Hey there! If this blog post is the first one you’re seeing, hold up dude! This is part 3, so you probably want to go read parts 1 and 2 before you skim this part of the story. Wouldn’t want you to get confused! Go check out parts 1 and 2 and then come back and enjoy this final installment of my first crazy neighbor series.
Erin’s command put into place a protection order. Erin was not allowed to come anywhere within a certain distance of his family or house unless accompanied by someone in his command with a rank of staff sergeant or higher. April lived with me for about a week after the police found the steroids. Her house was trashed from her husband throwing yet another tantrum and destroying everything, and she didn’t want to be alone. So she slept on my sofa for the next week or so. I did all I could to help her see this was such a good thing for her. She was finally free! We went shopping, we hung out, we had fun together. Anything to take her mind off what was going on. I encouraged her to abide by the protective order and cease all contact with Erin, but she had absolutely no self control when it came to talking to him. She confided in me that she had also cheated on her husband while he was in bootcamp with some guy from her hometown because she had a lot of people telling her a relationship with a military dude wasn’t going to work out. So she got lonely and slept with someone. This was a huge piece to the puzzle for me. No wonder she kept trying to justify this man’s horrible treatment of her, she was guilty and a hypocrite for expecting Erin to come clean about his cheating, yet she told me she had absolutely no intention of sharing her mistakes with her husband and swore to take her secret with her to the grave. Little by little she went from being so confident in herself and liberated, to falling right back for Erin’s manipulation. She had people like Erin’s parents pressuring her to stay with their son despite knowing many of the horrible things he had done. By the end of the week, she had lost all her confidence and was back to begging to work things out with her abusive husband. It was one of the saddest falls from grace I had ever seen. I went from being so proud of her and happy for her to mourning her loss of freedom and chance at a normal life for her son. She was selfishly planning on throwing her child right back into an abusive household. I should have seen this coming, I mean she did say some extremely immature things quite often. She told me once that she refuses to have children from different fathers, and that if she and Erin didn’t work out, she would still go to him purely for impregnation so she could have another child. She also shared that Erin had told her on multiple occasions that he would kill her and her lover if she ever cheated on him, and that she wholeheartedly believed he really meant that. I don’t know about you, but I would walk away from any relationship immediately if someone threatened my life.
Eventually I helped April move back into her house and helped her scrub things clean since it had been rotting in trash the whole time she was staying with me. We had things like glass to clean up because Erin’s last tantrum resulted in another tv being broken. April moving back triggered a sequel of back to back horrible decisions. The second she became lonely and started talking to Erin more, she pulled away from me again (she does this every time she comes to me upset, then runs back to her abusive husband’s arms). She started having Erin over nightly to climb in windows and be snuck into the house. This violated the protection order that was in place and concerned myself and the surrounding neighbors. Erin was an extremely dangerous individual. Not only was he mentally unstable in general, but his hormones were imbalanced due to his being deprived of steroids. So neighbors would call every time they saw him slinking around our buildings, which was an almost nightly occurance at one point. Police officers started to be able to recognize us on sight because of how often they were called to our housing area. He was never physically caught by officers for violating the protective order because he somehow always managed to sneak away.
There was one point when I met one of Erin’s co-workers by chance at a get together hosted by my friend, D. I was very curious to see what Erin was like at work as was asking him questions. April has told me a while back that she suspected Erin talked sh*t about her at work, so I asked this co-worker if he remembered anything Erin said about his wife at work. He didn’t really remember anything, so we all started talking about how prevalent abuse is in our neighborhood. D was telling us about one of her female neighbors whose husband shoved her through closet doors and pushed her down the stairs. We briefly chatted about how insane it was that women stay with men after being treated that way, and then eventually moved on to other conversation topics. Well I got a call from April days later and she said she knows I was telling people that Erin pushed her through closet doors and down stairs and that she didn’t want me to talk about her business to people at all, let alone lie about it. She said Erin was told by the coworker at work that I accused Erin of these things at the party, which most certainly did NOT happen. I wanted to slap this girl and shake her head while yelling “LOOK AT WHO YOUR SOURCE IS.” She was heavily insinuating that I was lying after I assured her repeatedly that I did not ever say anything of the sort at that party, and that someone was getting confused about who said what. To this day I wholeheartedly believe Erin purposefully lied to put a wedge between April and I. He was extremely upset when I started standing up to him and protecting April, and he said several times on several different social media platforms that April was “choosing me over him.” NO you stupid idiot, she was choosing herself over your sorry ass for once in her life, and it was beautiful!
His manipulation worked, though. I was shocked she believed her husband over me after all the lies she had caught him in over the course of the past year. Not once had I ever lied to her. Not once. Yet she believed him over me because he was on day 2 of “trying to change.” That was it for me. I had sacrificed enough for this teenager who just used me and didn’t appreciate all I had done to help her and her poor son. If she was dumb enough to run back to the man who didn’t respect her in any way, shape, or form… Well she could do it alone. I was done with holding her hand. I looked forward to the day she’d finally move out because that meant her trashy husband would have no reason to hang around the outside of my house anymore. My family’s safety was my biggest priority, and his existence was a threat to that safety. I focused on working with sharing the truth with investigators so they would have all right the information instead of whatever bullsh*t lies April would undoubtedly make up to protect Erin. I gave them proof that Erin was not only doing steroids, he was also dealing them to co-workers. Meanwhile, April was trying to turn out mutual friends against me. I now have proof of her telling people that I somehow caused her marital problems and that somehow I was the one responsible for her husband threatening divorce. She told them I costed her tens of thousands of dollars. First of all, I had absolutely nothing to do with her nasty husband cheating on her and abusing her. That is what caused their marital problems, not me. And I would like to see proof of this tens of thousands of dollars I costed her, because I can promise you my broke ass didn’t see a cent of this money I allegedly costed her. Hearing all these childishly constructed lies just confirmed that I was done with her. If she wanted so bad to stay with the mentally ill man who abused her and her child, so be it. I hope she enjoys this life of misery and suffering she chose for herself. I’ll keep my amazing husband who loves and respects me, thank you very much. My husband goes out of his way to ensure I am not being abused, to the point where he specifically requested I have not only access to his bank accounts, but that I have my own bank accounts to keep any money I make on the side from odd jobs here and there. He was very particular that I have a copy of every key that he has so we have equal access to absolutely everything. One of his cutest qualities is he is obsessed with making sure the kids and I are thoroughly fed, and even fusses at me when I forget to eat a meal during the day. It’s to the point where we’re all a little chubby because he’s so worried about our being fed enough. This is how a woman SHOULD be treated. No husband is perfect, but abuse is a deal breaker. If your man abuses you in any way, just throw the whole man away. Seriously. He’s not worth it.
The last I heard of April and Erin, they are still trying to force their gross relationship to work. She apparently thinks she’s some kind of hot sh*t for successfully sinking her claws into a gross man literally not self respecting woman would want. Despite all she has done to me with her pathological lying and her spreading rumors about me behind my back, I feel sorry for her. I really do. She’ll never know what it feels like to be in a truly loving relationship with a man who respects you. Most of all, I feel sorry for her son. He will grow up seeing his mom being mistreated and will have to fight so hard in life to not follow in his father’s footsteps. He’ll have to teach himself what a truly good relationship looks like, because god knows he won’t see any of that at home. I absolutely believe Erin will beat his son more and more as he grows older. All I can do is pray that kid survives childhood and doesn’t become yet another child failed by CPS, only to end up in news articles after being found critically wounded/murdered. People close to me have survived horrible, abusive childhoods and came out functioning adults with minimal psychological issues. So I’m really rooting for this kid to do the same.
You’ve finally reached the end! Thanks for sticking with it and making it this far! Let me know what you think of my experience. It’s insane, right?! Almost like something out of a novel or movie. But unfortunately everything I have written is 100% true and really happened. Hope you enjoyed!