Something Was Wrong - S13 E6: [Natalia] Absolutely Terrified

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

*Content warning: Today’s episode discusses emotional and physical abuse, image-based sexual abuse and substance use disorder. The National Domestic Violence Hotline Call 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) - Text "START" to 88788 - or Chat Live at https://www.thehotline.org The Trevor Project’s Mission is to end suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning young people. The Trevor Project offers five key programs: crisis services, peer support, research, public education, and advocacy. The Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective aims to bring together, heal and liberate Black marginalized communities. National Center for Transgender Equality Works at local, state, and federal levels to change policies and societal perceptions to increase understanding and acceptance of transgender peopleThe Network LA Red works to end partner abuse in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, BDSM, polyamorous, and queer communities. They provide a 24-hour hotline, support groups, and housing pathway programs. SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders. The National Helpline provides 24-hour free and confidential referrals and information about mental and/or substance use disorders, prevention, treatment, and recovery in English and Spanish. SAMHSA's National Helpline 800-662-HELP (4357)TTY: 800-487-4889 For additional information on finding help and treatment options, visit www.samhsa.gov/find-treatment.The National Domestic Violence Hotline Call 1.800.799.SAFE (7233)Text "START" to 88788 or Chat Live at https://www.thehotline.org provides essential tools and support to help survivors of domestic violence so they can live their lives free of abuse, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The Hotline can expect highly-trained, expert advocates to offer free, confidential, and compassionate support, crisis intervention information, education, and referral services in over 200 languages.SWW’s theme music – “U think U” by Glad Rags, from their album Wonder Under.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. I'm Candace DeLong and on my new podcast, Killer Psychy Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the cold-butter killers you read about in the news. Listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast Killer Psychy Daily in the Amazon Music exclusive podcast killer psyche daily in the Amazon music app. Download the app today. Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences. Episodes discuss topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence,

suicide, and murder. If you're in need of support, please visit somethingwaswrong.com slash resources for a list of nonprofit organizations that can help. I'm not a therapist or a doctor. Most names have been changed for anonymity purposes. Opinions expressed by guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent my views. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes.

Thank you so much for listening. He would take these heavy drugs, but you know, I couldn't take a hit of my vape pen if I wanted to. And so we're talking about this, and I'm pushing a little bit, and he's pushing back, and he's getting a little defensive. And that's when I'm like, you can't do this in my house. I fully support safe drug use, and all of these other things, but there's a boundary within my house that this is not something that I'm comfortable with, and that's not okay. And of course that leads to another huge angry fight, and we're going back and forth for a little while, and then again things come down. And so things come down. He wants to extend

his trip for an extra day. He's sweet talking me and he's like love bombing me in some moments of the day where he's like, I love you so much. You're so perfect. You take all these great care of me. You make sure I'm fed. You're always cooking for me. And then at the same time he's misogynistic where my only role was to be in the kitchen and to make sure his stuff was taken care of. Like, he asked me to wash his clothes. It felt good, but at the same time, it didn't feel good and it didn't feel right and something felt off

and something didn't feel good. So he extends his trip. I sent a group message, you know, the group chat. And Monika is in that group chat. She's one of the people in the chat and I was like, oh my god, he extended a trip for like another 24 hours. He'll change his flight. This is so great. I'm so excited and all these great things. And then within the hour, I call her walking my dog saying, you need to get this guy out of my house, and I don't know how to deal with this. And she was completely confused

on how he even got there. In between the time that he extended his trip until I called her, he decided that he wanted to watch football on his phone. It was college football weekend. He wants to watch this football game. He's cheering for his team or whatever. He's getting excited.

And I'm in the kitchen literally making him a sandwich. The only thing that was wrong with this picture, and his mind was I wasn't barefoot in pregnant. Like I'm Susie Homemaker to the max, making sure that he has everything he needs. He's watching on his phone and he starts cheering and he starts getting really, really loud. We're not in a stadium.

I live in a duplex. There's a very thin wall. It's an older building. My neighbors can hear you. And honestly, you're too loud for me, you're too loud for where I need you to be in my apartment. That's not the energy level, that's not the vibe, that's not what I have going on in my house. All I said to him was, can you keep it down? Or can you go in my room and shut the door? Because it's just really too loud in here and it's echoing?

He was so upset that he took his cell phone and slammed it down on the coffee table. Our coffee table was an old-fashioned train trunk. Those gorgeous train trunks that everyone is always trying to find, and my roommate had one and we used it as a coffee table, and he slammed down his phone so hard on this trunk that he ended up breaking the trim off of the coffee table, off of this train trunk. Then he slams his hand down and it breaks it again. He slams his phone down first and then he slams his hand down and I am in full

mode of when Natalia and Landon live together. I am in full mode of I'm going to get punched in the face in two minutes. I need to maintain myself. I need to defend myself But I also need to stay far enough away that I'm nowhere near him because my body went into immediate reaction mode of I know how this happens. I know how this goes. I've seen this story before. I know how the movie ends and so he is going through these moments of And so he is going through these moments of pure anger. The look on his face and the words that he's saying, he's so angry and he's screaming at me.

And he's telling me in my home that I pay for that has my name on the lease that only comes out of my bank account. He's telling me that I, if I wanted him to be quiet and I didn't want to hear him yelling, that I should go into my bedroom and shut my bedroom door. I was floored. I was completely floored because I don't know who the hell you think you are. You don't pay for anything over here. You're a guest in my home. Now you're going to speak to me disrespectfully after you just changed your flight and you can't change your back. There's no place for me to sit there and tell him he can get out because he has no speak to you disrespectfully. After you just changed your flight and you can't change it back, there's no place for me to sit there

and tell him he can get out because he has no place to go right now. We go back and forth and I'm arguing with him how dare you speak to me like this. Like I don't know who you think I am and I don't know how you think this interaction has gone but you're not going to speak to me like this. Like this is my house.

And it was the wildest thing where he was alternating between screaming and yelling at me and being vicious and mean. And then like, it would be like a couple minutes later and I'm like angry and I'm upset and I'm getting loud and I'm overwhelmed and I'm reacting to his, you know, mood and stuff that he would then come back and say something

and something of like a really calm voice and a really quiet voice and really chill. And then I would respond really chill. And then he would come back screaming and he'd be like, why are you yelling at me? You are yelling at me and I'm talking to you, calm. And I'm like, but you aren't. And I'm like getting totally confused. And he's totally gaslighting me the entire situation. He's making it that it's my fault. It's my fault that he yelled. It's my fault that I didn't have a TV.

It's my fault that I didn't go into my own bedroom to give him the privacy that he needed in my house. It was all of my fault. I'm going back and forth and I am like, I am way smarter than this. I have done this before. Like I've lived this before. I've lived this life before and then all of a sudden it was like I saw myself again and I remembered who I was and I remember the lessons I lived through with Landon. Then Tyrone says to me the thing that scared the crab out of me. He turns me and he said, do I remind you of land in? Do I remind you of land in? I don't mind you of land in.

And the minute he said that, I knew all that's were off. There's no reason for anybody else to compare themselves to your abuser. Once he compared himself to my abuser, I knew that he wasn't safe. I knew there was no difference between Tyrone and Landon. The difference was the time period of my life,

but they were the same person. And it was going to be the same situation. And so at that moment, I realized I need to get out of the house. My dog is a senior dog. So I walk around the block, could take 30 minutes because he's a 17 year old dog. So I walk around the block, could take 30 minutes, because he's a 17-year-old dog. I used that full hour.

I went on a really long walk for an hour, and I called Monique, and I was like, I don't know what to do. I need to get him out of my house. And so we start coming up with some type of plan. He did not want her at the house when he was there. He did not want to interact with her. He was very adamant. That's your ex-girlfriend, do what you do.

But I don't want her around when I'm around. I just assumed it was jealousy and I went with it. But he was very adamant that he didn't want her there. So she's like, I can't come over there, but can you come here? But I didn't want to leave him in my house. Like, this is my house. This is my home. I worked really hard for everything within these four walls

I Refused to leave and I was afraid that he was going to Find my personal information and to be honest. I had been listening to your podcast Non-stop because I didn't have a TV. There was nothing else to do and there was nowhere to go And I'm hearing all these stories about leaving people in your homes and they're stealing identities and they're stealing this and they're stealing that. And I could not imagine leaving this stranger in my home. Having him be able to access my electricity bill or to be able to access my passport

or to be able to look through my stuff. So I refuse to leave my house. And Monique said to me, well, then the only other thing that you can do is play the game. If he wants a submissive woman, give him what he wants. And that's what I did. I came back from that walk of very different woman. I came back calm. I came back quiet. I came back with a yes, no, anything else I can get for you type of attitude. I should have gotten Academy Award for the amount of people pleasing that I was doing. And so the last like 24 hours went pretty smoothly. My roommate came home that night. They met him. My roommate didn't get

a good feeling. Like this is weird. Some things off I can't put my finger on it, which is also something that Monique had said to that she had realized that something was wrong when I was at her house and we were sitting by like the fire pit or on the couch or something during like when everybody was over. She said, I don't know if it was my relationship with you or what, but she's like, you've always touchy with me. You always are sitting next to me, even if we're not holding hands or whatever,

you always at least that really close to me, your foot touched me, your arm touched me, your leg touched me, something was always touching me. And you would always sit next to me. She's like, but when you were with Tyrone, you were not sitting next to him. You would have space between you. I didn't realize I was doing that. I think it was like my subconscious, but that's when she started to realize it that it might

be a bigger problem. So by the time I called her on that Sunday, she was already questioning a lot of things. So he ended up staying until the Monday after Thanksgiving. His flight was in the afternoon. I was working in the morning. He was working in the morning. He packs up his stuff and he's like looking at me. He's like, are you okay? Are you good? Because your attitude seems weird. I'm like, no, I'm great. I'm fine. I'm still overly people pleasing so I

can have calm in my space until he leaves. He pulls off and he leaves my neighborhood. At the time, my neighborhood was in the process of gentrifying. It's like a very interesting space where there's people who are of color who have been there their entire lives, whose houses are not as worth as much as the land that they're on. And then you have people coming in and making things, tearing things down, making them brand new, and putting up these new like townhouses and condos. It's a very interesting dynamic living in the place like this. It's an interesting group of people who you live around.

There's a variety of folks. There is some crime, but I don't think anything more normal for them to area. It's not that far away from a housing project. I've never had issues. I walked down in my street at night. I walk my dog. I say hello to everybody. I'm my business.

I'm good. I never had any issues in my neighborhood. But he called me on the way to the airport to tell me a story that he went through with his lift driver. If round the corner for my house, he made a turn and somebody was just stopped in the middle of the road having a conversation with someone on the sidewalk. And I guess the driver of the lift honked the horn, the person in their car gave them a really dirty look as they drove by. And Tyrone turned to the driver. And my understanding is English was not their first language. They might have been new to the country and not necessarily familiar with the neighborhood.

Tyrone turned to the driver and said, hey, you need to be careful in this neighborhood. Because the people here, the black people here, they'll shoot you. I was so upset at the level of anti-blackness that you then gave to this person whose interactions with black people might be limited to the people who are in his car. You're putting this level of scariness on my neighborhood and the stereotype on my neighborhood, which it's not. It's a really great neighborhood. It was a really great place to live, really nice neighbors. And you're telling him that my neighbors are going to shoot him because he honked his horn. And this is black man to black man. Like, why would you put

someone down like this? I was generally upset about this because it didn't make sense to me that you would do this to someone who would also be in your same situation because Tyrone, you were also a black man. So anyone could say anything about you and could believe it. The protests of the Black Lives Matter are not that far away at this point. Months behind us, if that he wears a black lives matter mask, but he didn't understand their racial implications and the anti-blackness of telling this person you need to be careful in this neighborhood because it's very black.

We had like a little tiff about that and so I was like, I'll talk to you after you land. Let me know when you're safe, then he lands and he's good to go. And Link, I will love you. And I have so much work to do. So I'm going to talk to you later. That Monday evening, I'm thinking about our weekend. And I'm trying to figure out where things went left. And why this was such an opposite weekend from our first weekend that we had together. I don't like to give him the credit, but I will give him the credit he knew how to throw a love bomb of a weekend. How do you go from this really crazy romantic weekend to this weekend where I cannot

wait for you to get out of my house? What happened? So I'm sitting there thinking and replaying things in my mind. I start thinking about the fact that we don't see each other often. And you would think that we would be intimate all the time We'd be making out, we'd be touching each other, we'd be having sex, we'd be doing all of these things if I did a long distance relationship Why aren't we doing these things? What if you were trafficked into a cult over shot nine times, or fell in love with a vampire, or went into a minor surgery and woke up one week later, paralyzed? What would you do?

I'm Whit Missildine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast from Wondry that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future with one choice, to a woman who survived a notorious serial killer, you'll hear their first-person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Each episode is an exploration of the human spirit and personal discovery. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening. Followed this is actually happening wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wundery app.

And I realized he kept holding his phone the one time we were intimate. And I start really like diving deep into that in my own head. And I realized I think to myself, I think he videotaped me. I feel like he videotaped us having sex. Like I was facing the camera, like my back was to the camera, but I think his camera move is out. He calls me and I don't answer. And then he texts K, are you okay? Is everything alright?

If not, like you, to not answer. And I ask him, point of point, did you record us having sex? Did you record us? And he says, yes, I did. And I felt so violated. I sent to him. But like I specifically did not give you consent. I'm very big on consent. I teach my nieces about consent and that you can retract consent and consent changes so often and consent is dynamic, but my consent about being recorded

was pretty hard. It was a hard now. It was a pretty hard limit. It was a pretty hard boundary. And you didn't, anyway, as I'm so upset and I'm like, I can't talk to you, don't speak to me for the rest of the night. I have to think about this. I need to work this out on my own. He's calling me. I'm like, I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to speak to you. I will speak to you another time. I end up shutting my phone off and he sends like a bunch of messages and I'm ignoring them, but I'm in the group chat with Monique. And I say he recorded us having sex and everyone's like are you kidding me? And I'm like crying because I just have no idea where this video is. You can do anything with this video.

You can post it anywhere. This is at the height of only fans. Did you post it on only fans and you're making money? Did you just use it for yourself? Like, what are you using this for? Who did you show this to? We said, I promise I deleted it. He said me all these messages.

I deleted it. And he's showing me screen grabs of him deleting this video. But the iCloud lives forever. You can delete things and then undelete things. And you can recover things. And if you put it in a drop box, it doesn't matter that you deleted it from your phone because it's already there.

There's no protection for me. Once you decide that you want to do whatever you want to do with this video and I am mortified. I'm a sex positive person. I fully support people doing sex work, getting money from sex work, whatever it is that you want to do, but I did not want to do this. I did not want that video, that picture of me, without my final approval to be anywhere. It's not how I felt comfortable. This to me was enough of a reason for I never had to speak to him again.

All of those small little red flags that I had ignored, forget those, because this is big enough, this is illegal enough, that I can use this as the reason, and I don't have to address any of the other things that felt weird to me. I never have to address any of that stuff. This is concrete. He knows he's wrong and this gives me the out so I don't have to be in this situation anymore. The next morning I wake up I see all these messages from him and I respond with you know what? I know this is working out. This is not a good situation. Let's just part his friends friends then I go walk my dog and it's 70 am in the morning Tyrone starts calling my phone on this walk and he's calling my phone nonstop I finally answer I'm outside and I'm like listen I'm not arguing with

you you can apologize and he sounds upset. He sounds genuinely sorry and like this was a mistake. And maybe he was, maybe in some respect, he definitely felt bad. But for me, this was enough that I didn't want to do this anymore, that whatever I felt was clearly incorrect. I'm a rape survivor. I'm a domestic abuse survivor. When I say no, you need to hear me, because if you don't respect my no, I know that you're not safe for me. The minute you don't respect my no, you're not a good person for me, and I need to get out of there as fast as possible. And so we're on the phone and we're talking, I'm like I'm done. I can't talk to you about this anymore. I have work to do. I have to take a shower. I have to feed my dog. There's

things I have to do. I come out of the shower after feeding my dog probably like 40 minutes later and I have over 20 missed calls from him and he he's still calling, and he's still calling, and he's still calling. And I tell him, listen, this isn't gonna work. I'm gonna have to block you because you need to stop. There's no type of conversation that's gonna happen before I go into work. I can promise you.

I tell him that, and I block him, and I go to work. And it was great. And I did what I needed to do, I focused on my job and he was quiet. He didn't bug me and then I was, well, I probably should have to talk about this with him, have some type of resolution conversation. I shouldn't have listened to that. I should have just kept him block, but I, again, people pleasing. I want him to know that he can still use the tips I give him

as a reference, but we need to end this on a good note because you have our friends with my friends now. You are talking to my people and I'm probably going to run into you if you decide that this queer community is someplace that you want to be. I unblock him and he's not calling and he's not blowing at my phone. So I'm like, all right, this is fine. It was a moment of anger and he's fine now. So many excuses for him, but I'm giving it to him.

I call him later and I say to him, hey, like, we're good, we're done. This is really done. This is how I feel. And that was such the wrong idea. Because now he has me on the phone. And now he's telling me that I clearly never loved him because if I loved him, I wouldn't leave him like this.

Tyrone would say to me, well, I'm not like Landon. Landon hit you, but I never hit you. And you stayed with Landon for longer than you stayed with me. So why is Landon okay? And I'm not okay? The correlation just didn't make sense. You don't want to be compared to my abuser, but you're comparing yourself to my abuser, you're comparing our situation to the worst relationship that I have ever been in. You should be comparing yourself to like my best relationship, but what you're

doing is you're comparing yourself to the worst person. The person who is responsible for thousands of thousands of dollars in therapy, the person who is responsible for my PTSD, the person who's responsible for so many horrible things about my life, but you want to compare yourself to him. It didn't feel good. And so I was really firm and I was really clear. We need to be done. This is not okay. was really clear, we need to be done. This is not okay. He didn't understand it, he didn't get it, it didn't make sense to him, and then I blocked him again. This is when my version of hell started. He started creating fake numbers, and he would call my phone. I would get a bunch of different crazed numbers, calling me at all hours of the night. There was an app that he used to create new numbers, like throw away numbers. And so every time I would block one, he would call me from another one.

And then he started sending me text messages from these phone numbers. He would try to like email me from these random emails. Things were escalating getting worse and worse and worse and worse. So I'm blocking them. I'm blocking them. I'm blocking them. He took the day off of work to sit there and just call my phone. Now, if I were not me, I'd be like, why don't you just shut your phone off? But at the time, I was in sales. So my clients are calling me on my cell phone. I don't always have everyone's number.

I can't just shut my phone off because I could miss an important call from work. And if I keep my phone on, I actually can't answer any important calls from work because Tyrone is calling me so much that my phone hasn't stopped ringing. And my boss is calling me texting me, he wanted to answer me on the phone. My cell phone's my alarm clock. I couldn't shut my phone off in the middle of the night. He's sending alarms to call me in the middle of the night. He's taking the day off of work to call me He's harassing me

Calls nonstop from random numbers. He's sending me like messages of just like pure utter stereotypical abusive behavior Gaslighting guilt guilt tripping. Everything that I knew was not okay, I could not sleep. He's telling me, don't be surprised if I show up at your house.

And now he knows where I live, but I have no idea where he lives. And when he picked me up, he picked me up in a rental car. And we sit in a hotel. I don't know where he lives. I don't know what car he drives. I don't know if he's going to show up. He knows the area from not just me, but from his ex-girlfriend. I am terrified that in the middle of the night he's going to pop up. He knows the route I take because my dog was blind. A dog was deaf. And so we would have to take the same route. Otherwise, he would fall on would trip and he wouldn't know his way around.

He knows the route. He knows my routine. He knows when I call him, he knows that when I take work breaks, he knows when I take my dog out, he knows when I fall asleep. I was absolutely terrified because I still remember that line that his ID says that he's a woman. And because it says he's a woman that cops aren't going to give him

the same amount of stress as if he was a bit. I was absolutely terrified of where this would escalate to. I realized I know nothing about him. I only know what he told me and he knows everything about me. I was so honest. I was so open and I was so trusting in something that I'm not usually that I can only imagine where he was going to go with all of this information and then he's still threatening to

show up. He's threatening I will be there tomorrow. So now I'm like I can't go walk my dog. Now I can't leave my house. I'm terrified to open my door to get groceries and all of a sudden these deliveries start showing up at my house. He is sending me dozens and dozens and dozens of flowers because he knows I love fresh flowers. So he's sending me all of these roses. Every single time I open my door, I'm seeing roses on my doorstep, like door dash or whole foods or Amazon or like an actual florist is delivering to the point that my apartment smelled like a funeral home.

And I did not want to open my door. Monique came over one morning because she knew that I was just so stressed and I was so upset. And so before work, she went to a local coffee shop and she picked up coffee and food that I liked for breakfast and she shows up with tea. She knew I'd been crying all night.

I opened the door and she's holding roses. She loves to get me flowers because she knows how it makes me. And I look at her and I go, are they yours? And she says no. And I start crying because there's constant reminding that he's going to show up. He knows my address. He knows where I live.

And then I started getting restaurant deliveries at the time that I should eat all of these different weird situations. I don't know who's dropping off all this food. I don't know who's outside. My windows face the street. I'm fully expecting him to pull up. He would send messages from random numbers saying, I'm going to be there in the morning. I couldn't sleep all night because I'm expecting him to show up at my house. I'm like slowly like losing it. I'm on the phone with Monique. We're face timing and she's there with a friend of mine. And I start getting a phone call from this friend

that she's with. And I was like, can you tell? So and so does not call me right now because we're face timing. And she says that's really weird because his phone is across the room. I was like, I hear what you're saying, but his collar idea is showing up at my phone right now. And she turns the phone and she shows being his phone how completely dead it is. It's not even on.

And I was like, I don't understand this is really weird. So I'm taking screenshots of him calling me and sending it to her and I'm like I don't understand what's going on Then another friend of mine who's down in LA All of a sudden she starts calling me and I do something was off then because there's some people that who you expect phone calls from at any given moment. And there's some other people that you text all the time. And that's like your mean mode of communication. And a phone call means that something's wrong. A phone call is not a good sign in those situations. And there's no reason why she should call me.

Within like three minutes, I get a text message from her saying, Hey, I don't know what's going on, but you're calling me. And that's not like you. I want to make sure that you're actually okay. And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm not calling you. I'm sitting in my bed watching Netflix. What's going on?

I was like, actually, now I need you to call me. And so I'm on the phone with her. She's like, it's really weird. I didn't feel comfortable answering. Something just felt like this wasn't right. And my caller, D, the call waiting pops in. And she's calling me. So it doesn't make sense how I'm on the phone with her.

But then she's calling in and she's like, don't answer it, don't answer it, don't answer it. I start doing some diving. And I realize that whatever app he has to get new numbers it's also an app that can mimic phone numbers. He's taking numbers of the people I trusted, I entrusted him with to assist with his transition. He's taking their numbers, mimicking their numbers and calling me in an effort for me to answer the phone. He's spoofing and he's blowing up my phone. So now I have to start blocking my friends because it's not safe for me because I don't know what's actually them and I'm afraid that if I ignore my friend's phone

calls it could actually be an emergency and I don't want to have the situation where I answer and it's not them. Now I have to tell all my friends, you can't call me on this number because I'm blocking you. They understood the situation, but it was also extremely isolating. I'm losing more and more community. I'm losing more and more friends because now I can't talk to the people who I trusted the most. And now I can't talk to my inner circle because I don't know if it's him or it's not. And it keeps getting worse. And it just keeps getting worse and it keeps getting worse. And I'm losing it.

I'm not sleeping. I'm afraid of the doorbell ring because I don't know who it is. I'm ordering things I can defend myself with and stashing them around my house. I'm stashing them at the door My roommate and I came up with protocols of when I have to walk the dog that they have to come with me Or that we have to leave the door locked or unlocked a certain way so if I need to run into my house because he's outside I can easily do that it was making the paranoia worse and his threats, these random threats from these random numbers and it was just making me super ultra paranoid and

I'm crying and I'm not sleeping in the group chat or the friend chat. I'm like, I don't know what to do. And my friends are listening to me and voice my mose completely breaking down. I'm afraid to be in my own house. One of my friends said, you know what? I don't know what to do, but I'm sure the National Domestic Violence Hatline knows what to do. Call them. I call them. I'm talking representative who answered the phone and I'm explaining my situation. I'm breaking down because it was like a heavy moment of I thought I was past this. I thought I had dealt with this already. I thought I had done this. I thought I was past this moment in my life. I had gone to therapy. I had moved across the country. I was in a completely different space and a completely different identity than I was when I was with him. How could I

be here in the same situation again? I felt so defeated. This woman on the phone made me feel so seen and made me feel less like I have another statistic again. She connected me into the local shelter and she connected me to some type of legal aid. The next thing I had to do was get a restraining order and I didn't know how to do that. And so the shelter was able to connect me to someone who was a legal law ship fellow. We did the restraining order together and we filed an emergency restraining order. At that time, the phone call started to peter down. The text messages were still pretty regular. It really felt like he had some type of alarm system or calendar system set up

because they were pretty consistent at specific times. We filed the emergency restraining order and I'm sending them pictures and droves of information that he is texting me like he sent me a cash app request for money because he wanted to say I loved you because I blocked him on everything else. I'm sending all of this information over to her and she's like, oh my god, this is great. Usually they're not so blatant. She was really big on giving me advice and then I met with the law fellow and she was really great helping me get all this stuff done. Within about five days from calling the shelter to speaking to the fellow to getting the paperwork filed,

the judge approved an emergency restraining order, but then I had to get it to him. And I, again, I didn't know anything but other than what he told me. While we were at Monique's house when he came to visit for Thanksgiving, I had to go to the store and he was like, oh, here's my debit card. And his debit card had his legal dead name on it. I remembered what that name was. And so between that and him mentioning his name of his mother and all these other things, I was able to do like one of those background checks online

and property search and for like $10 I was able to get past court records and at least the information for where his mother lived because I knew that he stayed with her sometimes. Then I fell into this whole of research that I probably should have done before I actually met him the first time. I actually found court records that he had restraining orders not by just one person in one situation, but there were multiple restraining orders against him for multiple situations. He had, I believe, either one or two of five year restraining orders against him. I found a record of him being in jail in Northern California, county jail for domestic violence, all of the restraining

orders that were against him were specifically for domestic violence. The court system, it kind of feels sometimes that they put all of these blockers in place to either dissuade you or dissuade the wrong people from doing the wrong things. But when you're in this genuine situation, it is very, very scary and it's very unwieldy and it is like speaking another language. I was completely panicked. I'm not eating. I had been depressed before Tyrone showed up. I had been depressed with the depression which so much worries after all of this because it's like I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything at all. I still have to do a job. I still have to be someone's daughter. I still have to be someone's friend. I still have responsibilities. I have rent to pay, I have a house to clean, and I am just like losing it. Internally, it's just too much for me to take. I can't take anymore. I get his mother's address, and now I have to somehow get some type of sheriff to serve him. They end up serving him on a five a.m. Tuesday or Wednesday. And he's

not home. So they gave it to his mother that there's something that he needs to come to. The police station for and he needs to pick up and he shows up that afternoon. So the sheriff served him with the emergency restraining order and they made court. Once I got the emergency restraining order, it was great. I felt like I could sleep at night and know that if he did show up, I knew at least had enough that I could be protected at least by somebody with some type of uniform. And I have to make a really clear that as a black woman,

for me to go to the police or the court system to protect myself against a black man and not just a black man, a black trans man and putting that type of legal target. It didn't feel good. It didn't feel good, especially black trans people because going to jail is such a horrible experience for them and it's so dehumanizing, but at the end of the day, it came down to the fact, is it going to be him or me? I could protect this black trans man or I could protect this black woman.

I'm not doing anything wrong. I need to protect myself. For a few weeks, it was great. There were no more deliveries. But anytime the doorbell rang, I was nervous. Anytime I went for a walk, I was nervous. I changed my walk patterns with the dog. We go to court. This is January 2021 at this point. Everything's still on zoom. I don't think we had vaccines yet. I called Monique and I was like, you have to do this with me. I need your help. The law

fellow was able to stay on legal aid was able to stay on. They were able to assist with legal advice and representing me in court and talking to eventually Tyrone's lawyer. That was a godsend, honestly, that was amazing. I feel like anyone in that situation should automatically get that type of service, but I was lucky enough to be able to find it and to get it. We show up to court the first time, and my legal fellow is being supervised

by an attorney who's qualified by the California Bar Association. And so I have two people representing me plus myself. He had hired a lawyer and the lawyer got on the Zoom call with the judge and Tyrone wasn't on there. He said, I just received the case a couple days ago. Can we get a continuance? So they continued it until the end of January, but during this court proceeding, the lawyer that Tyrone had received. Basically, it was just like, well, I'm sure Natalia has no type of representation. And so I will just take care of everything directly with her. And my law felt like it was like, actually, no, no no no no I'll take care of it which was amazing because it felt so good to be like I don't have to deal with this. The judge was like no no you

could speak to your representation. You don't have to talk to her and that surprised him. It felt like to me that he expected me to be in this certain position which is back to how Tyrone made me out. Like I couldn't afford anything. I couldn't have the wherewithal to take care of this myself. It was the way that it was said and how it would came across. It was almost like I wasn't smart enough or I wasn't cultured enough to understand. I ended up speaking to my legal aid person. A couple of weeks later,

his lawyer had reached out to her and his lawyer specialized in domestic violence cases. He didn't give off good energy over the zoom, it didn't feel right. The way he talks about me, it didn't feel good, but turns out that his specialty was representing defendants in domestic violence cases. But she said that when she spoke to him, she actually started questioning herself as to if she was doing the right thing as my legal aid. Because the way that he was talking to her was the same gas-lating behavior that Tyrone had talked to me

in where he has like, well, no, no, no, no, no, you're new to the profession. She doesn't need to go to court. What we're gonna do is we're going to come up with a settlement and we're gonna sign papers that Tyrone and Natalia are not gonna speak to each other for six months and they'll be fine. They'll be good and that will be all that we need because obviously this is not that big of a deal.

And she's like, I have to speak to my client, but I don't think that's something that she's going to go with. He almost gaslit her in a way that she started questioning the facts as she knew them. And she told me later that she ended up calling her boss and me like, so this is really bad behavior because this is not how lawyers speak to each other and her boss agreed. This is not how lawyers speak to each other. The way that he spoke to her was not okay. She had a legal obligation to tell me about these settlement offers that he was giving where we was signed this agreement and we'd move on and we would drop the case and just not show up to court. But I realized that he had done this before.

Tyrone had done this with other women before. And that's why these women had restraining orders against him. And that's why when I'm looking through these records and these background reports that I'm seeing these cases that are dropped or dismissed. It's because he's meeting people and he's going through these situations of them and then he's getting some type of lawyer to make these agreements with them and that they're signing off saying that they won't contact him. So it gets dismissed and

it's not a real case anymore. There's no record of it. I couldn't let there be no records. There needed to be a record. There's a history and there's a pattern because I wouldn't have known there was a pattern. It had it not been for the first restraining order and then the second restraining order and then the third restraining order and then the fourth restraining order. I knew I was doing the right thing and I refused the agreements because there was no legal protection for me if he decided to show up at my front door. So we went to court a second time. He showed up this time. He and his lawyer are there and me and my legal team of two are there. I'm nervous. I'm facetiming Monique and I'm showing the camera. They can't see that she's watching, which was really amazing for me because I felt like I had like

a support system in court and so on me just being in my bedroom talking to my computer. His lawyer starts questioning me like, well why didn't you just block him? And then why didn't you do this and why didn't you do that? If he was trying to make me feel stupid He was doing like a really great job and he was trying to put doubt in my head about the choices that I made He was doing a really good job, but I also knew that I did the right thing So I was really sticking to my guns. I was really clear with the tarp line of what happened. He asked me, why didn't you just block his phone numbers? That seems to alleviate everything. Clearly, this is just a love spat between two people. And I said, I did actually. I did block him.

I blocked him multiple times. That's the moment that I witnessed the judge starting to go through the evidence of the screenshots I provided, of the transcripts I provided, and it felt like they hadn't gone through any of that stuff before. The lawyer is trying to frame it as like a lover's squabble instead of me being absolutely terrified for my life because we have no idea what he's capable of and he has four other restraining orders against him for domestic violence situations. Then the judge starts questioning him. He was so confident in his responses that he was so smart he thought in his responses. He was better than me. He was saying these things that were making no sense. And so the judge is like, I see here at this time on this date that

Natalia is telling you, I don't consent to you speaking to me anymore. Stop calling me. This is now considered harassment. And you kept calling and turns like, yeah, yeah, I sure did. I absolutely did because I wasn't quite sure if she actually didn't want to speak to me again. And it was just like these weird mind-fucks. I'm watching him and I'm like, I don't understand how I thought this was attractive. I don't understand how I thought that this was okay. And I'm questioning my judgment on everything.

He is talking to the judge and he is super confident in his abuse and thinking that this is normal, thinking that it's okay. And he's being like super-polligent. You're on her. I really thought she was into it. I really thought she was into the flowers and the judge didn't buy it. And I am grateful that the judge didn't buy it, but then I'm also not grateful because they only granted me a six month protection order against him.

Even though multiple people have multiple restraining orders against him, I only get a six month one. It gave me enough safety that I felt safe for a little bit, but I didn't feel safe for a long time. At the end of the entire hearing, he made a point to say, thank you, Your Honor. I appreciate your assistance with this matter. I also want to reiterate that I'm in a relationship. So I'm not going to be contacting Natalia anymore because I'm happy where I am. And just for like some type of weird insults, I hope you're happy with someone,

but at the same time, I feel awful for her. But the one thing I can do is have this on permanent record. So it's always attached to your name. I didn't always show that I had a restraining order against you. And these were the pieces of evidence showing why I hope that someone did some type of therapy with him. But I haven't heard from him since that last court case. And I am grateful. I was pre-endively smart, and I blocked him on everything. I need type of social media. When we first started having that fight,

he actually said in text message, you're really smart and lucky that you had done that. I am still picking up the pieces of the mess that he left behind. I trusted someone enough to want to be their wife. I trusted someone enough to want to talk motherhood and so personal to me. And I already come with trust issues. Now today I feel like I question myself as to why I didn't trust my gut when I knew I was right. I should have listened to all the red flags. I should have paid attention to all the red flags.

And I didn't. But I did pay attention early enough. I don't want to beat myself up that I didn't do it fast enough, I didn't do it soon enough, I wasn't smart enough. I don't want to do that to myself because Shida would have cut out in hindsight 2020. I recognize the signs when I recognize the signs and when I had enough I had enough and it was early enough for me. Well it did damage to me as just a person, it didn't do physical damage, although sometimes the psychological ones can be worse. I'm definitely more timid when it comes to men or masculine presenting folks. I feel like I can't trust my judgment when it comes to those type of folks, but I am definitely relearning to trust my gut. I am not beating myself up because I was so lonely

and in need of love that I was willing to accept whatever. I am telling my story because there's someone else like me. There's someone else who has been a survivor who's been an abusive relationship, whether it be physical, sexual, financially, emotionally, mentally. Whatever the situation is, they've been there before and then they don't trust themselves the next time with the next person, and they're like, what if I do it again? I did what I thought was the work, and I still ended up in that situation again. And I realized I did to listen to my intuition, listen to my gut, and pay attention to those red flags. Those red flags are key. Even if they're small, enough small red flags equals one big one. And so that's where I am in my life right now. That's my story. Thank you so so much for being willing to share your story. I'm so incredibly

sorry for what you've experienced. What I try to remind myself is sometimes I did the best I could at the time with the information I had at the time. And I'm sure the same is true for you. Sometimes you see the best in people because that's what they're showing you. Yeah, Monique put it in a really good perspective for me. She said, people will show up with their best representative, right? You show up being the best person you can be. And in weird situations or hard times,

then you see the person behind the representative. And fortunately for me, his representative dipped out really early. And so I was able to make a personality assessment way earlier. If we lived in the similar areas, I don't know if I would have been able to see it like that because I think my life was so separate from his that his intrusion into my life, especially in the negative way, was so magnified. And I feel like if we had lived in similar areas and I had seen him daily, this behavior where they've crept in versus being like this glaring thing to me, you know, no one asked

to be in the situation. No one wants to file a restraining order. No one wants to be terrified. No one wants to feel like this. It's not my fault. I don't take responsibility for it. What is my responsibility is what I do when the situation happens to me. And I did the best that I could with the information I had. Like you said, and I made the right choices at the right moments. He's in charge of his behavior, not me. He's in charge of his reactions, not me. Over Thanksgiving, what I didn't realize is that when he would calm down, he would record him speaking to me calmly and then record my reaction of me being still upset and angry.

The recording of me was not just us having sex or us being intimate. It was also during arguments in a way I feel like because he has had these restraining orders and he's been in these situations where people can pin things on him, that he tried to almost like set it up that I was the aggressor. I'm the one causing all these problems. I'm screaming at him and look how calm he is. Like, he has recordings of him talking to me calmly. And the only way that I was able to get those recordings

Was because he would send them to me in text messages It was like an effort of surveillance, but it was also an effort to like Protect himself. So he knew what he was doing was wrong because he knew well enough to calm himself down And record me. So I don't take responsibility for any of this because he set all of this up. Thank you so much for all of your effort and energy. I'd so appreciate you sharing your story. I think it's so incredibly important and impactful.

I also love hearing about your community of support and also the connection that you were able to make with the domestic violence hotline and that they were able to help and connect you with the right people. There's other people right now today who are probably going to listen to this podcast, who might not be able to get those same resources and I just have to say to those folks specifically, you need to find your people and you need to find a plan. And there's resources out there, planning an escape, planning to get to the courts.

There's spaces for everybody. Lots of people don't talk about domestic violence within the queer community. We are seen sometimes as two girls fighting versus a domestic violence situation. That's a lot steeper and a lot stronger than that. And there's a lot of, I think, allowances that queer people give to other queer people because they understand sometimes how hard it is just to survive in this

body or to survive in this life or to survive in your identity, whether orientation or gender. I need the queer people to recognize that sometimes the red flags are the red flags, no matter if they're rainbow colored or if they're not. You know deep in your gut that something doesn't feel right, something doesn't feel good. There's plenty of resources out there for queer folks. You have to put yourself first and I think that's something that I really learned during this pandemic. I had to put myself first and I had to pay attention to me. I'm the only one that I get to live with at the end of the day. If I can't survive, then there's no more story to tell. And I think that's the most important thing of telling my own story. And reviving my voice,

that was super important. I had done victim advocacy for a while, and I had to learn how to get my voice for my therapist to learn how to stand up for myself. And in those few months, I had let it go, but I didn't forget the lessons. And I needed to go back to that. Thank you so much. You're so amazing. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe friends. Something was wrong is a broken cycle media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Rees.

If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow something was wrong on Instagram. At something was wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed by Glad Rags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much. Hey, prime members, you can listen to something was wrong early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.