I knew it was over for real this time when I found the number in his pocket.
In the laundry. After the bar. After a night out—with my own fucking father.
My gut had been screaming for months—maybe longer—but I didn’t want to hear it. I wasn’t ready to honor the truth or trust the part of me that already knew.
I even ignored the “anonymous” emails.
The ones from a woman I now know was trying to do the decent thing—warning a fellow comrade that while her back was turned, her boyfriend was busy making her look like a fool.
Krazy was loved by everyone.
He was the kind of guy who peaked so hard his senior year of college, you could hear the echo. Tips gelled straight up like Pauly D. Cargo shorts. Flip-flops year-round. A puka shell necklace he refused to retire.
He had the swagger of someone who never questioned whether he was the main character. Shotgunned beers like it was a varsity sport. There was always a story, always a crowd around him, always someone laughing at something he said—even when it wasn’t funny.
He was that guy.
The one your mom warned you about—if she wasn’t too busy flirting with him.
The guy who never read the book but still got a B+.
The guy who showed up late, hungover, sunburned, and still somehow managed to charm the professor.
Krazy wasn’t a nickname. It was a lifestyle.
We met one summer when he walked into the restaurant where I worked and applied for a job.
I’m not sure it was love—looking back, probably not—but whatever it was, it hit fast.
One beer turned into however many beside my parents’ pool that night. After that, we were inseparable.
That is, when he wasn’t cheating on me.
When fall hit, he went back to Mansfield for his senior year—three hours and a whole different life away. I stayed behind, taking classes at Penn State York. We made weekend plans like they were sacred though. Took turns visiting each other, like we were doing something noble. Like we were in it for the long haul.
But during the week? He had full reign.
Five guys. One shitty upstairs apartment. And they worshipped him.
No accountability. No surprise.
It was college. It was chaos.
It was the kind of setup that practically begged for bad decisions.
And of course, Krazy didn’t disappoint.
The worst part was how he messed with my head—how he could look me in the eyes and lie so convincingly that I’d start to doubt my own reality.
I’d ask simple questions—calmly, reasonably—and within minutes, I was the villain.
I was “too emotional.”
I was “making things up.”
I was “obsessed with the past,” “overreacting,” “crazy.”
That one always stuck—crazy.
He said it like a joke, but he meant it.
He said it with a smirk that made me feel both ridiculous and incredibly small.
And the thing is—I believed him.
For a long time, I really did.
I believed that I was the problem. That I was clingy. Irrational. Needy. Dramatic. Overly sensitive.
“Too much” for anyone to really love.
I started to question my own instincts—because every time I brought up something that didn’t sit right, it got spun around and placed back on me like a loaded gun.
He’d cock it, hand it to me, and say, “See what you did?”
He could twist things so fast it made my head spin.
I’d walk into a conversation thinking I had a right to be upset, and by the end of it, I was the one apologizing for having feelings at all.
He was calm. I was chaotic.
He was logical. I was unhinged.
At least, that’s how he framed it.
That’s how he taught me to see myself.
And I carried that.
For years.
The number in his pocket wasn’t the first red flag.
It was just the latest one I couldn’t unsee.
The one I couldn’t twist into something innocent.
I remember holding it in my hand—still damp from the wash I was doing for him, like some kind of pathetic love offering—and feeling something inside me crack.
It wasn’t just a phone number.
It was proof. A receipt.
Another moment that confirmed what my gut had been screaming for months.
And I just… broke.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
Just quietly. Finally.
Not long after, he left me and married the next girl.
And here’s the part that still makes my stomach turn:
My dad took me to the Olive Garden while Krazy packed up his shit and moved out of our house behind my back.
It was planned. Coordinated.
Like I was too fragile—or too stupid—to be trusted with the truth.
And the cherry on top?
My dad co-signed the car Krazy drove away in.
Let me say that again:
The man who was supposed to protect me—who watched me cry, who knew what this relationship had done to me—helped the guy who broke me get a fresh start.
That wasn’t just betrayal.
That was betrayal with financing and a bottomless basket of breadsticks.
And I swallowed it.
Because I hadn’t learned how to rage yet.
Because I thought silence was strength.
It wasn’t just that they lied.
It was that they didn’t even think I deserved the truth.
They planned it—together—like I was some fragile inconvenience that needed to be handled, not a person whose life was about to get ripped out from under her.
That moment didn’t just end a relationship.
It ended something deeper.
Something I didn’t have words for at the time.
It broke my sense of safety.
It taught me that love comes with conditions.
That if I wanted people to stay, I had to stay quiet.
That if I wanted to be chosen, I had to be small. Palatable. Easy to lie to.
And the worst part?
No one ever apologized. Not him. Not my dad.
They acted like it was normal.
Like I should’ve known better.
Like betrayal was just a rite of passage for girls like me.
I didn’t fully understand what had happened—not then.
Not all at once.
But something inside me shifted.
And it stayed shifted.
From that moment on, I stopped trusting my gut.
I stopped believing I had the right to ask questions, to take up space, to demand better.
Because the people closest to me had looked at my pain, weighed it against their convenience, and decided I could handle it.
Or worse—that I should.
So I did.
I handled it. I shoved it down. I told myself I was fine.
And I got really good at pretending.
I became a version of myself I thought would be easier to love—cool, low-maintenance, agreeable.
The kind of girl who didn’t ask too many questions.
The kind of woman who laughed off the red flags.
Who carried the weight of other people’s shame like it was her birthright.
I didn’t want to be crazy.
I wanted to be chosen.
But under all that pretending was rage.
A rage I didn’t know how to name, let alone express.
So it turned inward.
And it lived in my body like rot.
In the way I apologized before speaking.
In the way I flinched when someone raised their voice.
In the way I picked men who were more interested in control than connection—because control felt familiar.
Because chaos felt like home.
I didn’t get some big moment of closure.
No final apology. No reckoning.
Just silence, distance, and the long, slow unraveling of all the lies I’d swallowed as truth.
But here’s what I did get:
I got my voice back.
I got my anger back.
I stopped calling it “drama” and started calling it what it was—abuse.
And now, years later, I can look back and say this with my whole chest:
It wasn’t my fault.
I wasn’t crazy.
I wasn’t too much.
I was a teenage girl trying to survive in a world that taught her to stay small and smile through betrayal.
And now I write the stories they tried to erase.
He didn’t get to keep the last word.
I do.