http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/michelle-carter-ordered-stand-trial-boyfriend-suicide-article-1.2696249

When you have a mental health issues and you have the wrong people in your life influencing your decisions, it can literally mean the difference between life and death. Conrad Roy who was 18 years old suffered from depression. He felt lost, wanted to kill himself and discussed it with his girlfriend. Instead of getting him help or urging him to seek help, she urged him to go through with it. Even when he felt doubt about doing it, when he kept putting it off and there was still time to help him, she pushed. Through texts about previous conversations on how to do it, manipulating him “I thought you wanted to do this. The time is right and you’re ready, you just need to do it!” Eventually the wall was broken, he gave in to his depression but not by himself.

He was found in his truck in a K-Mart parking lot dead from asphyxiation from the fumes coming into his truck leading from the exhaust. Even then he reached out to her, called her, told her that he was scared. “Get back in”, was the response. He became a victim of what can only be described as a true life horror story.

From 50 miles away she had enough influence, and control to manipulate Conrad, an 18 year old with depression, to give in to external influences and fight past his own feelings that something was wrong, his own instincts for survival.

We can all become vulnerable for people to take advantage of us in various ways and varying degrees. However, when you have mental health issues it can have deadly consequences, if not they are still lasting, deep, and painful. I have been a victim of something like the above, but I made it out with the help of my friends and family (Personal Support Network).

It was close, I was young, 21 years old and a sucker for the cover of the book and not too much the story that the book contains so to speak. I was a different person caught up in myself and still didn’t understand a lot about the world or life. I met a woman 11 years older than me with 2 kids. She was attractive and interested in getting to know me and I now have named her ‘Succubus”. It was during a time when I made bad decisions and idolized the wrong people. It was the beginning of a long and painful set of lessons for me that would change my life forever.

Growing up, I lived at the beach, the undertow could be treacherous but I knew the waters and never had an issue when I was swimming. I would always tell people I knew who would visit the area to go to the beach “If you don’t have much experience swimming, don’t go in over your head.” Same applied to me and dealing with this woman, I was WAY over my head! I would hit the darkest time in my life, and it would happen in the blink of an eye that I would lose control (if I ever had any to begin with while in the relationship.)

I turned away help at every opportunity, I disappeared from what little social circle I had, and started to push away from my family the deeper her influence and manipulation went. It was a poisonous relationship and had taught me valuable lessons that I would look back on later in life but at the time created incredibly large, no… gaping mental fissures that I would later have to figure out how to cross with the help of therapy, and time.

At a point in the relationship she had told my father “I’m going to give him back to you in pieces”. My father told me this and I wouldn’t, couldn’t believe it, even though I was experiencing the damage first hand. I assumed that he was making it up to gain control of me, in my mind I thought “what type of person would be so bold to say such a thing?” She shattered me like a crystal Champaign Glass. Years later, I look back on the story, I even asked my father about it again and I knew he was telling the truth.

On the night of one of the attempts to end my life, like the story of Conrad Roy only it was me in my car, in the parking lot of Riis Park one night at around 11:30pm with a razor in my hand. I reached out to her and she challenged me to do it. I called my friend Rob next, talking to me on a cellphone while he, his friend, and the succubus I was dating desperately racing to my location before I could do anything. Manipulating my friends along the ride. Somehow, I just went crazy. It had nothing to do with the months of torment and her attempts to gaslight me.

It was a lot of drama for my situation, I just couldn’t get away from her. I felt like I had no choices, I was too weak. I never smiled anymore, I didn’t have my friends around me, I was isolated and this was it. If it wasn’t for my friend Rob, things would have been very different and my story would have ended there. Like Conrad’s.

 I have lived long enough, seen enough, experienced enough to know that there are plenty of people out there who can be upfront about their malicious intentions. It’s all a part of having their own issues. I didn’t dwell on what her issues were, after multiple “attempts” to gain her attention by harming myself, and leaving a job in the building that she worked at, moving out of her apartment after only living there for 6 months yet continuing the relationship for 5 more years after that, I got away but not until damaging relationships with the closest of friends and family, almost completely disappearing to whole groups of friends and acquaintances, destroying what little self-esteem I had, and ruining a good job opportunity (I actually hated the job, but money helps you do other things like eat.)  I don’t even know exactly how it went that I got away, it felt like a “jail break from Alcatraz” it seemed impossible, it seemed like nobody ever made it out alive before, but it happened. I think she said something about being pregnant and it snapped in my head that I would never be able to get away from her, EVER! She wasn’t, it was another manipulation to keep me.

This time her lies, my Personal Support Network, and newer, healthier experiences added to my strength to stay away. Rules I started to place on myself to remind me what the succubus had done. I had no time for her anymore, I was free, like Dobby, I was a free elf.

I don’t know the rest of her story, maybe her and her demon spawn went back to hell where they belonged, or she grew up to be a better person. My hope is for the latter as I wish her no ill will. She was a part of who I am as much as my inner ear give me balance, I would eventually learn to walk on my own two feet after the vertigo ended, years later and several bad decisions later, but a better person for the experiences. I survived, stronger, happier, and able to make my own decisions to move forward in my life, without hate, and more control. Until the next crazy ride, another lost soul, this time a leech made their way into my life years later when my guard was down. However, that is a story for another time. This story at its end. A better outcome than poor Conrad Roy, but nonetheless a ruthless tale of woe.