I’ve been telling Erik for months that his behavior is getting worse and he would apologize to me and he would tell me whatever he had to say for me to give him another chance. But Erik never followed through. He violated every promise. I regret tolerating his behaviors or not enforcing boundaries sooner, but Erik remains responsible for what he chooses to do after those boundaries are stated. I regret allowing him to cross the line over and over, even after he had apologized and promised to never do those things again. 

Erik would insult me, throw and break things, hit me, punch the doors if I was behind it, slam the drawers. He would scream at me the top of his lungs: saying things that made me feel absolutely worthless to him. His apologies were meaningless, because it kept on happening. Erik was becoming a monster, and I didn’t recognize the person Erik was becoming. To be honest, I was afraid to move in to this apartment with him, but I did. 

It’s true that I talk to my best friend about things that happen with me. I tell her about the good and the bad. Erik would go through my phone and read my messages to her, and he would get angry with me for talking to her about his behavior, and it would blow up in my face. I used to be able to talk to Erik, but now It seems impossible to approach him with anything. 

Talking used to be easier for me, but not as much as writing it down or journaling does. Talking was easier before the strokes. Now, writing is easier. 

I do have family, but I don’t have contact with them. 

 I don’t keep acquaintances. 

I’ve had to learn the hard way that not every one is your friend. I’ve really only had one, or two people in my whole life that I can call my ‘friend.’ Mara is one of them.

Im a homebody. I don’t go out much, or at all if I can help it, due to my health. I wasn’t always sick, and I use to love going out,  shopping, and working. I stop working altogether because I would get antibiotic resistant infections and wind up in the hospital to get IV antibiotics, and be sent home with a picc line on home health.

Hospitals and facilities are no place for a person like me, so home health is preferred, and safer. 

I stopped working last year in November. 

I was a licensed cosmetologist, I loved cutting hair.. it’s kind of how I met Erik… it’s kind of how I came to notice him, even though he had been there all along. 

Last year, i was renting a room in a house. Erik and his (now ex-girlfriend) were friends of my landlord, as I was coming home from work, Erik passed by me at the front door and he saw me carrying my hair tools in with me (I would bring my tools home to clean them). Erik asked me, do you cut hair?  I said yes, $20, and he followed me to my bedroom for a haircut. 

When i became sick and couldn’t return to work, I couldn’t pay rent. I spoke to the landlord and I explained what was going on with me. He said he would ‘carry me’ for a few months.

It’s been depressing for me to step away from my work, and an even worse feeling not being able to pay rent. 

In April 2026, i was paid a (small) settlement for an injury case that was filed in 2022. I was not expecting this case to resolve, because my attorney had trouble locating the other party to get them served. 

In March 2026, I received a call from my attorney and he informed me that he had the other party served, he said he spoke to them and their lawyer- he said that they wanted to settle the matter without court involvement, and wanted to settle right away. 2 weeks later, the case settled. 

This came about one month after Erik had program completed from Omni Center. At that time, Erik had some issues with his Chevy Cruz not passing smog. He could not get the car registered with the DMV- and would have cost him too much to repair it. I gave Erik $1,500 to help him with purchasing another car. Erik’s child support payment was due and I paid that for him, it was 470. Erik’s auto insurance payment was also due- so I paid off the balance owed for his policy, which was $370 and that got him coverage for the next 2 months. Erik never asked for my help, i did it because I like Erik, I care about him, I want him to have success in his recovery and in all that he does. I did it to keep his stressors low, i helped him build his resume, and he was applying for jobs like crazy, he was going to interviews, I knew he would eventually find work. I saw how hard he was trying to do things differently. 

Meanwhile, the tension built up between my landlord and I. My landlord learned that I had received money, had been helping Erik financially, and not starting to pay him back rent… and the harassment began, the illegal eviction type of stuff.. My landlord made living there uncomfortable- he would switch off the breaker to my bedroom, so I had no power. He would turn off the water valve to the shower- so that I couldn’t shower, he even turned it off in the middle of me taking a shower once.. then he put a lock on the bathroom door- so I couldn’t use the toilet, or the shower. The landlord locked me out of the house when I stepped outside, he tampered with my gas tank- ripping off the face plate to the gas tank door. He scratched all of my ‘Caraway’ pots and pans- (very expensive cookware).

He would bad mouth me, loud enough so that i could hear, he shouted at me through my bedroom door that I ‘smelled,’ that I was ‘disgusting’ and a ‘weirdo.’ Etc. 

Then one day, Erik and I went out. We were only away 45 minutes- and my landlord broke into my bedroom. He put my cat (Greyson) in a cage in the living room, and he moved my belongings out of my bedroom and put them in a dirty shed in the front yard. He put my belongings in large black trash bags with rotten meat. When we returned I was horrified seeing my cat in a cage and my bedroom lock broke and door wide open, and practically emptied. I called the police, and they connected me with LACDA, community support in the city of Glendora. I was given emergency housing in a hotel at the 21 Motor Lodge, in Glendora. The housing navigator that was working with me could only get 3 weeks approved, while they searched for a permanent situation for me. After those 3 weeks, i was referred to a re-coup care in Long Beach, called ‘Encompass.’ 

During the move from this place to that place, I became sick with another serious infection, and was discharged on home health with IV Meropenem. ‘Encompass could not keep me at their facility because I needed a higher level Of Care and was referring me to a skilled nursing facility. I opted not to go, and I decided to pay for a decent sized storage unit and that is where my cat and I stayed during the day. At night, I would sleep in my car. 

In the end, I decided not to pay my landlord any of the  rent that I owed him, because of the actions that he took against me. 

Erik stood by me through the entire ordeal. 

I am grateful for his support, for standing by me even when I had no where to go. Erik taught me how to shower out of a U-Haul bathroom sink using a cup. This was humiliating for me, but it came so naturally to Erik and he didn’t think much of it. 

I will never pretend 

that it meant nothing to me.

It meant everything to me.

Erik kept my IV medications refrigerated at his sober living home, Erik got trained by my home health nurse, and he administered my  iv antibiotics 3 times a day. Erik just started at his new job, working as a construction laborer. 

I know that all of this responsibility was overwhelming for him. We spent much less meaningful time together- Erik worked  most of the day, and he wanted to shower after work, then he had to return to the sober living home by 10pm- I hardly saw Erik anymore. 

I missed Erik but I was proud of him for all the progress he was making. 

Erik decided to move in with me once some of my retroactive social security payment came in. I returned to 21 century lodge and I paid for a room there, while I searched for an apartment for us to move in to together

Since then, 

Erik has changed. He wasn’t as emotionally available to me as he was before, i felt like he cared less about me.

He blocked every single male in my Facebook and any male that has sent me text gets blocked, and then I’m accused of sleeping with them. He accused me of sleeping with other men in that hotel room. 

He doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. The only thing that he hears is what his mind tells him. Erik makes these accusations without any evidence and are not even close to being something I would do. I’m not allowed to talk to his sister, I’m not allowed to ask for help. I’m not allowed to talk to my best friend, Mara. Erik is being a bully, he’s paranoid. He gets SO angry if I talk about his behavior to anyone or try to get him to look at how he is behaving. He gets right in my face and he yells at me and I get it…he’s just trying to scare me into shutting up. 

The second he walks in through the door after work he starts saying some of the most disgusting, mean, things to me, and in so many words-he is calling me a slut. 

I’m a tough girl but I can only take so much.. I understood that Erik needs to get his meds adjusted, I know he’d been lying to his psychiatrist. I didn’t know how to intervene, Erik wouldn’t let me get involved with certain things. He would snap at me and tell me to stay out of it. I wouldn’t have let it progress to this if id known how, or who to contact. Now, I’m just like… 

‘ THIS IS IT ‘

Yes I know it’s healthy for people to set boundaries, but trying to reason with Erik is completely pointless, and getting Erik to understand me brings out more violence. 

I use to have very good self esteem. I think I still do, but being called slut every day…getting hit on the head, the legs, having food thrown all over the walls, the trash can flung across the living room and trash flying everywhere, my god. After I’d been cleaning and vacuuming all day before Erik came home from work.. All of this eventually starts to become real, like all that I do is worthless, I’m a slut, doing laundry meant that I was destroying some type of ‘evidence‘ of infidelity, and if I deleted something on my phone, like a text message (because I would get low memory notifications) then Erik interpreted it as if I was hiding something from him.

Eriks’ car has been at that mechanic for a month, to the day. I wake up with him at 3am and I drive him to work, Erik likes to be the first one there, so we get there early, and while we wait for the other workers and Forman to show up, Erik and I wait in my car. Erik reclines the passenger seat back while we wait together.. 

When I pick Erik up after work- the passenger seat is in the same position that Erik left it in from the morning time. 

Erik accuses me of having someone else in the car …because the passenger seat is reclined back. It was him. He was the only one in that seat. I’ve been on time, I’ve been reliable. (there’s been only one time that Erik has ever had to wait on me. On that day, I heard Erik say that he would be back at 3:30pm. But he said 3:03pm) 

My mistake- he only waited 30 minutes.. 

it’s not like I forgot about him. 

I’ve loaned Erik my car on the weekends that he’s had to work. I’ve taken him to his visits to see his daughter on Sundays. I let Erik borrow my car so that he could run errands. I let him take my car to his doctor’s appointments, to pick up his medications, to pick up his mail, I literally share everything that I own with Erik. I give him full access to everything in my life, I have not kept any secrets from him. 

He knows how much money is in my bank accounts, he is logged in on my social media accounts, he has my passwords to access to my lab work and my medical information st my specialists. He has my location on 360, and he has access to the Ring camera that is attached to our front door. (I am hoping that the ring camera will give Erik some peace of mind, and that it will stop his accusations like him saying that I have other men in our apartment while he is at work). 

I would never do that. 

Equally I have access to Eriks’ text messages, his emails, and his location on 360- I do trust Erik romantically, and I don’t have any suspicion that he is cheating on me, unless he is hiding it really well. 

I hold onto our history. Erik was supportive through the time I was displaced, sick, and he helped me administer my IV antibiotics- even when he had a lot on his plate. 

I needed someone beside me, 

and Erik was there. 

Erik helped me enormously during an awful period of my life, but now his behavior is impulsive, erratic, destructive and unsafe for me (and my cat) to be around. I say this with guilt, because I don’t want to lose my relationship with him, I love him… and in no way am I exposing his behavior as an attempt to get Erik into trouble with the law, or to alter anybody’s opinion about him. If I had a choice, i wouldn’t want it to be like this, at all. But I need him to change the bad parts about himself. We can live together if he treats this home as if this is the place that gives him peace. This is not a place where he can mistreat me, and think that it would stay behind closed doors. 

So in order for me to feel safe, and allow myself to be emotionally vulnerable with him again, I need to see consistent changes. I need that from him.