diary-of-my-devil

[diary-of-my-devil]

Sometime in December 2015, Her

She and I often volunteered together. My mom and her grandma were both registered to the same nonprofit organization and we would volunteer to work kid’s parties and fundraising dinners. It was nice, having someone my own age to hang out with when volunteering, considering until that point I had worked with adults my mom’s age or higher or watched over children.

We also went to the same school and had the same French class, so we had something to gossip about during slow times. 

Every year during the winter, this nonprofit would participate in my city’s winter parade. It was a spectacle, somewhat. Lots of parade floats and a couple high school marching bands and some school age running clubs all going along the same route for a couple miles. 

She and I happened to both be doing the parade that year. By that time, my hair was long gone already, something that he had lamented about. It was pink, green, and purple, and the shades of each color should not have gone as well together as they did. That day I also happened to be wearing fake nails, probably from a dollar store. I was self conscious about my nail biting habit.

And I tell you these things because I’m not primarily writing for an audience. Yes, you’re seeing this, you’re reading this, but it’s not for you. This was something I needed and figured that it may be an interesting story. I tell you the details I remember because they’re what I do remember. A lot of memories from this time are tainted, like they were dipped in an abandoned fishtank and now they’re all slimy and you can’t even tell what the colors used to look like.

Basically, I tell you about the fake nails, and the hair colors, and any detail about the outfits worn or weather conditions because it can be logged into my memory. Or, who knows, maybe you have an idea on my appearance and these little details I give help paint a larger story in your mind.

But I was wearing fake nails and the gloves we were provided with were kids sizes. I don’t think the sizes would’ve been a problem if not for the plastic nails trying to stab their way out of the hot pink knit. I ended up ditching the gloves, because there was no point.

It was cold, not really snowy but the ground was damp from rain. It was probably raining at the time too. I think my mom was running with my sister, or my sister was running by herself, and her grandma, my aunt essentially, was watching us. Or maybe not. 

I have done multiple parades since then and I have a faint memory of my youngest sister being in the back of my aunt’s van with me and my mom at the end of the parade route because it was so cold and rainy, but I can’t remember what year that was.

Either way, my mom being there or not being there isn’t too influential to the story.

She and I took our places on the parade float on this stupidly cold morning. It was probably early December in Michigan, so it was bound to be close to below freezing. The fact that it was the morning just made it a bit colder.

The parade had started and we waved at the people lined up on the street, throwing cheap candy towards the children and moving in ways that may have looked stupid but helped us to keep warm. 

About a quarter of the way through, I saw a familiar face in the crowd lined up on the street. This kid was remarkable, honestly, but not in a jaw-droppingly attractive way or anything. He was someone I went to school with for multiple years, a good chunk of elementary school and all of middle school. He had puffy blonde curls and many of my memories of this kid are him showing up to school every day in a Harry Potter robe with lipliner on his forehead.

He also kind of dated my best friend for a period of middle school. Kind of. I don’t know. Middle school relationships are confusing. They went to a dance together and it was a struggle to get my best friend up to dance with him. He was a weird kid and my friend also didn’t know how to reject proposals.

But I hadn’t seen him since eighth grade had ended, and I had waved at him from atop the parade float. He had waved back. If he recognized me up there with my hair cut off, I wouldn’t know. 

“Who was that?” She had asked me. I explained the history. An old classmate who kind of dated my best friend. There truly wasn’t more to the story than that. I don’t know what else could be there. 

She nodded along, seeming to understand. I probably made a joke about how he sucked at dancing. He did. He was enthusiastic, but dear god do not let this kid in the middle of a grade school dancefloor. I think my best friend still has videos that she had taken on her Ipod touch.

The parade ended maybe a couple hours later and I spent the rest of the day on the computer huddled up in pajamas, unable to warm up after hours in the cold. I had gotten a call semi early in the night from him and this was the first conversation with him that had brought me fear.

He asked me who I was flirting with earlier in the day. I was confused out of my mind. Flirted with? I spent most of the day with old ladies on a homemade parade float. He said I blew kisses to someone, and he wanted to know who he was.

It didn’t register then, or for a while after, how he would’ve gotten these allegations. I spent an hour crying and desperately trying to tell him that I never flirted with anyone, never blew a kiss to anyone. That the kid I had waved to was an old classmate of mine that I hadn’t seen in months, a somewhat ex of my best friend’s. I begged him to believe me.

I don’t remember how that conversation ended. If he finally believed me or he just wanted the conversation to be thrown out because we had been going in circles. That was the first time I had heard him angry and accusing me of things I know for a fact I didn’t do. 

Unfortunately, it was far from the last time.

[diary-of-my-devil]

Sometime In November 2015 (Her)

One of the biggest mistakes I had ever made in my life was this relationship, and one of the biggest mistakes I made in this relationship was introducing her to him.

She was a new friend of mine. A grade above me, in my French class. She was quiet and liked anime. She was also the granddaughter of another close family friend. Another family friend I consider an aunt.

He had some knowledge of my friends. He knew of my best friend since I was 9, and one of the friends I had made earlier in the school year who was cool and had green eyes and listened to Twenty One Pilots. He had some knowledge on a few guy friends, but he didn’t express much concern about them because they were in their own relationships.

During one of the times where she and I had volunteered together, my phone had died and she so graciously let me use her phone to call him. Big fucking mistake. 

I introduced them over the phone and I thought it was great that they got along. They both played video games and such, meanwhile the only game console I had in my entire life was the Wii and the only games we had were Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. They had talked about god knows what video game and I thought it was great. 

She comes back later.

[diary-of-my-devil]

Sometime In October 2015

I don’t recall this date, but I know it was early in the relationship. He had to use his mom’s phone to communicate with me for the first couple months of our relationship. I later found out it was because he went through phones often. In a fit of rage he would throw them and break them beyond repair. Even when he had a phone, it always had a crack or two.

It was our first long phone call, I believe. One that lasted for a few hours. I remember telling him multiple times that I was trying to maintain a proper sleep schedule. Insomnia had been a large part of my life for as long as I could remember, and despite knowing I’d probably be up much longer than intended, I still tried to be in bed with the lights out at a decent time. It was a school night.

He had told me not to worry about it. That I would get over having to stay up late to accommodate when he wanted to talk. I brushed it off because it wasn’t his phone, after all, and he didn’t have it as much as I had my phone. 

We discussed many things, but this one particular conversation was, in retrospect, the one that showed me a lot of bright red flags that were desperately trying to make themselves known. Firstly was the fact that I wasn’t able to go to bed when I wanted, because he wanted me to be on the phone.

Second, my hair. God, throughout our entire relationship he was obsessive about my hair. I had made it known to him that as soon as my aunt was married and the wedding was over, I was getting my hair cut. Waist length hair didn’t match what I felt like on the inside. He wasn’t happy with that.

“It’s so beautiful.” He had said despite the fact he had never seen it in its full glory. The only time we had ever seen each other involved the vast majority of my hair being hidden for a reason. He had only seen my overgrown bangs and the auburn shade my hair had turned after taking Color Oops to black box dye. 

I was a doormat, yes, but I stayed stern in cutting my hair. It was negatively affecting me. I needed it cut. Countless times I had stood in front of my bathroom mirror crying on the verge of taking a shitty pair of scissors to my hair. I was going to do this. I was going to cut my hair. And then I would dye it, because I’m in high school now and my dad finally agreed to it. 

Third, drugs. Weed, specifically. Nowadays, I have absolutely no problem with weed. I take half of a gummy about once a week to help ease the tension that makes my various aches and pains worse and I had smoked a bit since I had started college.

Younger me was not as receptive, though. All drugs are bad, thanks to what my law enforcement dad and my years in public school had taught me. He was odd about approaching this subject. His first time trying to skirt around a subject by not saying his plan, instead implying it to me.

“Your dad is going to have to get over the weed thing.” He had said to me. I asked why, genuinely confused. His answer was because he liked it, and since he liked it, I would have to like it too. This was the first time I felt something akin to peer pressure like this. Yes, we had only been dating for a short time, but he was my boyfriend. He knew more than I did. 

I managed to skirt around the conversation as well. I changed the subject but after the call was over and it was past the bedtime I had set for myself, I thought about it. I didn’t do drugs, never had and didn’t have the intention to. Jesus christ by that point my dad had been threatening me with drug tests for the past couple years.

I didn’t tell my friends. For your information, that will be a common theme. Secrecy on my end. I didn’t tell my friends a lot of things. It was not a conscious decision, but of course hindsight is 20/20 and I think I knew that these conversations and behaviors were wrong and I felt the need to protect him. 

This was the true start of me learning that I was not the one in control here.

[diary-of-my-devil]

October 3rd, 2015

I was a few weeks shy of 14 and I’d had a hell of a year. My aunt’s death had been a wave of ice cold water on my system and my feelings were still frozen when I got the news that my grandpa had died. I didn’t cry when my dad came into my room to tell me the news. I just said “oh, okay” and continued on with whatever I was doing. 

I think it was a Sunday night when it happened. If it was, it was on the 20th of September. I always mix the date up, though. My reason for believing it was that day, specifically a Sunday, was because I remember going to school and telling my friends “yeah, we have Friday off of school, but I’ll be spending it at a funeral”. I was in that ICU waiting room eating Burger King onion rings hours before.

I think my mom was thinking heavily about going to a grief camp after my aunt, who you should know was not technically my aunt, but a close family friend, had died. My sisters were at the Detroit Zoo with my grandma when that had happened, my mom calling her to tell her the news and beg her to not tell them. My grandma is a bit of a loud mouth, in all honesty.

My grandpa’s death was sort of the defining factor for it, the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. After he had passed, after the funeral and the absolutely awful experience of that, she had brought up to me and my sisters that she wanted to help us, and that the zoo in my city was holding one for all ages and that she would like for us all to go.

I didn’t want to go. I really didn’t want to go. I was dealing with crippling anxiety that was not yet diagnosed, let alone treated, and insurmountable grief. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it with a ton of strangers. I don’t know how I would’ve spent the time if I hadn’t gone, but I would’ve had more fun with that.

Mom threw out information about this grief camp for days leading up to it. How we would probably get free things (god, I’m a sucker for free shit), how they would provide food, how it would only be for a few hours. I didn’t agree to go until that morning. Ultimately, I wanted to make my mom happy.

It did make her happy, by the way.

By the way, I regret going.

It was October 3rd in the middle of Michigan. Apparently kids and parents from around the state had all come along to attend this event. It was held outside, under tents and while it was windy I think they had space heaters in the tents with us. We were split into age categories. I was allowed in the 14-17 group despite still being 13, because I was close enough. I was basically already 14, it just wasn’t official for another couple weeks, you know?

That’s when and where I met him.

There was nothing remarkable about him and his appearance. He looked like any other teenage boy in Michigan during that time. He had dirty blonde hair in what looked like a slightly grown out buzzcut, wore a hoodie and dark blue jeans with sneakers. He really wasn’t remarkable. I went to school with countless other guys that matched his style.

Apparently I was remarkable, though. To him at least.

It was weeks before I was able to cut all my hair off. I had to keep my long hair until after my aunt’s wedding, because it was long and beautiful and she had already hired someone to do our hair and had the consultation. I instead had it hidden in a bun underneath a beanie, grown out side bangs from my wannabe scene-kid haircut sticking out of the FBI hat I had gotten in DC months before.

I was wearing a leather jacket, I don’t recall what was underneath it though. For bottoms I was either wearing leggings or skinny jeans with slightly heeled boots. I don’t remember much about what I wore.

While he wasn’t remarkable, I knew something was going to happen. I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I believe you know when someone is going to have a large impact on your life from the first look. Whether or not it’s going to be good or bad was revealed in time.

We stuck by each other for a majority of the time, along with another girl in our age group. When I saw my mom later in the day she had looked relieved, that I had made some friends. We had exchanged numbers at the end of the event and all went our separate ways, I went home while they had gone to the cities they had come from.

Hours later, while I was out shopping with my grandma, I had gotten a call from a number that wasn’t saved in my phone. At the time, I didn’t have experiences that brought me dread at a mysterious phone number, so I answered. It was him.

I’m not naming him yet, simply because I don’t know if I want to. If I want to put his name out there and be at risk of legal action if someone puts the pieces together and identifies him, or use the nickname I’d used for him online when I’ve talked about these experiences.

We had small talk, most of which I can’t remember. I remember my grandma wondering who I was talking to. I recall him boldly asking me out, over the phone when we had only met just hours before. I remember telling him I didn’t know who or what I was into. That I didn’t know if I liked boys or girls or both.

He said that made me sexier. 

Like I had said previously, I was a doormat. Still kind of am, to be honest. I didn’t know how to say no anymore, considering I had already had my first experience with saying no and it being completely ignored. So, I did what any normal confused, sad teenager would do, and I said yes.

He wasn’t my first boyfriend, and not my last, but fuck he’s one of the more memorable ones for all of the wrong reasons. But we’ll get to that later. 

My first boyfriend was a friend I had since preschool. His family owned a bowling alley in a nearby town and he was a bit spoiled, if not certainly more wealthy than I was. He had a trampoline AND a pool! It was an easy relationship, despite my mental struggles during that time.

I had later found out he only asked me out because he was too nervous to ask out my friend, but we lasted about a year. I don’t regret the relationship and the times I spent at his house, with his family and our friends playing video games or fucking around on Omegle. I cringe, yes, but it’s not something I regret.

There was a boy I dated for a couple weeks not long after my breakup from my first boyfriend. A friend of mine, although not nearly as long as I had been with the first. He’s the one that didn’t know what the word “no” meant, but this is not about him. Yes, I do regret it.

So I had some experience with dating before him. Not much, not as much as many of my peers did, but this wasn’t my first time dating someone. This was different, yes, but not entirely new. While my two previous boyfriends had each lived a walking distance away, he was in a completely different town.

We were two young high schoolers who couldn’t drive, so it was going to be a semi-long distance relationship. Did I have feelings for him? No, not really, we had met and become friends just hours ago, but why not give it a shot? It couldn’t hurt, right?

Right?

So October 3rd of 2015 was when this whole shitshow of a relationship began. I regret this day more than any other. I wish I had stayed home, rotting in my bed with the lights off. I wish I was comfortable with letting him down gently. I wish I had never met him.

[diary-of-my-devil]

Preface: My mental state

I was vulnerable to a high degree when this whole thing started. It was the beginning of October of 2015, which I now call the most traumatic year of my life. He’s not even in the top 3 of the horrible incidents I went through during that single year of my life.

Firstly, for context, 2015 was the year I had started high school, however multiple things that happened in this year happened before I ever stepped foot onto the {redacted} High School campus. 

In May, I was nearly institutionalized. I wasn’t, out of convenience for my parents and the mental health “professionals” at the hospital telling me with straight faces that they thought I was faking, and it was all for attention. No one knew at the time that I had previously attempted suicide multiple times before that incident. I was already in therapy with a psychologist who would put words in my mouth and tell me that my fascination with online stories and storytelling was just me trying to be somewhere else. She didn’t care that I wanted to be a writer, and that was my first step.

I lost two of the most important people in my life. I believe I lost my aunt in mid July, however things were blurry and I’m not so sure. I visited her in the hospital that day but she was in such a state that I wasn’t allowed to see her for more than a few minutes. Midway through the drive home, my mom had gotten a call that she needed to come back. I had walked into her hospital room once more not knowing that she was already dead. 

Then, in late September, I lost my grandpa. The only one I’d ever known, considering my other one died long before I was born. It took a toll on me, for sure. I was in the ICU waiting room with a large part of my step-grandma’s side of the family nearly every day. Their kindness through these times not only eased the doom I felt, but others as well. 

Everyday they were bringing in food and drinks and if by some rare chance a stranger was in there with us, worrying about their own loved one, they’d be given a warm meal and a family. My mom told me it’s because of the culture, that nobody is ever hungry and if you’ve already eaten, you’re gonna eat more.

I hope that the strangers I shared a space with during those waiting room stays are okay. 

I met him on October 3rd, but let's go a bit further. My aunt was getting married in a small ceremony up in Traverse City on October 10th. During that weekend stay, where I was one of the few in the wedding party, being both maid of honor and ring bearer, my mom sat me down and told me that she and my dad were getting a divorce, and don’t tell my sisters yet. They wanted to tell them together. 

This was weeks before I turned 14 and I would have to experience my first birthday without sharing it with my grandpa.

In between every single one of those events I was dealing with a litany of other issues, most of the time mentally. I was depressed, luckily clinically so the diagnosis couldn’t be argued. I was dealing with horrid anxiety, which unfortunately wasn’t yet diagnosed. I had to go through hearing how sick my family members were and dealing with the seemingly endless maze of figuring out my gender and sexuality as a young teenager. I had my first breakup and my first experience where me saying “no” was ignored.

All this to say, I was sort of a perfect target. I was vulnerable. I was traumatized. I was a doormat afraid of losing any more people in my life. I was a hermit, locking myself in my room most hours of the day except to shower and go to school, listening to the same songs on repeat in my shitty headphones.

I was easily bendable, moldable. I was confused and taking any answers I got as gospel. Young and stupid is an understatement. 

So when someone approached me as a makeshift beam of light while I was stuck in a dark tunnel that seemingly had the ends boarded up, I followed. 

I didn’t know I was about to jump headfirst into hell, and that this light was actually just the glowing eyes of the devil himself.