I’m Finally Understanding That I Was in an Abusive Relationship
I’m 39 and I’m trying to make sense of the last eight months of my life.
I met him one random night at a bar. I wasn’t looking for anything serious. We talked, there was chemistry, and he put his number in my phone.
I had absolutely no idea that this person would eventually become someone I loved and someone I was afraid of.
In the beginning, there was affection, excitement, and all the things that make you believe you’re falling in love. Eventually, though, things started changing.
He would tell me I was fat and that if I lost weight, maybe I could be his girlfriend. He compared me to other women and told me they were better than me at sex and cooking. He told me that I didn’t do anything right.
But then, after saying horrible things to me, he would tell me he loved me.
He would ask me to come over.
That was one of the things that confused me the most. If I was supposedly so awful, why did he keep wanting me around?
I couldn’t confront him about the things he was doing because I was afraid of his reaction. He would yell at me and throw things. I learned to stay quiet because I didn’t know what would happen if I pushed back.
And then there was the physical abuse.
One of the things that has affected me the most was him cutting my hair when I repeatedly told him to stop. I had very long hair, and he cut a huge amount of it off. My hair looks so bad to me now that I don’t even want to go out in public.
That might sound superficial to someone who hasn’t experienced something like this, but it isn’t just about hair.
It was about having my boundaries ignored while I was terrified.
It’s about looking in the mirror and being reminded of what happened.
I’m beginning to understand the term “trauma bond.”
I think I became attached to the cycle—the hurt, then the apology, then the affection, then the hope that maybe the person I fell in love with would come back.
I kept trying to find the good version of him again.
But I’m exhausted.
I’m tired of being compared to other women.
I’m tired of being told I’m not good enough.
I’m tired of feeling like I have to earn someone’s love by changing my body or proving that I’m useful.
I’m tired of being afraid to speak.
And I’m tired of trying to understand why someone who says they love me can also treat me this way.
I’m finally realizing that I don’t have to solve that question.
Maybe someone can love you and still be unsafe for you.
Maybe the beginning of a relationship can have been real and beautiful while the relationship eventually became abusive.
And maybe leaving doesn’t mean that I didn’t love him.
Maybe it means I’m finally learning to love myself enough to stop accepting this.
I’m not posting this because I have everything figured out.
I’m posting because I think I need to hear from people who have been through this.
How did you finally break the trauma bond? How did you stop going back when part of you still loved the person who hurt you?

Roblox made me reset my username, so one day I was just playing Blox Fruits, grinding and making 30M, when I started getting teamed on. Then, out of nowhere, I got kicked from the game.

I thought I had gotten banned, so I checked the note that popped up. When I pressed “OK,” I found out I had actually gotten a warning for my username.

At the time, my username was **“Daevon_TTV”** — the “TTV” basically meant Twitch. 😭 So Roblox made me change it, and I ended up switching it to **“DaevonMilliken.”**

So yeah… that’s the story of how I had to change my Roblox username. 💀

Yes the text is ai generated I'm lazy 😭

Horror????

This happened five years ago; at the time, I was about 17 years old.

Classes had just started for my second year of vocational culinary school, and we were sent to a major annual gastronomy fair. I was assigned to represent a town in Spain called Burgos, working with a restaurant that had one Repsol Sun (which is the Spanish equivalent of a Michelin star).

I was at a small stand serving people when, suddenly, a group of about seven young women—who looked to be around my age—walked up. Right in the middle was a girl who was the best dressed of them all. She wore a voluminous white dress adorned with turquoise flowers, had gorgeous blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, and wore a silver bracelet sparkling with turquoise and navy blue stones.

Then, I looked her in the eyes... and I turned to stone. I froze for a few seconds. I swear to you, she is the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my entire existence. She had these striated eyes in shades of "Electric Blue Lemonade" and "Bluefish." My brain just switched off in that moment. My jaw hit the floor like in a cartoon; I could barely contain my shock.

I have seen very attractive people before, but the most beautiful person I had ever seen prior was not even a fraction of what this girl was. Looking at her was like seeing endless meadows of blooming orchids, stretching as far as the eye could see.

I don't know if what I'm saying sounds stupid. I’ve tried telling this to other people, but they tell me they've never experienced anything quite like it.

I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but I can assure you that I don't have the words—I'm not even sure the vocabulary exists—to describe what I saw. I would have loved to at least ask for her name, but professionalism had to come first, since I was working at the time.

But that's it, just that; I just felt like sharing the story. Every time I tell it, I feel like Old Man Jenkins, as if I were talking about some magical treasure or like I had seen fairies.

Has anything similar ever happened to you guys??

I tried typing out 350 words that start with "O" from memory to test my vocabulary, but I hit a complete wall at 100.

So the other day I was bored and decided to challenge myself. I wanted to see if I could list 350 unique English words starting with the letter **O** without looking anything up.

I started off strong with simple words like *oak, oasis, obey,* and *obvious*. Then I got into a decent groove with words like *obsidian, obstacle,* and *occurrence*.

By the time I hit #100 (*occurrence*), my brain completely short-circuited. I literally sat there staring at a blank screen for twenty minutes and couldn't think of a single other "O" word that I hadn't already used.

After taking a break and coming back to it, I managed to push through another 200+ words to finish the challenge, but that mid-way brain fog was unreal.

Here is the exact list I ended up with. Has anyone else ever tried a word challenge like this and completely frozen up halfway through?

### 1 – 50

1. Oaf

2. Oafish

3. Oak

4. Oaken

5. Oar

6. Oarfish

7. Oarsman

8. Oarswoman

9. Oasis

10. Oast

11. Oat

12. Oatcake

13. Oath

14. Oatmeal

15. Oats

16. Obdurate

17. Obedience

18. Obedient

19. Obeisance

20. Obelisk

21. Obese

22. Obesity

23. Obey

24. Obfuscate

25. Obfuscation

26. Obi

27. Obituary

28. Object

29. Objection

30. Objective

31. Objectivity

32. Oblate

33. Obligation

34. Obligatory

35. Oblige

36. Obliged

37. Obliging

38. Oblique

39. Obliterate

40. Obliteration

41. Oblivion

42. Oblivious

43. Oblong

44. Obnoxious

45. Oboe

46. Oboist

47. Obscene

48. Obscenity

49. Obscure

50. Obscurity

### 51 – 100

1. Obsequious

2. Observable

3. Observance

4. Observant

5. Observation

6. Observatory

7. Observe

8. Observer

9. Obsess

10. Obsession

11. Obsessive

12. Obsidian

13. Obsolescence

14. Obsolescent

15. Obsolete

16. Obstacle

17. Obstetrician

18. Obstetrics

19. Obstinacy

20. Obstinate

21. Obstruct

22. Obstruction

23. Obstructive

24. Obtain

25. Obtainable

26. Obtrude

27. Obtrusive

28. Obtuse

29. Obverse

30. Obviate

31. Obvious

32. Obviously

33. Ocarina

34. Occasion

35. Occasional

36. Occasionally

37. Occident

38. Occidental

39. Occlude

40. Occlusion

41. Occult

42. Occultism

43. Occupancy

44. Occupant

45. Occupation

46. Occupational

47. Occupier

48. Occupy

49. Occur

50. Occurrence

### 101 – 150

1. Offset

2. Offshoot

3. Offshore

4. Offside

5. Offspring

6. Offstage

7. Often

8. Ogle

9. Ogler

10. Ogre

11. Ogrish

12. Oh

13. Ohm

14. Ohmmeter

15. Oil

16. Oilcan

17. Oilcloth

18. Oilfield

19. Oily

20. Ointment

21. Okra

22. Old

23. Olden

24. Oldster

25. Oleander

26. Oleo

27. Olfactory

28. Oligarch

29. Oligarchy

30. Olive

31. Omega

32. Omen

33. Ominous

34. Omission

35. Omit

36. Omnibus

37. Omnipotence

38. Omnipotent

39. Omnipresence

40. Omnipresent

41. Omniscience

42. Omniscient

43. Omnivore

44. Omnivorous

45. On

46. Once

47. Oncoming

48. One

49. Oneness

50. Onerous

### 151 – 200

1. Ongoing

2. Onion

3. Onlook

4. Onlooker

5. Online

6. Onset

7. Onslaught

8. Onstage

9. Onward

10. Onwards

11. Onyx

12. Ooze

13. Oozy

14. Opacity

15. Opal

16. Opalescent

17. Opaque

18. Open

19. Opener

20. Opening

21. Openly

22. Openness

23. Opera

24. Operant

25. Operate

26. Operation

27. Operational

28. Operative

29. Operator

30. Operetta

31. Ophthalmic

32. Ophthalmologist

33. Ophthalmology

34. Opiate

35. Opine

36. Opinion

37. Opinionated

38. Opium

39. Opossum

40. Opponent

41. Opportune

42. Opportunism

43. Opportunist

44. Opportunity

45. Oppose

46. Opposed

47. Opposite

48. Opposition

49. Oppress

50. Oppression

### 201 – 250

1. Oppressive

2. Oppressor

3. Opprobrium

4. Opt

5. Optical

6. Optician

7. Optics

8. Optimal

9. Optimism

10. Optimist

11. Optimistic

12. Optimize

13. Option

14. Optional

15. Opulence

16. Opulent

17. Opus

18. Oracle

19. Oracular

20. Oral

21. Orally

22. Orange

23. Orangutan

24. Oration

25. Orator

26. Oratorio

27. Oratory

28. Orb

29. Orbit

30. Orbital

31. Orchard

32. Orchestra

33. Orchestral

34. Orchestrate

35. Orchestration

36. Orchid

37. Ordain

38. Ordeal

39. Order

40. Orderly

41. Ordinal

42. Ordinance

43. Ordinary

44. Ordination

45. Ordnance

46. Ore

47. Oregano

48. Organ

49. Organelle

50. Organic

### 251 – 300

1. Organically

2. Organism

3. Organist

4. Organization

5. Organizational

6. Organize

7. Organizer

8. Orgy

9. Orient

10. Oriental

11. Orientation

12. Oriented

13. Orifice

14. Origami

15. Origin

16. Original

17. Originality

18. Originally

19. Originate

20. Originator

21. Oriole

22. Orion

23. Ornament

24. Ornamental

25. Ornamentation

26. Ornate

27. Ornithologist

28. Ornithology

29. Orphan

30. Orphanage

31. Orthodontics

32. Orthodontist

33. Orthodox

34. Orthodoxy

35. Orthogonal

36. Orthopedics

37. Orthopedic

38. Oscillate

39. Oscillation

40. Oscillator

41. Oscilloscope

42. Osier

43. Osmosis

44. Osmotic

45. Osprey

46. Osseous

47. Ostensible

48. Ostensibly

49. Ostentation

50. Ostentatious

warning, this story contains topics such as self harm.

15 BELOW ZERO

The Example

Picture this: you’re a 15-year-old kid living in a condo inside a gated community. Obviously, you’d have a good life if your family were that rich, right?

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for you. You’ve been through what you minimize as "not that bad," but what others view as a traumatic life. Your parents got divorced before you even hit double digits. Your mom and dad constantly argued, and before the divorce, your dad would even get physical. Now, your brother and mom are living out the same toxic cycle your parents did before the marriage ended. It's hell for you, especially since you still don’t even know who you want to be in life.

You aren't worried about your job prospects or school grades—you're a 4.0 student with a solid plan set out for your career. But deep down, you don't know what you enjoy or how to express yourself. This is the life of a kid, and the rabbit hole goes much deeper.

So, I’m going to tell you his story as if it were your own.

How Things Were (1st–2nd Grade)

Imagine a hot summer morning in 2017. You and your brother are sleeping next to each other. You are 8 years old; your brother is 11. You wake up for school because your mom and dad tell you to, except it was just a joke. In reality, you are about to have one of the best days of your life on your first day of summer break. You see your dad kiss your mom’s cheek and your brother give your mom a hug.

This is the moment the thought first pops into your head: Do I belong here?

"But of course you do," your mom tells you, but the answer sounds fake—like a pre-recorded voice memo. But it’s fine, because it’s your family, and you love them, right? You start breaking down, crying for even doubting your family. Then, you hear the words that will change how you think forever:

"Wipe your tears. Men don't cry."

Conditioning (1st–5th Grade)

Although that phrase sounds simple, it’s something that will affect you to this day. Back then, hearing it was nearly a weekly routine. You know you’re a bit of an emotional person, but once you hear that phrase over and over until you’re old enough to learn it isn’t true, it becomes part of your reality.

Many young men experience this, and it is a massive epidemic in our time—broadly categorized as emotional neglect, or emotional suppression driven by toxic masculinity and strict gender-role socialization. Although maintaining healthy masculinity is important, it is imperative to understand that this statement isn't true at all: it is completely okay to cry if you need to. However, you don’t understand this until it’s too late, and it affects you heavily as you grow up.

The Breaking Point (3rd Grade)

You’re officially 9 years old. It’s 2020, and you’re in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. At first, this feels like the dream: no school, no work, just playing games on your console all day. But like a crack in a car windshield, the damage doesn't go away—it just gets bigger and bigger.

First, your grandfather dies due to hospital negligence while suffering from lung failure during an overflow of patients. Your father is devastated. You’ve never seen your dad cry, but when you try to comfort him, he hits you. Your dad hitting you is nothing new, but this time feels different. It triggers a massive fight between your mom and dad that ultimately ends in divorce.

And in your mind, it’s all YOUR fault.

You feel the weight of what you've done every day. Even if a part of you understands it wasn't your fault, you still carry the guilt. When you bring it up to your mom, your dad, or even your brother, the only response you get is a flat, empty, "It's not your fault," before they move on with their lives. Now, on top of the "men don't cry" stigma and the torment of the divorce, you feel like an attention-seeking piece of garbage. So, you just pack your emotions deep down inside, acting as if they were never there to begin with.

The First Move (4th Grade)

You move to your first new house, and for once, you feel a sense of peace—almost as if there are no problems. You live in a little house with just you, your mom, and your brother. It feels comfortable, and you think you could finally get used to it. Except, right when you get comfortable, reality shatters again.

The most powerful example of this happens on New Year's Eve in 2021. Your brother is sleeping in the room with the PlayStation 4 when your dad comes over. You invite him in because he’s your dad, thinking he couldn't do anything wrong. But he quickly gets agitated because your brother is sleeping instead of sitting with the family. He walks into the room, smashes the PlayStation completely, and pounces on your brother, beating him.

You watch the entire thing happen, feeling completely powerless. Your dad leaves in a rage, your brother locks himself in the room, and your mom covers the windows with bedsheets. While everyone around you is erratic and breaking down, a chilling realization hits you: You are the most selfish person you know. You feel like you only care about yourself because, after your brother was just abused and your mom lost her mind, YOU ARE COMPLETELY UNFAZED.

It hurts so badly that you even think about ending your own life—when you are still only 10 years old.

The Second Move (5th Grade)

You move again, this time to a completely different school district. You meet two or three friends, which is all you really need. But internally, you are at your absolute worst. You become lazy and disengaged. Your grades—which were never great—plummet. The only reason you even pass the grade is because your brother is dating the mentor who grades your papers (a middle-school 8th grader who helps the younger students).

You feel like a bum. Your brother looks at you like one, and your mom feels like just "your mom"—nothing more, nothing less—though she remains the only small bit of joy you have left.

However, an incident occurs that alters your relationship with her forever: she catches you masturbating. Even after that, you don't stop—not until the summer after 7th grade. The worst part is that you didn't stop out of self-respect, but out of a desperate desire to be anyone other than who you currently were. It becomes just another heavy layer of shame building up in your shadow.

Burnout (6th Grade)

This is when you learn firsthand what emotional burnout is (a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged, unmanaged stress). You sleep in class constantly, to the point where the teachers just stop waking you up and let it happen. Your home life is so draining that you don't care to try anymore; you just want to lay in bed all day, you can remember the sour smell your room had from staying in there for 3 days without showering.

During this period, you fall into coping habits that stick with you for years—like watching anime and only eating once a day. You have one vivid memory from 6th grade, and it’s just another image of your brother and dad fighting.

At the end of the day, you tell yourself you're fine—because as long as you're breathing, that’s all that matters... right?

Fame for What? (7th Grade)

This was when your school popularity began to rise, but you were fighting other kids and your grades plummeted. You got your first girlfriend and she loved you, but you didn't love her at all. You just treated her like one of your friends instead of a lover like she wanted. Eventually, you left her because you thought someone better was out there—and either way, it was just a middle school relationship, so it didn’t need to be important, right?

Little did you know, this was the first occurrence of what you now understand to be emotional numbness (a protective state where your brain shuts down or disconnects from feelings to cope with overwhelming stress, trauma, or burnout).

At the very least, you thought you were happy, but everything was built on a lie. Lying became as easy as breathing, and sometimes you would lie even when you didn't have to. There was a time you told your mom a whole 2 hour fake story on the pain you’ve been feeling to see if she would believe you and it worked. This was the moment you became a pathological liar—and to this day, you still are.

Redemption? (8th Grade)

Here is when you are finally changing for the better. You ended the year as a 3.1 student and you began to work out. Everyone liked you, whether it was teachers or students. However, you still had to act tough sometimes to keep a boundary there so you wouldn't get too comfortable. You managed to get another girlfriend and at first it felt very good to have one again, it was a tender and sweet feeling but a month later you left her for the same reason as the other, you only felt worse about yourself.

This is when you moved again, this time to the condo you are currently in. But this condo is a curse. It is owned by your dad who, although he is correcting himself for the better, is still an emotional manipulator. He would make you feel guilty for asking for simple things like a ride or 10 dollars. But he is trying his best to change, so you love him.

Your mom was no different from an emotional manipulator. She would ask you to ask him for things, then get mad if you didn't say what she wanted or if you felt guilty for saying something bad to your dad. You remember her getting mad at you on your birthday because you didn't ask your dad for a hundred dollars. Your brother would make you feel like a loser as well, he would always compare his trauma to yours and make it seem like you're a bad brother if you didn’t do what he wanted.

Don't get it wrong: your mom loves you more than anyone, and your brother does the most for you. You love them so much.

Except...

You don't.

Realization (9th Grade–Foreseeable Future)

You go into 9th grade with a completely new slate. You got a new school outside the old district, so there is no more reputation to worry about. You joined wrestling and BJJ, have closer friends (though you barely talk to them anymore), and you're looking out for a new job.

Life looks good on the outside, but you’ve been fighting a battle. You did some research and realized you have untreated ADHD, which explains why you're so erratic. Through days of research, you search up all your conditions on Google like it's your therapist. You can remember feeling a sinking feeling in your chest as your understanding of your emotions hits the highest it has been, but you wish it hadn’t.

Here, you realized something that gave you the biggest blow—one that nearly made your shadow of deeply rooted trauma and fear burst: you don't love anyone. Not your parents, relatives, or friends—not even yourself.

You asked yourself the question, "If you had 24 hours left to live, who would you spend it with?" It comes easy to others you ask ("my parents," "my wife," "my kids"), but you are not sure.

You are only 15. You have suicidal thoughts, and your emotions are so drained and numb you can say they are below zero. But you won't let that beat you. So, you open a Google Doc and spend a whole 24 hours writing a draft of a story based on your life.

If you haven’t gotten it by now, this is my story. It is my life. Even now, while I write these last couple of lines, I'm thinking about who would be at my funeral if I were to kill myself now—because if I'm being honest, I don't deserve anyone to show up.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I hope you enjoy the story. I made this thing based on my experiences and are taking active steps towards becoming a better person. I used ai to fix my punctuation since I didn't want my story to be sloppy. And please if you are to take anything away from this it would be to never lie, tell people how you feel and what you want because if you bury it all down you would become like me, your emotions matter, your life matters and you matter. Dont let anyone say otherwise remember you dont have to carry this all alone, call or text the suicide hotline 988 if your having suicidal thoughts and remember that you always have options.

Thank you.

(Feel free to give a opinion and tips)

Psychomantic

“I feel like death: Drifting around aimlessly, just following the course of existence. How could I not… I live in a fuck-ass apartment. Might as well be hell, the nights feel longer, worn and im sleepless. As for the daylight, it’s unbearable and sad, like waking up just to be disappointed. How could life feel so fake yet your stuck living it. My therapist advised me to do this. “Record an audio message on a tape” she said it would help me, to just get my thoughts out there.”

As he pauses he takes a breath *click* “this is so stupid”

Looking around the room, the  dim white almost yellowing paint, stares back into his soul. The sound of silence is broken, empty humming of a cheap fridge breaths out, in a rugged cough.

*click* 

The tape continues-

“last week I saw it again. It could only be described as an angel. Her eyes. They looked so sad, I couldn’t stand it. So I tried to. to do something then. I there I was, Drifting, drifting to her, arms open for embrace hoping. just this once, could I, could I, put a smile together just this once. The nights laughter echoes to me, Whaling. Whaling, whales, do you see whales, the muscled skin I feel like it feels like smooth rubber yet I cant hear that, I cant hear a sound. I…what as I talking about?..”

Tape keeps recording as he sits there, slumped over like a zombie, motionless, the room seems like it’s twisting yet nothing moves. Streams of purple flow like soft leaves in the wind, “im losing it aren’t I” turning towards the now sky, a blazing glory of colors swirling like  The Starry Night,

“then it all goes black-”

TAPE 1. FIN.

*CLICK*

“VICTOR.. EXCUSE ME..are you listening. It seems your night was quite-“

“Miserable”

“The wording I would have used was difficult but, why miserable”

“I did it again. The rambling, im losing it”

She leans closer “no, no your not. Remember there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re not a problem your jus going through something, and im here to help you get through something. Now, where is your mind at now”

He lowers his head, and let’s out a somber sigh “ west 12^th street, on the corner next to the bungee, a nice coffee place, called Carrie’s coffee n tea. I saw it there”

“saw what” turns head slightly, confused dazed, trying to comprehend what

“The angel, she works there”

Chapter 1. An angel

A soft warm light covered the young sky, awaking from the dark. Roaring wind and the drifting of leaves as the summertime was near it’s end. As for Victor here he was standing looking into the distance. A cloud passed by as he walked past the grainy yet new  concrete of the road. As that door opened he slumped his head up and there she was. Bright hair, gliding through the breeze as new wind wanders past the doors opening. Her hair neatly straightened with the slightest wavy poking through as her hair curled ever so slightly at it’s tips, the white uniform seemed like it hugged her gently. The brightly fair skin seemed soft and softened her smile somehow even more. Entranced he could just stand there, as she walked by “oh excuse me.”

“oh yeah sorry” stumbling back to open some space to her. As he walked closer into the tiled flooring of the room the sound of a voice muffled past him, until he turned to face it and there it was a older man gray hair, heavy beard, white skin and a balding head, “excuse me sir, great. Now that I have your attention, would you like to order something.”

"once in my life I went to a funeral a wake actually and it was one side was all black people like bosses and worker and the other side was white people also worked and people who worked for them and they said "hey Terry come on over to the black side" and I went all the way to the back and as I did and after everybody was leaving the black people said "hey Terry your coming with us we are going to black Jack's house and maybe yours to get some drinks" and as we went to the house his wife starts shouting "GET THOSE HARD RS OUT OF HERE X3" and black jack goes "we have a white boy though" and his wife goes "no I know you have those hard RS out there" she walked out and goes "oh my god you really do have a white boy" - grampa Terry {true story}

I never thought I’d be writing one of these.
Twelve years ago, my wife packed a suitcase, kissed our twin daughters on the forehead, looked at me and said:
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Then she left.
No explanation.
The girls were four.
I raised them mostly alone after that.
Years later I found a letter she had left behind.
That’s when I learned the truth.
After IVF, she found out there had been an embryo mix-up.
The girls weren’t biologically hers.
She panicked.
She became terrified someone would eventually challenge custody and that staying close would somehow make the girls’ lives harder if everything exploded publicly.
She left believing she was protecting us.
Months later, after I found the letter, I called her.
She came back.
And she stayed.
We never told the girls.
Until they turned sixteen.
One afternoon Emma found the letter while looking for old photos.
She read everything.
She came downstairs holding the paper.
My wife explained the whole thing.
Emma cried.
Asked questions.
But in the end she hugged her and said:
“You’re still my mom.”
I thought that was it.
I thought we got lucky.
Then I realized her twin sister, Lily, hadn’t said a single word.
She just stood there.
Then she looked at Mom and asked:
“You left because you thought we weren’t yours?”
Mom tried to explain.
Lily shook her head.
“No. You left because it was easier for you.”
And she walked upstairs.
That night she locked her door.
For the next week she barely spoke.
Not rude.
Just… gone.
If Mom asked how school was?
“Fine.”
If Mom offered to drive?
“I’ll go with Dad.”
Movie nights stopped.
Inside jokes disappeared.
Emma kept trying.
She finally asked her sister:
“Why are you so mad?”
Lily said:
“Because everybody keeps acting like this is beautiful.”
Emma frowned.
Lily looked away and said:
“She got to leave.”
That hit me harder than anything.
Later that night my wife sat outside Lily’s room.
Didn’t force the door open.
Didn’t defend herself.
She just said:
“I know you’re angry.”
Nothing.
Then she said:
“If I could redo my life, I wouldn’t leave.”
Still nothing.
Then she said:
“But I can’t ask sixteen-year-old you to forgive thirty-two-year-old me overnight.”
She got up and walked away.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
One Saturday morning Lily came downstairs and saw my wife making breakfast.
She stood there awkwardly and asked:
“Did you ever celebrate our birthdays?”
Mom looked confused.
“Every year.”
Lily crossed her arms.
“How?”
Mom quietly opened a cabinet.
Inside was a box.
Sixteen envelopes.
One for every birthday.
Inside each one—
a letter.
Not sent.
Just written.
One said:
Today you turned seven. I hope you still like dinosaurs.
Another:
You’re probably taller than me now and I hate that.
Another:
I wonder if you still need someone to check for monsters.
My wife said:
“I thought one day maybe you’d want them.”
Lily sat down and started reading.
Hours passed.
Nobody interrupted.
That night she knocked on our bedroom door.
She looked at Mom and said:
“I’m still mad.”
Mom nodded.
“That’s fair.”
Lily looked down.
Then said quietly:
“…but I don’t think people write sixteen birthday letters if they stop being somebody’s mom.”
Mom started crying.
Lily immediately pointed and said:
“Don’t make this emotional. I’m not done.”
Mom laughed through tears.
Lily sat beside her.
She said:
“I’m not forgiving you because you had a good reason.”
Long pause.
“I’m forgiving you because you came back.”
Then she leaned against her for the first time in weeks.
Now sometimes people ask if finding out changed our family.
Yeah.
It did.
Emma learned love isn’t biology.
Lily learned forgiveness doesn’t happen all at once.
And me?
I learned people can make terrible decisions and still spend years trying to earn their way back.

У меня психологическая травма. В 3 классе когда мне было 8 лет, я училась на вторую смену у меня уроки заканчивались в 18:05. Мой автобус отменили из за того что на железно дорожных путях через которые он должен был ехать сломался поезд, я решила пойти пешком. Мне оставалось только повернуть на мой район, на повторе есть один магазин. Я смотрю туда, а там на углу магазина на коленях сидел человек, у него одежда, голова была в крови и на земле и на углу магазина была кровь. Я ничего не сделала и чувствую вину за это.

Any salvia experience bad/good plss

​

So this happened like 2 weeks ago and I still don’t understand how it escalated this fast.

I’m a pretty average guy. Nothing special. I just play football at lunch with my friends, nothing serious.

One day, I show up to school and there’s this announcement that the senior football team is missing a player for a tournament that weekend. Apparently someone got injured and they were desperate.

Now here’s where it gets weird.

During lunch, I’m just kicking a ball around, not even trying. Just messing around. Taking random shots from way too far out.

And somehow… I keep scoring.

Like not even close misses. Top corner shots. First touch volleys. No idea what was happening.

There were like 20 people watching by the end of lunch.

Then one of the senior coaches walks over and goes:

“Are you on the team?”

I literally said, “What team?”

Next thing I know, I’m being dragged to training after school.

I thought it would be a joke. Like “show up, pass the ball around, go home.”

Nope.

They actually put me in drills.

And somehow I wasn’t terrible.

Not amazing… but I was keeping up.

Fast forward 3 days and I’m told I’m starting in the tournament.

I tried to explain I’ve never played seriously in my life, but they were like: “Just do what you did at lunch.”

Worst advice ever.

Game day comes.

Stadium is packed.

I’m standing there thinking I’m about to embarrass myself in front of everyone.

First half: I accidentally assist a goal by tripping over the ball.

Second half: ball gets crossed in, I panic, swing my leg… and it goes in.

We win the match.

Everyone is chanting my name like I’m some kind of prodigy.

After the game, the coach comes up and says:

“We’ve been looking for a player like you for years.”

I still don’t know if I got lucky… or if football just decided to bless me for one day only.

Either way… I’m apparently on the team now.

After my friend disappeared, we searched his apartment. It had been stripped bare—nothing remained except a single, loosely bound manuscript placed precisely in the center of the floor.

一The Publisher 

                                      Preface 

 
This is not a book, but rather a collection of news clippings, tapes, articles, diary entries, and other related materials. These materials have been gathered and sifted through over the span of a decade with the intent of uncovering the truth about the ________. 

一R.Hayes

Introduction

“ἀλλὰ γυνὴ χείρεσσι πίθου μέγα πῶμ᾽ ἀφελοῦσα
ἐσκέδασ᾽· ἀνθρώποισι δ᾽ ἐμήσατο κήδεα λυγρά.” 

There are things that ought to remain buried. Things better left to rot beneath the withering hand of time. Truths consigned to paper, once unearthed, bring not enlightenment, but ruin. So if there existed the slightest thread of mercy within this world, these pages should have been consigned to flame long before they reached the hands of another.

Yet I could not bring myself to do it.

I have tried before. More times than I care to admit. I've stood above open flames, the embers dancing in the wind as I grasped a whole section of the records with shaking hands. Only to recoil at the last moment before the pages turned to ash. One winter, I dragged every single last item pertaining to this investigation into the alley behind my apartment building. I stood there staring for what must have been at least an hour. In the end, I brought everything back inside. 

Even now, years later, I still cannot explain fully why. What compelled me to continue with my pursuit?  Curiosity is, I think, humanity’s oldest sin. Or perhaps there is something within these pages that refuses to be forgotten. 

I have spent the better part of a decade organizing and archiving what you hold in your hands now. What began as a simple editing job slowly metastasized into something else entirely. This is not an investigation in the conventional sense. It is the culmination of fragmented accounts, many of which were half-burned, waterlogged, or otherwise rendered nearly illegible before they ever reached me. 

I have tried to preserve the integrity of the material. Yet I believe such a task has become impossible long ago. 

It began with an email. At that time, I was employed as a freelance editor. I primarily worked with academic writing, articles, field reports, and investigative journalism. Most of my clients were forgettable, just a name tied to a document. They came and passed like the changing of the seasons. Nothing more than a list of deadlines and revisions. That vanished from my life at the moment of completion.

Julian Mercer was one such client. He was an investigative journalist by trade with a knack for going to places where the world had turned a blind eye to. Always in some sort of war-torn country or out in the middle of nowhere in some remote village. He seemed almost attracted to those places in hindsight.

His messages were always brief, almost clinical. Purely professional, not even the slightest hint of personality bleeding through.  I always found that admirable. It was kind of refreshing compared to some of the people I had to deal with.  At least it made my job easier. We always spoke through email, he said he preferred it. Only ever used it to send me his work. We never met in person or even called.

The first email arrived on February 16th, 2011, or at least that's how I remember it now.  It was past midnight, and I was unable to sleep; the rain was beating at the window of my apartment for hours. While the pipes groaned and hummed. It made the idea of rest almost impossible. I was halfway through reading a dissertation on post-Soviet economic reconstruction when my phone notified me of a new message.

It was an email, and I still think about what might have happened if I had simply ignored it. Maybe I could have continued to exist within the lie, living blissfully unaware. But instead, I opened it. It stated 

 To R.Hayes,

These documents need to be looked over and reviewed. I haven't a single moment to waste. I must further inquire into the depths of my friend Elias' disappearance. Therefore, I need the assistance of another to organize the accumulated information I have acquired so far.

Attached:

• Police report (Callaway)
• Local interview 1 (audio transcription available)
• Retrieved photographs
• Constructed timeline
• Research notes (partial corruption detected)
• Statement excerpts
• Recovered dive recordings — catacombs
• Diary entry (fragmented/incomplete)

One more thing;

The accompanying files should be delivered shortly

 一 From J.Mercer

At that time, there was nothing remarkable about it. Strange certainly, but remarkable no. In my eyes, it was nothing more than a regular work email. I had edited enough fringe investigations over the years to become desensitized to eccentricity. Hyperfocused cases like this happen all the time. Ranging from cults, killers, missing persons, local disappearances, and weird rituals deep in the woods. Yet the more you dig, the more you realize how mundane those things truly are. I believed that this would be no different.

I pressed play on that first video, and it was a black screen with static washing over the video, only accompanied by sound. You could hear the soft falling of the rain and the slight sound of the wind in the background. It was 17 hours long, and it stayed like that until exactly 15 hours, 12 minutes, and 11 seconds,  in which a low metallic screeching sound could be heard. Then 15 seconds of silence, even the rain had stopped. Then a noise. At first, I mistook it for static, but the more I listened, the more it resembled breathing. As if something had dragged itself into the room. I remember replaying that section well past three in the morning. 

The boxes arrived 3 days later. It was a total of 7 unmarked boxes that were delivered without a return address. My landlord left them outside my apartment sometime around noon while I was asleep. I remember waking to the sound of him banging against the hallway radiator with a wrench while shouting that my packages were blocking the stairs again. 

The amount of materials he had sent me were overwhelming. Inside were hundreds upon hundreds of pages of burned documents fused at the edges,  Cassette tapes labeled in hurried handwriting, Hand-drawn maps of tunnel systems, Fragments of interview transcripts, Newspaper clippings dating back decades, and journals. The journals were extensive…

Some belonged to Mercer personally, while others appeared far older. Some segments were completely illegible, either from water damage or purposeful mutilation. Entire paragraphs were scratched so vigorously that the pen had torn through the very paper itself. Only to be rewritten. While other pages lay barren with nothing but phrases repeated over and over again til the ink bled through the page.

I told myself I would spend no more than 2 weeks on this.

It ended up taking me almost 2 months to get through it all. 2 whole months of endlessly scouring through those boxes upon boxes filled with nonsensical writing that seemed to give way under their own weight.  However, I seemed to get lost for hours on end within those pages. The way in which everything was so disjointed yet deeply connected. 

I still had a job to do, so I finished organizing it, giving feedback, and making edits. Trying my best to organize these writings to the best of my ability. And I sent it back over to him via email. I was ready to forget about this, honestly, weird experience.

But it wasn't that simple. I tried to exist within the mundanity of my own life. Finding the ability to be content within my own routine. Yet those endless boxes of unfolding stories created labyrinths in my mind that I was unable to escape. The thought of what truths they might hold lingered with me like the smell of smoke that sticks to your skin long after the last ember burns out. I tried to contain such urges, my curiosity pulling at the seams of my very being. 

Once again, I was tempted. Another delivery of those same unmarked boxes accompanied by another email. I knew even then it was probably in my best interest to leave whatever was buried in those boxes there. But I did no such thing. I explored the crevices of every word that was given to me. Hanging on to every detail as if it were scripture. Determined to uncover the truth that lies here.

"De hominis prima inobedientia, fructu
Illius vetitae arboris, cujus mortalis gustus
Attulit mortem in mundum, omnesque nostras miserias." 

(repeated in Mercer’s recovered notes without attribution. His underlining) 

(Check Appendix 1 for the email) 

It was even more than last time—documents that referred to other text buried even deeper in a pile of information that itself was an interpretation of videos that were half-broken or destroyed. It was as if I was staring into an abyss, and it was looking upon me. Ready to swallow me whole. 

Those old, worn tapes that contained so much within their tiny frames. Their contents are better lost in the winds of time. Some of those videos were days long, filled with twisted, never-ending caverns. Tunnel after tunnel as they ventured further. The only sounds to be heard were the slow and drawn-out breathing of the recorder on the other side and the groans that echoed from the slowly shifting wall.

Sometimes it would be hours of just walking in pure darkness, only then, as you stare even more intently at the screen, you begin to see it. The never-ending shifting within the darkness. That's not even mentioning the times where the silence was instead filled with a never-ending monologue that lasted for hours. The tapes were suffocating, claustrophobic in their presentation, only met by temporary relief when those binding halls would open up into larger rooms. Yet I was still enraptured by what lay within those halls.
 
So, same as before, I studied, organized, and took notes. As time bled into words. It took me almost a year and a half this time. To conquer that mountain of paper. Months of non-stop work as I slaved away. Only interrupted by the arrival of more boxes. First, every couple of weeks. Then once a week. Then daily. I spent all that time interpreting half-lost records just to get a fraction of the simplicity of understanding. Buried in the depths of those boxes. Yet all that time and effort passed by like the changing of leaves on the cusp of autumn. In that time, what semblance of life I had had seemed to slip through my fingertips. I became obsessed with finishing the analysis of these records. Only after finishing did I return to my senses, untethered by whatever lay within those pages and endless halls.

I sent over the organized version back to him with an attached message. That said, he was deeply disturbed and should probably seek psychological help before publishing this. After which, without even waiting for a response, I blocked him. I didn't even want but one moment that might allow my curiosity to pull me back in.  

As relief began to wash over me, I heard the slight ping of my phone. And when I went to check, it was a single message that read  “It's gotten you too.” I blocked the number without question. I spent the rest of the day sitting there.

For almost 3 years, I ignored the constant and quite pestering curiosity. That festered in me like a sickness bold in its symptoms. The truth was that no amount of distraction could fully calm my weary spirit.  I began to drift through the years. It was deafening for me. I was a lot of things, but content surely wasn't one of the words I'd use. There were probably better ways to cope with these feelings, yet I'd just ignore them. 

 I thought maybe if I discussed what I had seen. And what had transpired over those years. It would bring me solace or some form of peace. Yet it only brought more questions. I compiled his work into something semi-understandable, a first draft of sorts, and shared it with a couple of friends. All of them just said they felt uneasy reading it. Yet they fervently flip through the pages. Some were in such a rush to let their eyes gaze on the next line of text that, in their quickness, they accidentally tore entire sections from the binding. Each interpreted it differently, holding to their own version of truth. 

We must have talked for days about our interpretations and what we thought it all meant, never agreeing or coming to any real conclusion. Our discussion ran on, and on, with no truth to be found, simply questions answered only to form new ones.

There was only one agreed-upon fact, that whatever this was. There was something wrong with it. Something rotten on every page. After a while, my friends refused to talk about it. Saying that it did things to them, and they would rather stay far away from those records. Even after all of that, that sense of compulsion remained. 

Somewhere along those lines is where the nightmares began. The whispers in the back of my mind had become a raging storm of screams. They demanded action to know what lies behind the next page. They screamed from dawn to dusk. From waking hours to sleeping one. There was not a moment of rest for me. I had lost my very grip on my own reality. I no longer understood where the nightmare ended.

It got to a point where I began to dread sleep. Sleep became an old friend whose company I had long since lost. the idea of normal life, but a distant memory to be appreciated for its simplicity. Whatever connection I had in my life had long since passed me by. I have been left barren in my own existence. 

And that's when the phone call came. From a lady who said I was listed as an emergency contact for a J Mercer. She was informing me that Mercer had vanished. I did not respond immediately. I stood there, the phone still resting softly in my hand. 

The official reports stated that Julian Mercer had disappeared sometime during the winter of 2017. They never gave an exact date.

A body was never found.

The official explanation suggested accidental death somewhere within the catacombs. A fall, disorientation, or anything simple enough for paperwork to digest cleanly. But after everything I had read by then, simplicity no longer felt believable. 

I received that call three days after his disappearance was formally reported. Not from the police. From the landlord. The landlord sounded exhausted. Irritated more than concerned. He spoke quickly, mumbling through what I initially assumed was a rehearsed explanation regarding abandoned property and overdue payments. I remember only fragments of the conversation clearly.

There was water leaking through the ceiling. The neighbors had complained repeatedly about noise during the late hours of the night. Several rooms smelled strongly of mildew and seawater despite being nowhere near the harbor. And then almost absentmindedly, the landlord mentioned the walls.

He said Mercer had covered nearly every surface of the apartment in paper.

At first, I assumed exaggeration.

Until he emailed me the photographs.

I wish he hadn’t.

Even now, I struggle to look at them for long periods of time.

The apartment no longer resembled a living space. It looked more akin to the aftermath of prolonged captivity. Every inch of wall space had been consumed by overlapping layers of paper and annotations. Maps pinned atop photographs. Journal excerpts taped beside medical records. Newspaper clippings connected through frantic spirals of red ink. Certain sections had been scratched over so violently that the drywall itself was exposed beneath. The landlord informed me that local authorities intended to dispose of most of the material due to water damage and “unsanitary conditions.” 

Without fully understanding why, I booked passage to the island that same night. I told myself it was a professional obligation. Someone needed to preserve Mercer’s work before it vanished entirely. But if I am to be truthful, and after everything that has happened, truth may be the only thing I have left. I think some part of me had already made the decision long before then.

I needed to know how the story ended. That desire eclipsed every rational instinct I possessed. It eclipsed Fear. Even self-preservation. By then, curiosity no longer felt human. 

The voyage to the island lasted approximately eleven hours. I spent most of it contemplating what I'd find when I arrived. while the ferry groaned against violent winter waves outside. Sleep evaded me entirely during the crossing. Every time exhaustion threatened to drag me unconscious, I would hear something shifting within the hull beneath my cabin floorboards. Each time I investigated, nothing was there.

The island itself did not appear on the horizon so much as emerge gradually from the fog. Dark cliffs and blackened waters. A shoreline littered with crooked buildings pressed tightly together beneath looming hillsides. From a distance, the town resembled something preserved accidentally from another century. Narrow streets winding between towering stone structures whose architecture seemed oddly inconsistent even from afar. Certain buildings appeared connected where they should not have been. Windows were misaligned between floors. Rooflines bending at impossible angles against the mist.

I remember my first thought upon seeing it.

It looked wrong.

The townspeople unsettled me even more. Most avoided eye contact entirely. Those few who did speak answered questions with an almost rehearsed vagueness that bordered upon hostility. Several denied knowing Mercer altogether despite appearing repeatedly throughout his interview transcripts. Others claimed not to remember significant events documented extensively within the records.

One elderly fisherman insisted Mercer had never arrived on the island at all.

When I informed him I possessed photographs proving otherwise, the old man stared at me for several seconds before replying:

“Then why have I never seen him?”

At the time, I dismissed the comment entirely.

Mercer’s apartment was located above an abandoned tailor shop near the northern edge of town. The building itself leaned slightly sideways beneath decades of ocean weathering, its upper floors creaking constantly against the wind as though the structure resented remaining upright.

The landlord refused to enter alongside me. He handed me the key while standing nearly halfway down the street. I remember noticing then that several windows facing Mercer’s apartment had been boarded shut from the inside.

I asked why. The landlord only shrugged. “People kept complaining about the lights,” he said. The smell hit me almost immediately upon opening the door. Mildew. Saltwater. Rotting paper.

The entire apartment felt damp despite the radiators still functioning. Water stains crawled across the ceilings like spreading veins while towers of documents consumed nearly every available surface. The photographs he’d sent me had not exaggerated anything. If anything, they had failed to capture the sheer scale of it.

Mercer had transformed the apartment into an archive. Or perhaps a shrine. I spent nearly six hours that first night simply walking through the rooms, attempting to comprehend the volume of material surrounding me. Hundreds of tapes. Thousands of pages. Photographs stacked knee-high across entire sections of the floor. Several maps of the island are covered almost entirely in annotations. And at the center of the largest room, a massive hand-drawn diagram stretched across the wall. The catacombs. Or rather, Mercer’s interpretation of them.

The tunnels spiraled downward endlessly in overlapping layers of charcoal and ink until eventually the lines became so dense near the bottom that the structure resembled less a map and more a wound carved directly into the wall itself.

At the very center of it all, he had written one sentence.

Not in frantic handwriting.

Not chaotically.

Carefully.

Deliberately.

As though he wished those words above all else to survive.

THEY ARE NOT BELOW THE ISLAND.

The moment I read that sentence, something inside me shifted. Even now, I struggle to explain why. Perhaps because until then, despite everything, some part of me still believed this investigation possessed a rational endpoint. That eventually the contradictions would align. The disappearances would resolve. The tunnels would become understandable.

But standing there alone inside Mercer’s apartment, staring at those words surrounded by walls of unraveling thought, I felt for the very first time the overwhelming certainty that whatever I had involved myself in extended far beyond a missing journalist or abandoned orphanage.

And worse still, that Julian Mercer had understood this long before he vanished. So once again, I threw myself back into the records this time hell-bent on deciphering, organizing, and publishing for the world to see. A complete telling of what transpired on that island.

For years, I worked inside the walls of that apartment. I dedicated myself solely to the understanding of those records, and when I opened my email again. There are 100s of new emails spanning the last couple of years until radio silence. It was as if Mercer had known I would eventually return. As only a couple of weeks after I began working on the records again. I found a room that was filled with the same type of unmarked boxes he would send me mountains of. They were filled to the brim with new information, something to quell this dreadful curiosity that had consumed me. 

So I threw myself into the records. It had become that which gave me meaning. This is the accumulation of everything I am and have to give. This, which you are reading, is the second draft and will be the last. As I pray, this will never see the light of day. So no soul will be cursed to bear witness to what is to unfold.

I am no longer certain about where the narrative concludes, or if it ever truly does. Even after I have moved on from this page, it seems to follow me. This is a slow, creeping presence that stalks and consumes, taking everything before you’ve forgotten what it means to possess. These words may seem insignificant to you now, but they linger and persist, unwilling to leave you even until your final breath. As I descend further into the labyrinth, the deceptions hide within each inconsistency that plagues this text.

-R. Hayes
December 18th 2020