#sunbreaksdown

i met sam on livejournal when i was 15 years old. we were both in the final fantasy VII fandom, and she wrote most of my favorite fanfictions. we had mutual friends, and one day began talking on a mutual friends' journal entry. at that point i shyly requested to friend her, and she happily accepted. shortly after that we exchanged AIM usernames and began talking via IM.

at this time, i was 15 and in high school. sam was 19 and was about to leave for china to begin teaching young chinese kids english. very early on in our interactions she moved from london to china. in china sam was completely self-sufficient and lived with roommates. she was an adult.

i didn’t think about it much then, but the age difference between us made some of our conversations incredibly inappropriate. she wrote me porn when i was 15 years old. she talked about sex with me, in explicit detail. it was not appropriate. it was not appropriate for her to ask about my fumbling, awkward first time with my ex (my first, and only) girlfriend. it was inappropriate, yet inevitable, when somehow our discussions of our own sexual experiences devolved into a discussion of our sexual interests. and let me assure you – her sexual experiences were not what mine were. sam was more experienced than me. and at age 15, i admired that. i found that attractive.

i remember during our interactions at this time i turned 16. my 16th birthday party was a sleepover with my high school friends, and that night sam was going out clubbing. she called me to tell me happy birthday, and that she bought me gifts and wanted to see me someday.

our relationship shifted. suddenly our interactions were very romantic, and shortly after that, they were very sexual. suddenly us sharing about our sexual experiences turned into a very, very sexual relationship. things became much more explicit. suddenly sam was telling me that she wanted to fuck me, that she wanted to do things to me that were inappropriate for a 16 year old girl. she wanted to tie me up, to fuck me roughly with her fingers, to go down on me while I was blindfolded and unable to see what she was doing. and honestly, as an awkward 16 year old, her advances were flattering. she was so COOL, and so experienced, and she actually liked me.

she bought me more gifts. the idea of someone who liked me buying me gifts was new to me. i was only halfway through high school – most of my friends and my crushes and ex-girlfriend did not have a job. they didn't buy me things the way that sam did. she was an adult, and she was employed, and she was able to buy me things that would win me over.

she knew i was too young for her. she used to call me "jailbait" affectionately. she used to joke that her favorite book was "lolita". she used to make pedophile jokes to and about me. it was all in good fun, of course. but it sent a very clear message -- we were both more than vaguely aware that our age difference was not entirely appropriate.

we made plans for her to come see me in february of 2008. we were so elated -- not just because we were so close, but because we could finally consummate our relationship (read: have sex) and be together in person.

at some point before she came to visit we started having phonesex. sam would call me and ask me to touch myself, and i would, and would eventually request for her to do the same. and she did. this was all very new to me -- i was inexperienced as hell and had never done anything other than very vanilla lesbian sex with my first girlfriend. not that i didn't enjoy or initiate these conversations at time -- but this was certainly not something i'd ever planned on, and i'm not quite sure the same was true for her. sam used to tell me that she wished she'd taken my virginity. that she was going to pretend i was a virgin. i wanted so badly to give myself over to her that i indulged her fantasies, i told her she could try new things on me that i'd never done before.

i had more than a few girls vying for my attention when i was in high school. sam told me once that i was a competition, and she intended to win me. i was her prize.

i didn't see how gross it all was at that time. i didn't see how unhealthy her fantasies (me being a virgin, her tying me up) were to a young girl. i didn't think about how much more mature than me she was. i didn't think about the gifts she bought me as being ways to win my affection. i didn't think about the fact that she was an adult.

sam eventually did come to visit, and we had a lot of sex. i remember that i had wanted to show her the sights, show her where i lived, show her LA and places close to my hometown. we had planned to eventually get around to that, but when she got there she made her intentions very clear -- she had come for ME. she had come to have me. she had come because she wanted to touch me, because she was in love with me, because i was hers. visiting california was nothing but an afterthought to her.

i think that was something i had never quite understood at that age.

about a week into her visit my mom found out.

she flipped her lid entirely, and filed a police report. a day later i was being interviewed by cops and locked in my house while sam was being arrested. i was dragged to a police station where they demanded to know what she did to me, how many times she had sex with me, etc.

sam went to prison for 2 months.

when she got out we continued our relationship behind my mother's back. my mom had uprooted our family and moved me away from my friends and the house i'd lived in for most of my life. she wanted me away from the world where i met sam.

i was devastated.

on top of that, sam had faced extreme violence and homophobia in prison and i found out every horrific detail. some girls beat the shit out of her in the freezer. she was called slurs very regularly. she was treated like she was subhuman. at one time, sam told me, she thought she was going to be sentenced to three to five years, and she planned to kill herself in prison if she if that's what she was forced to serve. she told me that she stabbed herself with a pair of scissors the day she made it out of prison.

she told me in explicit detail how much prison fucked her up. i was 16 and unprepared to deal with this, and have lived with the guilt of everything that happened to her for nearly 7 years. for 7 years i have dwelled on the fact that my girlfriend told me point blank she would have committed suicide because of something she insinuated was my mother's fault. something that was, at least partially, my fault.

sam and i continued our relationship for one year. having phonesex and sending her nudes (at her request) was fairly common. if sam had learned anything from prison, it wasn't apparent. she sent me lacy underwear and requested i take pictures in them on more than one occasion. sam loved me -- she sent me hoodies and a stuffed animals and books too. but her most prominent gift was a sexual one.

however, sam believed that she was absolved of any guilt because in england the legal age of consent is 16. she reminded me of this a lot. i don't know where i stand on this fact, and i am fairly sure she still believes this. i made this post regardless because i feel that, in retrospect, she was very much an adult while i was very much a teen and this relationship did not seem level. we weren't in the same place in life, and that put her in control of the relationship. it was not healthy. 

when sam and i eventually broke up it was a fucking mess, and she was horrible to me. she reminded me constantly that she went to prison. she implied, on a regular basis, that it was my fault. she let me carry that guilt.

i was no longer the bubbly, bright 16 year old who wanted to fuck her all the time. i was 17, and depressed, and no longer of value to her. i was explicitly suicidal, i was on strange medications, and i was miserable. i got into fights publicly with sam's friends because they all disliked me. i was unhappy. i was bringing her down.

when sam finally left she told me, essentially, that i was horrible and to have a nice life. i won't lie -- i was a mess during our breakup. i was possessive and demanding and passive aggressive. i did not know how to properly treat someone when they weren't obsessing over me -- our unhealthy fascination with each other was all i knew. our relationship was such a mess that i couldn't cope when she left. i was living in an abusive home as well, and she was all i'd had. and she knew that, and was okay with that, for whatever reason. she seemed to still want me badly enough that she let our relationship devolve into a codependent mess. and it was all good and well until she wanted out. but i don't know what else she expected of me other than complete devastation and horrible reactionary behavior -- our relationship was codependent, overly sexual, messy, and just generally unhealthy. i don't know what she believed would happen to the girl she'd pretty much gained complete control over and sexually abused/molested/taken advantage of when she decided to leave.

in the past 6 years since this happened sam and i have spoken maybe four times. she ignored me when my mother kicked me out. she ignored me when my father kicked me out. she ignored me forever. i was no longer of use to her and she'd washed her hands of me.

i spent a lot of time trying to win her attention, after that. i wanted her to see me. i wanted to be anything other than nonexistant to her. i believe i resorted to sad and questionable tactics. but abuse does that to you -- my disgusting dependency on her left me completely broken. sam took a LOT of my self-worth, and i believe she knew that.

the last time i ever heard from her was here on tumblr, when she ungracefully told me to fuck off and leave her alone.

it took me years to realize how awful this relationship was, and it first started dawning on me when i was 19 and looked at 16 year olds in a very different way than how sam looked at me. it took me exactly 6 years to finally begin talking honestly about it.

i have receipts, and they are here, here, and here.

to recap: sunbreaksdown/swapcats was willfully sexually involved with me while i was a minor, and after going to prison for that very reason, blamed me for it. she gaslighted me into believing that what happened to her was my fault. she left me high and dry after i was no longer happy, and no longer sexually available to her.

i loved sam. i believe sam loved me as well. but what sam did to me was inexcusable, and unforgivable.

that being said, sam has never apologized. she feigns care for minors, she pretends on her current blog to care about the welfare of young queer girls that follow her, but she does not care. in the 6 years since we stopped speaking sam has never once apologized to me. she never once made an effort to reach out to the minor whose life she ruined.

and my life has been altered. my family very nearly disowned me. i haven't seen my hometown in 6 years. i cannot hold down functional sexual relationships. i am completely emotionally devastated by what happened to me when i was 16, and her power over me stays to this day. to this day i wonder if she was right. to this day i feel guilty because she went to prison. until this day i have always protected her feelings.

and i'm done now. now i need to protect my own feelings.