew he sucked but as my best friend and roommate I expected you TO NOT SUCK. Why did the guy who continued to hurt me and act like a coward grow a pair of balls (for one night) to tell me what transpired between them?

Clearly, the guilt drove him crazy that one night when I deliberately separated them to hang out with him on my own, we got so incredibly high off of a ~single~ joint that he not only confessed to their trysts but first told me that he loved me. "Phoebe, I love you," he blurted to me after we finished that joint, and he attempted to make us some food before having a nervous breakdown.

I didn't know whether or not to believe him when he had said it out loud. And I certainly couldn't trust my roommate. She manipulated both of us so much after our break-up that I had felt unsafe living with her. She made me feel even more unsafe after I confronted her. At the time, I was making unlivable wages at a Chipotle. I was barely making ends meet while I had looked for a better job post-graduation.

I had no idea what to do. I mean, obviously, I had to move out. I began looking almost immediately. I kicked my search into high gear when she texted me that I should move out from her room since I still wasn't talking to her after we got back from spending Thanksgiving with our families. I moved into her place in July, and it never felt like my place. Mainly because she lied about putting my name on the lease or registering my license plate with the building complex. I ended up seeing all the parking tickets I had through my old student account soon after I confronted her. Since she never put my name on the lease (how convenient for her!), she was able to kick me out (not legally!). She told me to go live with him instead because she "really doesn't want to live with someone she's not friends with..." LIKE, WHO'S FUCKING FAULT IS THAT, BABE? I was clear on what would keep our friendship going. Of course, I know that I couldn't actually keep them from sleeping together, but she knew what the consequences would be if and when she made that choice. And it wasn't the actual act of them fucking one another; it was the fact that both of them lied to me and snuck around behind my back. The worst part is hearing it from the guy who broke your heart in the first place instead of the friend who should've been the one who got you through it. (She did not.) She only ensured that this ongoing heartbreak hurt deeper. And so did he, by sleeping with the one person that resulted in a broken friendship and left me HOMELESS. He couldn't have picked anyone else, really?

He even offered for me to stay at his place the same Night of his Confessions. But I couldn't figure out if he meant as his lover in his room or as his roommate in the spare bedroom of his apartment. Either way, there was no chance in hell I'd stay with him. He broke my heart, slept with my roommate of all people, and lied and manipulated me continuously. This was already an escalated situation; months prior, he had broken up with me only a few weeks after he had told me he liked me, and we began trying to date. After being friends for so long, I had to admit it was awkward to be physical with him. His original break-up reason was that he "was not ready for a relationship." Really, no shit huh?

After he initially ended it, he thought that we could just go back to being friends again like nothing had ever happened. But if he didn't want anything to happen, then he should've never said anything in the first place. Especially since during his Night of Confessions, I found out it was because he was not "as sexually attracted to me as he would like to be." So, boom, there it is. I dead-ass asked him if it was because I was overweight, and he told me that "it was the only reason he wasn't fully attracted to me."

Like, what was I supposed to do with that information?? Oh phew, I thought it might've been my oddly shaped head or other random body parts that weren't to his liking, my mistake. His vanity was most likely rooted in deeply misogynistic ideologies he learned from the media and childhood. Sadly, I've noticed that when men say they are not attracted to a woman for whatever reason, this does not mean they still won't try touching or kissing you. It also certainly does not keep them from trying to sleep with you either.

It's funny because when I am not interested or attracted to a particular man (or woman), I do not end up kissing them anyway! And indeed, if I had kissed them once and realized I didn't like it, I would not do it again... or again… He, in fact, decided that he would do all those things. Actually, we did a lot, but we never technically had sex. My roommate liked to conveniently hold that over my head like I can't call him my ex or even say that what we had wasn't real if he didn't penetrate me. But kissing, touching, and sleeping over in each other's beds obviously doesn't mean anything, right, right... I think he believed that stupid notion too. Like we're modern humans we don't need to consummate a new relationship.

It took me a long time to undo my twisted thinking about this whole situation. I blamed myself for a lot of what transpired for a really long time. Then, after I had found out the truths (which, a part of me knew could happen, but really hoped it wouldn't) because I hoped that they loved me enough not to put me through that. But it's not a question of how much they loved me, but really how much more they loved themselves to be so unabashedly selfish in the first place. The absolute truth is that they didn't care about me; they weren't even thinking of me. Somehow, that made me feel even worse.

It also took me a long time to sort through all of the emotions and feelings I felt, especially right after his confessions. At the time, I took myself to a new hiking trail that I had never been to before. I made a point of going just to get lost. I put in some headphones, took some pictures, and just kept walking. I looked at no maps or directions, just kept walking until I felt as depleted on the outside as I did inside. Just letting my instincts take over and figure how to get myself out of this forest preserve, and then maybe out of my situation.

I did get lost for a while. And in that moment, I wasn't me, trying to get over two heartbreaks at once. I was nothing and no one. I saw the world from a new perspective, finally understanding the trajectory of where my life was headed: in the same toxic spiral over and over again.

It was at this moment I found God.

HAH! Got ya, I'm just kidding, sorry, I thought this was getting too depressing. Especially if you're thinking, hey, maybe a young early 20-something woman shouldn't be getting lost in the woods... on purpose. And wow, you're really so responsible and observant and caring, thank you. But my mental health was in such a horrible spot that if a crazed murderer decided to off me in the woods, then maybe it was fate! Happy to report though, I didn't get murdered or confronted in those woods by anyone, so I decided to take it as a sign of "hope" and seriously, I was just fresh out. But also… I would feel worse for the poor fucker who came across me since I felt so unstable that I think they'd be in more danger.

I later realized this lil excursion may have been another symptom of my mania/hypomania that would lead to my bipolar diagnosis a few months later. When I had both of these people in my life at once, I realized that the symptoms of my bipolar disorder were on full blast. Non-stop manic and depressive episodes, constant risky behaviors, and the worst part was that I didn't realize it was happening or how to control it. Certainly, cutting toxic people out of my life would always help, even if your own toxicity and grief makes you miss them.

Oh, don't worry, it wasn't all bad! Without good ole mania, I wouldn't have ended up fucking my roommate's ex-boyfriend! You know, the guy that dumped her for rightfully thinking she was cheating on him. We had a few laughs about how things turned out. I decided that if a guy as hot as that didn't have a problem with fucking fat, maybe it was always less about the sex.

It was more about someone's own issues with intimacy and insecurities that they had projected onto me. And I, for fuck's sake, realized I deserved better than that AND going forward, I would never let anyone treat me like that again.

And if any of this Situationship crap feels relatable to you, then you probably definitely deserve better too.

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