To You, Standing on That Balcony

If you’re reading this, you’re probably in that suspended moment I know too well—broken after months of manipulation, gaslighting, and abuse you couldn’t articulate because it’s still happening. Trapped financially. Surrounded by people you can’t trust. Standing somewhere high, realising that staying means dying slowly, and leaving means you don’t know how you’ll survive the leaving itself.

I’m writing to tell you something they don’t say in recovery literature: sometimes the bravest thing you do isn’t choosing to leave. It’s surviving long enough to actually make it out.

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The Architecture of the Trap

You don’t wake up one day trapped. It builds in layers.

The manipulation started quietly—small lies, rewritten history, your perception questioned constantly. Gaslighting so subtle you stop trusting your own mind. By the time you realise something is wrong, you can’t quite articulate what it is.

picture this then came the corruption from people who should have protected you. Police officers—the ones meant to serve—became part of the trap. Paid off. Sexually interested. One of them had cheated with your partner. They brought narcotics into your home. They became weapons, not protectors. The threat of being called on you—of you being arrested in a foreign country where you had no family, no legal standing, no way to defend yourself—that threat alone is enough to paralyse you.

The money situation made it worse. Imagine if your resources were tied up, controlled, unavailable. You couldn’t afford a flight home. You couldn’t hire a lawyer. You couldn’t pay for safety. You were held in place by your own poverty in a beautiful city you no longer recognised.

The environment itself was stunning with views over a beautiful nature reserve and public park below, high security, gates, codes, a lift that required authentication to reach the 12th floor. Imagine you were living in a fortress. But fortresses can become prisons if you’re inside with people who want to keep you there.

And all of it—the manipulation, the police, the isolation—was happening while you were trying to be stable, loving, the person who could fix it all if I just tried hard enough.

I couldn’t.

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Early November: The Balcony

After months of this accumulating pressure—the psychological warfare, the untrustworthy people, the constant threat, the financial cage—I broke.

Not emotionally. Practically. You hit a point where you understood, with absolute clarity, that staying in that apartment meant dying. Not metaphorically. Actually.

The balcony became the place where I saw the choice clearly for the first time: leave, or don’t survive.

There was a showdown. There were guns. There was police. There was a moment where my life was genuinely in danger—not from an abstract crisis, but from the concrete situation i’d been living inside.

That wasn’t a mental health episode. That was clarity arriving in the worst possible way.

I needed out.

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November to December: The Impossible Wait

I made a flight. I booked it. I had a date. I had hope that I could finally leave.

And then the flight was rescheduled.

I was stuck for another 30 days. Thirty days of hoping that somehow things would improve, believing the gaslighting maybe I’d misread the situation, that maybe if i’d just held on a bit longer, something would shift.

It didn’t.

I was trapped by circumstance with no way to force the timeline. The only thing I had was will—the decision that no matter how long it took, I am leaving.

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December 5th: The Escape

I made it out.

I got on the plane. I flew 6,000 miles. I arrived back in Brighton in early December.

And my body—which had been holding together through sheer survival instinct—finally let go.

I was 65.38kg. Down 14kg from when i’d gone to Buenos Aires at 12.5 stone. That weight loss wasn’t from diet. It was from months of living in a state of acute danger with my nervous system in constant crisis mode. It was from not being able to eat properly. It was from your body literally metabolising itself trying to survive.

I looked like someone who had been to war. Because I had been.

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Brighton: Coming Home to Myself

Now it’s 6am and the seagulls are screaming at each other like they own the morning. I hear bins, traffic, the ordinary sound of people living ordinary lives.

I am home in the flat I built—the space I restored myself in once before when my health nearly broke. Warm. Full of colour. Full of plants I’ve watered. Full of my things, arranged the way I like them, owned by me alone.

There’s no fortress. No code-locked lift. No security gates. No 12th floor distance from the world.

The view here isn’t of Puerto Madero reserve or the Buenos Aires skyline. It’s of Brighton streets. Of people. Of real, messy, alive community.

And the light—actual, honest daylight—comes through the windows.

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Fifty Days Home: What Has Actually Happened

Weeks 1-2: Collapse and Rest

I came home and my body shut down. 12-14 hours of sleep a day. Not sleep—collapse. My nervous system needed permission to finally stop holding the emergency alert.

I ate what you could. Mostly I slept.

I didn’t answer my phone.

Weeks 3-4: The Stabilisation

I brain started to come back online. I could form sentences again. I could think about more than one day at a time.

I started eating properly. Protein. Greens. Real meals. My body registered that it was finally safe to digest after months of starving myself, unable to eat.

I weighed myself, I needed to know the baseline of the damage so I could track my recovery.

I reconnected with my advocacy work. The housing campaigns. The community organising. The justice projects that remind me who I am when everything else has been stripped away.

I realised I had energy for things beyond the shock, grief and crisis.

Weeks 5-6: Seeing the Pattern

The shock wore off and clarity arrived.

I understood that the person I loved wasn’t the person who was capable of getting clean. The manipulation, the betrayals, the infidelity, the lies—these weren’t “mistakes” made under the pressure of addiction. They were patterns. They were choices.

His friends had been saying this for months. I couldn’t hear it while I was inside the situation. Now, with distance, I can finally listen.

I stopped waiting for accountability. He wasn’t going to provide it.

I stopped expecting an apology. It wasn’t coming.

I let myself grieve the fantasy—the version of him that was possible—instead of defending the reality he was choosing.

Week 7: Egypt and Resurrection

A week in the sun. Swimming. New people. Laughter that wasn’t forced or survival-based, but genuine.

I realised I had escaped with my life. Not just left a relationship. Actually survived a situation that was trying to kill me.

I came back with something my therapist couldn’t give me: proof that I can still feel joy. That I can still connect. That I existed as a whole person outside of crisis-management.

Weeks 8-9: Building Systems, Not Just Survival

I have started to build intentionally.

A low-carb, high-protein, anti-inflammatory diet to heal my body from the inside and support mental clarity. Not punishment. Medicine.

A mobility and strength protocol to rebuild what months of crisis had broken. My back. My hips. My core. My neck. The places that held the tension of constant threat.

I set targets for the next 50 days: 100-day targets. Physical. Emotional. Cognitive. Spiritual.

I am pouring energy into my justice engine project—a system designed to help others, not just to survive one more day.

I’ve done home renovation. Small projects that are quiet assertions: This is my space. I live here. I intend to stay.

I wrapped up the complaint. I’ve documented what happened. I took back some agency by naming it formally, officially, on record.

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Two Tests of Who I am Now

Twice in these 50 days, someone brought drugs into my proximity.

The first time, someone I know came into my home, took out a pipe, and started smoking it. In the space where I am rebuilding. They offered it to me, knowing what I’d just survived, as if I might need an escape route.

Me today-I told them clearly: this doesn’t come into my home. This isn’t who I am. Not here. Not now.

The second time, someone had stuff near me. Something stronger moved through me: I told myself, I don’t want this. I don’t want that life.

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What My Body Tells Me

When I left, I was a shadow of myself 65kg—a loss of 14kg from my starting weight of 80kg in July.

My clothes hung off me. my face was hollow. My muscles had metabolised themselves. My nervous system was so shot I could barely form thoughts.

Today thankfully I’m 73.94kg (11 stone 9).

So i’ve have gained 8.56kg in 50 days.

What that means:

• My clothes fit again. My body has substance.
• My face has returned. The gaunt, haunted look is softening.
• My pain is reducing—the chronic back tension, the locked hips, the neck that couldn’t turn.
• I can move. I can bend. I can extend.
• I sleep. Not the exhausted collapse of crisis, but actual restorative sleep.
• My cognitive function has returned. I can read. I can retain. I can plan.

I am not just “recovered from leaving.” I am rebuilding.

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The Shocking Reality of the Replacement

Days after I escaped, he moved someone new in.

Within days of that, he was introducing this new person to his family.

That’s not love. That’s fear of being alone. That’s a pattern—the speed with which he replaces people, moves them in, integrates them, before they can see what’s actually happening.

I watched him do it to me in slow motion. Now I am watching him do it to someone else at double speed.

The difficult part is: I know how this story ends. I know what that new person is walking into. I know the manipulation, the infidelity, the control, the gaslighting. I know the balcony is probably waiting somewhere in their future too.

And I can only move on.

That is the hardest lesson: I couldn’t save him, so how could I possibly?

He can’t. He wont.

What I do instead is document my own recovery. I become proof that it’s possible to escape.

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The Man in the Photograph

If you saw him now, I notice things:

His eyes lack the clarity they used to have. There’s a tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix—the exhaustion of living a double life while convincing yourself it’s normal.

He looks unkempt. Not in a careless way. In a way that says “I’m no longer interested in being seen.” The self-care has dropped. The grooming has slipped. These are serious signals of someone in decline.

He’s continued the same patterns that got him to into this mess in the first place. Same lifestyle. Same isolation of friends. Same replacements. Same cycle.

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A Letter to the Version of me on That Balcony

To the person I was on that 12th floor, broken after months of abuse I couldn’t even name:

• You are not crazy.
• The police corruption was real.
• The gaslighting happened.
• The financial control was intentional.
• The threat in the air was genuine.

What happened to you was not a relationship with complications. It was abuse with system-level participation—people who should have protected you became part of the trap.

You didn’t “have a breakdown.” You had a crisis of survival. And you survived it.

The next 30 days—waiting for that rescheduled flight, hoping things would improve, knowing they wouldn’t—that was you fighting to get out. That wasn’t weakness. That was will.

And December 5th? That was you choosing your life.

Fifty days later, you’re 8.56kg heavier. You’re sleeping. You’re thinking clearly. You’re working. You’re helping others. You’re rebuilding your home. You’re learning to say no to things that would have destroyed you six months ago.

You made the right choice.

Not because he was “bad.” But because you were disappearing, and you chose to come back to yourself instead.

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A Silent Letter to the Man You Left

I’ve changed your name in this letter, not to erase you, but to give us both some mercy.

I still think about you. I miss the version of you I met—the clean, present, emotionally available person who existed for a moment before addiction and control became more important than connection.

But I can’t unsee what I saw.

The manipulation. The gaslighting. The police corruption. The infidelity. The new person moved in days after I left. The way you’re introducing him to family so quickly—the same speed you probably used to integrate me, before the real situation became obvious.

I don’t hate you. I’m not writing this to shame you.

But I need you to know, if you ever read this: the cost of loving you nearly killed me. And I don’t regret leaving.

I hope you choose recovery. I hope you shock everyone and become the man you could be. I hope you get to a place where you can be honest about what happened, why it happened, and what it cost.

But I won’t wait for that. My life can’t be paused for your maybe.

I’m 50 days into actually living again. And I’m not stopping.

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The Next 50 Days: A Deliberate Ascent

I’ve done 50 days. I’m doing another 50.

This isn’t white-knuckling. It’s intentional growth:

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To You, Still Reading

If you’re standing on your own version of that balcony—after months of manipulation, surrounded by people you can’t trust, financially trapped, seeing no way out—this is your evidence:

It is possible to escape.

It takes time. It takes patience. It takes surviving the in-between, the moment when the flight gets rescheduled and you have to keep breathing for 30 more days.

But on the other side of that escape is a home with daylight. Weight returning to your body. Sleep that actually restores. Work that matters. A life that belongs to you.

You will grieve. You’ll miss the person they could have been. You’ll feel the loss genuinely and completely.

And you’ll also be alive.

Take the plane. Document the recovery. Track every kilogram, every hour of sleep, every reduction in pain. Build your own justice system. Become proof for the next person that escape is possible.

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What Comes Next

There are stories I’m not telling yet. The details of the police corruption. The full scope of the manipulation. The specific moments that broke me. The recovery that came before this recovery.

Those come in future pieces, when the time is right and the distance is greater.

For now, this is about what happened when I chose myself. This is about what 50 days of being home looks like. This is about the next 50 days—and the 50 after that—of building a life that belongs entirely to me.

I’m no longer waiting for him to change.

I’m no longer trying to fix what he won’t acknowledge is broken.

I’m no longer on that balcony, looking down.

I’m here. In Brighton. In daylight. Building.

And that’s everything.