Chapter 1- X: The Perfect Stranger

Chapter 1 of a 4-Part Survival Series

Since the beginning of Plot Twist: Still Alive, host Krystal with a K, three-time cancer survivor and chaos coordinator, has asked others to share their darkest survival stories. Now, for the first time, she tells her own.

In this first chapter, X: The Perfect Stranger, Krystal recounts meeting a man who seemed perfect—vulnerable, magnetic, and eerily in sync with her every thought—making promises that felt too good to be true. His moods flickered like shadows, and life seemed poised to shift in an instant. What started as a “dream come true” quickly became a nightmare disguised as love.

She ignored every red flag—not because she didn’t notice them, but because she grew up in a place where toxic felt familiar, where danger hid behind comfort. What should have been alarming instead felt… normal.

Krystal is not reliving this horror alone. Joining her is her ride-or-die, Sarah, who had front row seats to the chaos and helped her tell the story.

The episode launches listeners into the opening act of the seven-year horror movie that was Krystal’s life—the first whispers of manipulation, intoxicating love bombing, and subtle control that tighten like invisible chains. This is the beginning of a vicious cycle, a psychological horror where trust becomes a weapon and every “perfect” moment may conceal danger.

Krystal shares her cautionary story as a warning, in hopes of arming those stuck in a similar nightmare with the tools it takes to escape for good. Dark, unsettling, and yes, wickedly funny—in true Plot Twist: Still Alive fashion, dark humor is included free of charge…because what doesn’t kill you makes you fucking hilarious.

⚠️ Trigger Warning: This episode contains discussion of mental abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual coercion, and suicide. Recommended for listeners 18 and older.

If you or someone you know needs resources for domestic violence, abuse cycles or suicidal prevention please visit our website blog at www.plottwiststillalive.com for national resources and information.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Last twist. Still alive. This is chapter one of a four-part series. X, the Prologue Breaking My Silence. I'm Crystal with a K, your host, three-time cancer survivor, and chaos coordinator. For months, I've asked others to bear their darkest truths on Plat Twist still alive. Now, it's my turn. Before we dive in, a few important notes. The person I'm talking about will be called X to protect his other victims and myself. Everyone else in this story has had their names changed to famous singers or groups, because why the fuck not? And none of them have an actual affiliation with the celebrities named. Let me be clear. This is my story. I am not a therapist. I do not have the licensing to diagnose anyone. I am not here to label anyone, but I do have the authority to tell the truth about what happened to me. My goal is simple: to help someone else recognize the signs, break the cycle, and understand that real love does not cost you your sanity, your freedom, or your life. Most people assume that surviving cancer was the hardest thing I've ever faced, but in truth, surviving this relationship was far, far worse. Cancer is a disease. It happens to you. This was a person who set out to destroy me, break me, use me as fuel, and then hoover me back in to do it all over again. I was lost in it for years. I lived in a false reality. I was made to feel like I was the abusive one. I lost myself completely. And I will never go back to that. I am lucky enough to still be standing. I could not have made it through this without my ride or die Sarah. She's had a front row seat to the shit show, and she is the person I chose to help me tell this story. So you're getting the real, raw, and unflinching truth with her by my side. This series exposes the narcissistic abuse cycle, the love bombing, gaslighting, reactive abuse, trauma bonding, threats, coercion, manipulation, shame, and silence. I want you to know this. Nobody owes their abusers silence. The shame, the fear of judgment, the worry about retaliation, these are weapons designed to trap you. I overcame mine through therapy, research, and tools, and now I refuse to stay quiet. This series is dark, it's terrifying, it's heartbreaking, and yes, in true plat twist of the dive fashion, dark humor is included free of charge because what doesn't kill you makes you fucking hilarious. Trigger warning. This content is for 18 and up audiences and includes discussions of mental and physical abuse, sexual coercion, trauma bonding, and suicidal conversations. Today I break my silence and I hope to break the cycle for the next person. Chapter one of The Perfect Stranger. This chapter covers the idolization phase where abusers hook you before the real horrors begin. A few terms you'll hear in this episode. Well, in love bombing. Overwhelming affection, declarations of love, and sexual intimacy used to lure you in. Later, these gestures turn into breadcrumbs, tiny doses of attention to reel you back in after the damage has been done. False intimacy slash sharing secrets. They share their deepest secrets to earn your trust. But their real goal is to hear yours. Those secrets are weaponized later to break you down, make you feel unworthy, or paint you as the fucked up one, all while they play the victim. Miring. Reflecting back your fears, desires, and trauma to make you feel like you finally found someone whoever gets you. This phase is intoxicating, seductive, and terrifying. But like the charm of Ted Bundy or Hannibal Lecter, it's the first step in a cycle that tightens its grip on you, setting the stage for the horrors to come. The perfect stranger, chapter one. I've been very hesitant on telling this story, but after starting this and having so many people on this podcast now sharing their darkest, their hardest, their most difficult, several of them being abused survivors. I just felt like it was time for me. And I don't owe somebody that was abusive or people that were abusive any silence anymore. And I'm tired of living my life worried about that, especially because I've seen the healing that it has done for some of the people that have been on this show to be able to just tell people and not be ashamed because they shouldn't be, and neither should I. But in order to do this, I definitely needed to bring back somebody who also inspired me with how they told their story just recently about sexual abuse as a child. And she is literally one of the strongest, most incredible people that I know. She is my rad or die. Everybody say hello to Sarah. What's up with the ladies? Oh my gosh, you are adorable. I decided to have you come on to this episode because number one, you know almost everything about me, but you know, there's a lot of shit to know about me because I have so much life experience way more than I should at 40 years old. But you were also my best friend during one of my abusive relationships, the one that was definitely the most life-altering, most or most traumatic, I guess. And so I want you to be here not only just to support me, but to kind of help fill in the blanks and also to let people know from the outside looking in what your experience was throughout. And just ask me questions, you know, whatever you're thinking that you think the people might want to know. I am gonna be an open book. Now, let me just go ahead and tell you now. I am, I am a fucking shit show. My life is on and off a horror movie, which is why I have such dark humor. Plot twist still alive, all of the things, because there are a lot of plot twists in my life. Some were because of me and the decisions that I made, and some are because of a lot of other things that were completely out of my control, other people, whatever you whatever it was. But I just want to say that you are probably gonna judge the shit out of me, but I promise you, if you're listening to this, I don't fucking care anymore because I I say the mean most mean, ugliest shit to myself that anybody could ever say. So before you think in your head, that was fucking stupid, why did she do that? Blah, blah, blah, blah. What I want to do instead is give you a frame, a mind frame before you even we even start this podcast. Please understand that most people that go through abuse and are in multiple one or multiple abusive relationships, they are actually attracted to what ru would repel a healthy person. Every time you're listening, you could even play a fucking drinking game to this podcast. So if you want to gather your friends all 18 and up and uh listen to the shit show, that's fine. But every time you hear a scenario that is like red flag, throw the red flag. Yep, you could call it out and then take a shot or take a drink.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

We'll be very proud of you guys, actually.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah, and and honestly, more than likely, a lot of this is gonna be a red flag. But I also don't, this is instead of it being, you know, hey, this is my story, it's not just my story, it's also essentially a cautionary tale. There are a lot of things I did wrong. I am not gonna candy coat it, sugarcoat it, or try to make myself look good because there are a lot of times that I did the wrong thing, I made the wrong choices, I stepped outside of who I thought I was for a long time. I've I lost myself in this. So you're gonna hear me say and acknowledge shit that I'm not proud of. But at the end of the day, I am not that person anymore. I want to hopefully educate people, but I also want to take my life back and not allow somebody to silence me anymore.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yes. And I hope that the goal too for me as well is just to be able to give people some per perspective, but also for anybody that may have somebody in their lives that may be going through something similar that Crystal did, and or have gone through the this themselves, you know, just to feel like this happens more commonly than I think people realize. And sometimes even just being the friend in this situation, there's a lot of times where we're just like, man, they're freaking dumb. Like I'm just done with them. I'm just done. Like, you know how many times I could have just been like, she is chaotic, this whole situation's chaotic, I'm leaving. Like this, I can't support her in this anymore. She continuously makes poor decisions, she continuously keeps going back to this person. There's so many scenarios that, you know, that can end up being coming very toxic all the way around. But I say all that because with Crystal, I feel like for you, you are very self-critical, but you also take that and you do try to learn from it. That is also the goal that I want people to take away. I will hopefully be able to give perspective of like, I stayed around for this long because I did see you take the steps to try to move forward. There was some back word backpedaling. So much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

But in my own way a lot.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

She would have conversations be like, no, no, you're right. You're right. And the fact that she even could say that, I felt like I could continue.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

So that would be the first resource that I want to say. You need honest friends and supportive friends. If nothing else, they are gonna always steer you the right way. If you don't have any in your life right now, I highly encourage you to get those. And especially when you end up in relationship dynamics like we're about to talk about, a lot of times they try their best to isolate you because it's easier to control you and manipulate you. So thanks for like that, that whole what all of what you just said is true. And there were friends that fell off, but you didn't because you're my rider die, bitch. You ain't going nowhere.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Well, there was times when it was difficult to tell you how I really felt or about the situation or tried to stay, because in the beginning, obviously, the goal was to stay in a relationship, right? But then once things started to get really rocky and for too long, your friend should be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Your people that love you should tell you the truth, even if it hurts. And in constructive ways. Yeah. So we'll get to that. All right. As we say in every every episode that has to do with any sort of abuse, um, this is not about the person that it was abuse abusing me. I'm going to tell the story as it happened. I'm not going to tell it from the enlightened 40-year-old crystal that knows what these things are and educated herself and climbed out of that fucking hole of whatever that was. I'm not going to tell you in that way. I'm going to tell you in the way that it happened in the time before I knew all these things. Okay. So again, understand that we are going to tell this from my perspective, give you a very brief overview of what my upbringing looked like and my relationship dynamics looked like prior to this relationship that's going to be the focus of this. Because typically you don't just end up in a super toxic relationship and stay for seven years just because I grew up in a very tumultuous household. Both of my parents came from very abusive households in different ways, both physical on one side. And then the other side, I think, was a lot different. Um, there was some sexual abuse on that side. It wasn't directly with my parents, and that's not necessarily my story to tell. But I will say that I knew that very early in my life. But I also felt like at times that was kind of an excuse for poor parenting choices and things that I accepted as normal that I realize as a parent myself now that are very far from normal, nor would I ever do with my own children. There was a lot of corporal punishment growing up. There was a lot of things that I was made privy of as a young person that I should have never known about. There was a lot of pinning me against each other, a lot of manipulation, uh using me to manipulate. Overall, there one parent specifically, there was a lot of uh fear and mental warfare that occurred. And it it was kind of what walking on minefields at times. And sometimes you wouldn't even know why you were in trouble, and the punishment would be a lot more severe than what the crime was, if you will. But I grew up like that. My fight or flight was broken, basically, my whole childhood. But I also saw my parents stay together through all of that. They're still together, actually. And so there were never cops called, no matter how bad it got. And let me be clear, there was most of the time not any physical violence in my house. However, there was a lot of screaming, yelling, fighting, things being thrown, just chaos. So that's how I grew up. It was to the point where when I was almost 18 years old, I decided to get the fuck out. I actually left town from Texas and went back up to North Carolina on a Greyhound bus to move in with my boyfriend at the time, who I met in high school and was my high school sweetheart and also a drug dealer because I thought this is my way out.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

And his pseudonym is Chingy. It's what? Chingy.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

So I literally got on a Greyhound bus, lost all of my luggage, so lost all of my fucking clothes.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

If that wasn't a sign, I don't know what it was.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

I know, right? But it, you know, it was my way out. One thing I will say is growing up the way that I did, having childhood cancer, it did make me very resilient, very resilient. And at times in my life I've felt broken, but I don't think I've ever actually been able to not pick up the pieces and keep fucking moving. Always been independent, always been very stubborn, as you will hear, and never wanting to give up. And I also was the person in the family who always had to fix things and felt that I had to take care of everyone and I had to fix things. And so I ended up in a relationship where that first relationship, I wanted to fix him. I wanted to change him. I wanted to get him out of blah, blah, blah. Well, I did. He joined the military. We ended up married. I know. First shocker, plot twist. Crystal's been married three times and not just twice. You're welcome. Not super proud of that. Not something I love to tell everybody, but here I am telling my 33, yes, we're up to 33 followers. I'm just kidding. That I have been married three times. I highly do not recommend that. Don't fucking marry somebody if you're not sure. Very, very long story short, to wrap up the chingy. I like the way you're doing that rat thr right there. Basically, I married him. I got him to join the military. He had several failed jobs, just wasn't good at keeping a job. He struggled with addiction on and off and alcoholism. But I was also the caregiver. He would get obliterated drunk on a regular basis. He was using drugs behind my back. At that point, I was like so goody-goody, which is so wild that I ended up with somebody like that because I didn't even know what like crack was, cocaine, any of that. And then I moved to where he's at, and there's like a dude just running around in his underwear scratch, and he's like, yo, cuz you seen you seen them snakes. And I, and this really happened. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And then my ex is super paranoid and he's like, why was he in his underwear in front of you? And I'm like, dude, I don't fucking know what I'm seeing Dave Chappelle vibes right now. So much. So much. Yes. That's exactly like give a crack and a crack, be fish for it. Um, not everyone there did drugs, but a lot of them did. And so got him out, all of those things. And he still just ended up going back. And I don't think he was using drugs when he was in the military, in fairness, but he did drink quite a bit and he would be physical at times during that. But I in my head, I thought if I fought back, then it's not abuse. Like if he can't hurt me because I'm defend myself, then I'm not being abused. I don't know why my brain thought that, but that's it. So take your first drink, bitches. I'm not gonna do that this whole time. Everything came to a head when he continued to drink, and I was literally about to get into a nursing program. If you've ever gone to nursing school, then you know that it's actually very competitive. I said no thank you to that because he basically came home on leave from deployment and just started getting obliterated drinking. He did cheat several times, and I found texts in his phone, and that was kind of it. So I decided to leave him. So I moved back home to Texas because I knew that if I stayed, I would end up back with him. I was trying to push for the divorce, he didn't want it. So I moved to Texas and I don't follow up on the divorce. I'm just collecting spousal support and I want a divorce, but he doesn't want to. And if anyone's ever been through a divorce like this, you can do all the paperwork, you can do all the legwork. If they don't want to sign the fucking papers, you can't really make them. And neither one of us was in a place where we wanted to get lawyers and all of that shit because quite frankly, we didn't have kids, we didn't have assets, there was nothing.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Like, well, clearly, spousal support wasn't that expensive.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

It wasn't. It was a few hundred dollars a month. It wasn't something crazy. So I think for him, it was just the principal. And I didn't, but I didn't talk to him. I mean, we were, I gave him one chance and then I that was that. Uh, he blew it. I finally cut it. He was my first everything. Like from 14 years old on, I lost my virginity. This person, I was with this person for nine years. I come back home, I start working at a bar. I'm having a great time. I'm traveling. I'm trying this dating thing. Now, let me just say this time frame, there was not Tinder, there was not bumble. I think there was like plenty of fish, but you like got on a fucking actual computer.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Plenty of whales and dolphins.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Oh, and so it was there was minimal online, right? I did not live with my parents because I couldn't. I was just enjoying being single. I was definitely not ready to be in a relationship again. And I was still pretty what a naive, I guess. And so I thought if I had sex with a guy, I was like, he likes me. I was like monogamous. I really wanted to be in a relationship. That did not work out the first couple of times I was intimate. And so I just I decided we're not doing that anymore. So I would yeah, so I would go, I'd meet a lot of guys and I would go like we might mess around, fool around, over the clothes type of thing, but I I stopped sleeping with men very quickly in my early 20s because this wasn't, it was making me feel used and it wasn't panning out into a relationship. I did date a couple of people in that time frame, but none of it ever became very serious. I really don't know. I think I I w was the red flag. I had a lot of red flags. I didn't know how to be in a relationship because I had never been outside of being in the relationship with this guy, and he had been with a lot of people before me, for the record. So working at this bar, I'm kind of in a place in my life where I'm either gonna move up in management for the bar, I was gonna try and get nursing school. That didn't pan out. That's another story. But basically, I had all my pre-works done, but then they required something different in this state of Texas. So I was like, fuck this. I'm just gonna keep working at the bar. I was making great money working five or six days a week. I got to travel a lot for them. I was having the time of my life, and I really did consider doing management for the bar, but I always wanted to be a nurse. And so after a lot of conversations with my family and with my friends, I was like, why don't I just join the military? Like I came from a military family. I do respect the military a lot. I will say it's just like any job. There are really great people in the military. There are really big pieces of shit in the military. And I will say also, if you already have any mental health issues, any personality disorders, any of those things, the military doesn't necessarily weed those people out. They're actually more, a lot of times more attracted to what the military offers. And later it's kind of used as an excuse for these issues that were already present. But that's another soapbox I won't get on too much. So I'm working at the bar and I decide to join the military. And so I have a few months. I have about six months before I'm actually gonna go in. And I picked the shortest MOS because my goal was to come back, go to ROTC, go to college, and basically I was gonna do the National Guard. So I would just go to school. I wouldn't have to deploy or anything because I'd be an ROTC. I'd be an officer and then I'd owe them, you know, a couple of years to pay for my college. I was like, cool, I'll be done by the summer. It'll be great. Well, a few months before I go to basic training, one of my coworkers was talking about his brother and telling me that he's coming back from deployment and he he just kept bragging about his brother. Mind you, I hated this coworker. He was a liar. He was really gross. He would like cheat on his wife. We'll call him Fat Joe, like the rapper Fat Joe. And he was a big guy. He was just slimy. Like there were multiple instances that he was just awkward. And I watched him be inappropriate with the other bartenders. I watched him be inappropriate with people that came into the bar. So I didn't like the guy. So but he's bragging about his brother, showing off pictures, yada, yada, yada. And then all of a sudden, we have a new person and it's this guy. Now, this guy we are gonna call X. He was a at the time, he wasn't in really good shape, and he was to me attractive. But he was married and I knew he was married. So like there was nothing. In fact, I think one of the first things I did was like insult him because that's the type of bitch I was. I was just sarcastic. And at work, that's kind of that was what we did. Like we would just like fuck with the customers and talk shit and all that. So I insulted him. He kind of gave it back a little bit. There was just banter. So my relationships didn't work out. That my first marriage, I had a lot of respect for people that were married. In fact, I hated it if I found out somebody who cheated and things like that. I just don't, it's not something I've ever been super monogamous. Yeah, serial monogamous. So either way, he's working there for maybe a month. One night he would get on the subject of me joining the military, and he's like, Oh, I can help you do PT one day if you want. Maybe we can just do it after work. Because we'd get off at like four in the morning so we could go do PT because we'd have to be there the next night. And I'm like, is your wife okay with that? I don't want to make her uncomfortable. He's like, Yeah, no, it's no, no problem. It's fine. So I was like, okay, we can do that. So we went and did that one time. And I will say it felt very flirtatious, but there was nothing I could say that was quite over the line, crossing the line too much. It was just like I felt there was tension and like chemistry, but I also I also felt guilty for feeling it. And I was like, man, maybe we shouldn't do this again. But is he giving me that? Or am I just like, I don't know. And I I was overthinking the shit out of it, but I also felt guilty. Within a couple days of that happening, I remember him just coming in after a shift. We're cleaning. He walks outside to take a phone call, comes back in, and he's just like devastated. And he looks like he's about to cry. And I'm just like, Are you okay? And he's like, No, I'm not. Like, my my wife's cheating on me. I and again, I've only known this guy maybe a month, a little, maybe a little over. And I'm like, oh my God. And I just, I just like touched his chest because I was just, I knew what that felt like. I had been cheated on. So I was just like, Are you all right? And he's like, I just don't know what to do. I don't have anyone to talk to, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I I felt sad for him. I feel like empathy is my strong suit. I really do care a lot about other people and their feelings. And so I'm like, if you want, we can go to like Denny's or something after and just have a conversation. So I think we did do that for a little while. It's kind of blurred because we did this a few times, like hanging out and conversating about things. So that time he started telling me about how she had actually cheated on him while he was deployed. And she sent him a video of cheating, like of being with another man. And I'm just blown away by this, right? Because I saw that shit on Jarhead, the movie. Like that happened in the movie where the wife did that and she was like, fuck you, Tom, or whatever. And I'm like, there's no way this chick did. Like that's I just, I don't know. There was just, I felt sad for him. And he was so open with me. And it wasn't just that. He told me about that. He said he thinks that she's with these two men that she works with now and that she's having like kind of a three-person affair thing happening, and she's out of town right now. And he caught her. He shared all that with me. I just felt an obligation to like continue to be there because he said he had no one to listen to him. And I was like, I got you. And I did, I believe I even did ask, like, well, you can't talk to your brother. He's like, no, you know, fat Joe, he's not that kind of person. I kind of became his, I basically became his confidant for these things. And this was a very quick-moving thing. I met him, I think, in September, late August or early September. And by Halloween, I knew all of these things. And one night he ended up actually needing to talk again. Or that it was that night. He was his wife was out of town. And we only we only talked. Nothing happened. We went over to his apartment though, and I was talking to him, and he opened up to me and he told me that he had seen some things while he was deployed. But the biggest thing that happened was when he lived, they lived in a small town here somewhere. And when he lived there, there were illegal people coming over the border at night, and he was trying to help them get away. And one was a little kid, I believe a little girl is what he said. Don't quote me on that. And he was running with a little girl, and the little girl got shot in the head while he was carrying her. And what? Yes. And I he was crying. He started crying. And I was just like, holy shit, like this guy has been through it, you know? And I have been through it in my own way. And the fixer in me was like, I can help him. Like I can be his friend. I will listen to him. I'm empathetic. That doesn't scare me.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Question any of that?

SPEAKER_00 25:18

No.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

I guess I wouldn't either if somebody was like literally crying.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

He was crying. I wouldn't seen I had seen men cry, but again, few and far between. And usually it was like they were angry or something else. He he was crying and it was so genuine. And I just felt like, wow, I finally met a man that shows emotion. And I I in turn told him about my childhood, told him about my cancer, told him about my previous marriage. We like just told each other everything. We both had to just click it. Opened up. And I remember leaving that and thinking, God, like I, I, I literally prayed about it. I was like, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I feel guilty because he's married. I'm still technically married, by the way. But that, I mean, that part in my head, I was like, we're not intimate. We don't speak. We literally don't even acknowledge each other's existence. I live in another state and every month I get a check. Like, yeah. And he won't sign my fucking paper. So here we are. I remember being like, God, why would you put a man that is all the things that I've needed and wanted there if he's married and I can't have him? Like that's what I was praying. And the very next day comes up to me after work and he's like, I'm I'm gonna divorce her. I told her I'm leaving. And I was just like, My God, my prayers have been answered. Holy shit, this praying shit works, you know? No, so I am obviously happy, but also feeling like that I'm not supposed to be happy because he's getting he should be heartbroken, right? Like he's getting a divorce. I know I was. My divorce broke me the fuck down, like for a while. And so I was expecting that. And he was emotional, but he's just kept telling me I've never felt this way about anybody else. I've been in relationships, but I've never felt this way about anybody else. I don't even feel this way about her. Yeah. And I felt so special. And so he was almost quickly able to detach from his wife. Yeah. Because he told me it had been wrong the whole time and that she had cheated early on. And we're gonna name all of the women we're talking about with him spice girls' names, because you and me love spice girls. Let me also say this before we we do that. I'm not going to drag any of these women. I actually want to protect these women's identities to a degree because they're all victims too. And I didn't know that in this moment. And I'm telling you as it happened, I'm not telling you what I know now. So we're gonna call them different names, but I just want to be very clear on that. All these women are victims. And if any of them ever hears this, I want them to know that you are not the problem and that you can get out and you don't have to be there, and you don't deserve anything that was done to you, period. So I didn't say that in the beginning, and you guys deserve that. Um, so ginger spice, we'll call her ginger spice. Uh, she from what I understood was cheating pretty much the entire relationship, and she also had these sexual urges liked threesomes. I guess she had had some trauma, according to him, but again, that's not my story, and I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Everything that you've knew or had heard about her was from him.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Correct. I did not know her. All of this was alleged. All of this was alleged, but um to me, why would he look it was fact, yeah. Right. I mean, we all know crazy people. She was he was cheating, all these things. So very quickly, his life is like unraveling, or so I would think, but he's like falling for me. And I will say, probably within the first like once he said he was breaking up with her, it probably took him six days to tell me that he loved me, and it was so that we would be intimate and have sex. He literally told me right before we had sex because I was in that space where I was just like, I don't think we should do this yet. I don't know if you're ready. And that's when he just laid it on thick and was like, I love you, and told me what I wanted to hear, everything I wanted to hear. And I was just like, Okay, let's do it. You know, within a week a week that happened, and within a couple more weeks, he needed a place to live because he was gonna move out. His youngest sister, who was I think 16 at the time, was also either living with them or going to be because there had been a situation. So his family, he w grow grew up in a very devout religious family, and it's it's a very strict religion, and which in fairness, I don't think any fucking religion should approve this. But one of the elders of that religion had been having a sexual relationship with her and she was 16, but he also had a daughter that same age. So the family, including X, was talking about killing this guy. Like they were so fucking mad, rightfully so. Totally understand that the family wasn't having it. They were pissed, but they wanted to move her away from him. So the best option was to move her in with her brother, who's going through a divorce from a wife that's cheating. They needed a place to live. I was going to basic training in like two months, counting down. I had three pets at the time, two ferrets and a dog. And I was just like, Well, if you need a place to live, you can come live at my house and just take care of my animals and keep my house safe and then help pay some of the bills. And so he said, Okay, and he was moving in. And again, this is from me meeting him in September to the very beginning of November. He's moving in with me.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

He loves September, October, November.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Uh-huh. With his younger sister. Man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

And we were such a nice, nice lady.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

I wouldn't call it that. Fucking very naive. Those and uh uneducated, if you will. You guys should be drunk by now, just from this first part. If you're playing Plot Twist Still Alive, Crystal Shit Show drinking game, all of you should have taken 27 shots. No, I'm kidding. Anyway, at one point, though, within those two months, he wanted to move all of his stuff out because he was worried about his stuff. It was shortly after she, quote, cheated in another place. We're talking within a few days or a couple weeks of that. So he was ready to like move out. And I honestly think I'm giving myself too much credit by saying two months, two months. I knew him, but within a few weeks of him saying he's divorcing his wife, he was moving in my house. Um, one night he wanted me to go pick up his stuff with him from his apartment. And he's like, she's there. He starts getting emotional. He's like, I can't do this without you. I need you with me. I don't know what to do. And I'm like, okay, I'll go, I'll go with you. So we go to the apartment and uh I told him I don't want to be part of any drama. I know she's probably hurting, even though she cheated, and I don't want to rub salt in the wound. That isn't what I want to do at all. And he's like, No, I just need you. I can't do this. Like, he I need your strengths. And I'm like, Okay, so we go over there. But what's crazy is he said he told her he was coming. He said he's, you know, and then he's like, I think those guys are over there, and they were. There were two men there. But this whole scenario was so uncomfortable for me. We walk in, I'm in this woman's apartment, and he's now moving into my house, and there's two random dudes there that he quickly kicks out, but I'm in there too, right? So I'm just like so uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

You're like, should I go to?

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Yeah, like I was like, I did want I my skin was crawling being in there. I felt horrible. And he is just like berating her, calling her all kinds of names, you cheating horb. And she just has her head down and she's just not even it's like her emotions, her face is just like void of any uh emotion. She just looks so defeated.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

My gosh.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

And I remember feeling sorry for her, but also like, but she's cheating on him, and there's men here.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

She's deserving of this too.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

I don't know how to explain it, but at that time, everything about what she was doing felt like I felt empathetic towards her more than anyone else in the scenario. But then my heart was like, No, you're cheating. But it's weird that that was the focus, is what what she seemed like out of everything else chaotic. He starts grabbing her stuff in their bedroom and chunking her clothes out of the fucking second story bedroom window, like a movie again.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

And I'm you didn't think any like you didn't at one like drink. Okay, yeah. Lots. You better just down an entire like tequila bottle right now.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

I was like, he's angry because I done actually, I can't even lie. When I broke up with my ex and I found a bunch of texts, and the last one with Chingy, the last text I got was call me when this shit was with your wife is over. That's what it said. I threw all of his shit out the front.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

But that's the thing though, is like I think about it and I'm like, if I were her, if I were Ginger, I would have been erratic and be like, tell that effing bitch to get out of my fucking apartment.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

She had every right to. Exactly. I actually excused myself. When that started happening, I was like, I'll be outside. This is wild, dude. And I had seen again, I just told you about the crackhead that was naked and saw the snakes. Like, I've seen some shit.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Especially as a woman, like I am not having you talk to me like that, regardless of whether I what I did or didn't do or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

No, I'm in my place. It felt intrusive. It felt like I was intruding and I excused myself. She didn't say anything to me. She barely looked at me, she barely looked at anybody. To me, it was like I was missing some pieces somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

We're gonna have to circle back around this one because man, this is the first time I'm hearing this story. So for me, I'm like, honestly, to me, I'm like, man, this girl has some class. Would have I didn't know her. I didn't know her at all. At all. I mean, because again, I've had my past, and this would have been a triggering situation.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

I have too. I but I left because it was so tangible, everything. It was just too much. And I I went and stepped outside and I was just like, this is fucking crazy. And the two dudes that got kicked out, I think they were hanging around outside too, still. Like nobody helped. No, the guys didn't do anything. They like ran out of the house. And then the last thing he did before we left was, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, she was like selling perfume or something. That was like what she was doing. And he had a bag of it, like all of her products that she was selling. And he pulls around in his truck and he opens it and it's all glass and stuff, and he pours it on the ground so that it like breaks everywhere. And he got he says something to the effect of basically, there you go, you fucking whore, pick it up. And I'm just like shocked. And when we leave, I do remember telling him that was very uncomfortable for me. I did express that. I was like, I don't ever want to be part of that again or anything like that. This is awkward for her, it's awkward for me. And he was semi-understanding about it, but he's like, You saw those men there, like I just I couldn't do it without you. He like turned it back in to me and said, I needed you there. I needed your strength, I needed your support. I don't know what I'll do.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

You look like you did all that you needed to do. I don't know how I would have supported you.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

And then some, yeah. So But sure, again, swooned. And so within I think a couple more weeks of that, he's living with me. He wants me to meet his parents. They're very standoffish with me because they're religious and he's still married, and they don't know that I'm still married. And so they just were very standoffish, very cold. I did watch his mom have meltdown while I was there. It was probably the third time I met her, where she got into his face, and it's like she got this wild look in her eyes and started losing her shit. And everyone in the family powered down like a robot, just like exactly. And I'm sitting there like I'm watching a fucking movie, just like looking back. But when I said my childhood was chaotic, my fight or flight is broken. So I have been in a lot of scenarios that are probably dangerous or scary, and I don't react this. This is normal. Well, it's not normal to new kind of fucked up. It was just a new kind of fucked up. I didn't see this kind of fucked up before. This isn't my flavor of fuck up. So she did that and got in his face and was talking shit to him about being in the military. And I'm just like, oh my god, like what the fuck is going on? And this is random? Yeah, she like he didn't do anything to have made her. This became something that I realized later down the road, um, without putting too much emphasis on her, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Okay. So, like, this is definitely a thing that is a family issue with everyone in that family. But she, I could tell a lot of it stemmed from her. So it was something small. Some anything that she disagreed with, their rel their religion was used to cut him off. That was one of the things he told me. He was actually disowned by his family when he was 18, kicked out of his religion, moved in with a woman that he got engaged to. We'll call her Scary Spice for the sake of giving him spice girl names. And the woman was significantly older, actually, from what I understand. Scary Spice was like eight years older, I think, around that. He was like 18. She was like 26, 27. And when I heard the story, I was like, that's strange. Like, that's kind of a red flag. Here I am looking at her flag. Fucking standing in a glass. You got a freaking flag. Black kettle, bitch. Waving on your bag, too. But Scary Spice was like 26, 27 years old. But he also told me that she came from a very tumultuous and not like a little bit like physical and mental. I think one of her parents had like a personality disorder types of issues, really severe, really bad. And so she had a lot of social issues. She had a lot of relationship issues. And again, hearing that saddened me, it didn't sound like she was preying upon him, if you will. So they were engaged, but then he called the engagement off at one point. And I don't recall exactly what the story was, but he remained friends with one of her brothers and his wife. I ended up becoming friends with them too. But when I actually learned more about this woman, knowing them, she sh just she's just grew up in a really, really bad place. She's socially has a difficult time being around people. Yeah, like she's not just super social.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Yeah, I've met her. She's just not super social, but she's really kind.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

I was about to say I've met her a couple times and she was very kind to me. And I thought that was odd too, because I'm like, you were engaged to him. I don't think she's been in many relationships since, but I realized now he knows how to pick us. He really knew how to pick women with damage and women with difficulties and women that have have probably already been victimized in one capacity or another. So, and I don't know about Ginger. Again, that was something I heard third party from him. So, again, those are their stories. I'm not gonna go any further into that. But all this being said, he introduced me to his parents, and then he's like telling me he's gonna take me up to the top top of the world, because every fucking small town has the top of the world where you go look at the stars, and that's how he's gonna propose to me. He wants to marry me. And I'm just like, wow, like I can't wait for that. And he's gonna serenade me because he was a musician, not for a living, but he knew how to play music. This is gonna be amazing, but one problem, we're both married still, so that's not gonna happen right now. He got some things to do. And so my house, my pets, and him and his sister at my house, and he is working and doing these different things, and he had a dog he brought as well. And so when all that was happening, I actually had tried to start the divorce process before like him and I got ser serious, which took hardly any time at all, right before basic. A lot of these people are going to basic at the same time. So they'll have you drill just so you can learn some general knowledge. And he went with me. Like every we were we were inseparable. He had to be everywhere that I was. And so one of the things that he did was go up to that with me and I'd stay the weekend up there, and we got into an argument because I actually told him, I don't know if I'm supposed to be bringing people or not. There was also just a lot of tension because he was still going back and forth with ginger spice about the divorce and trying to get that done. So there was a lot of of tension, but he just had a breakdown in the car one night and was telling me that he didn't want to be alive anymore and he wished he would have died when he was deployed. And of course that broke my fucking heart. And I actually have family and friends that have severe depression and have had suicidal thoughts, really, really bad stuff. And I just I didn't like I loved him already. Like my heart ached, and I didn't want anyone to feel like that, let alone somebody that I cared about and was hoping to see a future with. And so I just comforted him the best that I could, and I tried to be there for him, and it worked, or it seemed to have worked. That was the first time I heard that, but it would not be the last. And I left. We were gonna get married when I got back. He he hadn't asked yet because he was waiting on the perfect time and all of those things. So I'm in basic, I think it's eight or nine weeks or some shit. We're writing letters, all of that's happening. And then I get a call the day the day before he comes up for family day, because him and my parents are coming up for family day, and he tells me on my call that my dog is dead. And I'm like, what? Like, why didn't anybody tell me? And he's like, I'm so sorry. So in the time that I was gone for basic, his dog ran away, my dog died, and then when he came to visit me for that week, because they drove me from one place to another for my AIT, which is just like your advanced training for your actual job for your MOS. So I went to do that. He quote unquote left somebody in charge with of my ferrets, and when he got back to the house, one of the ferrets was dead also. Oh god. So I left with three pets, technically four. Yeah, technically four, and only one survived. And and so again, I won't get into all this, but he had been telling me he really wanted to have a baby and really wanted to have to killing all my pets. I mean nothing turns me on more than a fucking slew of dead animals. And so on our way over, we have unprotected sex one time, one shot, one kill. Solid tanks, did not pull the goalie, and I got pregnant between basic and AIT with our first kid.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

And trucking by any chance of like, yeah, this is when we would we could potentially conceive.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

No, because when I went to basic, I was working out so much, and I mean I had been played soccer my whole life and stuff, so like I had been very active in the past. My period stopped. Like, that's how much like physical stuff we were doing. So it'd start and stop and start and stop. It was strange. So I really didn't know, but then I started feeling like shit about week four, five. And my AIT was only about seven or eight weeks long. I think it wasn't very long, maybe eight or nine weeks. I picked a really bad MOS, but I don't want to talk about it, but you could basically be a jar. Of mayonnaise and get a score of the three or something on the asthma and get this. So I wasn't with the brightest bulbs in the in the box, but it it was fine. But I started getting sick while I was in AIT and I was like puking while I was in formation. And I refused to tell anybody because I knew what the rumors would look like. So I end up just keeping a secret, but I'm like puking in formation sometimes and having to sneak food into my barracks because I am nauseous. You're trying to feed well, I'm nauseous. And so yeah. But I made it. Okay. I got out, I was good. And I actually had to call him and tell him that I was pregnant while I was in uh in AIT because I finally was able to get off base and get a test. And I did it in a Walmart and I was scared shitless when I saw it. And then I called him and told him and he was so happy. Needless to say, it was super romantic the way that we did it. But right before I find out I'm pregnant, he there's fights every time because when you're in AIT, you can use your phone and stuff. He we're having fights on and off. Sometimes he's answering the phone, sometimes he's ignoring my calls. And then he at some point tells me we're not getting married. He just like calls off the engagement and I'm I'm shattered. I think I spent the whole day crying and didn't know I had pregnancy hormones yet. But then, I don't know, a day or two later, it's like a switch flipped and he was telling me he can't live without me. He, of course, he'll marry me, you know. And I told him I think I'm at that point, I think right around that time, I told him I think I was pregnant. So I come back and he does not propose to me the way that he said he was going to do. He asks me in his parents' backyard with a his mom's old ring. No music, no guitar, no top of the world. Just, hey, here you go. Let's he give you a reason. Yeah, there was a lot of excuses as to why, and I can't remember any of them because they weren't really worth a fuck. But I love it.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

And for you, you still were like, I get it, I understand.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

Yeah, of course. I understood. There was always a reason for everything that happened. There was always an excuse for everything that happened. I just didn't know that yet because at this point, I'm now home and I've been gone about four or five months, and we had known each other maybe a whole seven months and were expecting a baby, and now we're engaged. So that drink.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Yeah, lots of drinks.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Yeah. So I'm divorced. And he was too while I was gone. That all went through. And I'm thinking, here we are, we're gonna get married and we're gonna start our family. It's gonna be great. And there pretty quickly are just issues. His job thing, he just wasn't making great money. There was a lot of fighting within my family. My sister hated his guts. My dad and him butted heads a lot. And at this point in my life, I didn't know shit about boundaries, clearly. And so I was constantly letting my family step over boundaries, and then he would point that out. And then I'm like, you X might have a point. And so that caused a lot of friction between my family and him. And it was just, I was always in the middle. I felt like the fucking Shutch Armstrong just like being pulled more and more and more by both sides, and nothing I did was right. If I took my parents' or family's side, then I was, you know, fighting with him. Yeah, and vice versa. So it just sucked because I feel like that there was no like honeymoon phase.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

I was gonna say I'm surprised to hear that too, because that's something I learned for the first time. I I had thought maybe they had a good relationship early on, and then it only crackled later down the road.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Not at all.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

The only person he got along with was my youngest sister, but she was a teenager just like his sister was, who was living with us for a little while. Yeah, before. Now, by the time I came back, I believe she was gone. So that was good.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Um Was there any particular reason why they didn't get along?

SPEAKER_00 47:49

I mean, or was it just He was blatantly it was like he I feel like he when we were there, he would like puff his chest out and say shit to like poke. But it's weird because my dad did that a lot too. And so like I just looked at it and was like, oh, they're just having a pissing contest. And in our family, like talking shit to each other was kind of like a a love language, if you will. It went too far at times, it caused problems at times, but no, they would just butt heads. And my sister, my middle sister, she was always very outspoken about like that type of shit. Like she we gave each other's boyfriends hell. Every time we brought somebody home, they had nicknames for all of the boyfriends.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

But was it because you had already gave, I guess, some negative connotations about your family that made him poke?

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 48:37

That's possible. Definitely possible. I'm not sure. I I really couldn't tell you what he was thinking or why. I know that my sister hated him. She says it all the time now. She's like, I hated him from the beginning. And she did not try to fucking hide that. That was a very obvious thing.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

But it made it really hard on me. And so here I am expecting a baby. I feel like once I got pregnant, things shifted tremendously. We were always very sexually connected. But as the relationship continued, he would tell me, you know, he had experienced some sort of sexual trauma as a kid. And I again felt super bad for him. I've never experienced that myself at that time. I knew a lot of people that had. And so I was very conscientious of that. But there were times when we would be intimate. I remember we got into a fight. And for me, I love language is physical touch. So like I wanted to be intimate with him. And so I was trying to like make up by having makeup sex, if you will. And he literally told me, like, you make me feel just like that person that sexually abused me. And that was yes. And that was said to me. That's not something I ever expected to hear from someone.

SPEAKER_01 49:47

Yeah, somebody that you love or somebody that says they love you.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

Because I mean, I didn't think there was anything wrong. People have makeup sex. It's called makeup sex for a reason. But it's not like he didn't initiate it was hot and cold. So, like there would be times he was very would want me a lot, and then there would be other days where he would just completely shut me down or s say something like that, and then I feel disgusting, like I'm doing something completely wrong, and I I just felt didn't know what to do. So as our relationship continued, we I ended up moving up to West Texas for a very brief period. It became a common thing that he couldn't keep a job, or if he got a job, there were issues within, I would say a year that I would give him max a year at a job. We moved up here, that's when you and I got close. This was while I was still pregnant.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

We And I don't even remember why he left here, why y'all ended up?

SPEAKER_00 50:37

Uh there was actually kind of a culmination of things, but the main thing was because we weren't married still and I was pregnant, I didn't have any health insurance. The whole thing we bonded over was me joining the military. But then when it we turned around and I actually get in and I start drilling the first couple months, he's still in the reserves and he's drilling, and he starts asking me all these what-if questions about like, well, what if you deploy? Because we're supposed to deploy next year, and what are you gonna do? And we need a family care plan and we'll have to sign our rights away. And I don't want to give them to my pam parents because of the religious thing, and I don't want to give them to your parents because of how you know Well, yeah. I mean, he they're not getting along with him. Right. Yeah. He's like, and I started thinking about it. And I mean, this was a constant fight. Like we would fight about this a lot. And so he had a way of making me feel guilty for doing things and picking fights about him. He never directly told me I had to or didn't have to do something, but it got to the point where it was just such a taxing thing and I was heavily pregnant that when I finally told them that I was pregnant, they were like, Well, do you want to stay in or get out? And he was putting all this pressure on me. I I was just like, you know what, I'll get out. Because I the truth is I didn't want to sign the rights away. Like when you do a family care plan, you literally give your parental rights to the person that you deem, you know, the person. And I didn't want anyone raising my kid but me. A lot of people don't know I was in the military. I have shame there. Like, I feel like I just quit. I just left. I would have done well in the military. I mean, I do well at anything that I want to do, but I felt like a disappointed myself. Just getting pregnant in the middle of all of it. Trust me, all the things you're thinking right now, yes, I know I've already thought this about myself. But I was extremely disappointed and quite frankly embarrassed as fuck. I don't want people knowing that and I'm in the military to this day when they do like a veterans thing. My my kids know, and my husband now knows, and he's always like, tell your mom, happy veterans day. Shut the fuck up, Drew. And Drew was uh in the military and he actually deployed. I'm like, I haven't done shit. All I did was have that military spend money on me, and that's still an honorary discharge or a medical discharge, basically. So I got out and I could again, I didn't really have anything to do. I'm like, what do I do with my life? I'm now I'm back to square one. I was joining the military so I could go to nursing school finally, and here I am again. And that brought me to the point though. I didn't have insurance because I wasn't in the military. We were not married, both of our divorces were done at that point, but we still weren't married. And he wasn't pulling the trigger on that. We moved up here a few months before I had the baby, and I couldn't get into an OBGYN up here until like three weeks after my due date. And so I was like, fuck that. So I called down there and I ended up down there. And I actually ended up having to get on Medicaid. So during pregnancy and then a few months after, because I I essentially looked like a single mom. I really didn't have anything. I had no money, I had no job. I was pregnant, nine months pregnant. So needless to say, every time he couldn't keep a job, I would go back and go back and work at the bar. I never burned the bridge there. And so I would want to do that. But throughout our relationship, we moved two or two times because of work. Within a year, there was an issue, and we moved back to where we were living, the same house. Our first kid was born, and they were only a couple years old when we moved to Oklahoma for a little bit. And at first it seemed fine, but I was also away from all of my family. I had no support at all. I was literally just staying home. We couldn't afford daycare. We were always financially unstable the entire relationship. We never ever had money. So tensions were high at times, but he also traveled a lot for work. So I did get to spend a lot of quality time with my kid. And I got into decent shape just because I had nothing else to do. But that was the first time something really, really scary happened. Um, he we fought all the time. And even people that were around us, like you guys, kind of knew us as that couple. Like we were that couple that fought at I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but No, yeah, you guys would fight pretty often. And after those fights or during those fights or whatever, there was a lot of these people think this about you. That's what he would tell me about you, about your husband, about all of the people that lived up in West Texas. Any of our mutual friends, well, they think this about you and they say this about you. And it was always derogatory. It was, you're too much, you're just crazy. If I had a few drinks or, you know, we got drunk or whatever, do you do you remember what you did? Do you remember what you said? And I didn't remember it in the way that he said it. I just started realizing that there was a huge difference in the way that he remembered things and the way that I remembered things, and we would fight about that. But the more I would argue with him, the worse it would get. And then there would be like screaming or throwing things or breaking things. He would usually be the one started. And then it was like lighting a fuse, and it was like click, click, click, click, and then at the top, whoever blew up the biggest, I wouldn't say won the fight, but like if if he blew up the biggest, I would shut down and cry. And if I blew up the biggest, then he would tell me what a piece of shit I was, that I was abusive, that I'm just like my family, all of those things, right? When we were in Oklahoma, um, we were having one of those fights, and I can't remember what it was exactly, but I wasn't doing something that he wanted. And he got really mad at me, and he hit the door and and it was a rental. We were in a rental, and I was like, don't fucking do that. Like, we we're gonna have to pay for that. And he goes to the top drawer and he grabs a pistol out of the drawer because we own guns, and he starts walking with it. And I told you that the first time he said he wish he wasn't alive, those things kind of continued to happen, and he kept saying things similar to that. But this was the first time that he actually grabbed a gun and he walked to like the back of the house, and I just got up and I was like, No, no, no, please don't, please don't, please don't. And I'm running after him, and he puts the gun up to his head. Please tune in next week for Plot Twist Still Alive Survival Series, Chapter 2, X The Upside Down.