tilwecrashandburn

[tilwecrashandburn]

Trapped in a Shattered Mirror

I am writing this, so that through all the manipulation and false realities, I never forget who you really are. So that I never forget what you put me through. 

I was in a pretty serious relationship. For the sake of anonymity, I will refer to my former lover as Mariah. Mariah and I were college sweethearts (I know, I should have known we were doomed from the start with just that single piece of information alone). To the point of this story, we had been dating consistently from 2014-2018. Although we had our fair share of issues before then, 2018 is where the craziness elevated and that is the year in which this story takes place. 

I was a school year ahead of Mariah in a relatively small, party-centric university in Ohio. That is where we met. There were warning signs early on that I ignored. For one, she had a whole secret, unclaimed boyfriend who she ended up leaving to be with me. For two, she flirtatiously entertained every man who would acknowledge her to the point where it seriously made me question the entire relationship.

 I graduated in 2017 and headed off to graduate school in another university about an hour way. Mariah still had one more year left at our alma mater. At first things were cool, but everything started changing during the spring semester. 

Mariah and I began growing apart. I was struggling with grad school. It was one of the hardest times of my life and I felt completely alone. Mariah was living her best life as she celebrated her last year of undergrad. She was coming into herself and I encouraged it. She was an absolutely beautiful woman with an amazing personality and the world began noticing. But it quickly went to her head. 

As the distance between us grew, arguments became more frequent. Mariah was engaging with other men via social media but ignoring me. She began texting another man at the university at the beginning of that semester. I will refer to him as Marcus. I first discovered her communication with Marcus during the winter break heading into spring semester. The were talking on snapchat but he was in the process of pledging so none of it made sense to me. I confronted her about it and she assured me that it was nothing. To my ignorance, they continued talking for the rest of that semester but she would hide it from me. Only her and her friends were aware of what was happening. I would see snaps and videos of Mariah and Marcus hanging together. I confronted her about it but she reassured me that they were only friends and that she had learned her boundaries in regards entertaining other men. She explicitly told me that she was not sexual attracted to Marcus at all and that I had nothing to worry about. 

Spring break came. Mariah and I decided to take a trip together to a new city. The trip was nice and it felt like we were making some sort of progress. I didn’t know that I had already lost her at this point. After spring break, the distance between us continued to grow. It was now April. Although we weren’t on the best terms, we were still together and we still looked out for one another. She was struggling financially that month and asked for me to pay her rent for April. She’s never made such a request before so I took care of it and paid her rent. I then came down to visit but we didn’t talk much. I could tell she was feeling herself and I knew something was up. At this point she was still entertaining Marcus behind my back. She hung with her friends that weekend and I hung with mine. She then got mad at me for being distant during the visit. She had no right, all things considering.

I went back to my grad school that Sunday. By Sunday night, Mariah and Marcus were at a private party and he was caressing her legs and butt and putting his hands up her skirt. She allowed him to do so and expressed how it was turning her on when they were texting about it later. I discovered this information because I read the texts that were deleted from her phone but still on the Apple Watch I bought for her. 

That week in April, we didn’t talk at all. But Mariah and Marcus began kicking it heavier. He was coming to spend the night with her about everyday and they were talking consistently. They would send sexual messages during the day and he would sleep in her bed at night. All of this was happening during the month I paid her rent. Once the week had passed without us talking, I felt very uneasy. I knew something was up. The weekend was upon us. I sent her a message of a song to express how I was feeling. She gave me a dry reply. I decided to drive down to her school and see what was up. 

I made it to her apartment but she wasn’t there. It was nighttime at this point, maybe about 2am. I decided to check her favorite after-party diner. As I stood on the street, I saw her car pull up to the diner. She didn’t see me. But I saw her and Marcus exit the car and go into the diner together. My heart dropped to my feet. I was furious. I texted her to ask where she was. She sent back the “eyes” emoji and dodged the question. I waited. Her and Marcus left the diner. I thought maybe she would just drop him off somewhere and return home with her roommates. That was a foolish thought that I didn’t really believe. I rushed to her apartment. She still wasn’t there. It was at least 3am at this point. I went up to her window but heard nothing. As I turned to head back to my car, Mariah and Marcus crossed my path. The were too deep in laughter and conversation to realize I was there until it was too late. 

I tried to keep my composure as I asked what the hell was going on. She tried to defuse the situation and told me nothing was happening. She told me her and Marcus were just heading into her apartment to play games and chill with her roommates and friends. However, her roommates and friends were either sleep or not around. She tried to hug me and I pushed her away. Marcus then became angry and tried to fight me. Mariah stopped us from fighting. I felt like she was defending him. She told him to leave and he angrily stomped off. 

We entered her apartment and went into her bedroom. I was still heated and questioning her. She was telling me that nothing happened and that I was overreacting. She once again expressed that she was not sexually attracted to Marcus and that she would never do that to me. A part of me believed her. Another part of me didn’t but I had nothing concrete to go off of. I stayed the night in her bed. I woke up early before Mariah did and that is when I went through her phone. I found nothing. Everything was deleted. I then grabbed the Apple Watch and went to my car. It had to be about 6am. I sat in my car for about an hour, reading the lengthy text thread between her and Marcus. That is where I saw all the sexual messages back and forth. That is how I figured out that he had been staying with her that entire week. That is how I confirmed that she was a liar. I felt as if a blackhole was inside my chest, swallowing me into the emptiness. 

I then went back to her room and woke her up calmly. I asked her to tell me the truth. She hesitated. I asked her if her and Marcus had sex. She wouldn’t talk but I knew the truth at this point and she could probably hear it in my voice. She eventually admitted to having sex with Marcus the night before I came down (Friday night - it was now Sunday morning). They had sex in her bed. She cheated on me in her apartment during a month when I paid her rent. She allowed me to sleep in the very same spot that they had just had sex, no more than 24 hours prior to this conversation, on the same unwashed sheets. They had unprotected sex and she even gave him head. I was disgusted and outraged. My sense of calmness was gone. She wasn’t even apologetic. She was cold and dry. She blamed me and compared me to Marcus. She said Marcus was so happy-go-lucky and that I was a depressing factor in her life. She made a negative comment about how I wasn’t living up to the stature of my dead father. She broke me. I sat there lost. 

I knew Marcus and Marcus knew me. I tried to explain to her that he was not the perfect man that she tried to portray him to be. He was a woman user and she was just another name on the list. She didn’t listen. She didn’t care.

I stayed for the next day or two. Marcus was still hitting her up but she was ignoring him. I told her to block him on everything but she wouldn’t, no matter how much I begged and pleaded. She couldn’t even do that for me. I asked her to stop seeing him and told her that I wanted to work on us. She assured me that she was done with Marcus and would try to make things work with me. 

Eventually I returned to my grad school. Mariah and I began talking more but something was still off. She was still talking to Marcus behind my back. She was still seeing him everyday. She went over his place a few days later and they had sex again. I would come down to visit, and he would come over to her place as soon as I left. I tried to cut her off but she then drove to see me, crying and begging for me to be with her. We would argue and she would held back down to her school to be with Marcus, although she was telling me that they were no longer a thing. She would talk about how she was disgusted to even look at him when they were out in public and that she was no longer speaking to him. That was just a lie to make me feel better. They were closer than ever. I could feel it. I was done at this point but its hard to completely throw away 3-4 years of your life. I was conflicted. I was alone and vulnerable. I didn’t know what to do. 

And then it was time for Mariah’s graduation. It was now May. I expressed that I wasn’t going to come. She told me that if I didn’t come, she would never forgive me. I ended up coming. When I got to her apartment, the energy was off. I noticed she was wearing Marcus’s Nike slides but I didn’t say anything. I got drunk af that night. Marcus avoided me but was still hitting Mariah up to see where she was once the bars closed. I soon discovered that she still had not blocked him and that she was still talking to him and seeing him consistently. I confronted her, and she got mad at me for doing so. She said I was ruining things when she had it all under control. She told me her plan was to keep entertaining Marcus until she graduated because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I was furious that she was putting his feelings equal to or above mine. I expressed this to her but nothing changed. I was being gaslit. 

Now that she had graduated, we were back in the same city. My grad school was in her hometown. However, she still had her old apartment for a few more months down at our alma mater. At this point I was in a depressed state. I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to eat. Apparently, I was “bringing her down.” She wanted an escape and planned a trip to go back down to her school. I tried to convince her not to and suspected that she was only going down to see Marcus again. She assured me that she was not going to see Marcus. She then went back to her old apartment and hung out with Marcus and her friends as an escape from the miserable atmosphere that she left me sitting in back in her hometown. Broken can’t even begin to describe my state at this point. I had lost 20 pounds. I was taking some of the biggest finals of my life in-between full-blown crying sessions. I hated everything but still wanted to be with Mariah. I should have cut her off when I had the chance. I should have realized my worth sooner. 

I feel like I forced her to stop talking to Marcus eventually. She never did so on her own accord. The apologies never felt real. The entire incident felt like it was swept under the rug and downplayed immensely. Things were toxic and I haven’t been happy since.

A couple years later, he got outed as a sexual predator on one of those MeToo pages. Multiple women came out to speak against the horrible things this man did to them. But the relationship between him and Mariah was completely voluntary and consensual. She cheated on me with him and put the desires of a sexual predator before me and my feelings. Her boyfriend of years. She praised this man so highly despite my warnings. She belittled, embarrassed, and ruined me and I feel horrible for sitting by and letting it happen. When the news came out about Marcus’s true character, Mariah tried to flip the story and play the victim. She was not the victim and I clearly recall her telling me multiple times how she was “using him” and he wasn’t using her. She was the predator in a sense. Maybe they belonged together. 

I’ve never told anyone this story. But I didn’t want it to fade into the abyss with my dying memory. I needed to relive this story once more so that I can finally try to move passed it for-real. Mariah and I are still in communication, but at this point, I am realizing that we will never work out. The history is just too tainted and I still feel wronged. There are so many people in the world so I don’t understand why I should feel like I have to be with her. Why do I have to be with anyone? Whenever I try to leave, she guilts me back in. She will probably never understand the amount of pain she has put me through. I don’t even think she wants to try. And if I try to express it to her, she will only tell me about the pain that I have put her through. I feel like I’m trapped in a shattered mirror.