somebody til gnomebody “loves” you

 

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  I was fresh out of high school in 2015 when I decided to move to Phoenix Arizona and be an artist. I saved up for a year and finally made enough to move out on my own. I started attending poetry slams at Lawn Gnome Publishing and fell in love with not only the store but the whole arts scene. After a slam one night in 2016 I introduced myself to Aaron Johnson and asked if he was hiring and I got and interview the next morning and was hired almost on the spot. I began working for below legal minimum wage, which didn’t bother me at the time because I was 19 and living on my own for the first time and just so excited to be there and be a part of it. 

  I got along with Aaron almost immediately. He’s charming and very well spoken and like everyone in the community, appreciated art the same way I did. From the very start though, there was always an moo uneasiness in me, the way he talked to me and sometimes it almost seemed flirty. But I brushed it off, I trusted him. He was married and had a child at home and he owned a beautiful establishment that did so many things for the arts community, I thought he could never be the person he really is. I began nannying for his child and I enjoyed it very much, but it gave him much more time to be around me which I see now was purposeful. 

  Eventually after working for him for a few months, I began to notice small things, like how he treated some of the other women who worked for him, inappropriate things he said and everyone laughed off. He was always so nice to me and we spent more and more time together. Just hanging out and going to movies but it soon got more serious. He started to bring up uncomfortable topics like how he and his wife were in an open relationship (which wasn’t true at all) and he even sabotaged a potential relationship with someone was casually seeing by telling him he was too old for me and asked him is he felt like he was taking advantage of me (he was 27) and that ended that fairly quickly but I had no idea why. 

  Aaron then began taking it further, every chance he got he would sexualize me by making comments about how great my ass looked when I walked, how he would stare at me while I worked, how he thought about me all the time, and he praised me for being so good with his child and how I would make such an amazing mother. At 19 I found myself in a situation where my boss, an authority figure who I respected and trusted who was 34, began to make steps toward a relationship. 

  I can admit my faults, I know now and I knew then it felt wrong, but I trusted him and he was older and wiser so he must know better than me and he is very good at manipulating people. 

  Basically from then on out it all went so fast. He texted me saying that his wife thought we were having an affair and he said that since she thought it already that maybe we should. I did what I always did and laughed it off and I made excuses to myself for his behavior even though red flags went off but I was young and in a situation I didn’t know how to handle at all and he seemed to enjoy trying to make me uncomfortable and then when he sensed that I was he would try and make me overly comfortable and try to normalize what he had done or said. When I tried to talk to him about the situation he would make it seem like it had nothing to do with me and that she just didn’t love him along with a bunch of other lies. 

I believed every word he said. I wanted to believe it.

 He used his power role over me as my boss and made me believe he loved me and that he wanted to have a life with me running this bookstore that I loved so much. I fell for all of it. 

  At the time I was in a living situation with a roommate who was unstable and it was a toxic situation, at this time, his wife left and he offered to have me move in with him to get out of the situation.  

 He invited me to meet him and his child at this sweet little house and offered me a key as he filled my head with delusions about how wonderful our future would be together.

 So I moved in, which was one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made. I let this man have full control of my life at work and at home. My life revolved around making him happy, I did everything I could, and I still watched his child. I cleaned, I cooked, I worked in the bookstore, trying to make his life easier. I hardly made any money even then and I payed for half of the rent with the help of my savings and my parents. Even worse, it had to be secret, so in my mind, this was the right choice and eventually everything would blow over, but months went by. 

  I was mortified by the way he treated his wife soon to be ex but I rationalized it by telling myself he would never do such a thing to me. I felt like he was the only person I could really talk to. I was completely alone in this. I had to hide when people came to the door and park my car in the backyard. But I stayed positive because I loved his child and I was very attached to the idea of them as my family. 

 Slowly he began to criticize everything I did when he once only talked about how he loved me so much, anytime I went out with friends or did anything for myself became a fight but he would stay out late drinking with friends while I stayed home with his child. When he would come home late after not answering his phone all night he would talk about other women, women I knew. He would tell me how cool and great they were and how much fun they had the way he had once talked about me. 

  I finally told two of my friends who also worked for him what was happening and I did feel less alone but the cycle had begun and I couldn’t stop it. It eventually got so bad that I questioned my sanity because I have an existing mental illness, I was diagnosed bipolar at 17 years old and I had been learning how to deal with everyday things. He would tell me that he didn’t believe in psychology and that it was in my head and that when I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed, he would say that I was lazy. He wasn’t happy and it was my fault, I would feel such guilt because he had done so much for me. I would slip up on something that seems silly now like doing the dishes and we would fight and he would tell me how I was a terrible person for his child to be around and I would beg him to forgive me and to stay with me, I had nowhere to go and I loved them and then a week would go by where everything was great, but those days became fewer and fewer until I was a shell of who I was. 

  This was gaslighting and emotional abuse. I eventually left when it got so bad I didn’t even feel alive. 

 My friends helped me leave and tried to help me get on my feet but after a week, I packed up my car and moved back with my parents where I went to intensive therapy and I got medicated for my bipolar disorder. After I moved across the country I tried to get a new license only to find that when I had gone out of town for a week to attend my cousin’s funeral, he had racked up tickets on my car. I found out it was him because the dmv showed me a red light ticket of my car with a picture of him driving it. 

 The first time my paintings were ever in a gallery it was at own gnome publishing and it was such a huge moment for me, I hoped I would sell my art and live my dream of being an artist, after I left I asked he send me those paintings back and send me my tickets which had been sent by federal mail to that address he would promise he would and make excuses keeping the line of communication open for him to manipulate me further. He kept that going for months and every time I called he would tell me to come back and when I would say no, he would pick apart my every “flaw” and say I just didn’t meet up to his standards.

  After awhile I found out he sold my paintings for 5 dollars a piece when they were worth so much more and I never knew who purchased them and of course he kept the money he made off of them.

 I later discovered he had done similar things to friends and people I knew, some at the same time he was with me. 

  This is my story. There are plenty more from others about how he would refuse to pay his employees a livable wage (which I can say is 100% true) Every employee worked so hard because we all felt like we were doing our part to better the arts community but I now know it was just a vehicle to prey on young trusting people like myself.

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