Matthew told me I made him feel safe, like I was the first person who’d ever really understood him. I clung to that like air, desperate to believe in something so fragile.
But it wasn’t love. It was surveillance disguised as devotion.
One night, he offered to share his location with me. He said it was so I’d always know where he was. A gesture of transparency, of trust. Then he asked for mine in return. I gave it to him without thinking. It felt intimate, like a tether in a world that kept spinning too fast. Like safety. But it wasn’t. It was control, dressed up as care.
At first, nothing changed. He’d check in casually, ask how my day was going, tell me he liked knowing I was safe. It felt sweet—attentive, even. I mistook it for love.
But the sweetness soured quickly.
Not long after, the accusations began. He’d question where I said I was, even though he could see it on the map. “That doesn’t look like your friend’s house.” “Why’d you take a different route home?” “You said you were getting coffee, but you were there for twenty minutes.”
At first, I tried to explain. Then I started second-guessing myself. Wondering if I’d said something wrong. If I was remembering things out of order. The tension made me careful. And when I told him how it made me feel cornered, scrutinized. He looked at me like I’d just confessed to something.
"I just want you to be honest with me," he whispered, his voice low, like a secret. "That’s all I’ve ever asked for. You say I can trust you, but sometimes… it just doesn’t feel like that. And maybe that’s on me. Maybe I’m broken, I don’t know. But when you say one thing and I feel something else, it messes with my head. Do you get that?"
He looked at me like he was the one who was wounded. Like this was somehow happening to him.
"It’s not that I think you’re lying," he continued, "I just… I know what it feels like to be made a fool of. And I can’t go through that again. So if something’s going on—just tell me. Please. That’s all I’m asking. I’m not mad. I just want the truth. That’s what people who love each other do, right? They’re honest."
He paused, searching my face for something, guilt, maybe. Weakness.
"You have no idea how hard this is for me," he added, softer now. "To open up like this. To let someone in. If you leave… if this ends… I don’t know what I’ll do. But I’m trusting you not to hurt me. So just… don’t make me feel crazy. Please. Just be real with me."
So I adjusted. Made myself more neutral. After he told me my outfit was embarrassing—too tight, too revealing—I started dressing differently when I went to see him. Baggy clothes, plain colors. Nothing that could be interpreted as trying too hard. I didn’t want to draw attention from the men who were always around—older guys, drifters, ex-mechanics, whoever was lingering that day.
I stopped responding to texts from friends. I pulled back from the people who knew me best. Over time, I narrowed my world down to what he could see.
The isolation didn’t come crashing down. It slid in quietly, like fog rolling over a city before dawn. Glances that made me question myself. Questions that weren’t really questions at all, just quiet dismantlings.
“Are you really going to wear that?”
“Do you think she actually cares about you?”
“Why do you need anyone else’s approval? You have me.”
And I did. I had him everywhere, in the walls, in the air, inside my skin like a second heartbeat. I breathed him in without realizing.
Fall came. One night we went to dinner in West Hollywood. The chef was an old friend, someone I’d slept with years ago. I told Matthew. Fully and honestly. He said it didn’t matter.
The restaurant buzzed, warm, wine-soaked, laughter spilling like light. The scent of garlic and rosemary thick in the air. But Matthew was quiet, watching. Like a storm ready to break.
When I excused myself to the bathroom and came back, he was gone. Outside, pacing the sidewalk like a caged animal, skin tight with anger and hurt.
“You humiliated me,” he said, voice low and taut.
“How?”
“The way he looked at you. The way you smiled.”
I shook my head.
“Not that,” he said, eyes darkening. “You fucked the chef. I know it. When you left, I saw it. You fucked him.”
I stared. The accusation landed like a slap in an empty room.
“No. I didn’t.”
His jaw tightened, fists clenched. The line between love and possession blurred so much I barely recognized it anymore.
I was confused, frantic even, because I hadn’t fucked the chef. I was in the bathroom, eyes on my phone, trying to calm the sudden rush in my chest. I didn’t know where this was coming from? His anger, the wild accusations, the way his voice cracked like a whip.
He kept pacing, every step echoing in the night air, like he was trying to burn it all away. His jealousy, his fear, whatever was tangled deep inside him that I didn’t have the language to untangle.
“I wasn’t there,” I said, voice low, but firm. “You’re wrong.”
He stopped, stared like I was a stranger. “I saw it,” he hissed. “I’m not stupid.”
That night, the line between love and obsession twisted tighter around us. I realized then that it wasn’t about trust. It was never about trust. It was about control, possession, a cage built from paranoia and hurt that I was already trapped inside.
The sex—God, the sex—it escalated in ways I didn’t expect. It got darker, more urgent, as if every touch was a desperate plea to keep me tethered. Like the chaos inside him bled into the way his hands gripped my body, fierce and possessive, leaving marks that burned long after.
I found myself craving it, craving him like a drug I couldn’t quit. The more tangled I got in his madness, the harder it was to pull away. Our bodies collided with a ferocity that was equal parts salvation and destruction. It was raw, messy, sometimes brutal; nothing like the tenderness I thought I wanted. But it made me feel alive when everything else felt like it was falling apart.
In those moments, his volatility faded just enough for me to believe maybe, just maybe, there was something real underneath the chaos. And so I kept coming back, chasing that fleeting calm between storms, even as I knew I was sinking deeper into something I wouldn’t be able to escape.
The night air was thick and sticky, the city hum muffled beneath the distant buzz of neon signs. One night we stumbled into the alley, shadows folding around us like a secret. The brick wall pressed cold against my back, rough and unforgiving beneath my skin. His hands found my waist with urgent need, fingers digging in, pulling me closer until there was no space between us.
His breath was hot against my neck, lips trailing fire along the sensitive skin just below my ear. I tilted my head, exposing more, feeling the sharp edge of desire coil low in my belly. His mouth captured mine, fierce and claiming, teeth grazing my bottom lip before he plunged inside, tongue tangling with mine in a dance that was both hungry and desperate.
His hands roamed under my shirt, cool calloused fingers skimming over bare skin, tracing the curve of my ribs, the swell of my breasts. I pressed back into him, wanting more, needing the roughness of his touch to anchor me. His belt clinked as he fumbled with it, the snap of leather hitting the wall like a crack of thunder.
The world shrank to the fever of his body—heat and hunger and the relentless rhythm of skin on skin. I tasted him, slick and electric, as he took me with a kind of reckless urgency that made my breath catch, my thighs shake. Each thrust was a promise and a punishment, hitting deep, deliberate, until I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak—only feel.
The wall at my back was rough, cool with graffiti and city grime, but he was all fire, pressing me hard into the brick like he needed to leave a mark. My fingers clawed at his shoulders, my moan swallowed by his mouth. He bit down where my neck met my collarbone, and the jolt of it, sharp, claiming, sent me spiraling.
I came undone, dizzy and gasping, and he followed with a low, guttural groan that vibrated through both of us, collapsing into me like a confession.
When he finally pulled away, his lips brushed my jaw, whispering promises I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep. But right then, none of it mattered, just the night, the city, and the fierce, consuming ache we’d made against the cold, unforgiving wall.
After that night—the fight, the accusations—it didn’t stop. It never stopped. It became ritual. Obsessive. Predictable in the most exhausting way. Every hour, it seemed, he needed proof, photos of where I was, who I was with, what the room looked like. Location sharing wasn’t enough. He wanted faces. Angles. Evidence.
“Why didn’t you take a selfie with her?” he’d press, voice coiled with suspicion. “How do I know that’s really today?”
So I’d send the pictures. Pan around the room. Show him my coffee, the skyline, the friend across the table. I offered my life up like documentation, trying to soothe something that could not be soothed.
But it never worked. His paranoia was bottomless. Each answer only opened another door.
I started living in half-light—always aware of his eyes, even when he wasn’t there. His voice became a constant hum beneath my thoughts. A slow erosion of trust, of self. I stopped knowing what was real and what was performance.
Every message felt like a test. Every call like a countdown. One wrong tone, one too-long pause, and I could feel the air shift—fragile calm breaking apart like thin glass.
I started living half a life, always aware of his eyes, his questions, his need to own every piece of me, even the ones I didn’t know belonged to him.
One night, I’d had enough. I booked a suite at the Sunset Tower, telling myself it was for peace, a place to isolate, to disappear from the noise and the chaos of everything he’d become. The marble floors, the heavy pink velvet curtains, the faint scent of old Hollywood glamour felt like a fortress. Somewhere I could breathe without feeling watched, without his shadow creeping over me.
But he found me. Or maybe he never really let go.
The phone buzzed relentlessly with calls, texts, over two hundred messages flooding my screen in a manic tide. His voice was frantic, desperate, pleading. Every ring was a jolt, every notification a stab through the quiet I was craving.
“Why won’t you answer?”
“Please, just talk to me.”
“Where are you? Who are you with?”
“I can’t live without you.”
The mania was suffocating, a relentless storm that tore through the calm I tried to build. I silenced the phone, hid it under the pillow, but the panic bubbled in my chest. He was everywhere, a ghost I couldn’t outrun. And in that suite, with its gilded walls and empty halls, I realized isolation wasn’t safety. Not when he was still reaching, still hunting, still refusing to let go.
I stayed on the phone with him for three hours that night, the line stretched thin between us as his voice cracked with tears. He was crying—literally crying—accusing me of things I hadn’t done, twisting reality like a blade against my skin. Every word was sharp, but I didn’t fight back. I just listened.
And that’s what seemed to unravel him the most.
He wanted a reaction—needed one. Every accusation was bait, a trap disguised as pain. He was looking for the spark, the scream, the fury. Something to prove I cared enough to rage. But I gave him nothing.
Not because I didn’t care, but because I didn’t know how to anymore.
I didn’t argue. Just stayed quiet—flat, calm, chemically dulled by a Xanax and sheer exhaustion. And in that quiet, I could feel his frustration tightening, like a spring winding with no release. My silence wasn’t neutrality to him, it was betrayal.
He needed a fight. Needed resistance. That was how he measured love. And I wasn’t giving him anything.
The desperation in his voice was heavy, clinging. I reached for the Xanax on the nightstand and took another without saying a word. He kept going, unraveling out loud—accusations, questions, stories he’d rewritten in real time. I let it wash over me. Let him talk.
That night, I stopped being a participant. I was just a body on the other end of the line. A quiet place for his madness to land.
The next morning, he showed up. Walked from his dump of an apartment all the way to my hotel—like some desperate pilgrim—dressed in the outfit he knew I loved most. The one that used to make me feel something real, something electric.
But the front desk turned him away, clipped and cold. He called me, furious, his voice rough with frustration and something darker—hurt, maybe embarrassed.
I panicked. Pulled the phone from my ear and ran down to the lobby, my heart pounding like I’d just been caught in a storm. I told them to let him up. I didn’t know why. Maybe I just needed to see him, to feel that fire again, even if it was burning everything down.
He showed up like a ghost of himself, all smooth charm and carefully rehearsed calm. The familiar mask he wore after every meltdown, the “best behavior” act that always felt like walking on thin ice. We sat on the edge of the bed, tangled up in the sheets, making love like we were trying to stitch the cracks in something broken.
Later, when room service arrived, I noticed the way he watched and the way his eyes tracked the delivery guy, a hot blonde with that model-wannabe vibe, who had glanced at me lingering in my robe. For a split second, his eyes went red, a flicker of something sharp and raw.
I caught it, but said nothing. Some battles weren’t worth starting. Not yet.
I tried to break it off a few times, but every time I pulled away, I found myself slipping right back in. Like gravity, or some cruel magnetic pull I couldn’t resist. The pull of his voice on the phone, the raw intensity in his eyes when we were together—it tangled with the parts of me that were lonely and desperate to be seen.
Each time I told myself it was over, that I was done, but then he’d say something—something soft, or frantic, or raw—and I’d cave. The cycle spun faster and faster, the lines between pain and pleasure, love and control, blurring until I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began.
I was falling, deeper and deeper, even as the world around me cracked apart.
And with every return, the walls I’d tried to build crumbled a little more. The late-night texts, the frantic apologies, the promises that he’d change—it all wrapped around me like a noose disguised as a lifeline.
I told myself I was stronger this time. That I’d stay away, keep my distance, protect what little was left of myself. But then there was that hunger—his touch, his neednand suddenly the loneliness was unbearable.
I woke up one morning with amazing work news—the kind that makes your chest swell and the world feel a little less heavy. He’d already ordered coffee for us. When he handed me mine, he took the lid off and then covered it again before sliding it across the bed. “Gotta protect the magic,” he said with that crooked grin.
He said he was taking the day off so we could celebrate, but then his phone buzzed—a call from the shop. Something urgent. He had to go in, just for a bit.
Before he left, he sat at the edge of the bed and watched me drink my coffee. Really watched me. Like he was memorizing something. I didn’t think much of it at first—he was always intense. I stayed in bed, but not for long. My head started to fog, slowly at first, then all at once. Colors too sharp, sounds too loud. My skin felt wrong. The walls started breathing.
I called him, confused, my voice barely holding steady. “Something’s off,” I said. “I don’t feel right.”
He laughed. That low, casual laugh he used when he thought I was being dramatic. “Oh, yeah,” he said, like it was nothing. “I slipped some acid into your coffee. Thought it’d help us really connect today.”
I’d never taken acid before. Not once. And now I was alone in his apartment, high out of my mind on something I didn’t choose. My heart thudded in my chest. I couldn’t leave—not like this. And a part of me, the part still capable of thinking clearly, wondered if that was exactly the point.
We’d collide again—bodies desperate and raw, like two forces on a collision course neither of us could stop. The madness between us was addicting, a fire burning so bright it blinded me to everything else.
I knew it was wrong. Knew that with every stolen night, I was losing more of myself. But I didn’t care. Not yet. Because in those moments, tangled up with him, I felt alive. Even if it was just for a little while.
Days blurred into nights. I found myself chasing the moments when he was close, the way his fingers would trail over my skin like electricity, the way his voice could shift from soft whispers to harsh demands in a breath. We existed in extremes: passion and fury, tenderness and suspicion, craving and control.
There were mornings when I woke with bruises and apologies, nights when we’d burn through sheets with an intensity that left me breathless and aching in the best and worst ways. His touch was both sanctuary and trap, a complicated map I kept trying to read, hoping it would lead me somewhere better.
Slowly, the small cracks became impossible to ignore. The phone calls demanding to know where I was, the texts that arrived in the middle of the night asking for proof, the weight of his gaze that felt less like love and more like surveillance. I started shrinking into myself, retreating from friends, hiding pieces of me that he found “too loud” or “too much.”
And then one afternoon, after a fight that lasted hours, he simply stopped showing up. No calls. No messages. No excuses. The sudden coldness hit like a blow. No warnings, no fights, no slow unraveling. He broke things off, severing the thread that had been stretched too thin for too long.
I was stunned. Numb. The silence that followed was deafening—a vacuum where all that chaos had lived. I kept waiting—for calls, texts, desperate attempts to pull me back in, but they never came. The absence was worse than any fight, louder than any scream. Just empty space where he used to be.
For the first time, I was alone in the wreckage. And I didn’t know what to do with the space he left behind.
At first, the silence felt like a wound, raw and aching, the absence of his voice like a constant echo in my head. I replayed every fight, every touch, every word like a broken record, searching for the moment it all slipped away. I wanted to scream at him, beg him, make sense of the sudden void. But there was nothing. Just the heavy stillness of a world that kept spinning without him.
Days bled into nights, and I found myself haunted by the ghost of what we had. The sharp edges of passion, the toxic pull, the way I’d lost myself in his shadow. I was untethered, adrift in a city that felt too loud and too empty all at once.
But slowly, almost imperceptibly, the space around me began to widen; a hollow that felt at first like loss, but then, strangely, like relief. The nights stretched out, emptier than before, and the silence wasn’t a comfort, not yet. It was a weight pressing down, a reminder of absence so vast it swallowed the chaos whole.
In that quiet, I could almost hear the echoes of what I used to be, buried beneath the noise of his presence—the fragments of a self I had tucked away, like a secret in the dark. At first, it was just a flicker, a faint pulse beneath the surface, easy to miss or ignore. But with each passing day, it grew more insistent, like a candle struggling to burn against a draft.
I found myself reaching toward it, hesitant and trembling, as if afraid that lighting it fully might scorch me. The edges of who I was began to sharpen, contours of memory and desire creeping back into focus.
Yet, the haunting lingered—ghosts of his shadow clung to my skin, whispers of what was lost and what I couldn’t quite leave behind. The line between healing and remembering blurred, and sometimes, in the quietest moments, I wondered if reclaiming myself meant learning to live with that shadow forever.
But still, I held onto that flicker—fragile, fragile but mine—and in it, the faintest promise of a new beginning.
did you ever hear from him again? or forever ghosted?
sounds like a total narcissist, the exact patterns.
parallel lives over here.
I'm from LA so your locations hit home and your wit is just my bag.
Glad I stumbled on your posts.
I ran away from Hollywood and my Narc, landed in Mexico.
Here's the first chapter teaser.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cynishere/p/left-my-xanax-in-la-la-land?r=3vddjw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false