The Devil In Disguise

You look like an angel (look like an angel)
Walk like an angel (walk like an angel)
Talk like an angel
But I got wise
You're the devil in disguise
Oh yes you are
Devil in disguise
Mmm-hmm-mmm

You fooled me with your kisses
You cheated and you schemed
Heaven knows how you lied to me
You're not the way you seemed...

—"(You're The) Devil In Disguise," written by Bill Giant, Bernie Baum, and Florence Kaye, recorded by Elvis Presley and the Jordanaires

An appropriate photo, given that Christine wore a metaphorical mask in front of me for the first half of our relationship.

For just about nine months, Christine Kim-Minh Le was Miss Piggy to my Kermit the Frog.

And if you've actually watched Jim Henson's OG The Muppet Show--or pretty much any Muppet movie, or the 2015-16 ABC sitcom (which she and I are both fans of)--you'll know that analogy is not a compliment.

You've probably noticed that it's been a while since the last post on this blog. Well, I had struggled to write something about four road trips that Christine and I went on together in the first few months of our relationship. Even had a perfect song picked out: "Two of Us," by the Beatles. ("Two of us riding nowhere / Spending someone's hard-earned pay...")

And then the relationship turned into a waking nightmare.

This post will publish on May 22, 2023, at 1:25 AM California time. Two years to the day--to the minute--that Christine dumped me by text message. For a guy she had been cheating on me with for some time, it turns out.

At the time, I was just annoyed. She had tried to break it off literally dozens of times since January of that year, but always came back for some reason. There were two that actually lasted a day or more--one of them was even a week and a half. But this time? I think I was just done with it all, so I let it stick. And in hindsight, that turned out to be one of the best days of my life. Getting cut loose by a covert narcissist is right up there with getting accepted into the film production program at Cal State Northridge, or earning my first black belt, or becoming an Eagle Scout.

Yes, narcissist. That is not an exaggeration.

By her own admission, Christine Kim-Minh Le is mentally ill.

Based on my experiences with her, from her love-bombing me right at the start, to melting down over me setting boundaries, to her bald-faced perjury during a hearing for a restraining order I filed against her? I would not be surprised if a proper psychiatric evaluation diagnosed her with narcissistic personality disorder, possibly co-morbid with borderline personality disorder.

It's a 2-for-1 deal from hell, likely the product of years of abuse at the hands of her father and emotional neglect by her mother. The end result: a 30-year-old woman with the emotional maturity of a toddler, crippling abandonment issues, and an eager will to abuse and manipulate whoever she needs to in order to survive.

Yet beneath all that rage and shame and cruelty is a lost little girl, desperately crying out for the familial love she never got, lashing out at those she thinks have wronged her. I think that’s why she latched onto my dad so hard when we visited him in the San Francisco Bay Area in October 2020. He likely showed her more paternal love in just four days than she received from her actual father in 20-odd years.

Gray is Christine, blue is me. In hindsight, the clues about her true nature were all out in the open, but I was too distracted by our adventures to see them for what they were.

Christine advertised herself to me as practically an angel sent from on high, come to wash away the pain of my past relationships, to distract me with adventures in photography that took us from San Diego to the Bay Area to Death Valley. And it did distract me. Those nine months saw me grabbing some of the best photos of my life, growing my skillset as a photographer by learning from Christine, shooting alongside her, having her as my model.

No...my muse.

Christine inspired me and my work more than anyone since I first got my Sony camera at the very end of 2017. She was the catalyst for a personal creative renaissance that helped to pull me out of an emotional abyss.

But ultimately, those adventures became the only reason I stayed. Even she admitted that those were the only times she felt anything resembling peace.

And when we weren't on the road, my psychopathic woman-child of a partner constantly tried to blow us up with histrionic reactions to mild criticism, refusing to sit with me and address our actual issues, even weaponizing my ADHD against me in one fight.

I told her about my ADHD because I trusted her not to use it against me, and she did this. My only regret is that I didn't dump Christine immediately after she prison-shanked me this way.

On our last adventure, she was peaceful, happy. Got so much joy out of me teaching her to catch snowflakes on her tongue when we stopped in a flurry in the San Gabriel Mountains. But all I could think of was one question:

"How is Christine going to fuck this up?"

Not if. How.

It turned out that she had been feeding on me, like a vampire drinking blood, sustaining herself with the love and care she'd never gotten from her traditional Vietnamese/Chinese parents or been able to give herself. And when she sensed that I wasn't providing her with enough, she sought it elsewhere...and found it in the arms and bed of at least one other man.

The man she dumped me for via text message at an unholy hour.

A man she told me she met after blowing up on me--and briefly blowing up our relationship--in the middle of February 2021.

A man she swore she would cut off for good.

An oath she likely took with her fingers crossed behind her back.

And to be honest, I'm not just relieved to have Christine in my metaphorical rearview mirror. I'm fucking thrilled! Because it's great to not be with someone whose response to you setting boundaries and taking a day for yourself includes a narcissistic collapse and threats of self-harm. (That, ladies and blokes and non-binary folks, is called emotional blackmail.)

It's great to not be with someone who coldly calls you their "escape plan" to your face, then tries to gaslight you into thinking it's complimentary rather than dehumanizing.

It's great to not be with someone who doesn't have the courage to confront problems directly and instead resorts to cowardly bullshit like anonymous vicious letters to neighbors. Or attacking my housemate's girlfriend's car because said girlfriend was allergic to dogs and forced us to "hide" Milah whenever they were at my house.

It's great to not be with someone who doesn't have the courage to own up to their shit and genuinely try to make amends when they do you wrong.

It's great to not be with someone who tries to use your wonky sex drive against you.

It's great to not be with someone who leaves you feeling drained after every interaction, rather than happy and hopeful.

It's great to not have to be the only one trying to repair ruptures and grow the relationship.

It's great to not be with someone who is genuinely incapable of empathy. Or compromise. Or love--actual, mature, grown-up love.

Yes, I mentioned a restraining order. Took that out last year, after finally admitting to myself that her treatment of me was abusive and finding her paramour. She flew into a narcissistic rage, reached out to my dad--and remembering she had driven up to my house one night for the sole purpose of vandalizing someone else's property, I believed she was fully capable of harming me or my family or friends.

It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do for someone I once loved--or rather, someone I thought I loved. (It was the false front she created that I fell for; that love crumbled to ash when I finally saw the real her.) I remember sitting in my car with the granted TRO in my hands, crying because it hurt all over again. Wanting to vomit when I finally saw her again at the hearing, listening to her lie under oath about how she never abused me or attacked a car belonging to her perceived rival. Feeling empty once it was all over.

Her reaction? Get a load of this: She blew up her entire photography business. I wish I was making this up.

Huh. That's funny. I thought stalkers were the ones getting served with restraining orders, not the ones filing them.

In the immortal words of Bender Bending Rodriguez:

"Ahahahahaha--oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder. AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Seriously, this is just some crazy bullshit, right? Like something out of a novel or a movie?

(Come to think of it, once I was exhausted from laughing, it did give me an idea for a Fatal Attraction-y thriller screenplay. Maybe I'll try writing it someday.)

But I guess that’s the most screwed-up part about surviving a narcissist, especially a covert one like Christine: The bullshit they do just sounds too crazy to be real, yet it is, and far too few people are willing to listen and understand and believe. I guess that’s the biggest force behind this post, to remind myself that what I endured was real.

That I survived months of abuse both overt and covert.

That I got spat out because I refused to break like she wanted.

And that I have the right to tell my story, to share my truth, to hopefully enlighten and warn the folks who might read it.

I've probably been labeled "the crazy ex" for a long time because I refused to buy into Christine's bullshit. Fine by me.

She's probably lied to everyone she can about being horribly mistreated by me, leaving out the parts that actually happened. And I've removed her access rights to this blog, but I am very aware that there's a chance she rediscovers it in the future. Fine by me.

She's welcome to throw another fit if she does, to loudly whine that she's not an abuser or a cheater. But I have the receipts to prove she'd be lying through her teeth. Phone and text logs from when we were on the same AT&T plan and she was lighting up her lover's phone. Her messages to me, and the love letters she wrote in a desperate attempt to hoover me back.

Let her piss and moan and threaten me for telling the truth.

Let her show her true colors to the world, like she did to me one February afternoon in San Diego with a very public and very terrifying tantrum.

I'm done.

I cannot stress this enough: I hope I never see or hear from her again for the rest of my time in this world.

I do not know, nor do I want to know, where Christine is or who she's feeding off of for supply these days. (Though I have no doubt that she's cheating on them as well, the hungry little devil.) She is a ticking time bomb, and I quite enjoy being far outside the inevitable blast radius. I imagine that if I should get word that she's crossed the line into felonious behavior or even met her demise, my reaction would be something like this:

I miss Milah, but that's it. That sweetheart of a dog deserves better. So do I.

Christine Le is sadly not the first abusive partner I've had over a decade and a half of dating. One shoved me against a door and forced me to have sex with her when I was clearly in no state to say yes, and another (also named Christine!) broke up with me when I stood my ground against her naked attempt at emotional blackmail. But she will be the last. And in a strange way, I suppose I'm grateful for the time I had with her.

It taught me how to spot tactics like love bombing, manipulation, and future faking.

It taught me that people who won't honor your boundaries don't deserve to be allowed inside them.

It taught me that it's okay to walk away from what's hurting you, even if it still inspires you, because you just might find healing and new inspiration in someplace you never expected.

I'll leave you with what I wish had been the last thing Christine ever said to me. Maybe the only true thing she ever said to me. And a piece of advice that I am finally taking, with this last blog post as part of it--a cathartic release and maybe a warning to the next poor bastard who meets her. They have my sympathies, as do her victims from before she met me.

The ballad is over. Good night, everybody.