You Are What You Think

Dealing hard with my body image issues lately. One thing about summer is that I see all these people living it up, not caring about the fact they’re half naked, and here I am with my jeans and t shirt because I am so uncomfortable in my own skin. No matter what weight I am at, I think I should just be comfortable with me, but I’m not. I see bigger girls wearing tank tops and I think if someone saw me in one I would cry from shear embarrassment. I see skinny girls in bikinis and I yearn to be them. I eat well, but have not been exercising as much as I should. That’s changed in the last two days, but I can’t seem to shake this feeling of unworthiness. I feel unworthy to my absolutely gorgeous fiance. He has a V line on his stomach and is super strong. Everyday he tells me how beautiful and sexy I am. He wants to have sex basically all the time, but half the time I don’t want to simply because I don’t feel sexy in the slightest. Half of my day is consumed by self consciousness. Are they looking at me? Talking about me? Laughing at me? Are my jiggly arms showing too much? How do my thighs look in these? They’re too fat. Everything is too fat. 

This is my story of being madly in love, to being torn down and afraid, to the strong person I am now who is taking back her life. In October of 2016, I met Travis Zinck. He seemed perfect. He captivated me in a way like never before. He liked everything I liked, we had the same beliefs, he was hot, smart, charming, funny...everything a girl could want. We did everything together. I became engulfed by him.

We opened up to each other. He told me about his previous relationships where the females he was with took all his money, hit him, and cheated on him. He told me stories of people trying to frame him for rape, but he didn’t do that, he was just taking care of whatever drunk girl was accusing him. He told me of all the spiritual work he had done and was still working on. He told me he wasn’t using hard drugs anymore, that he was all about the law of attraction and positivity. I started noticing some things though...He changed his bio to be one similar to mine, he would like and share literally everything I posted. He agreed with every single one of my beliefs, even the ones people would think are insane. I don’t consume animal products so he went vegan after about three days of knowing me and it honestly just seemed like he was trying to be me. Maybe that sounds egotistical but that’s how it felt.

After maybe three weeks of an incredible honeymoon phase is when he changed.. He would scream at me, punch things, make me feel like everything was my fault...He was constantly talking shit about my mom and friends; he turned me on them. He made it seem like they were out to get me and I believed him...One day he screamed at me for wanting to spend time with my mom instead of going to babysit his 12 year old brother with him. I broke up with him that day and made a facebook status, as some of you may recall, saying that he was emotionally abusive.

Unfortunately, my choice didn’t last for long. He came back to me and said everything I wanted to hear. That I was right and that he did need to work on himself. He wrote me a long essay on how he’s going to change and that he loves me and whatever else, so I took him back. Now, during the few days we were broken up I had a conversation with a good friend of mine that wasn’t exactly clean. We basically talked about “what would happen” if we ever met but we didn’t sext or take it any further than that. I came clean about it to Travis, he was upset but he said he forgave me and understood where I was coming from.

Things were good for a few weeks. He seemed like he was really trying to change. He told me he wanted to stop using social media so much and I agreed, so we both deleted our Facebook apps so we would stop mindlessly scrolling...little did I know he never stopped because Facebook is his main source for females. During this time there was a lot I was going through too. I have struggled with my emotions my entire life. I have cut myself, attempted suicide, struggled with eating disorders, and have some anger issues. Travis was not the only problem in the relationship. I had a lot of things I needed to work out within myself and I did and am still working on those things. The thing about Travis is that whenever I would get upset, he would make me feel guilty about everything I had ever done.

He would say things like “You broke up with me. Told me I needed to work on myself while telling some other dude you wanted to fuck him and here you are yelling at me!” He wasn’t completely wrong. I own up to the mistakes I made and I should never have yelled. No one should scream at anyone; it doesn’t get anyone anywhere and it just makes things worse. I gained a ton of control over my anger and my depression through all of this.

I took a look at myself and decided on the person I wanted to be. I made the choice to detach from my emotions. I made the choice to take responsibility of my reactions and decided that yelling and throwing fits wasn’t the person I wanted to be. I became, and still am, very serious about my inner work and being the best person I can be. This started with me quieting my voice and calmly talking about a problem I was having, whether it was about him, myself, or something else.

For example, I was concerned he was getting back into drugs. He was going out a lot, drinking, blowing coke...things he told me he wasn’t about anymore. I told him my concerns, I cried, and I let him know I loved him and just wanted him to be safe and okay. He yelled at me, told me my feelings were irrelevant...he reasoned that because he had just started a new job (he didn’t have one for the first three months of the relationship) he was celebrating and being with his boys or whatever. This argument ended with me sitting on his bed, my face soaked with tears, shaking because of how loud he got with me.

I stayed silent for a while after that. This was the basis of every argument we had...It would start with me just wanting to have an open conversation to him blaming everything on me and telling me I’m the problem and I have to deal with it myself. After minutes of him telling me everything that’s wrong with me I would end up yelling. He would say something about how I need to work on myself and then refer back to what happened in November. In turn I would sink into myself because I just did what I didn’t want to be doing anymore, so it made me feel like everything he said to and about me was right. I was the problem. I was the one doing all of this. I was the one starting the fights. I was the one who was unfaithful that one time in November with my friend. I was the cause of any and all stress in the relationship. It was my fault.

This is what my life has been like since around November. I was always with him and when I wasn’t, he was blowing up my phone asking me what I’m doing and where I am. If I was ever on my phone around him, he would make a comment about how I’m always on my phone or he would ask who I’m talking to...The one day he actually got mad at me because I was reconnecting with an old friend from high school (a female) who was coming to me for a friend and some spiritual advice.

Sometime in the beginning of January I asked to see a conversation he was having with a girl and he clutched his phone to his chest and yelled at me about how ‘it’s bullshit you’re accusing me of something when you did what you did!’ I had a melt down. I think the events that took place the next two days happened not only because I knew deep down he was cheating, but because of the mass amounts of stress he put me through. I cut myself, tried hanging myself, and, for the first time ever, I hit myself in the face so much I left bruises. I went crazy to say the least.

It kept getting worse in the last few weeks of our relationship. He went through a hard time for a week or two where basically everything was going wrong and he got very depressed. His depression came out as anger towards me while he stayed on his phone talking to God knows how many girls. The one night he screamed at the top of his lungs at me while I was trying to make him feel better. I had tried telling him that this is going to get better, that life likes to shit on us to push us to what we think is our breaking point but that after it gets really good, you just gotta hold on! He screamed at and mocked me. Told me that I was being patronizing because I had only started my spiritual journey in the last few months and he’s been on his for years.

That night he was talking to many girls on Facebook messenger, right in front of me, and when I asked to see the conversation he clutched his phone to his chest and yelled “Oh so you’re gonna accuse me of shit now? I wasn’t the one who was telling another girl I wanted to fuck her...etc.” That night he ended up leaving my house and “attempted suicide” by lying in front of traffic but I think he just went out and chain smoked cigs honestly. The entire time, literally, all i said was I love you, please come back, I’ll pick you up from wherever you are just please don’t hurt yourself, etc. Every time something like this happened, he would come back with this look on his face. It’s the look a dog gives you when they know they did something wrong, but they’re not really sorry about it, they just want your forgiveness and not to be punished. He would apologize and say “I don’t even know why I was freaking out, it’s not even that bad,” and then he’d ask me to smoke him up.

After this I started to realized how unhappy I really was. I was becoming more of a shell of a person than an actual person. I was drained in every aspect of the word. Because he didn’t have a job, he had no money saved up so I was paying for everything. Oh, and anytime he did pay for something, he made sure to throw it in my face later during a fight. I wasn’t able to pay my half of the rent to my mom, my car payment, groceries, nothing... I had been having medical problems for a few months now and they got worse. My face was pale, I lost weight without trying, and my energy was basically gone. Every day I was waking up asking myself “why is he still here?” I would tell myself it’s going to get better, you just need to hold on!  

The last weekend of our relationship we had a party for a coworkers birthday. That night Travis got drunk, did coke, and was being an overall ass to me and everyone around him. Whenever you are with someone, notice how they act in front of people or at parties. This is important because it shows you who they really are...anytime we went to a party he would openly and loudly say mean things about people. He said he did it because he wanted to prove that no one was really listening, but I was and he did it every time we went out somewhere. It was embarrassing to say the least.

So after an extremely long night, we finally got back to my house. We both passed out but I woke up a couple hours later with an intense urge in my stomach to look in his phone. This is when I found the first piece of evidence that he was and had always been cheating on me. It wasn’t anything too bad but he was flirting with her. I woke him up and we argued about it and basically ended with “now we’re even on what I did in November.” He said he did it because he was still upset about what I did. I was pretty upset about the whole situation. That was the start of the break up.

A couple days later that urge was back...He was asleep and his phone was literally right in front of me as if God himself put it there. I found a conversation between him and an old friend of his about possibly contracting an STD from her when he was at her house on January 19th. (I unknowingly picked him up from her house the morning after.) At this point you’d think I would be yelling, crying, and just overall freaking out, but I didn’t. I woke him up, told him to pack his shit, and slapped him across the face five times (I’ve never done that before but lemme tell you it felt fucking good).

I ended up seeing him again later that day. I drove him to court because, honestly,I was so brainwashed by this dude a part of me didn’t want this to end. I ended up having a conversation on the phone with the girl he cheated on me with. She told me she had no idea and that she was clean before they did anything so if any of us have something, it’s because he either had it prior to meeting me or picked it up from someone else while we were together. He heard the conversation I had with her and got angry at one point and threatened to kill both of us if we tried to team up or something.

I dropped him off at his house and went home. I got on the phone with this girl again and she told me they had been sexting for months. She sent me screenshots of everything. I was in complete shock. He was doing this shit on Christmas, New Years, and so many times in between, while i was physically with him the entire time. I went to his house and screamed at him and his mom. She defended him and said “well if you have something that’s your problem.” and then told me to get out. I later found out she lies for and with him. I was in complete disgust. I went home and started doing some “research” on him. This is where it gets really bad…

I found out from a couple different girls, one being his ex, that he consistently cheats, lies, and steals. I found out that he nearly killed his ex from beating her so bad. I found out that he has drugged and raped women. I found out more in two days about him than the past four months of knowing him. There were multiple girls he was sexting during our relationship, not just on Facebook, but through these sites where people literally subscribe to to meet up and fuck each other. I know his exes and other girls he has been with aren’t lying about these events because they match up almost exactly to mine without me having explained my situation. I feel so strongly that if I had stayed just another month, the physical abuse would have started.

Everything he told me was a lie. Every story he told me where he was the victim was the other way around. I need to make it perfectly clear that I am not telling my story out of anger, bitterness, or heartbreak because that is not what I feel about this situation anymore. I was sad at first, then I got angry, and now I’m finally starting to feel back to my happy, positive self aside from the fear I have for the next victim. Which is why I am making this public because no woman, no person, should ever go through what me or any female he has been in contact with has gone through.

I am so embarrassed that this happened to me. I feel so dumb for allowing someone to manipulate and control me the way he did, but he is good at it. He is good at what he does and he will never stop. A predator is “a person or group that ruthlessly exploits others,” and that is exactly what he does. I know many of you won’t believe me. Maybe you think I’m a liar and that I’m just bitter about him burning me, or maybe you yourself are already wrapped up in his scheme. But this is my truth. This is what I have been experiencing and enduring for months and I feel a responsibility to let it be known what happened.

Thank you to everyone who is still with me right now, I know how long this was to read. One of the main reasons I’m writing this is because I never want someone to go through what I went through with him and what I’m still going through because of him. Even right now, all I can think of is “why didn’t he come after me or beg for me back like the others? Why wasn’t I good enough?” I know these thoughts and feelings are not really my own. I know they are because of how manipulative, controlling, and abusive he was...but this is where I’m at right now and I wish I wasn’t. He never hit me, but I feel battered.

Please, everyone, don’t let anyone tell you you are anything but amazing. If you are with someone that your friends and family do not like, listen to them! You may not be able to see the bullshit, but they do and I promise they have your best interests at heart. I wish I would have listened to everyone around me, I wish I would have listened to myself. I saw the flags but chose to ignore them in hopes that “he really is a good guy” and “people are honest and good.” There were a few times where I was laying in bed and I’d look over at him and the words “HE IS GOING TO KILL YOU” would scroll across my mind. I didn’t know where it came from. It happened three times and I just shrugged it off, but it was true. Had I stayed with him, he would have ended up killing me like he almost did his ex.