In 2009, just before I was to turn 19 (which in BC is the legal drinking age), I was dragged by my oldest sister from my cozy hometown to Edmonton, Alberta. Like most teenagers, I was sort of looking forward to being of legal drinking age in my home province, not that legalities stopped me from drinking anyway. When we moved to Edmonton, it was only a month and a half before my 19th birthday and here in Alberta the legal drinking age is 18, so that milestone was almost ripped from me. While it is not a huge deal in my community to become of legal drinking age, I knew it was a bigger milestone in Edmonton.
My sister and I had no way out to Edmonton on our own, as neither of us drove, so we asked our uncle who was driving up north again anyway. The evening before the move, we packed up the back of his pickup truck and were prepared to leave early the next morning. The space in the truck was not allotted fairly. My sister let me take, a 1" mattress, blankets, two boxes, and two smaller garbage bags of clothes. As a bullied high school student, I was hoping moving to a big city would change thisー I was wrong.
Upon moving to Edmonton, we arrived a month before our lease was to come into effect and that forced us to stay in my sister's friend's small apartment for a month. It was in this cramped apartment that my hobby had started to boom in comparison as before because I had no privacy 24/7. At this time I was role-playing online almost every waking moment and had met someone else who lived in Canada (which at the time was very rare). We started talking out of character and were getting to know each other. In March of 2009, we started an online relationship. They seemed like a really good person and someone I really connected with. Later that year, after their graduation in June, since they were a year younger than me, they moved in with me as a "roommate." In September of 2009, we had told my sister that we were together and that started a fight between my sister and I. By the end of September, my sister and I split because of the lie and many other underlying problemsー ones I wish I listened to.
At the start of 2010, I had lost my best friend that had travelled 1200km from my hometown to Edmonton with me in a cramped car, to a UTI. My four-year-old Manx cat Sirius passed away just before my birthday because my at the time partner would not let me take him to the vet until it was too late. I had to sit there in a room with him as he became less aware as to what was going on around him due to the sedation before euthanization they gave him. I sat there with him for over an hour before he was completely asleep and I was forced to leave with an empty carrier. After he passed away I was also not allowed to grieve his death. Nor was I allowed to even talk about him. Days after his passing, we went to a pet store and picked up a new cat, of which I still have and she is my life.
The fact that I was not allowed grieve and that my best friend was immediately replaced were sure signs of a toxic relationship that I see now, but never knew were signs before. This person was my first relationship ever so I thought actions like these were normal.
I moved away from my hometown where all of my friends were, I lost my only friend to illness, and was not allowed to make friends online, in person, or even at workー I was alone.
Since I was doing nothing but catering to that person, working, and basically sitting around twiddling my thumbs. After losing Sirius I had gotten back into my old habits of role-playing, but this time I took on a different sort of role, one that is considered illegal these days. I forgot that I had made impersonation accounts of JUMP a couple years before. I thought that no one would know who they were because I was still very unfamiliar with how the Japanese pop media worked. I thought that these 10 people were underground and lesser known people... I was wrong. At the time, I mainly frequented my favourite member's page (that I made to imitate them).
I began talking to someone who told me they were very sick and that they were dying, I quickly felt bad and came out that I was not them. My honesty made really good friends (and we're still friends now), but because of that person I was not allowed to have friends so we hid our friendship. We then bonded over our love for this group that I still thought no one else knew of, especially in North America.
Not too long after her and I were talking via Facebook only, my partner found out and barred us from speaking to each other... making me alone once again. I was told (and watched in the moment) to send them a message that I would no longer be talking to them and that they should not contact me anymore. She was my best friend that had remembered my role-playing names and made a new character just so they could add me and talk to me in secret. How she did it was add small conversation snippets in our new role-plays that only her and I had. This is how I knew that I was talking to someone I knew.
In June of 2010, I found out why I was forced to be so alone. It was because that person was cheating on me with a coworker (of which would extend to the end of our relationship in 2013). Their subconscious told them that they were cheating on me so I MUST be doing the same to them. Limiting who I talked to, male or female, would limit my chances of being able to cheat on them. It got to the point that even my role-plays and entire phone was being monitored.
I had no one.
I was completely alone.
No one to talk to.
I saw hundreds of people a day, all of which our conversation did not pass, "How are you?" and "Have a good day."
I was a prisoner in my own home.
I was a hostage in my relationship.
JUMP was my escape of reality.
I needed out of reality.
Every day, after they had gotten home from work (even days that they came from sessions with their coworker) they would come home and sexually assault me or exploit my personal space, such as watching or even filming me while taking a shower. I am not sure if the videos that were taken were ever posted somewhere, I never cared if they were. Because of the assault, I remembered a repressed memory of my first assault of when I was 6-years-old. Something I will never forget is the trauma that they caused me, and the trauma that I had forgotten to protect myself that was awaken in my memory.
There were times where I tried to get away from them and their advancements where I would just go into the spare bedroom and just sit in silence. It was usually before they just got home and I needed alone time or just time to physically recover. It was me hiding away that caused them to get angry at me. I had problems in high school where I cut myself, even if it was only twice, the scars were still there. They took advantage of this and bound me and forced me to stand there (usually naked) and they would cut me in places where someone would normally do it themselves. I have dozens of scars across both of my thighs that any unknowing passer-by would think I did it myself, and that is how they got away with physically hurting me for years.
To hide myself from the daily emotional, sexual, and physical abuse, I immersed myself in a fake world of idols. I drowned myself in it to the point that they were like my friendsー friends i never knew, but friends nonetheless. They were all my age and a little bit younger, specifically Hey! Say! BEST because they are my age. This made disassociating and imagining we were all in school together but just all took very drastic paths in the end. I consumed and zoned out daily just to hide the pain of my thighs, to hide the burning in my stomach, to hide how frail I was and how little muscle I had, to hide that I had not slept for days.
I began writing again when that person found took my role-playing option away, all because we were role-playing with the same person and that person had brought up my main characters name. That happenstance person had told them what kind of role-play we were doing and they were not happy to hear that.
When I began writing again, I gave JUMP members different names and began writing about them in a world that I would love to live in. It eventually grew to give my favourite pairing their own story and gave one of them traits that I was dealing with, both as a kid and at that current moment. That character became me, and his friend became the saviour that I needed.
This fascinations with writing these two characters daily, almost like a personal journal, went on until late 2012 where my life took two drastic turnsー mind you one was for the better, and the other ruined my life up until 2020. One incident was not better for that person, and that made me unnaturally happy.
The first incident actually began in late 2011 and continued to January 12, 2012, that date I will never forget. That person had a desire... a need for material belongings, especially if it made me more physically attractive. What started it all I was at work one night and someone had purchased two bags of merchandise and after I handed them their change I returned to my floor tasks without waiting for them to leave my till. When I had returned to my till some ten minutes later when the next customer came up I had noticed that the previous customer had left both of their bags on the counter and just left with their change. I put the bags behind the counter and waited until the end of the night for them to come back and pick up their items, but they never did. I returned the product and placed the cash and both receipts in an envelope and pinned it to the cork board in the office explaining what I did and why. The customers never came back and the money was just placed in the donation bins at each till. When I told them about what had happened they figured doing returns like this would be a good way to get disposable money into our pockets, THEY just wanted the money. So, I was forced to do fake returns on products that never actually existed and that would yield a higher return of money. If I did not come back home with at least $100 cash from fake returns, I would be physically punished or starved for days because I did not get the money to fuel their addiction to money. At the time I had two thoughts rolling through my head every time I did one of these returns, "I dont want to be hurt." and "I don't care if I'm fired. If I'm fired, it means that I don't have to do this anymore." Never once did legal reprimands come into mind because I could not care less about my life or what happened in it.
On January 11, 2012, I was doing two actual returns, receipts and product were real. My shift manager did not like this because he was always watching me. I was being trained to replace him and he was not even supposed to know that. The very next day I was arrested and taken to jail for about 10 hours. That person did not care I was gone all day, in fact, they cheated on me that day because... what else do you do when your partner is at work for 15 hours? When I was released from jail, the first words that came out of their mouth were, "How much did you get today?" They did not care that I was arrested and was in the works of getting a criminal record. On December 3, 2012 I was actually tried and had five counts of fraud under $2000... this meant nothing to them. They just wanted money.
Within this time I was also taking some smaller amounts of the money I was told to steal from the company I worked for and hid it around the house. That money I was hoarding was for my escape. I was saving for a plane ticket to Japan to run and hide. But then a godsend happened.
At the end of November 2012, that person had started showing very strange medical symptoms, ones I've never seen before. They were not sleeping, barely eating, and making random sudden gestures in the air. As the days went on, their texting became incoherent and when they called it would be nothing but laughs and random babble. On top of that, the sleeping had changed to 100% ZERO sleep, not knowing how to eat, did not know how to tip a glass back to drink, would run around the house and even into walls. It turns out that they had encephalitis caused by the Herpes Simplex Virus. They were only diagnosed four months after their hospitalization. The Herpes virus was from the man they were cheating on me with (thankfully I never contracted it). Their karma was that, not only did they contract an STI, but they almost died from it. She almost died, under my care (even though I brought her to a hospital before her mom was able to get to Edmonton), and somehow... I was happy about it. Never in my life did I want anyone to dieー but the pain and trauma they caused me, WANTED her dead.
Because of having to deal with this and working more hours I had zero time to write or even consume things I enjoyed. After her hospitalization for 5 months and release in March 2013, I was free. She moved back across Canada at the beginning of April, took almost everything of mine except my two cats, computer and a gaming console. She left me alone once again.
I was left extremely poor and had to work everyday, 10-16 hours a day. This went on until July of 2013 where I lost my job due to poor performance. Like being worked like a dog doesn't effect how your body functions. I was poor, desperate, and in need of cashー fast. I was in the works of selling all of the merchandise of JUMP I had previously purchased just to be able to give money to my apartment manager to ensure I could stay. Just after I was getting ready to post my page of items for sale, I had gotten a job again.
I was able to keep the only thing that kept me alive during those four years of hell.
I was able to write again.
I was able to even purchase items again.
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