Hoo boy. Yesterday is a lot to unpack.
Night before last, I had the same problem I always have – fall asleep, and wake up a few minutes later, fully “activated” (thanks, Erica, I’ll never get THAT fucking word out of my head) and re-living the worst moments of the last month. Over and over.
Fight for an hour to fall asleep. Doze off. Wake up sweating and panicked and in tears.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Finally fell asleep around three, woke up at 7 am. Again, in a panic, from a dream where I was a little kid, maybe around 3 or 4 years old. I’d been fighting with Erica, but she was also around 3 or 4 years old. She was wearing the same pink dress that she was wearing in several of the photos I’ve seen of her at that age. Same mop of strawberry blonde hair, pink dress, and rosacea covered cheeks. But her face wasn’t adorable and cherub-like. It was angry. Furrowed brows and rage. The same face she made at me a lot as an adult.
We were both yelling at each other, but we were both totally unintelligible, just angry, and babbling away at each other, neither of us being understood, getting angrier and angrier. Tears, runny noses, wiping snot off our faces with the backs of our hands. No one around to calm or soothe us. She morphed into an adult version. I did not.
Angry and fully out of sorts, I kicked the blankets off and get out of bed, pacing and not exactly plugged into reality just yet. I go downstairs, let Koa outside and then make myself a coffee. By this time, my brain is really working overtime, and I decided that I am SO DONE with this bullshit. I’m exhausted. I’m done with not being able to sleep, and being so tentative about taking my life back. It’s time to get REALLY proactive. So, I make a plan. I make a couple phone calls. I start to gather a bag of stuff, do a quick check of my bike, top the air in my tires, throw a few tools in the bag, grab some headphones, and jump on my bike and head down to the ferry. Grab a walk-on ticket and head over to Horseshoe Bay, coffee and bagel in hand.
…………….
I have never been to Vancouver by myself. I’m not really familiar with how to get around, but I figure it out, and head towards Stanley Park. Crossed the Lions Gate bridge, then the Burrard Street Bridge, and down past Kitsilano beach. Followed along the shoreline past Point Grey and followed a route pretty similar to the route Erica took me on last September.
There were ghosts of her. Everywhere. The dog run that paralleled the dog run where a little white dog barked and chased us along the bike path. It was 6 months ago, but the memory is so clear and so tangible that it could have been 6 minutes ago.

Interestingly, we weren’t speaking by that point of the ride, because we were fighting. As usual.
The spot where we stopped to have a snack, the spot where we took photos on the beach, the spot where she wiped out on the curb, the pub that she said she frequented as a student, the Ivy covered building at UBC, the big round water fountain.
All day, I was haunted by the ghosts of this woman. Everywhere, I see specters of her superimposed on the scenery in front of me as I ride, like old images burned into a CRT television that was left on too long. Ghost images of a happier time overlaying the present. And it breaks my heart. I felt sorrow, shame and guilt. For failing to care for her, to keep my promises to protect her. In that moment of nostalgia and familiar feeling, I felt shame for not adhering to the promise I made to her mother to protect Erica. I feel tears well up (again) when I think back to the moment when her mom touched my arm on a bike ride and told me how happy she was that her daughter had me in her life, a good friend to take care of her little girl. I was overcome with emotions and had to pull over to dry my eyes.
But then, something interesting thing happened on my way home.
At the end of my day, as I rode into Horseshoe bay, I realized I was pretty hungry, so I grabbed a sub at Subway. Looking for a place to eat, I rode down to a spot at the waterfront, and as I propped my bike up against a totem pole that now doubles as a bench to eat in the shade of a big old Maple tree, I realized that I was looking at the spot where Erica and I first met, and sat with our Starbucks coffees and the spot where I took the smiling photo of her that appears in an earlier post.
I was suddenly overcome with emotions, and the tears came. I missed her. I was heartbroken that things have changed so much, that this is the place we are now. This blog is what we have become. What “we” have been reduced to.
The tears came in waves, and I couldn’t stop them I didn’t want them. I fought against them.
I looked down the breakwater to see a couple on a date, talking, laughing, awkwardly making physical contact with each other, hands briefly touching each other, awkwardly trying not to linger too long. I remember – vividly – how it felt for me that day. How badly I wanted to go back to that day and start over. To have a second chance to keep my promises to take care of her, protect her and always be a safe space for her. To be her vault and her protector.
How did we get here? We were supposed to be friends. We were supposed to have each other in our lives for the rest of our lives. We were supposed to be friends! WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE FRIENDS!
As I stood there, tears streaming down my face, feeling the sadness and anger boil over, I had a moment of clarity, and I heard an entirely new voice in my head telling me, with an unwavering voice: “It was all an illusion. You aren’t mourning the loss of Erica. You’re mourning the loss of the version of Erica that she fooled you into thinking was real“.
I wasn’t missing Erica, I was missing the future with her that I’d been tricked into thinking was possible. I was mourning the loss of potential. Because she was never my friend. I was never going to be her friend. She never had ANY plans to be my friend. I didn’t exist in her social media posts, in her photos, in her life, and I was kept entirely separate from her “real” life.
I. Was. Not. Her. Friend. Her counselling friends were her friends. Her classmates were her friends. Her friends were her friends. M, J, KL, K, J&S, S – THOSE were her friends. I was just… Robb. Her side guy until her better guy came along. Something to do (literally AND figuratively) in between her friends when she had nothing (and no one) better to do. She’ll tell you that that was MY doing, but the evidence is pretty fucking clear around what she thought of me. Here I was, feeling like an asshole for not keeping my promise to her, yet she’s never spared a single second to feel anything for me and the hurt she caused by breaking her promise to me. None of them have. The only thing Erica feels, she feels for HER. No one else.
You cannot be friends with someone you can’t trust. You cannot be friends with someone that abuses the little trust you DO have. You can’t be friends with someone who compartmentalizes you and sequesters you from everyone else in their lives, and hides you. You can’t be friends with someone who can’t stop lying to you all the time. You can’t be friends with someone who gaslights you, manipulates you and convinces you that sweet, reassuring words and love-bombing is love. A friendship with someone that disrespects and abuses your boundaries is impossible. Someone who tells you out one side of their mouth that they care about you and that you’re important to them while planning dates with your replacement and hiding it from you out of the other side is not a friend. If someone puts time, energy and effort into convincing not only themselves but you as well that you’re a violent and dangerous person that they need to be afraid of, then that is the furthest thing from someone you can call a friend.
But, a friend is was what I thought she was. Because that’s who she pretended to be, while it was advantageous to her to do so. Now, she has a new supply to prop her up, support her, listen to her stories, cuddle her at night when she’s had a rough day and needs someone to help her regulate, and now it’s his turn to buy into the illusion and the promises, her stories of being afraid, and to protect her from me and be her safe space – until she does the same thing to him, too.
Standing there, under that Maple tree at Horseshoe Bay, in that moment of clarity – the tears stopped. My body calmed. I realized that my shame, guilt and sadness wasn’t deserved. I didn’t deserve my shame, and she definitely wasn’t worthy of all that shame, guilt and regret. In that moment, I had a very, very clear thought that changed everything.
The day I met Erica, I was at peace with my life. I had a lot of trauma, both physical and emotional. I had survived a physically and emotionally abusive father. I had survived my time on the streets, the deaths of some friends, the murder of others. I had survived the repeated losses of caregivers and role models that I bonded with who then left my life, often abruptly. I had endured, and I had survived. I had collected many things that caused pain, heartache, loss, loneliness, sorrow, despair, and deep, emotional traumas that were like giant, angry, buzzing wasps. But here I was, looking for connection and meaning, with a LOT of love and care to give. No addictions, no vices, no drugs, alcohol or cigarettes. I was a bright, creative, happy, gregarious, silly, happy-go-lucky guy with a lot of puns and jokes and a whole lot to give and to share. And Erica made me feel like she wanted it all.
Without question, I was afflicted with these giant, angry buzzing wasps – hundreds of them. I held them in my hands, and in my heart. They were a part of me, each with a stinger and a lot of venom. Once in awhile, either back then or since they found me, they have stung me, and I have hurt. And they will again, no doubt. They are always there, immortal and tireless, always.
I had gotten to a point where yes, these wasps were there, but I had found a way to calm them, and to co exist with them. They were dormant, calm and causing me no harm. I had lived with them for years, and in some cases – decades. They no longer harmed me, and we co existed in relative harmony.
Along comes Erica. She’s a therapist, and counsellor, a professional wasp-whisperer, if you will. During the first couple of months, while I was super vulnerable and dealing with some incredibly difficult events, I learned to trust her. I trauma bonded with her, and she knew it. She told me I can open up to her, be vulnerable, and it’s safe to show her my wasps, and she’ll help me get rid of them. So, I open up to her. I show her my wasps. I explain where each one came from, and how I learned to calm them. I explain the damage they’ve done, but how I’ve managed the pain and worked through it. How I learned to accept them as part of who I am, and to co exist with them. In some of the most vulnerable exchanges I have ever had with another human being, I let her see my wasps. I trusted her with them.
“You don’t have to live with these wasps, Robb. You can kill them and bury them for good, you know” she says gently and with care. And slowly, imperceptibly, she convinces me to wake up my wasps, wrestle with them, and kill them. She promises it’s safe to do this work, to exterminate them and live a better life, without the wasps. Without the traumas. She’ll be there, no matter what. In one way or another, she will be there.
And so, I believe her. She is, after all, a “teardrop specialist” (A term she stole from me and my IG bio) and an expert at helping people deal with their wasps. Right?
Wrong. So. Fucking. Wrong.
She gained my trust, she convinced me it was safe to open my hands, and confront the wasps. She woke them up and worked them into a frenzy so she could play therapist. So she could feel validated as a therapist, and as a counselor. She created chaos so that she could calm it, like the firefighter who becomes an arsonist and sets things on fire so that they can rush in, douse the flames and be seen as the hero, the one you can count on, the one who will be there for you when you need her. That’s how she convinces you that you are loved, cared for, important, and safe. Only, I wasn’t any of those things, because she was actually adding wasps. Bigger, angrier, vindictive wasps with far more venom and far more painful stingers.
And the worst part is, she fucking knew better. She knew what she was doing, she knew what the impact of cheating, lying, gaslighting and manipulating would do. She knew EXACTLY what the impact of April 13th would have.
She did it all on purpose. And that makes her the worst of all them.
…………………..
That’s the takeaway, the TL;DR. That’s the realization I had as I pedaled home from the ferry late last night: Erica doesn’t deserve my promises, my care or my protection. She felt zero obligation to keep her promises to me or my family, or to show me the care she told me I was deserving of, so I’m absolutely not going to feel bad about offering her the same level of care and consideration. I’m going to go to the Poly group discussion meetups and speak my truth to my community. I’m going to tell them about her breaching client confidentiality. I’m going to talk about what happened. I’ve had conversations with the VIHA Privacy office to make them aware of the situation, and by Monday, the BCACC will have a completed complaint package in their mailbox. I’m going to speak the truth, even if my voice shakes. I will no longer feel guilty, shame, or allow myself to hear her voice telling me I’m a bad person for not sacrificing my own peace in order to protect hers.
I will remind myself every single day, that Erica did what she did on purpose, that she is a perfidious person, and she is NOT a safe space. I will no longer allow sympathy, remorse, regret or nostalgie to cloud the facts. I will not allow feelings of loss for a false promise to cloud painful reality. My experiences with her as both counselor and a relationship have made things absolutely clear; She is not a safe person, a trustworthy person or an honest person. And I will stand on a mountaintop with a bullhorn, telling my story, to my community and to the world.
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