The craziest year of my life started with Facebook Dating in Florida.
A few years ago, I moved to Florida for a man. Obviously all names are changed.
Before him, I was already in a toxic relationship with another guy. We had broken up after I found out he was secretly sending explicit videos of me and our sex life to other women without my permission and making money from it. When I confronted him, everything escalated. We fought constantly. One night he went through my phone, saw old conversations between me and another guy named “Marcus,” and completely lost it. He put his hands on me and ended up going to jail.
After that, I moved back to my home state for about a year. During that time, Marcus and I stayed in contact constantly. We called each other every day, texted nonstop, and honestly, he felt safe compared to what I had just escaped from.
I had to return to Florida for court involving my ex, and while I was there, I spent ten days with Marcus. We had a great time together. A month later, after a bunch of personal things happened in my life, Marcus told me I could move in with him and start over.
So I packed everything I owned into suitcases, got on a plane, and moved to Florida.
Almost immediately, things started feeling off.
I knew Marcus had a young son, but while unpacking I kept finding things that didn’t make sense for a man who supposedly hadn’t been in a relationship for three years. Little girls’ clothes. Women’s underwear. Random traces of somebody else’s life everywhere. Every time I asked about it, he had an explanation ready, and I wanted badly enough to believe him that I ignored the feeling in my gut.
I lived with him for about three weeks before things started changing.
His car broke down almost immediately after I moved there, and since I didn’t know anyone and had no transportation, my only options were walking places or applying at the same company where he worked. I eventually got hired there too.
Then one weekend he suddenly told me I had to leave because he needed to move back in with his elderly parents to “help take care of them.” I had nowhere to go. No family nearby. No backup plan.
The only person I really knew in Florida let me stay with her and her mother-in-law.
That house felt like something out of a fever dream.
It was a gated property packed with animals and people. Around a dozen undocumented workers lived there, most of whom didn’t speak English. There were cats everywhere. I mean everywhere. Chickens in the bathroom. Farm animals outside. No air conditioning. Barely any food. I slept on the floor of a room stacked almost to the ceiling with junk, with no privacy and no real place to shower.
The first night almost felt like camping. By the second day, reality hit me.
I had just gotten hired and was supposed to start work Monday, but now I was miles farther away from the job with no car. I tried riding a bike there even though I’m physically disabled, and it went horribly. I genuinely thought I was going to collapse.
I felt completely trapped.
I couldn’t ask my adoptive family for help because our relationship has never been stable. I felt embarrassed that I had moved states for a man and ended up stranded almost immediately.
That Saturday night, Marcus stopped answering my calls. His location showed him at a restaurant, then later at a lake.
I knew.
He was on a date.
And the part that hurt the most was that he had never once taken me on one.
I completely crashed out on him emotionally. The next day I begged him to let me come back to the house just long enough to shower and go to work so I could start getting paid and leave.
After days of begging, he finally let me back.
The second I walked in, I saw black dog hair all over the floor even though he didn’t own a dog. Then I found a condom wrapper under the bed.
When I confronted him, he told me I was crazy, overthinking, paranoid, and that if I kept questioning him he’d kick me out again.
At that point, I still hadn’t realized I’d missed my period.
A couple weeks later, he went through my unlocked phone while I was sleeping and found messages between me and people back home, including old photos I’d sent while we weren’t together. Suddenly he became devastated and heartbroken, even though he had literally kicked me out for another woman days earlier.
He cried for days. Told me he loved me. Said he wanted to fix things.
Around the same time, I started a new job working as a behavioral specialist at a place close enough that I could walk there every day.
Then I got sick.
One morning I realized I couldn’t remember my last period. I ordered a pregnancy test through DoorDash along with a Red Bull and took the test alone in the bathroom.
Before I could even wipe, it said positive.
I called Marcus immediately, excited and terrified all at once.
He laughed.
Not nervous laughter. Not shocked laughter. He literally laughed in my face.
The thing is, I wasn’t excited because it was his baby. I was excited because I was going to be a mom.
My best friend, my sister, and my friends were all supportive. They knew Marcus wasn’t a good person, but they knew I would love my child deeply.
That night Marcus told me not to tell anyone.
A few weeks later I found a photograph of two children who looked exactly like him. A little boy and a little girl. I placed the picture on his dresser before work.
By the time I got home, it was gone.
Eventually after another fight, he admitted they were his twins that he and the mother had placed for adoption because they “couldn’t provide for them.” He cried while telling me the story, and because both of us were adopted, I sympathized with him deeply.
I didn’t even make it to seven weeks pregnant before finding out the man I lived with had secret children he never told me about.
By ten weeks pregnant, I was walking miles to and from work every day while sick, exhausted, and constantly on my feet. Instead of supporting me, Marcus picked fights because I wasn’t cooking enough meals for him.
Then he told me he wanted me to get an abortion because he didn’t think we could provide for the baby.
Something in me completely shut off after that conversation.
Not even two days later, he lost his job for smoking at work after repeated warnings.
Suddenly I was the only one financially supporting us while pregnant and sick. I walked to work every day while he sat at home playing Roblox from morning until night.
He had opportunities to make money streaming online and refused.
Meanwhile, I was begging friends and family for help so we wouldn’t lose housing.
He complained that I wasn’t cooking enough for him while I was literally growing a child and carrying our entire household financially.
Multiple times while pregnant he fed me spoiled food with mold on it and told me we couldn’t afford anything else. Somehow he’d eat the exact same thing and never get sick.
My phone stayed shut off for months because every time I tried to pay it, he’d claim his son needed daycare money more urgently. Later I found out the child hadn’t even attended daycare in years.
Then I got COVID while pregnant.
Deep down, I think part of me already knew I wasn’t going to meet my baby.
I tried returning to work after about a week, but something felt wrong. I was cramping slightly and felt lightheaded. By Sunday I started spotting.
I begged Marcus for days to ask his mother to take me to the hospital because I hadn’t even made it to my first prenatal appointment yet. I had no insurance and had already been turned away from places because of it.
Finally, he asked his mom to drive me.
When we got there, he refused to come back into the room with me.
The doctors did an ultrasound. I never heard a heartbeat.
Then they performed an internal ultrasound and brought me back to the room alone.
Another doctor came in and quietly told me there was no cardiac activity.
They believed I was around 13 to 16 weeks.
Then they sent me home and told me it would basically be “like a bad period.”
That was the biggest lie anyone has ever told me.
I called Marcus sobbing so hard I could barely speak. He hugged me for maybe two minutes before immediately joking around to “lighten the mood.” Then we had to get back in the car and pretend to his mother that everything was fine because he didn’t want me telling her I lost the baby.
That night I laid in bed devastated while he played Roblox and talked on the phone with another woman.
The next day the cramping became unbearable. I started bleeding heavily and eventually collapsed in the bathroom after passing massive clots. I begged him not to come in while I was on the floor, but he unlocked the door with a knife anyway.
He carried me to the shower and helped me back into bed.
Then he left me there and went back to playing games.
I thought that was the miscarriage.
It wasn’t.
The following morning the pain became indescribable. Waves of pressure and cramping hit me over and over. Marcus left to “go get weed” and was gone for hours while I wandered around the house screaming in pain.
Nobody had told me I would have to deliver my baby.
Nobody warned me.
Nobody explained any of it.
Around 4 PM, I sat in the shower and pushed as hard as I could because my body felt like it was splitting apart.
My baby came out onto the shower floor.
And he looked like a baby.
Tiny arms. Tiny feet. A head. Everything.
The second the physical pain stopped, the emotional pain became something I can’t even properly describe.
I had no idea what to do.
I literally Googled what happens next because nobody had prepared me for this.
When I texted Marcus that I had delivered the baby, he asked if I was sure. I sent him a picture.
His response was: “Did you get it cleaned up?”
That sentence broke something in me permanently.
When he finally got home hours later, we smoked a blunt together in silence while he played video games and I stared at the ceiling trying to understand how my entire life had collapsed inside a bathroom shower.
The next day I walked back to work.
I walked into a classroom full of one-year-olds, and one of the teachers smiled at me and said, “How are you feeling? You’re about to be a mom.”
She didn’t know.
I broke apart internally right there.
My boss eventually sent me home for a couple weeks.
During that time Marcus acted loving again, right up until I discovered he had secretly been talking to another woman named “Kaci” the entire time.
Then his ex, the mother of the twins, contacted me and revealed he had been trying to get back with her throughout our entire relationship. She also revealed there were possibly more children he had abandoned.
A few days later another woman added me on Snapchat.
I messaged her asking if we knew each other.
She replied, “No, but I know your boyfriend.”
Turns out she had also been dating him since January.
Then she told me she was pregnant.
The date she gave me for conception was September 3rd.
The same day I delivered my baby alone in the shower.