Hello. My name’s Olivia. My boyfriend and I have been dating for a little over a year and a half now. We met in high school and after years of friendship and missed connections we finally started dating. My boyfriend, Dan, is so sweet and nice and funny and unique. He was always thinking and cared a lot about horoscopes and said when he was a kid he made up an imaginary world. I didn’t think anything of it, other than that he is quirky.
A few months into our relationship, my boyfriend (who is an avid pot smoker) ran out of weed and started smoking the K2 from the sketchy guy that lived next door to us. I wasn’t aware of this at first, but noticed it was weird that he was lying on the bed with his legs up on the wall and started crying about his grandmother, saying she was talking to him in a dream. She was alive and well at the time. Then, the next day, he said he had to talk to me. With a serious expression, he said the octopus stuffed animal I had needed to be destroyed. Later he told me that he had talked to the octopus all day and that it was possessed in a positive way by a God named Cthulu. It told him he was special and going to meet aliens and that he was a hero of a future war. Somehow, Dan felt he now had to destroy the octopus before it destroyed us. He stood in front of me as I sat on the bed crying and ran downstairs. I heard him ripping it apart. He then burned the remains outside.
I thought that the K2 had just intensified his strange beliefs, which were usually mild. But I did research and saw that schizophrenia starts in the 20’s (he’s 23) and has a way of fading in and out in levels. I told him this and he said, “Maybe I am.” But he liked his thoughts and for a while after that he was just a horoscope-obsessed, curious, weird guy. I thought it was interesting.
But for the past 4 months or longer, he’s become terrible.
He started researching aliens and at first said that there was a war going on, bigger than anyone could imagine, on April 14. I became concerned but his thoughts weren’t harming or anything. He just kept showing me videos of UFO’s and saying they were real and they were obviously not. He said that he had to start meditating in preparation for the war so he could get his powers - wings, telepathy and the ability to create weapons. He said people were going to die but we would be safe. He kept telling me about consipracy theories and religion (which he never cared about before). He would get mad if I didn’t believe it.
He meditates for hours every day. He has to smoke to meditate. He says it gives him power. He can’t wait for “space weed” from the war. He explained that I had to meditate or I’d be defenseless. I did a few times to be nice. He obsessed over the stories in the Bible and Jesus and said that Michelle Obama had people looking at his Facebook because she was using it to get hints about meditation. Barack Obama is the devil. The government cares he’s alive. There’s agents all over town. If I cry, I’m causing attention to us on purpose. Cars are following him. They know he’s part of a bigger plan. His co-workers at work are trying to murder him every day. THey don’t say this out loud, of course, but whisper it and say it with their minds.
I read that weed does NOT help at all. So I said that if the war doesn’t happen, he has to stop smoking. He confidently said he would, laughing at the idea that it wouldn’t happen. It didn’t. He refused to stop smoking, saying he would break up with me, that it was his life, that I’m bossing him around, that the 14th was a day to gain energy. THe REAL event is on the Monday after Easter. The Illuminati will unveil themselves, everyone - good and bad - will get their wings. They’ll get their powers. He’ll fly. He’ll meet aliens.
I know he’ll never stop smoking weed. I know he’ll have a reason to keep pushing back the date.
The worst part, is that he thinks I’m having an affair with the old, gross, pudgy, crack-head upstairs. He thinks I’m always UP to something. I’m flirting, I’m trying to meet someone. I want him to “go to work on time BECAUSE I’m meeting someone and want him gone.” It hurts my feelings a lot, because through everything I have been trying to support him and understand him. I know I’m not a therapist or a medication, but I was hoping I could keep us together. But it hurts when he says I’m in on the evil plot. I’m evil. I’m a temptress. I am secretly flirting with everyone. I am lying to him.
I have never lied to him for the whole year and a half we’ve been together.
It seems like soon he won’t function anymore. I don’t know how much longer I can get him to keep a job. I don’t know how to stop him from hurting me. He’ll hide from me all day under the covers, saying I’m doing something. He’ll push me forcefully off of him like I’m a disgusting or evil being. He won’t stop smoking weed. He needs it for everything. He thinks everyone cares about his existance and is watching him, waiting for him to slip up. He can’t go out with our friends or he’ll think they’re in on something or plotting to harm him. My parents think he’s bringing me down.
I love him so much. He is the kindest person I’ve ever met. I am crying just thinking about how happy we once were. Going to the zoo. Cuddling. Playing video games. Now he seems so pained. But he says it’s an insult if I say he needs help, that his thoughts are not made up, that he doesnt’ want to be like everyone else.
He doesn’t have health insurance.
We aren’t super rich.
Is there any help for him? Is there any hope for us? Can I help him?
I know a lot of you are going through tougher situations. I know he could get worse. Am I making a mistake by being with him? He is my soul mate. And he knows I am his. He says it every day. He is an amazing, create, kind person. I don’t want to give up. I don’t think I can.
But what can I do?
Thank you so much for reading.
Glad to hear it.
Passive Resistance.