"The Heat: Entry One"

This a hard entry to write as it is a story that doesn't seem to find its ending.

Don't you ever wish that someone would let you go?

But they won't.

In fact, they find ways to send their dark energy to you?

Well, thats about the present tense.

Lets focus on the past that led us here.

Right now I'm going back into 2023...

A time that felt like I had met my demise.

More than a year ago, I met a man whom I fell deeply in love with at the speed of light and his feelings were reciprocrated in an even stronger sense.

His love was bold, intense and all consuming.

He made me feel like I was the only person who had ever walked the earth and there would never be another soul like mine. He would compliment every detail of my body, praise my work ethic, admire my talent and ask me to share about my past as he showed I had his full attention.

This all seems like such a dream... it absolutely was... until one day I realized it was a nightmare.

Due to how he expressed his love so intensely, I overlooked how he was using every thing I had ever said to slowly chip away at my self esteem, independence, body and overall my mental ability to make rational decisions.

An example on how he would praise me and cut me down all within a single breath:

"You're so beautiful and I hope our kids look like you... except your smile and lips."

I can remember the feeling of my heart glowing and then quickly dropping.

As he watched my reaction, I could feel his excitement rise from my confusion.

He then said "What? Don't be offended by that. You can't be perfect, you know. Don't be so vein."

I could feel him mentally getting off on my conflicting emotions.

Was he right? Was I being vein by being hurt by his under cutting comment? I didn't think I was perfect... but my smile? Maybe I'm being too sensitive?

I became very self conscience of my smile and laugh.

In my every day living and in my modeling. He took away my smile which subsquently took away my joy little by little every day.

Until I was broken.

Until I couldn't feel joy anymore.

Until I had lost who I was.

Until the darkness had absorded my light.

Until I didn't want to live anymore.

That's one of many ways in which he kept me under his thumb.

This is just a segment of the mental abuse that I quietly suffered through...

I was silent because I loved him and he loved me. If I shared these things, no one would understand and they wouldn't like him.

But that is just a very tiny glimpse of the many, many ways he broke me down.

Eventually I came to the conclusion I needed to speak to a life coach because I was desperately fighting to live but couldn't tell anyone that was close to me how I was really feeling.

Thats when I was educated on what a true narcassist is...he marked every box.

Except one.

As to my knowledge, he hadn't cheated.

I felt he was so consumed with controlling and torturing me that he wouldn't have any time.

To learn I was wrong was the nail in my coffin.

The revelation it was also a betrayal of someone whom I had held very close as a friend... destroyed me.

Coming to understand that they both played me and enjoyed every moment of watching me break into a million pieces... pulverized what was left of my aching heart.

This is one of the many books in my story and I will be breaking it down into bite sized chapters.

Why am I sharing?

To break the stigma that the victim must remain silent.

I'm not sharing for revenge or to break down the people who broke me.

I am sharing because its theraputic for my soul.

And I know that this will help a few others out in this world not feel alone in their own situations: present or past and still dealing with the long term affects of the aftermath.

What I will share is only the truths as I had lived them. I will not reveal names but I will still write my story.

If I sit in silence, swallow the pain and allow myself to pretend it didn't happen... I will have learned nothing.

And I absolutely refuse to have gone through so many chapters in the life of heart break and not learn my lessons from it.

My soul is new here.

But I'll be damned if she doesn't finally start learning her lessons.

And in doing so, hopefully she will help other new souls too.

This particular book in my story will be

called "The Heat".

It will be filled with stories about romance, toxicity, love, abuse, control, passion, sex and survival.

A relationship that nearly destroyed every fiber of my being just within nine months.

Follow the light with me as I travel through many different books of my story as it is still being continuously written:

"The Heat"

"The Artist"

"100 Shades of Black"

"Martini Lover"

"The Past That Made Me"

"Glimmers of Light"

"Lumen Travels"

And I'm sure over time, I will be adding more books filled with not only lessons but also joy, light, glimmers and true love in all its forms.

In order to become all that you are meant to be.. you must unwrite the lies, expectations, hardships and abandoment that has been scribbled in your pages.

Only then can you "become" unwritten and begin to rewrite your own story.

Following the Light,

Lumen <3

Image Set: Leo Reinfeld (unedited images)

Miami Florida, March 2024