Oh wow. Let me tell you. I was a little 15 year old rebel, was partying a ton and doing more and more drugs, had undiagnosed PTSD at the time. Dropped out of competitive soccer, stopped going to school.

My parents sent me to outpatient drug treatment, they recommended there that I go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. There’s a saying called “13 stepping” in AA which is older members taking advantage of newcomer members sexually.

Some much older men hit on me under the guise of “helping” but there was this one guy that was 31 who really won me over. He had a year sober, he was going to save me from all of this pain I was in, he promised me. He was charming and handsome, I was like a moth to a flame. My dumbass believed it.

He turned into being very controlling and dominating, I dropped out of high school, moved in with him and found out he wasn’t sober. He had been doing drugs secretly the whole time; he was lying about his sobriety. Again, I had sexual trauma in my past so I was already unfortunately easily manipulated. He convinced to me to relapse to be closer to him.

Cue multiple overdoses, suicide attempts, restraining orders, and me leaving the country because he made it impossible to leave him, it was a cycle of on off. He turned physically abusive on stimulants, was selling drugs. It was horrible.

Thankfully I got help for all of that when I left the country, where I lived for a few years for my undergrad eventually.

It took a really long time to break the trauma bond with him. Although 90% of the time he was a sociopathic asshole, 10% I had never felt safer and we bonded over the messed up situations we got in.

I’m so, so grateful that part of my life is over.