S20 E3: Don't Wake the Bear
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Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and may be distressing for some listeners. For a full trigger warning for each episode and for a list of resources for survivors and their loved ones, please see the episode notes. Pseudonyms are given to all minors and some survivors in these stories for their privacy and protection. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own.

and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, or Wondery. This podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. In response to the allegations against Jessica Pauly, she responded with no comment. Thank you so much for listening. Think you know me, you don't.

You think you know me, you don't know me. Oh, until you talk to someone.

Here's Brie's mom. When I would be with Brie, like at Christmas time or when she would come home for the state fair or I was out there when they moved, I would watch Brie on her phone and I could, I would watch Brie and I could physically see her whole body structure changing.

She would slump and her shoulders would come forward. I could almost like watch the blood drain out of her face. Just watch her physically change.

I knew that Brody was a thing. A lot of times I thought that they weren't talking anymore. And I know there were times that she had blocked him and they weren't, but then eventually she would start talking to him again. So I knew that this is who she was talking to because I knew it wasn't a great situation yet. I didn't know to what level I put Brody off limits in conversation. I would not talk to her about him anymore.

there's a time that he was in Dallas for an interview and he missed the interview because he slept. And I'm like, no, I'm at the point now where I'm like, this is not what this is. I mean, I know what it is and trying to have that conversation with her as gently as I can. And then there

There was the car accidents, all of the unaliving situations. It's like, I have no more room for this. And I talked to her about it. I said, this is domestic violence. I said, this is an abusive relationship. Just like domestic violence. The difference is, is that we cannot see the bruises on your face because the bruises are in your head. That's what this is.

I said, until you are ready to do something about it and really do something about it, I'm done. I can't. I can't. I'm not going to listen to the stories because I know they're not real. I know this by now. This is not a thing. Yet I have this in the back of my head. She said she met him. I'm like, it just cannot be. It cannot be a true thing.

I think when you're in that situation, when you are the partner involved in it, you're not thinking that way. Your reality, again, is so different. And you're believing what that person is telling you to believe. You're not able to look at it from a different perspective, from an outsider looking in. Yet, if I would say to Bree, what if this were your friend, blah, in this situation?

And she 100% would be like, I would be blah, blah, blah. Why aren't you doing that for yourself? That was always my question. How can a person feel so alone that this kind of a relationship is better than nothing? Blows me away. Blows me away.

with COVID in 2020. When you talk about isolation, you go to work, you put on a hazmat suit, you're dealing with people that are dying. It's not like we were isolated at home with our families, washing our cans from the grocery store and all of that. She was at a completely different level in a hazmat suit in a war zone. You're in the moment and you're doing what has to be done because that's what you have to do. It's kind of like when somebody you love dies, you have

You have to go through the motions. You have to do it. You don't have a choice. You go through them. You don't know how you get through it, but you do. And I kind of feel like that maybe was how COVID was for her. And then to not have somebody to come home and talk to about it, she maybe felt way more isolated because of what she had to do.

Lauren and Bree and Monica all have that compassion, kind soul, warm, friendly. Who the fuck does that to people like this? How does she, Jess, who the fuck does she think she is? Here's Bree's friend, Emily.

We'd honestly stayed long distance best friends the entire time, keeping up with each other's lives. But slowly throughout the years, as we would meet up for like birthdays or little vacations or any time that we could find to get together, because, you know, slowly she started to go to like North Carolina and different places like that. It honestly just became a

a duller human being, in my opinion. I would tell her every time I saw her, she would be glued to her phone, constantly not in the moment anymore. And it didn't seem like she had the energy to be the bubbly, sparkly person that I had known her to be for years. And it was really hard to watch. Towards the end there, before we found out that it was Jess, it was harder and harder to see her.

We had one last vacation where we had gone to Turks and Caicos, obviously one of the most beautiful places on the face of planet Earth. And it felt like the entire time it was being taken away from her through a phone. And it was so discouraging to watch. And I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that she just couldn't block this person from basically controlling her life from a phone.

Here's Bree. I went to Turks and Caicos with a group of close friends. I remember Brody saying something along the lines of, who goes on a honeymoon with their friends? She was upset because I told her I'm not going to go on a couple thousand dollar vacation with a child. And I'm like, that's not against you. That's not against him. I want to do adult things. And she didn't like that.

She never liked my other friends. There was maybe two that she liked, but she was very critical of any decision, life choice they made. And it was never right.

And it was honestly one of the best weekends ever. But because Jess wasn't there and felt left out, Brody had to ruin it for me. And that was any trip, whether I was with my mom, whether I went home to Minnesota, there would always be a problem or Brody would bring up my exes there. And naturally, I was going to see them if I was going home for like Christmas.

I got into therapy, I want to say it was the summer of 2021. I had broken things off with him like officially. It was for like a month. I'd went home. I had hung out with friends. And then naturally, guess who pops into my messages when I'm home, has my location and finds out who I'm with, got extremely upset.

Through a fit, said all the awful things that you can imagine about me being a slut and doing whatever I wanted. Meanwhile, we hadn't spoken in a month. This was another suicide attempt. On the 4th of July, he had overdosed.

Matt was still alive at this point. Matt found him, did CPR on him, the works, the usual. Unfortunately, I can say that, but it was because of me being the awful cheating person that I was, even though I'd broken things off. After that, it was really bad. Naturally, he didn't, quote, die. But when he reached back out to me, it was very hostile. Brody was being very threatening. He

continuing saying I was such a slut and how could I do this? How could I ruin someone like this? And then threatening like, I'm going to come find you. I'm going to come find this guy. I'm going to do this, this and this. Being literally crazy, typing in all caps, 10, 20 messages in a row. I was driving home to my mom's and I was on the phone with Jess and I was like, I

Like, I'm actually like scared of him right now. I don't want anything to do with this anymore. I thought we could have like a few good words and then it exploded. That's when my good friend Emily saw how bad it really was because I couldn't get a grip. I was having an anxiety attack. I was crying my eyes out. I did not know what to do. And I remember just saying, why? Why are you scared of him? Like, you're just texting, making me feel silly for saying that.

In the messages she would show me between her and Brody, she'd be like, she's a really nice girl with a good heart. I don't want you to hurt her. But nothing that she says is true. But she would do really nice things for me. For my birthday during COVID, she brought me like a COVID care package, flowers, super sweet things. If I needed her to grab something at the store when we were roommates, that was not a big deal.

seemingly healthy, but then after we moved out and then got a little bit more distant after she moved to North Carolina and had less control of me and less insight on my life, I feel like we weren't as close. The emotional damage it did to me, I have to just keep reiterating, it feels so weird for me to be so calm talking about this now in hindsight, because in therapy, I cried to my therapist, I cried to my mom, cried to my friends, I...

was heartbroken because every time it was because of something I did, he was mad at me. I did something that upset him. I wasn't doing exactly right by him. And then his brother or cousin would come in and say, you never really cared that much anyways. We got it. Don't worry about it. And keep gaslighting

laid in bed crying for days and days. There was so many times looking back that I just couldn't get a grip because I'm like, why is this person doing this to me? They're clearly not happy with me. I'm not happy. I'm begging to leave and they won't let me go. I just wanted to leave peacefully. And many times I cried to Jess about it. I don't know if it was entertainment. It just never stopped.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like...

I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Hi, I'm Lauren's mom. Lauren, she's so great. I hope I don't get emotional during this, but I know I will. She's such a compassionate person and caring person about people, about animals, about everything. And she's very strong-willed and positive. She's very resilient. She had a very difficult time with Jess, but boy, she really bounced back after she found out the truth, that's for sure.

She's very intelligent and creative. She's a very considerate and sincere person. If she thinks that you've had a rough time in your life, she is the first one that would stand up and be there for you and help you through it. I think that's one of the things with Jess is because Jess had told her all these things, which I don't know if they were true, about her growing up and how she was treated and why she is the way she is. That tugged at Lauren's heartstrings, and Lauren wanted to be there for her and be a friend for her because she felt like she needed that.

I think Jess obviously took advantage of that. That was what was so hard when she was going through all this. I saw a difference, Lauren. And it was sad because you could tell she didn't have that sparkle in her eye anymore. She didn't have that joy and happiness. It got worse and worse and worse continuously through all of this.

When she was about nine years old, I think it was Hurricane Katrina down in New Orleans. It just devastated them. And she saw all that on the news. And she asked me, could she go around to the neighborhood and collect money to send to them? And she did. She went around. I went with her and she collected money and we took it to Red Cross to donate for them. And I thought that was the sweetest, most thoughtful thing. She's just a very caring person.

If you ever saw a bug or anything, you know, don't kill it, don't kill it. And she would get it and put it outside.

Hi, I'm Lauren's cousin. And if I could describe Lauren, she's smart. She's very motivated. She's a really good person. She's very caring. I consider her the person that everyone wants to be friends with. She's very outgoing and bubbly and fun and funny. She's the type of person that anyone would want to be friends with. We were always together growing up.

She was always so goofy. We were always making like home videos being really, really strange. I don't know what it was about growing up when we did, but we would take these weird videos and try to be like Amanda from the Amanda show. And we were just she was very weird growing up. I graduated a year ahead of her.

We kind of went through like the party stage together and then I got married. She moved in with Jess, which is basically having a boyfriend because she told her everything she could and couldn't do. She's lucky that nobody killed herself or did something serious to themselves over this. How many other people were there that we don't even know about?

Hey, my name's Lauren. I came on here because I wanted to get the chance to empower myself and take back the power that she took from us. I also wanted to spread awareness and make sure she's held accountable. I know that she has a funny way of twisting her story and all the other people around her hear a different version of it and I want to be clear on what happened.

I was living in Nashville at the time. I was in my 20s, so I was having the time of my life. I was dating around but really enjoying being single. I worked as a server pretty much full time. I was partying a lot and I was happy and that was about to end.

I matched with Brody on Hinge. We had pretty normal conversations in the beginning. He didn't stand out to me very much. I wasn't being very responsive. I knew that he was only visiting and he was kind of only looking for one thing. And I told him that's not really what I wanted. After we had that conversation, things took a turn and he really wanted to start pursuing things with me. He was very persistent. I grew to be comfortable with that and in

enjoy that. He is a good looking guy. It's weird saying that because the real Brody will be on. But yeah, he's a good looking guy. And he had tattoos.

He also lived in Colorado or was from Colorado. And I always had this gravitational pull towards Colorado. So I thought this might actually be something eventually down the line. Obviously, I didn't think that in the beginning. He was very family oriented. He just seemed very personable in conversations. And sometimes it can take a little bit to get to that point, especially on dating apps. Using my name a lot...

It was very personable and it made me feel like I stood out to him. We just had a lot of the same values. He worked at the hospital and he was studying to be a pediatric surgeon. Things changed with his career several times.

He had goals. He was in school for nursing. And at the time he was doing his residency. He was a little older than me, I believe by two years, three years. I think he was 27 and I was 24. I mentioned that he was very out for one thing. I think he sent me something along the lines of like, I want to make your legs shake, something like that. It was very poetic. Sorry, mom.

He said that and I told him, it seems like we're looking for different things. He said, I'm here for a bachelor party. Obviously, I didn't expect anything to be serious right now. But if that is something you're looking for...

I'm looking for something serious too. I want a relationship. I'm very much a relationship kind of guy. So we went into it with that mindset. And he started using pet names pretty quickly. And the love bombing thing, once again, here comes the skill, like it started out very slowly and the pet names and then being flirty and casual flirting conversations. And then it started getting more sexual and he would always make sexual comments.

I would say that the sexual element was the whole conversation and the whole relationship, quote unquote, was very sexually motivated. And that's what I get frustrated by is when Jess says that it wasn't sexually motivated. There's hundreds of texts from Brody. It was sexually every single night there was a conversation like that.

And it became something where I felt uncomfortable. And I felt like I was almost being coerced into these conversations, into sexting, into talking dirty. I wasn't comfortable with it because of past things that have happened to me. I opened up to him about that.

He would say, I think I'm too much for you in a sexual aspect. Like I'm too much for you sexually. I don't know if we can get there. Maybe it's best we don't do this. And it would push me and manipulate me to want to give more because I didn't feel like what I was giving was enough.

She created a brother, a sister, a cousin, a whole group of family members that were texting me. So we had Brad, we had Brooke, we had Will, the cousin, we had Matt, the cousin, and they all would text me at different points in our relationship.

They all had different personalities, different typing styles. The main thing is just different personalities because certain things that the sister would say didn't agree with the things that the brother would say. And it just seemed so real. It seems so silly looking back on it that I believed it, but that just shows how good at it she was.

I had complained saying that I needed stronger friendships in Nashville. They were all very surface level going out types of friends. And I wanted to steer away from that and have genuine friendships. I was telling Brody about that. I opened up to him about it and he said, you should talk to my cousin's on and off again girlfriend.

He sends me her Snapchat and he's like, yeah, you should just talk to her. She's really cool. They love to go on trips. We would all be down to hang out together. So I added her on Snapchat and we started talking and became friends. She was dating a guy that was cousins with Brody. She said that she met Brody, that she spent summers with him on the boat. Even her son knows Brody and would claim to know.

She said that he fixed her tire one time when she was pulled over and didn't have anyone to come help her. And he came to help her. He very well could have been thinking of someone else and just went along with that being Brody, or it could be someone else named Brody. But there were multiple times, even one time he came up to me and told me that he had a dream about Brody.

She would tell me something and I would ask her to explain it and she'd be like, I'll just FaceTime you. So she would end up calling me and we would talk for long periods of time and she would always tell me about like her family and her friends. She always had drama in her life and she was always telling me about that.

She was very sweet. She was very outgoing. I felt like I was friends with her already, which in hindsight, I basically was. She was always willing to fly to Nashville or do any type of trip, no matter what. She was always down to make plans, book a trip to come visit, whatever it was. She would always just pick up her son and driving like seven to eight hours.

She seemed very harmless in the beginning. She'd tell me about her boy problems and family. She said that her son's father was not in his life. He had cheated on her. And she found out the night that her son was born. And she changed her son's name last minute and wanted nothing to do with him. I later found out that that was a huge lie and that he was a one-night stand.

We matched in June. We made plans for sure in October for Halloween. I found out he got COVID probably 20 minutes before I was supposed to leave for the airport. I was supposed to fly and have him pick me up. And she ended up saying that she could pick me up and we could go get Mexican food and go get drinks or whatever it was.

I was not planning on obviously going just to see Jess with Brody being in the hospital. I didn't have time to really sit and think, okay, do I want to stay? Do I want to go? I just ended up going anyways in hopes that I would still see him. Because at this point, it was four months that we've been talking and we've been talking pretty seriously. So I was hoping to still see him regardless.

So she picked me up from the airport. We were in Des Moines and we went and got drinks downtown. But we really honestly hit it off from the start.

The majority of our conversations were surrounded by Brody, especially in the beginning, it being like a Halloween thing. Shortly after we started hanging out with Bree, mind you, Bree is also talking to Brody at the time. I have no idea. This is the first time I met Bree and we all went out on Halloween together and neither of us discovered that we were talking to the same guy. Jess said that Bree does not like Matt and

And so we need to not talk about Brody. So that's how we never talked about Brody. It never came up.

We were telling everybody that night that we met at college. I was just bullshitting my way through it. I'm not sure what it was from Bree's perspective, but from my perspective, she told me we had to construct this lie about where we met. I knew that Bree was working at the same hospital as Jess was, and that's how they met in Des Moines, in Iowa. Here's Bree.

Just was like, hey, my old friend from college and I reconnected. She's going to come and stay with us Halloween weekend. And I was like, OK, that's fine. Cool. The more the merrier. She didn't tell me much about Lauren. I knew they'd probably be doing their own thing. I'd be working. I didn't think too much about it.

So Lauren came and little did I know for Lauren, this was her first time flying to meet Brody. But I'm thinking she's having an old friend come visit and Lauren's thinking she's flying to meet Brody.

So Lauren gets to the house. They had like painted some pumpkins, normal girl things. And then we had all talked about going out to a brewery for Halloween day and then maybe going out that night with some of our other friends from work, which seemed pretty on par for us having this friend from out of town join us. We went to a place we used to like go watch football games, very normal bar. We had all dressed as the Purge and met some other friends from work and

I drank a lot to be expected. I talked to Lauren a little bit. We talked about Nashville and her friends back home, her job, but not really anything boy related.

I think Brody was still so new for her. And to her, she had just been stood up. And he's like, you can hang out with my friend, Jess. You guys will get along. He had told her he had COVID and that's why he couldn't see her. So he's like, you can stay with Jess. It'll be fine. And for me, I had been with him long enough at this point. I was embarrassed and I didn't want to tell her, hey, I've been talking to this guy online. He treats me like crap. We've never met. And anytime I try and break up with him...

and move on with my life, he threatens suicide or something catastrophic happens. So we had no reason to bring that up to each other. We didn't know each other that well. There was no reason. Here's Lauren again.

We just ended up having a good time. I ended up meeting a lot of Jess's friends. We would go get drinks, get food. We did all the things. Brody was still in the hospital. He apparently had really bad asthma. He had COVID, so he was hospitalized and couldn't get out. And I think he ended up staying there for two weeks. So I ended up staying in Des Moines, waiting on him to feel better. Here's Bri again.

So what made the Halloween thing stand out is that it went a lot longer than just the weekend. I was really confused.

I had work. It was back to normal life after that weekend. And Lauren was staying there. And I asked Jess, I said, is she flying home? I was like, what's going on there? Meanwhile, Lauren is talking to Brody and he's like, I just need to quarantine a little longer. I talked to Jess. You can stay with her a couple more days. It's totally fine. So I'm like, what's going on here? She wasn't doing anything to me.

I had no issue with Lauren. I was so confused why this girl I'm just meeting, which whatever, and Jess had just reconnected with is still at our house like 10 days later. She didn't bother me. She wasn't in the living room. She wasn't going through my stuff. Like it was nothing like that. I was just like, what is going on here? Is she trying to move? I was very confused. Jess got mad at me when I asked, is she leaving? Is like, what's going on here? It was almost two weeks.

She never really gave me a reason. She was like, basically, she just wants, you know, a break from her Nashville life. So she just came here and she works from her computer. That part wasn't that weird. Here's Lauren.

I'm not sure what happened at this point, but something happened and he was out of the hospital and we got into an argument. I was still staying with Jess. I remember this like it was yesterday. I was laying in Jess's bed. I was crying my eyes out. She's rubbing my back and playing Christian music, hoping that I can get through this.

He is completely ridiculous, yelling at me and fighting with me while he's in the parking lot of Jess's place. And he refuses to come in. And I don't know what he drives. I'm not just going to walk outside into a random parking lot. I also gave the wrong address. The few times that I did end up screwing up with something or giving him the wrong information accidentally, he would eat it up and he would rub it in my face. He gets in the parking lot and freezes and he can't get out of the car.

He has so much trauma from his mom dying of cancer and his dad dying in a drunk driving accident. And he had a bad relationship before that. And he just doesn't find worth in himself anymore because this relationship, she made him feel like shit all the time. I drew a little arrow about where to come in at so that he didn't have any worries. I said, I'm right here. Just come inside this door. And he refused to. Yeah.

I got all cute. This happened three or four days in a row where he would not answer. He would either stop responding and claim he was on the phone with his cousin and his cousin would be texting me, Matt. And he'd be like, I'm going to fly there tomorrow. Like, I want to make this work. I'll do whatever I can to make it work. And yeah, I mean, he just never did come inside. He would just stay out there and say that he was traumatized and he's not worthy of this and I deserve better. Yeah.

I also have tons of messages. I'm just going to start reading. It says, okay, the door's unlocked. Am I supposed to just walk in? He said, I said, you can knock if you'd like. Then I gave him the right number. I said, 302. Oh my gosh. Ha ha ha. And then he said, I hate you right now. He said, where am I going? Because that wasn't you. And he said, he went to that door and it wasn't open.

I said, I'm not listening to your excuses anymore. And I said, you were going to be here an hour ago. Once again, you're stalling. It's disrespectful to me because you're keeping me awake and it shows you're not ready for this. And he said, I'm here. I didn't leave. This is 5.55 in the morning.

So he's still in the parking lot downstairs texting me instead of coming upstairs. And he said, I didn't stall at all. If that's what you want, then say it and I'll leave too. I didn't do anything. I came up and went to the wrong door and walked back down and saw your text about it being the wrong one. I said, then come up. What the fuck? Or call me like a normal person. It's been an hour, more than an hour. He said, you need to chill. I stopped down the road when I first got here. I said, it's 5am. Are you insane? I'm fucking tired as hell. And you're doing the same thing you did before. And you're scarring me.

I said, I'm done being your pen pal. He said, Jesus, Lauren, no, I'm not. You just work yourself up right away and get all pissy and make it awkward as fuck. And it doesn't need to be. I said, I gave you plenty of time to come up here. There comes a time where I have to respect myself and put my foot down. I would never do to somebody else what you're doing to me. I'm not pissy. I'm upset. And you say you hate to know that you've made me upset, but then you continue to do it. He's just continuing to go back and forth with me instead of just coming inside, walking

We would be fine if he would have came upstairs. It's the first time we're meeting. We would have been fine to talk about things in person and hug it out and be cool. But it's the fact that he's just sitting in the parking lot arguing and arguing and arguing. And he said, I literally didn't do anything to upset you. I didn't read your text right away. I wasn't mad at you. I just came down here and texted you because I was confused by what was going on. Don't respond while you're mad. I don't want this to be how the weekend starts.

I said, you can't even come up here and talk to me like a man and do what it takes in order to keep me. He said, I'm tired. I don't want to come up there just for you to yell at me and be all pissy with me over miscommunication and me walking back out. It shouldn't lead to that. And I said, then you're not ready to fight for this. If you'd rather hide in your car and talk to me behind a screen instead of come in and face it and try to make me feel better, then you have said all you need to say. And he said, will you stop? Do I tell Matt to come or are you going to be difficult? Because I think they were coming back with us to Nashville after that.

He said, I'm closing my eyes. I have an alarm set. You just tell me what you want, I guess. And if I'm going with you or not. I said, how are you going to go with me if you couldn't even see me because I was upset? And he says, all right, your point has been made. Sorry, I get it. He's just stalling over and over and over again. You made it clear you don't want to be around me.

And then I drove all the way home, bawling my eyes out the entire night into the next day. And then he just sends me this long message. Baby, I can't lose you. Sending me like all these songs and I suck. I don't know why I do that. I'm coming to see you. Like I'm driving right now. I ruined everything. I hate myself. I don't deserve you. You're perfect and have been in every way possible since day one. I want you, but I don't deserve you. And it's a struggle fighting myself on it all the time.

I mean, it just goes on and on and on. She was trying to console me the best she could. She's never been very good at consoling. She's kind of the type that would take a broom and pat you on the back. I rode back home and I genuinely cried the entire way home. And I don't think I felt anything ever since then. I think that part really broke me as well because I was like, there's no way we're going to be able to make a relationship work if you can't even see me when I'm upset.

And I remember driving through the neighborhood looking for his truck because he fell asleep in the parking lot. I remember that morning, me and Jess, we all started looking for his truck. She told me what he drove, what I should look for. I'm still like numb to it in a lot of ways because it's so unbelievable. I've been living in so much brain fog and questioning things if they're real or not. I've been doing that for three, four years now.

I question a lot of things and I'm confused a lot of the time. And I know that that's because of the trauma. I still look back and I'm like, that actually happened to me. That's my story. I think she genuinely got off also on the risk that she was taking. So she would do something that was potentially a little bit risky and she would get away with it. And she would love that and crave more of that.

I genuinely had the purest of intentions and it's just so sick and cruel how someone can keep something going like that. Especially your best friend. I haven't touched on that, but especially your best friend who you do everything with and you live with and you confide in. It's another form of backstabbing. She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

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One time I told him that I didn't want him coming because I was scared he wasn't going to show up. And he told me he was next door at Taco Bell. I got upset because obviously I wanted to see him, but I was scared to have that happen again and go through that, all those emotions again of him not showing up. So he used that against me for so long saying he was right next door to me and I refused to see him and yada, yada, yada. I would try to call him. I would try to FaceTime him.

He said he was uncomfortable talking on the phone. At one point when I did live in Nashville, he tried to FaceTime me and said there was an error. I think she just took that screenshot off of Google and it wasn't ever real, obviously. But that showed me that, okay, maybe he was trying to FaceTime. It was giving me some kind of hope because I had, obviously I had friends in my ear that were like, he's not FaceTiming me. He's not calling you. That's sketchy.

And yes, it was sketchy, but I also had a lot of empathy for what he's been through. And we would text all the time. We texted nonstop. We texted probably every five minutes a day. Then you have the dopamine highs and lows that I experienced all the time that was addicting. That's why I'm so mind blown by it because I'm telling you, we texted every five minutes a day and she had to have been doing the same thing to Brie unless when Brie was working, obviously she couldn't get back to her, but

Because I worked from home, I was able to be a lot more responsive. She was working at the hospital and she was still always getting back to me for the most part, even though Brody obviously was working at the hospital too. And he would take breaks occasionally. But for the most part, we talked nonstop. And I want to emphasize that because we talked so much and it was just text messages.

She would always be on her phone. Always. I mean, to the point where I could not have a conversation with her without her having her phone in her face. I was like bidding for her time. We would make plans. I was always able to, and he would always no show. But then the few times that I couldn't, for whatever reason it was, he would always hold that over my head. And he'd be like, well, it's not like I'm the only one that doesn't show up. Like you've been able to before and you didn't, or you didn't drive to see me even though you could.

I didn't drive for three years because I was in a car accident. I didn't trust the other drivers anymore because it was a hit and run. I just decided to not ever leave the house anymore after that. And that became a whole thing, which I worked through.

I think a lot of it is she beat us down to the point where we were just like shells of ourselves. And we were so numb because she would threaten the suicide stuff. And I remember one time that suicide stuff came up and he would threaten that he was going to do it. And he would say, but I'm not telling you where I'm at.

And that just really fucks with you because I genuinely thought he was going to kill himself and he wasn't going to tell me where he was and I couldn't stop it and I couldn't help him. It's really bad. Yeah.

He stood me up so many times, but there was a certain time when I went to live music and Jess was with me. He was supposed to show up. I'm actually like hopeful that he's going to show up this time because I knew how bad he messed up last time and how apologetic he was and how it messed him up. And I thought it's a better way to meet someone. It's a more casual setting. I was trying to do anything at this point to try to make him comfortable.

We get there, we're like listening to music. Time goes by and he's like, okay, I'm on my way. And he gets to the area and he says he's going to go next door to get a drink to calm his nerves. I'm slowly starting to like get triggered again, but I'm trying to stay calm because that was a huge pattern was me getting triggered and blowing up on him before he could actually show himself, which obviously he was never going to show himself. But I thought that it was my problem for like upsetting him.

He doesn't show. And I remember seeing a guy walk by the window. And for some reason, I felt like it was him. And I told just that in the moment. And then I texted Brody that and I said, did you just walk by? Are you wearing like a leather jacket? And he said, yeah, that was me. And so in my mind, that further convinced me that he was real because I just saw him. And I ended up crying that night, too. I remember crying the whole way home in the Uber.

He took something and he starts slurring his texting, which is weird, but he started texting very gibberish, scaring the shit out of me. Me thinking that he took something and that he is lost somewhere in downtown Nashville and he could potentially kill himself. He could potentially kill someone else if he's driving around. And this became something that happened way too frequently.

I was terrified that he was going to do it again. I told him, I'm not going to do this anymore with you until you go to therapy. And he says he talks to a therapist and he makes the decision, okay, while I'm talking to a therapist and while I'm getting the help, I don't want us to make any other plans because I don't want to hurt you like I hurt you last time. There were times where I would be like, this is not working. I

I want to at least still talk to other people. You're not giving me anything. We're not progressing at all. I want to talk to other people. That's fine if you want to talk to other people while we navigate this. It was completely a deal breaker for him. He did not want me talking to anyone else. He said, if I'm talking to anyone else, then we're not talking. And so for the most part, I...

stuck with that and didn't talk to anybody else. And so the one person that I'm best friends with and becoming increasingly closer, I wouldn't say we were best friends right off the bat, but we got very close because of the trauma bond and because I was crying in her arms all the time. I didn't expect her to be the one that was out to get me or the one that had bad intentions for me.

She was having trouble with her family and having help with her son. I believe she was just having issues with her dad for the most part. And she wanted to get away from that and just wanted a new start.

I was living in Nashville. My lease was up. COVID had hit and I lost my job. I texted Jess and I said, hey, do you want to look into living together in North Carolina? Would you be interested in that? And right off the bat, she was like, hell yeah, let's do it. She was so down.

Brody was living in Colorado and then he moved to Nashville. So during the time that he was having therapy sessions and didn't want to see me, he had already moved to Nashville to have his travel nursing position there.

When I first started talking to Brody about leaving, we were in kind of a rough spot. He was living in Nashville. I was having the hardest time ever trying to carry on with my life, knowing that someone that I really had feelings for was in my city, in hospitals nearby me, probably meeting people and running across people that I knew. I was just becoming so insecure and so jealous.

And that is not me at all. I've never been that type. And it was becoming too much. So once I realized that my lease was running out and I couldn't resign because I didn't have a job at the time, I knew I was moving to North Carolina and I knew that he was able to still get a travel position there if he still wanted to see me. But I was under the impression that I was going to start fresh in North Carolina.

We settled in a place that had a really good school district. We'd never been there. We really, really liked the city. We found an apartment that was really close by to the beach and we were super excited about it. He was going to be able to take the bus to school. She was able to go to work in the mornings at the hospital. It was working out really well for a bit. I was skeptical about living with a kid, but

But at the same time, I had spent a lot of time with him at this point, and I didn't think it was going to be that drastic of a change. I even asked my mom, I said, I feel like I stepped into a mom role. And she was like, you absolutely did. You were taking care of him a lot of the time. So from an outsider's perspective, I still was very much taking care of him and being that live-in babysitter that she was apparently looking for.

I work from home because I started my own business in 2020. I was working from home. I mean, it was not a problem. I was able to pick him up from school if I needed to or if she needed me to.

So I mentioned she always has drama in her life with her friends, with her family. There's just always something going on. She was very secretive about her work schedule. When we first started living together, she told me that she doesn't want people knowing her business. So she didn't want to give me her work schedule, but I watch her son. So obviously I need it to make plans and work around it. And we had this little argument about that. And I started feeling weird that she wasn't comfortable giving her work schedule.

I think I can pull that up. Okay, here it is. I said, can you send me your schedule for the next two months? I only have July through August. She said, for what? I said, just so I know what days you work, haha. And she said, creep. I said, just send it you full. She said, mind your own business. I said, LOL, for real, I need it. And she said, I don't think you do. I said, okay. And she said, I forgot this was a marriage. She finally sends it and I say, thank you. And she said, mm-hmm. I said, stop with the attitude.

I don't like people knowing my every move and stuff. I don't like always giving my schedule. I said, you gave it to me without asking last time. But yeah, clearly. And she said, yeah, I just don't like to do it. I said, I don't mind helping, but I do need a schedule. And she said, I don't like people knowing my every move and stuff. I'm just saying you don't have to help out all the time. You have your own life. What's that have to do with anything? Bree didn't get my schedule, which I don't know what she's talking about there. I said, OK, see you later. This is getting weird. And she said, OK, I'm sorry. I get really closed off when I'm struggling.

So whatever reason that was, she was struggling. I don't know. She never wanted me to have new friends. I invited her to like a Bumble BFF little get together thing in the area that was just going to be a bunch of girls going to get coffee. And she was like, Oh, I don't want to make friends like that. She talked so down on that. So did Brody and Brad, Brody's brother. She said, I already have my set of friends that I'm going to have in my wedding. And

Anytime we would argue or something, she would have this victim card that she'd always play. Like we would fight and then she'd be like, I need to know if I'm going to have to move out. I can't live like this. I'm a single mom, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just victim playing all the time. She didn't respect boundaries. She would make me feel bad if I didn't go to the movies with her or go to dinner with her. She would literally get mad at me for it. So I felt like every time she asked me to do something, I felt like I had to do it or else it would cause tension in the house.

Another red flag I noticed with her job was she was always telling her boss what she was going to do and what she wouldn't do. So she would be like, I'm not working those days. I can't work Wednesday and Thursday, even though she was scheduled. So she went through a lot of jobs, a lot of issues with work, a lot of problems with people that she worked with, etc.,

I was still standing my ground and I'll continue to do that. But she would just keep going and keep going and keep going and just nag and nag and nag. It became this thing where I should just not do anything and then I won't make her mad. It was almost like, don't wake the bear. Next time on Something Was Wrong.

I hear bang, bang, bang, bang, bang right on the window. I run upstairs, I grab her son, I grab the dogs, and we go upstairs and the person is shining their flashlight in my bedroom window. I'm freaking out, calling the police, crying, but also completely frozen. Like I couldn't move. All I could say was, please hurry, please hurry, please hurry. I'll never forget it. So she called me that one day and she said she needed to talk to me about something. I was concerned because I could tell she was upset.

I remember getting a text from Brody that night and he had said that Matt had overdosed. I think she's actually evil to her core. That was probably one of the first moments that I was like, "What is going on?" I started thinking, "I feel like Jess has a crush on Lauren." It was pretty clear that Jess had some sort of obsessive desire to have complete control over Lauren or Lauren totally to herself.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe, friends.

Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. This season, our theme song, You Think You, by Gladrags, is covered by Palehound. For music and tour dates, go to palehound.com. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram at somethingwaswrongpodcast.

As always, thank you so much for listening. You think you know me, you don't know me. You think you know me, you don't know me. You don't need to keep talking.

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