What's up, you guys! Welcome back. So for today’s video, I'm gonna be talking to you guys about codependency and my experience with that. Before we get started, I just want to mention that not all unhealthy relationships are affected by drugs, but this is my experience and a really toxic relationship that I had a really hard time letting go of. So I just want to share that experience with you and just say that I have gotten permission to use his name, and also, please don’t judge. You never know what someone is going through, you never know their struggles and how hard they have tried to get out of a negative situation, so please go into this video with an open mind. So let’s get started. So I'm gonna start at the beginning. I met Randy when I was 17 years old. I went over to a friend’s house after school; we were gonna play horseshoes and have a few beers, and I walked—I’ll never forget this as long as I live—I walked out into the backyard to play horseshoes, and I saw this guy. I’d never seen him before. He was playing horseshoes, and I thought, "Oh my god, this is the sexiest man I’ve ever seen in my life." I was just like, immediately infatuated with him. He had big muscles, and he was just—he was my type, my kind of guy. And I remember standing there for like a second too long because my friend was like, "What? Come on, let’s go." I just like couldn’t move for a second, and I’d never experienced anything like that, you know? Usually if someone hits on me, I’m like, "You know, what? What?" You know, like I don’t respond to being hit on very well, but this was just—this was just my experience where I just saw him, I was like, "Oh my god, I have to talk to that person." So he stopped playing horseshoes and came up to us, started talking and everything, and um, I stayed there and hung out with him for a few hours, and I said, "Okay, man, I gotta go, I’m gonna be late, I have to leave." And he said, "Well, just wait ten more minutes." I’m like, "Wait ten more? Why, why?" And then I realized, like, "Oh, he’s trying to get the courage to kiss me." So I said just that, I’m like, "If you’re trying to get courage to kiss me, I don’t have time for that, I gotta go." And that gave him enough courage to kiss me. From that day on, we started seeing each other. At first, I was on top of the world; I thought he was such a catch. Now, there were a lot of rumors about him in my hometown. I heard really crazy rumors, I heard dangerous rumors that he was a dangerous person, everyone told me that he just got out of prison. None of that affected me in any way; I did not care what other people thought of him. A few weeks had gone by, and I realized, or someone had told me, that he was asking about me. So I’m like, "Oh, he really likes me because he’s like asking people about me." Later, I realized that he learned who I was. He knew who my family was, he knew that I was really well-connected, he knew that I was a drug dealer and he was a drug addict, so it just kind of worked out for him. A few months into our relationship, I was still on cloud nine. I thought everything was just going so well, and I believed everything he said because, until you do me wrong, you know, until I have a reason to not believe you, I trust you. That’s kind of just how I am. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. So I found out that he was cheating on me—and not just with one person, with two different women. And when I confront him about it, he tried to lie at first and then finally just came out with it and told me like that was the situation, bla bla bla, and I broke up with him. So that was our first breakup, only a few months in, and we kind of just went back and forth with chasing each other. I would leave him, and I would try to start seeing someone else, and he would get really pissed off about that, and he would chase me. And I always thought that was like a romantic thing, but it really wasn’t. So for a while, we just went back and forth with the whole "I’m gonna chase you, I’m gonna call you all the time, I’m gonna come see you, I’m gonna find out where you are." And I honestly thought all of those things were because he loved me and he just couldn’t be without me because he was in love with me. Now, we had gotten back together, and it was at the height of my heroin addiction, and the one reason why I kind of fell in love with Randy was because I could be myself with him. He knew I was a drug dealer, he knew I was a drug addict, he knew I partied, and that was just such a comforting thing. I’m trying to explain it in like, not a weird way, you know, but I thought it was amazing that I could be myself with him. To everyone else in my life, I had to hide who I was. To my ex, I had to lie about being a drug addict and a drug dealer. I was on paper; I had parents, I had friends that I had to hide who I was, and that was just exhausting. So when I finally met a guy that I could just be myself—as ugly as I was—that was great to me, it was great. So I got him addicted to heroin, and I’m not proud of that. It sucks, but he was a drug addict, he liked crack, he liked coke, he liked uppers. Um, trying to make this, trying to get through without crying. Um, so when I got him addicted to heroin, it was like a whole new beast had been unleashed for both of us. I was kind of violent and kind of crazy, and we would fight all the time—not physically, but the mental toll that took on me was a lot. Abuse isn’t always violent, you know. Verbal abuse got to me. I always felt like he would leave, constantly felt like he would leave because he had before. So I told you guys in a previous video that I owed my drug dealer a lot of money now because of Randy. This was just a situation that kept getting worse and worse. So one morning, we had fought all night, and I woke up and he was already awake, kind of watching me sleep, and I thought it was so romantic that he was watching me sleep. He told me, "Hey, why don’t you get in the shower, and I will meet you in there and we can go get breakfast." I thought it was just so sweet. Now, just part of the codependency—we did literally everything together. We showered together, we ate together, we went to families’ houses together, we went shopping together, every single thing we did was together—except for when I had to meet my dealer. He couldn’t be around me; my guy just hated him for obvious reasons. Um, so I get in the shower, and I’m like, "Oh, we’re gonna have a romantic breakfast, it’s so sweet." And I was taking my time, we took a really long shower. Just kind of want to give you guys an idea of what I went through. Um, so I got out of the shower, he didn’t come in the bathroom. And I’m like, "That’s weird, guess I’ll do my makeup." And I sat, I stayed in the bathroom forever, just doing my makeup and getting ready to go and getting dressed. I had a pretty big bathroom. And finally, I’m just like, "That’s so strange, he’s not here." Well, I guess I’ll go get high—I haven’t gotten high yet today, I don’t want to be sick. Um, which is actually good at that time that I had made it to the shower without getting high; as my addiction progressed, I couldn’t even get out of bed without getting high. Anyway, I go in our bedroom, and I go to get my little personal stash box out so that I could get high, and it’s gone. And my immediate reaction was, "He stole that from me." So I’m looking through all our stuff—thousands of dollars were gone, all his clothes were gone, and he just left a picture of him and me on the nightstand. That’s all that was left. Um, so I panicked and I freaked out and I called my best friend, and I got in the car and I drove to bus stations because I’m like, "He’s taking all this money, he’s gonna leave the state, that’s what he’s gonna do." It turns out he just went to a hotel in our town after spending all my money on, like, a watch and some [other things]. And he blew through all that money and drugs in like three or four days and put me in a very dangerous situation and put me in debt, and that’s just the kind of behavior that I learned to expect from Randy. I believe that he loved me; I loved him, but at the end of the day, we were so toxic together. At the very end of our addiction, after breaking up a million times and fighting with each other and causing drama and getting arrested and me holding him down through prison stints, at the very end, I just decided I love myself more. I need to save my own life, I need to get away from him. And it just so happened that a couple of weeks before I decided this, Randy had gotten arrested and I left the next day. But I kind of already made it, I kind of already decided, you know, that I needed to leave him, and it was because I knew I was gonna die. It was because I knew I couldn’t salvage this relationship, I couldn’t fix it; it was just broken beyond repair, and I needed to start, like, taking care of myself for a change. So I left New York in February of 2011, and I left Randy and my best friend in jail. I’m telling you guys that because it was the only way I could break free of this toxic, mentally abusive, draining relationship that was gonna cost me my life. And I say that because when things were good between Randy and I, I was so happy, I loved him so much, but when things were bad, I was so depressed, I was suicidal. I didn’t want to wake up, I didn’t want to go to bed—all I wanted to do was stay as high as I could so I didn’t feel the pain of losing him, and I thought I couldn’t live without him. And I’m very proud to say I’ve been without him for seven years, and I learned how strong I am and how powerful I am, and how I don’t need a man in my life to be successful or to be happy. Those things were very empowering to me because for so long, I was codependent on him, and he dictated how I saw the world, he dictated how my mood was for the day, or my purpose in life. He dictated whether or not I wanted to be alive—it was all on him. And when you put your happiness in someone else, your whole happiness, your whole life, you put that on someone else, they’re gonna let you down. I put unrealistic expectations on him and our relationship. So I just want to get this message out there: if you are in an abusive relationship, get out. Reach out for help, tell somebody, and get out. Even if it feels like you can’t live without that person, I promise you, you can—because if I could do it, I know you can do it. Um, and before I go, I just want to tell you guys I’m not in any way trying to bash Randy. You will hear a lot about him in my story, you might even hear from him. I want you guys to understand that he’s not a bad person; we just were two very toxic, very sick people. Our addiction made us sick, and our relationship was terrible because of it. But yeah, if you guys are struggling in an abusive relationship, please get help, please get out. You never know how strong you are until you overcome something like that, you never know how beautiful and powerful and amazing you are until you get out of those relationships. So that’s the message I want to share with you guys today, and I look forward to sharing more about my story later. Have a good day, you guys. Bye.