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People Think I Just Moved Back. That’s Not What Happened. #PTSD #PostTraumaticStressDisorder
Content warning: kidnapping, sexual violence, drugs, cartel violence, suicidal ideation, trauma. No graphic detail.
I still have nightmares about Colombia and the Colombian cartel almost every night.
People think I just moved back, but that’s not what happened.
What happened lasted longer than people realize.
It started with about two weeks of heavy drug use by my boyfriend. That’s when I realized this wasn’t just partying — it was addiction. Then he met cartel members. Then plans started forming that I didn’t fully understand at first, but I knew were dangerous.
They figured out where we lived.
The first kidnapping didn’t just “happen.”
He was taken. He was beaten. He was sexually assaulted. He was forced to take drugs. He was robbed. He ran for his life and made it back.
We went to the police. They did nothing.
After all of that, he still refused to leave.
Two days later, I fled the country. I didn’t choose to leave — I had no choice. I fled for my life. If they had taken me, I wouldn’t have been held for ransom. I would have disappeared. That’s how they operate.
I had to leave my dog behind in Colombia, in boarding. She was still a puppy. I was gone for a month and a half before I could get her back. I need people to know this part, because it felt impossible — but I did get her out. That part still wrecks me.
One day after I left, they saw him outside our apartment. They picked him up again.
The second kidnapping.
I found out while I was on my way back to the United States.
There was a ransom. Sixteen thousand dollars. A number that doesn’t sound real until it is.
Drugs were still involved. Fear was constant. My body felt nauseatingly dizzy, dissociated, unreal — like I was watching something that couldn’t possibly be my life.
He told me he wanted to die.
I was in another country, on the phone, trying to keep him alive. The hardest part of that wasn’t exhaustion — it was the fear and the responsibility. Knowing that if I said the wrong thing, or didn’t say enough, I could lose him. I had to convince him to leave. To come back. To survive.
We stayed together for six more months after that.
People don’t understand that part. They think trauma has an ending. It didn’t. It followed us home. PTSD stacked onto BPD. Abandonment wounds blew open. My eating disorder came back as my body tried to regain control. My nervous system never stood down.
And then, after all of it, we broke up.
That part still feels like shock, betrayal, and emptiness all at once. I don’t know how you survive something that extreme together and still lose each other afterward.
I’m sharing this because I need somewhere this can exist. I need to talk about it. I need to hear how other people would feel about this. I need to know I’m not crazy for still having nightmares, for still waking up in a cold sweat, for still dreaming about the cartel every night.
This didn’t end when I left Colombia.
It didn’t end when we came back.
And it didn’t end when the relationship did.
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