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one-hundred-year-ocean-blog · 7 years

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TW // ABUSE - Sarah Cowell

Yesterday while I was out of state working at a friend’s screen printing shop someone hit me up to let me know that Sarah Cowell wrote a post calling me out for emotional abusing her for years. They sent me the text version of what was posted because I have had my facebook deactivated for a while now. I am only reactivating to make this statement. I am making this post as an attempt to clarify a lot of the things she claimed I had done to her and try to understand why she wants to hurt me so much. I am going to take this piece by piece with screen shots of all of our conversations we’ve ever had online. The only problem is that I can’t go back far enough in the archives of our facebook conversations to clarify the situation where I expressed having feelings for her.

“My first interaction with Nicole Shanholtzer was on the night of April 2, 2013. My band had self-released our first EP, and she had found it. She messaged us on Tumblr that night saying she wanted to put it out on tape and we were beyond thrilled. Broken World Media was a dream label for us. Over the next few months we met a few times, she made us tapes, and she and I talked online almost everyday.One night that summer she messaged me asking to talk. She told me that she was in love with me (at the time, she was married), and I panicked. I did not have feelings for her, and told her this - I was 20 years old at the time and didn't want to break up someone's marriage. It was awkward. She didn't talk to me for a while afterwards. I was worried she would stop being my friend, or stop working with my band. I didn't know what to do. She made it seem like I had led her on in some way, and what had happened was my fault. I felt like I was going to lose everything because I didn't reciprocate her feelings. Both our business and personal relationships were on the line.” I found Sarah’s band on tumblr and fell in love with their EP, I did reach out and we became friends. We spoke a lot online and I was very excited about getting to know her and how great I thought her band was. We did talk a lot online and I also talked about her with my ex-wife Katie often. I thought Sarah was incredibly talented and I was very very excited about our growing friendship. Katie began to playfully tease me about having a crush on Sarah and I did. Katie and I had talked a lot about being open in our relationship and also being into the idea of bringing other people into our sex. I mistook Katie teasing me as encouragement of my interest in Sarah. I told Sarah that I had feelings for her. I never said “I’m in love with you”, I never thought I was putting my marriage at risk. It was an awkward conversation I suppose but I most certainly never felt that Sarah was also into me and never did I express that I felt like she led me on or that any of it was her fault. I never pressured her to reciprocate the feelings. The very next day Katie and I had a long conversation about it, she was very upset, I apologized and didn’t realize I was overstepping boundaries in our relationship. We resolved the situation with what I said before, I mistook Katie playfully teasing me about having a crush on Sarah as encouragement. I then had a conversation with Sarah about it and told her about my conversation with Katie. I apologized for putting her in an awkward place. At absoutely no point in the conversation did I ask or like demand that she feel the same way. I never threaten her band’s future ability to work with my label, I cared a lot about their music and did everything in my power to help them. I felt dumb and ashamed for expressing those feelings to Sarah. I also was in no way trying to give up on my marriage to try to pursue Sarah. My archives of our facebook conversations unfortunately will net let me go back far enough to show you screen shots of our conversation. I never made it seem like we couldn’t work together if she didn’t reciprocate my feelings. This was the last time we ever talked about the situation until a few years later while we were at The Fest in Florida where while she was blackout drunk kept bringing up the situation from years ago where I told her I had feelings for her. I kept telling her it was upsetting and I didn’t want to have it brought up. She kept grabbing my hands and taking me away from our group of friends so say incoherent shit and lean on me. When she was finally done talking about it she asked me to hug her, so I did. The hug went on for a minute and i tried to end it. She would not let me go even though I was clearly trying to end the hug. I spent the rest of the night with Katie crying and talking to her about how Sarah reopened a wound for something I was very ashamed of. Below is proof that facebook won’t let me go back further into our archives so I can’t revisit this years old conversation, I can just retell it as I remember it and know that within the next few days I apologized to Sarah and talked her about my conversation with Katie about how I felt I was being encouraged to be interested in her. I was wrong, and I apologized. Here is a messaged she sent me after her blackout episode at fest where she upset me a lot:

“She didn't talk to me for a while afterwards“

I remember talking to Sarah about the conversation I had with Katie like the next day or within a few days. Before I had expressed my feelings for Sarah we had already made plans for Sarah and members of her band to travel to my house in Willimantic CT to hang out for the weekend. At first Katie did not want them to come up and hang out because she was still hurt. We talked more about it and Sarah and members of For Everest came up. We hung out in my band’s practice space and jammed some music, drank some whiskey. Later that night we were hanging out on my porch with the whiskey and I jokingly said to Nick Pitamn that he needed to take a big pull of the whiskey to “prove he wasn’t Greg”, to clarify for anyone unfamiliar I’m referring to Greg Horbal who was a member of TWIABP for a while that we liked to pick on him and refer to him as Shitty Greg for being being a little shitty. We all definitely loved and cared a lot for Greg even if we probably picked on him more than he deserved. Greg was / is / probably always will be straight edge. This was the origin of reoccurring drinking game we called “PROVE YOU ARE NOT GREG”, Sarah references this later in her post and I will get to that in a bit.

This is a screen shot of as far back as facebook would allow me to review our conversation. It says “facebook user” because we have each other blocked. Also her grown ass father has sent me multiple harassing messages on facebook.

“A few months later, I started dating David. Bad timing, probably, all things considered, but I felt very strongly for him and we just clicked. She was not happy with this, and she would frequently treat me poorly and say mean things that I won't disclose. She is a mean person, that is her thing, but I did what I could to make her happy, to keep us on good terms. I didn't just have myself to think about, but David. I was worried what would happen to both of us if she decided to cut ties with us. She constantly makes people feel like they can't get by without her, like she is necessary, that you need her.“

What I can remember is that before Dave and Sarah ever met in person I had talked about her with Dave and pretty much said that I knew Dave would definitely be into her. I told Dave about the weird situation that happened before and said something along the lines of like I would probably feel heartbroken if you got with her. Half joking, half serious. It was still difficult thing for me to navigate. At one point the band and Sarah were hanging out a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn. I don’t remember if this was the first time they met. As the night went on Dave and Sarah spent a lot of time together and it became apparent he was into her. Dave and I talked before anything happened between them. I said that my problem is dumb and shouldn’t get in the way of them wanting to be with each other. If any of my actions after this point seemed resentful that was not my intention. I never told her i wasn’t ok with her dating Daveand I did not start to treat her poorly, If we had any sort of animosity towards each other it is probably because we are both pretty hot headed people. I don’t know what Sarah claimed I said to her but I have no recollection of saying mean shit to her about her relationship with Dave. After this point I will be posting a lot of screenshots from our conversations on facebook over the years. I would be willing to share the entire transcript if ever asked. The point of most of this is show how close our friendship was and negate some of the claims she made in her post

“One day in the summer of 2014, I confronted her and told her I wanted things to be like they were before. I wanted to fix whatever weirdness had happened between us. She apologized, and offered to bring me on tour with TWIABP as a merch person, which I did.

“On that tour, she would get upset if I gave someone else more attention than I gave her. She would get annoyed that David and I slept next to each other. She would buy me drinks and get me too fucked up at shows. This was something that occurred multiple times over the next few years. If I didn't want to drink or party or hang out, I was being a bad friend. I had to push the boundaries with her, and if I declined, she would make me feel small. She would encourage me to play a game were you would drink as much as possible to "prove" you weren't straight edge.”

The tour this in reference to was with Posture & The Grizzly. A few of us in TWIABP played as Jordan’s backing band. Jordan is one of my best friends in the world and I feel like I spent the entire tour with him just getting fucked up. I could tell that Jordan (being a young and a very sloppy annoying drunk) was irritating Dave and Sarah. At one point I felt like they were bullying Jordan for accidentally spilling a drink and I got upset, stood up for him, said something like “You don’t have to be a fucking asshole about it” to her and walked off. I don’t know why Sarah believes that I treated them like shit for dating each other. I was happy they were together. If I did anything else on that tour that was mean to her it was likely because I didn’t like the way she and Dave were treating Jordan. I am a mean person, I have anger problems, and a lot of issues with controlling my emotions, I’m going to touch on that a lot more in my next post. To me, and a lot of I know that have been friends with Sarah, she is also a mean person. She can be hotheaded, quick to anger, etc. If there was any sort of problems between us i believe is was because of our issues with being assholes all the time. Never because she started dating my friend. I also never forced / pressured her to party or drink more. We both drank a lot and sort of enabled each other. I’m sorry that she now feels this way. I drink way too much, I like to get too drunk with my friends, I have a drinking problem. I was in no way intentionally trying to get Sarah more fucked up than she was comfortable with. I tend to gravitate more to people who also drink a lot because I want relationships that help enable and perpetuate my alcoholism and substance abuse problems. As far as I could tell, we were on the same page about getting fucked up. We had a lot of conversations about our issues with substance abuse and the way we drank and how it was starting to effect our relationships. She also references the “prove your not greg” drinking game we made up that I explained in the previous paragraph. To me this was an inside joke and a form of us bonding / enabling each other to drink more. I’m confused and hurt about how she presented it in her call out post. He are some examples of many many conversations we had with each other about our drinking and drug use, some celebratory and some out of concern for ourselves.

One night, she got into a physical fight with someone and kicked me out of her house for speaking up about it (I had nowhere to go so I took a cab to a train station and stood outside all night). Afterwards, she threatened to throw away everything I had left at her house, and cancelled a run of shirts she was printing for my band, leading me to believe she was dropping us. She never apologized, and in fact asked ME to apologize to HER. After a few weeks she pretended like it never happened.“

This is a very selective retelling of the situation. It is scary that she wants me to hurt so bad that she would blatantly lie. Before the screen shots of our conversation I will explain exactly what happened on the last night of our tour with Posture & The Grizzly. It was apparent after weeks of touring with Jordan that Dave was very annoyed with his behavior. Jordan got very sloppily drunk constant and was pretty disrespectful to others on the tour when he was very drunk. Jordan was very young then and is not that kind of a drunk anymore. On the last night of tour in Boston Jordan was very very drunk and pissing everyone on the tour off. He was kicked out of the venue after his set and was blacked out for most of the night. I don’t know what exactly he did to Dave to piss him off so bad, I was wasn’t very aware because I was also stupid drunk. On the 2 hour drive home from Boston Jordan passed out in the backseat of the van with me. Sarah texted in the van and said something along the lines of “heads up, Dave is really pissed at Jordan and has been texting me about kicking his ass when we get home” and I just responded “That isn’t going to happen”, to me it didn’t seem like Sarah was discouraging Dave from hurting Jordan. I can’t say for sure. Jordan is blackout drunk and slept the entire drive home. Dave got out of the van and stood by the door. I woke up Jordan to let him know we were at my house and he needed to get out of the van. The second he stepped out of the van Dave grabbed Jordan and threw him to the ground and to me it looked like he was about to start kicking him / attacking him. I jumped out of the van as fast as I could and punched Dave once in the face and then grabbed him by his hair on the back of his head and started yelling at him “What the fuck do you think you’re doing???” As this happens Sarah gets out of the van and starts yelling at me. My immediate reaction was that she was mad that I wasn’t letting Dave kick Jordan’s ass. I stopped what I was doing and said “Both of you need to get the fuck out of here, you are not staying at my house” Within the next few days Dave and I made up and jokingly said something like “It’s fine, we grew up in West Virginia and sometimes you punch your friends” We were on good terms then. At some point days later Sarah messaged me angry that I never apologized to her and I was confused because in my mind i believed that she was pissed I stopped Dave from hurting Jordan. She claims I never apologized to her and asked her to apologize to me. Here is the conversation we had about the situation after it happened.

“One night, my band played a show in Connecticut near her house. Afterwards a big group of us went to the diner down the street from her. She had been drinking that night and already gotten sick, so I was caring for her while both our partners slept at her house. She began to get visibly distressed, and asked me to hold her hand, so I did. During our meal she started crying and the two of us went outside. Once we got to the parking lot, she told me once more she was in love with me. She said she didn't know how to not be in love with me, and not being with me makes her want to kill herself. Again, I didn't know what to do. I calmed her down as best as I could and told her we would always be friends - but just friends. She told me not to tell anyone, so I didn't for a long time.She would regularly express her feelings for me when she got drunk. She would make me feel bad for not feeling the same way. She would threaten to kill or hurt herself because we weren't together. She would encourage me to get fucked up with her and get mad when I wouldn't kiss her. She would flash her breasts at me even after I asked her not to. As her mental health got worse over the years, every conversation we had would turn into manipulation and emotional abuse.“

I am not entirely when she claims this happened. I most definitely never made any physical advance on her or tried to kiss her. I never felt strongly enough about her romantically to believe for a second that I would do have done this to her. Once her and Dave were dating and I became better friends with Sarah I didn’t have those feelings for her anymore. I most certainly never threatened to kill myself if she wouldn’t love me back. Scrolling through years of our conversations on facebook there is absolutely no mention of me continuing to have feelings for her or any reference to a situation like what she described. I also don’t know of a time I flashed her my breasts or continued to do so after she asked me not to. I have no screen shots because as far as I can tell we never had a conversation like this on facebook ever. There isn’t a single instance I could find in years of our conversations where I expressed a continued romantic relationship with her. I’m not sure what show she was referring to this happening after but here is a message she sent to me after Broken World fest which happened while I was living in East Haven. I believe For Everest stayed at my house that night. Maybe that is what she is referring to.

There have been quite a few times in our friendship where Sarah would get really drunk an touch me without my consent. There was a specific weird situation when I was living in East Haven and She was visiting with Dave at the time. We were all drinking of course. I had gotten my first dress after coming out more publicly about being trans and was wearing it. Sarah and I were talking about gender dysphoria and I talked about how I didn’t know i didn’t know how to really do my makeup that well and I wanted to figure out how to pluck and shape my eyebrows. I remember her quickly taking me away from the rest of the group and into my bedroom to pluck my eyebrows. I felt nervous that her rushing me off to my room and then shutting the door without saying a word to Dave or Katie would look really suspicious, I was really uncomfortable and she was being forceful. During her attempt at grooming my eyebrows we continued to have a conversation about gender dysphoria and i talked about issues I had with my body and not being able to pass. I talked about wishing i had breasts that weren’t just because I am overweight but I wished I had like actual “female breasts” without any warning she stopped plucking my eyebrows and cupped my breasts without consent. She then said “I think you have really good breasts” and went back to plucking my eyebrows. I didn’t really know how to react because I already felt weird about her rushing me off into a room to be alone in front of both of our partners. Even though it made me uncomfortable and nervous I never felt like it was a problem big enough to hold her accountable for or talk about it again.

“As her mental health got worse over the years, every conversation we had would turn into manipulation and emotional abuse.“

“Towards the end of our friendship, when we were preparing to put our our LP with Broken World Media, I would ask to talk business and she would ignore me or get mad. When we would finally get around to it, she would change the subject and send me photos of her self harm. I would try to brush it off (the subject is highly triggering for me) and nothing would get done.”

Here is just about every single screen shot I can find of our conversations about my mental health getting worse and how I felt I was handling things poorly. This is how we spoke with each other the entire time we were very close friends. This addresses her claim that i sent her self photos and ignore her. There is one photo because we having a long conversation about our history and problem with self harm.

The next set of screen shots of our conversations immediately after my wife left me and the band kicked me out. When all those folks were still friendly with me and just wanted me to get help. That I’m going to address in another post I’ve working on.

I have years and years worth of our conversations I would be willing to share with anyone. I am horrified that these people I haven’t talked to or heard from in a year are still trying to find ways to hurt me. I don’t know what they want me to do. I’m convinced they actually just want me to commit suicide.

If absolutely necessary i have a countless number of screenshots where we are actively having conversations about their record, plans on releasing it, stuff we could to promote it. I worked really hard for that band. I only lost money on their projects really, they weren’t super popular but I loved their music and cared greatly for those people.

I don’t know what else to do to stop these people from actively trying to hurt me. I can’t let them continue lie about me or tell half truths to conveniently only implicate me. I’m working on a larger post about my situation with TWIABP that I will post soon.

Here is an unorganized dropbox folder of all the screen shots i took from our conversations, a lot of them didn’t end up in the post. If you are curious here you go: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6dv1y0ercru67z6/AAARJxO_vqhKveKDIyMQEgkga?dl=0

#sarah cowell #nicole schoenholz #twiabp #for everest #abuse

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