I trusted them to make my life better. Here's why you should NEVER do that if you value your humanity.

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Sorry for the expletives but I’m writing this off the cuff with my mind racing a million miles an hour like the last 60 seconds of a timed essay. I don’t know when my time’s gonna run out so I just need to tell you guys everything right away. But then again, even if they find out, I told myself that I wouldn’t care anymore as long as I get this out there. And yet I’m still looking over my shoulder constantly and for what? Just goes to show how much they’ve taken over me and my mind and everything, everything.

Okay okay okay, I didn’t mean for this to be so suspenseful, so before I go off on another tangent you won’t understand yet, let me start from the beginning. It was about two weeks ago, can’t remember which day exactly but that’s not important, so on that day during nighttime I was leaving Sobeys in a real hurry. What happened was that while I was buying groceries, I got an alert about servers going down (I work as a DevOps Engineer for a software-as-a-service company and I was on-call that week) so I needed to haul ass and get home. I don’t have a car, so I just had to power walk to the bus stop and hope the ride wasn’t slow as fuck like usual. And I was so focused that I almost ran into some random guy in the parking lot. In hindsight it was my fault, but in the moment I was pissed this guy got in my way and I was ready to at least give him the stinkeye as we turned to face each other.

Guy: “Oh sorry. Hey, you need a ride?”

He straight-up asked me that right after taking a glance at the bags in my hand, and of course I was confused since that wasn’t something you’d expect from some random stranger, much less one you nearly collided with. After a while I realized he was probably some Uber or Lyft driver waiting around to offer people rides, so I asked him if that was the case.

Guy: “Nah man, no ride sharing, it’s on the house. I just wanna help you out.”

Yes, that sounded shady as all hell, and even now I’m still not sure what it was that kept me from just turning around and hightailing it out of there. Maybe it was because I could still feel my phone vibrating, probably with more DEGRADED SERVER HEALTH notifications, so shadiness be damned if this guy could get me back to my PC before my ass got fired.

I wish I could say that’s all it was, that I was rushing and had no other choice, but I think it had just as much to do with how he looked and spoke. I hate to admit it because I like to think I’m not a gullible person, but I dunno, something about his looks — his Dad beard, boringly plain glasses, golf shirt — and the really casual, unassuming way he spoke reminded me of my old soccer coach who always used to drive me and my friends home. Not in a scarily accurate “this guy is an impersonator” way, but he just gave off a similar vibe. It’s kinda weird to say, but he looked and sounded like someone who just belonged in my life, if that makes sense.

So yeah, that’s it, that’s all it took to get me into the back seat of this stranger’s car. I was still a bit on edge, of course, especially when the first thing he did after he started driving was ask for my name. And I know, I know, it would’ve been so easy to just tell him a fake name, but there was something about him, or maybe the situation we were in, that just made it feel like doing that would be wrong. Maybe it was that blind trust that got me into the car to begin with, but I think it was also just a feeling of… futility? It’s hard to put in words, but hiding my name just felt pointless. I mean, this dude already had me in his car, and everything he was doing so far was to help me, and like, did I really need to pass up the first opportunity I’ve had in ages to socialize with someone in-person during this fucking lockdown? I know it’s only been less than a year, but I felt like I’d been lonely for way longer than that, and at some point while the guy was waiting for me to respond, my suspicion turned into thanks, thanks that he was helping me and wanted to talk to me personally without me having to do anything (I think I even teared up a little). So eventually, yes, I told him my name.

And I can’t even begin to tell you how much I fucking hate myself for doing that.

But I had no way to know at the time that it was the wrong thing to do. Heck, even during the rest of the ride I didn’t. We were shooting the shit the whole time through, talking about how this stupid virus turned both our lives upside-down. Looking back on it now, he didn’t tell me a whole lot about himself — just that he used to work 9-5 at an office and now he had to do that at home. The more I think on it now, the more vanilla his response sounds: what he said applies to like 99% of all office workers. I should’ve asked him how that was like, if being home with noisy kids affected his work, and maybe I even thought about doing that while I was in the car with him — but I don’t know how he does it, but he took the topic like a steering a wheel and drove it toward me missing my friends and family.

And well what can I say? I couldn’t help spilling the beans like I was on a psychiatrist couch. Trust me, I wouldn’t normally say a word about this super personal stuff to anyone, but well I guess my reasoning was that he was basically a taxi driver, someone who offers you a service and that’s it, someone you’re almost never gonna cross paths with again. So as horrible as it is now in hindsight, I barely hesitated to tell him about how lonely I was, being a new grad who flew to this city for a job just in time for lockdown to hit. It felt so relieving to just tell him about how I was forcing myself to be strong, to prove to my parents that I could live on my own, to keep my friends from worrying about me, even though this driver guy just kept nodding along while kinda slumped back in his chair. But it’s not like he was ignoring me, cause he’d cut in every once in a while and ask a really meaningful question. It felt like he’d been in this situation with lots of passengers before, which was reassuring to me at the time — but absolutely terrifying to me now.

Eventually, though, soon after I finished telling my sad tale, we pulled up to the intersection I’d told him, the one a few blocks from my apartment. Even though it felt like I’d been blabbering on for hours in that car, the whole trip took less than ten minutes, which was a far cry from the twenty or thirty minutes it would’ve taken me on the bus. And as the frequent vibrations in my pocket kept telling me, every minute counted hugely. So I think that’s it, that feeling of relief and having saved my ass that led me to do an even stupider thing before leaving the car:

Give the guy my phone number.

I know. I know. Like Jesus H. Christ, I wish I could go back in the past and beat myself up for dooming me so obviously like that. But like I keep saying, it was all about the moment, and in that moment the guy’s proposal sounded really good: if I ever needed to go out somewhere, text him and he’ll drive me there and back if he’s not busy. And that’s exactly what we did for the next week and a half or so. Usually it’d just be going to Sobeys for more groceries or getting me to appointments like with my dentist. And every single time, we’d have a short chat like the one we had the first time. It all started to feel natural and I started not to hesitate at all before spitting words in that car, like I was on a road trip with old friends. And I didn’t think anything of it until the day we drove out of town to get me a haircut.

Yeah, a haircut. Don’t you love how innocent it sounds? It started off that way too, with the two of us enjoying a longer than usual chat because of the long trip. It was the middle of the day on a Sunday, and it was smooth sailing the whole way up to sitting in the barber’s chair. I guess I was a little tense because I didn’t know the barber at all (I just went with the closest one I could find open on Google Maps) and she seemed to have a bit of a language barrier. So to keep it simple, I just asked for a trim and then sat back and let my mind worry about work and student loans and a billion other things like I usually did on the barber’s chair.

So I spaced out like that for who knows how long, but eventually I came back to my senses when I caught an eyeful of something in the mirror. I know I asked for a trim and to keep it short so that I wouldn’t have to cut it again, but I could swear she was shaving the sides way too short. It didn’t look bad, so I didn’t complain, but after that I was on alert. I didn’t know why at the time, but I felt even more uneasy looking at my hair — and then that turned into full-on freakout the moment she combed my long, ridiculous bangs up and started applying gel to hold it all in place. She wasn’t doing a trim — she was completely transforming my hair into a full-on Elvis-style pompadour.

Me: “Excuse me, this isn’t what I asked for.”

Barber: “But is what you want, yes?”

Okay, what she said there made me really freak out. Some context: for a couple years now, I’ve been thinking about getting a pompadour ever since I tried on one of those joke wigs at a party and thought it looked surprisingly nice. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it because it’d give off a totally different feel from the boring, unassuming mop of hair I have right now. So yeah, the barber was right that I actually wanted it and was just too chicken to try.

But I never told anyone any of that.

Not my friends, not my family, and sure as hell not the barber when she asked a few minutes ago. And how the hell did she even know me? I wish I’d said that to her — I wish I’d said anything — but I was so shaken up that all I could do was let her finish the cut (which she went right back to doing without even waiting for my answer). I hate that afterwards when she was done, I liked the result enough to just thank her and pay and walk away like nothing bad had happened. She waved and gave a sweet-sounding goodbye, and it didn’t seem creepy or insincere or anything, but it still made my skin crawl as I stepped outside.

When I got back in the car, driver guy reacted exactly the way you’d expect him to.

Driver: “Wow, that’s pretty bold! But it’s a good fit. Lookin’ cool, man.”

Me: “Thanks.”

I thought about telling him how the barber knew who I was and what hairstyle I subconsciously wanted, and how fucking freaky that was, but then an idea hit me: what if it was him? At that point in time, he was the one who knew me best, and with how well-travelled he seemed to be, it wouldn’t be crazy to assume that he and the barber knew each other, right?

Me: “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know one of the barbers here, would you?”

Driver: “No. I’m the same as you: never been here before.”

Me: “But then how?”

Driver: “How what? Something wrong?”

I never wanted to facepalm harder than when I blurted that out. I was going to just give him a non-answer, but he turned in his seat and looked me right in the eye. I wasn’t sure you could call it a dominating look, because he still looked as outwardly kind as he usually did, but it did make me stop what I was going to do.

Driver: “Hey man, if there’s something wrong, you can tell me. Wouldn’t want to drop you off knowing you feel like shit.”

I really shouldn’t have said anything. I mean, looking back on it now, opening up to him about it was basically like putting out a welcome mat for a vampire — I was inviting this guy way too deep into my personal space. But I was still too dumb at the time, too pathetically reliant, so as we started driving back to town, I spilled everything about the barber and her impossible knowledge.

Driver: “Yeah, that’s pretty strange… If this escalates and you feel like you’re being watched, you should definitely call the cops. But for now, it’s just one person in a place you’ll probably never visit again. So don’t worry, you can relax.”

Me: “Is it just one person, though?”

Driver: “Huh? What do you mean?”

Again I said something out loud that I shouldn’t, but I might have done it on purpose just out of frustration. The way he acted so nonchalant about the whole thing was starting to piss me off, so I stopped holding back on my theory.

Me: “Tell me, did I say anything to you about what haircut I wanted? And have you been talking about me with other people?”

Driver: “Did you tell me? Hm, that’s hard to say… We talk about so many things in here that I can’t really say for sure. Do you remember anything like that?”

I wanted to say “YES” so bad, but instead I ended up cursing because he was right. I really hadn’t paid much mind to the stuff we talked about in the car, so when I tried to remember if I’d mentioned hairstyles even briefly, all I got was a vague memory soup of talking and talking while looking at the same car interior over and over. I mean, what really mattered was getting to the place I wanted to go, so why would I care too much about what happened in what was basically a taxi ride?

Driver: “And well, I’ll be honest: I do talk about you with my friends and family. You and I see each other a couple times a week, so naturally they get curious that there’s some new person in my life. So I tell them about you the same way I describe any of my other friends. But that’s all, really.”

In text that makes him sound fishy as fuck, but again, there’s just something about the way he said it that made it sound completely reasonable. Of course we were basically friends at that point, so why wouldn’t he feel comfortable giving people a quick blurb about me? I hate that it still kind of makes sense when I write it out.

Me: “But did you tell them anything about my hairstyle preferences?”

Driver: “Well, like I said before, it’s hard to tell. But even if that did happen, nothing bad came out of it, right? If she didn’t know, you wouldn’t have a killer haircut right now. So it was better for her to know, don’t you think?”

Even though he wasn’t facing me, I could see his eyes relax reassuringly in the rear view mirror. He was basically painting his words as being a “look on the bright side” sort of response, like a friend telling you there’s tons of other fish in the sea after you get dumped. I wish I could say I called him out on this bullshit, but the face I saw and the voice I heard were so genuine and convincing that I just mumbled out “Yeah I guess you’re right” or some other equally limp agreement.

Driver: “And these days, a person’s info is a lot like a balloon — once you let go of it, anyone anywhere can catch it. But it’s just a balloon, so nothing to cry over unless you’re a kid who loves balloons. You get what I’m saying?”

He said all of that just as nicely as the rest, even laughing a little at the ‘unless you’re a kid’ joke.

But his eyes.

It was brief, and maybe he didn’t expect me to be looking in the rearview mirror, but as he was saying that last question, his eyes went wider than I’d ever seen them before and his eyebrows creased down onto them. And he was looking right at me. It goes without saying how terrifying it was to be stuck in a car, on an empty country road, with the sun glaring down, with the only other person — the driver — staring daggers at you, but it was so quick and unexpected that I just went with my kneejerk survival reflex and hastily agreed with what he said.

And then things rapidly went back to normal after that as we started talking the rest of the way like we usually did. I went with it mostly to calm myself down, to tell myself that what I saw was just a random facial tic, and that agreeing with what he said couldn’t have been the same as showing a predator a sign of weakness.

But he did take it as a sign of weakness, because after I got home, it wasn’t long before they started showing up.

Obviously, I had no way of knowing that at the time, other than this horrible feeling in my gut that things were about to get worse somehow. But it didn’t take long — and by that I mean literally the next morning. It was garbage day, so I woke up earlier than usual to gather all my junk. I’ll admit, I’m a really messy person when I live alone, so I usually end up filling two whole garbage bags with all the crap I have lying around. I’m too lazy and tired to want to do two trips, so I just carry one in each hand and kinda stumble my way outside to the back lot where the dumpster is.

The reason I do this early is so I don’t bump into anybody else on the way — so you can imagine how shook I was when, the moment I stepped outside, someone immediately shouted my name. And not just anyone, but a voice I had literally never heard before.

It came from around the corner of the building, so I looked there just as a woman stepped out and started walking toward me. You can probably guess, but I was sure to hell that we had never, ever met before. So of course I was incredibly creeped out by how she was wearing this huge smile that seemed to want to say otherwise. (Her face mask was transparent, for whatever reason.) I tried to walk on and just ignore her, but she went up in front and blocked me — still smiling the whole time.

Woman: “Hey, let me help you with that.”

Me: “Sorry, have we met before?”

Woman: “I’m just here to help you.”

I don’t think I ever felt the same mixture of confusion, frustration, and skin-crawling uneasiness with anyone the same way I did with her. I think it was the smile — even now, I can’t remember how she looked because that forced-but-not-forced smile was so distracting. But eventually, something clicked in my brain: she was probably someone who lived on one of the lower floors and saw me struggling with the two garbage bags on the way outside. So I figured hey, why not try to be a friendly neighbour and calm down a bit.

Me: “Which floor are you from?”

Woman: “Huh? Oh no, I don’t live here.”

…Well, I can’t even remember what I said in response, but it was probably unintelligible anyway as my brain folded in on itself from what she just said.

Woman: “I just came by to help you take out your trash. Here, let me show you.”

She yanked one of the bags out of my hand and made a beeline for the dumpster. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open because, well, can you really blame me? How did she know me? How did she know where I lived? How did she know the exact time I usually take out trash? And who the fuck even was she?

I had no choice but to walk up to where she was standing in front of the dumpster, wiping her hands after having thrown in the bag she took. But before I could say anything, she yanked the other bag out of my hand, tossed it in, then turned to look at me with — you guessed it — that incredibly cursed smile.

Woman: “See? Pretty helpful, right?”

Me: “Why—”

I barely started talking before she walked up closer to me. It wasn’t super close to the point of being uncomfortable, but it was enough to make her smile look like it filled my entire view and, I don’t know, even in broad daylight out in public I got the shiver of a feeling that I could die then and there.

Woman: “See you next week!”

And then she walked right past me and started making for the other side of the building, which is probably where she had her car parked. It took me a while to come down from the high of freak-out, but I eventually screamed out “Wait!” — which made her start sprinting away.

I wanted to run after her, so I could at least see her car and have some chance of identifying who the fuck she was, but all of a sudden my phone started vibrating like crazy.

Work alarm. Daily stand-up was about to start.

So I gave up trying to catch her and rushed back inside instead. Reading my phone had already distracted me long enough for her to get away — I think I heard a car’s engine rev up and quickly fade off into the distance — and at the time I figured it wasn’t worth risking my job over. What would I even tell my team if they asked why I was late? “This woman came out of nowhere and knew exactly when I was going to take out my trash, even though we never met before, just so she could help me.” Saying that to myself made the creepiness of what had just happened really dawn on me, making me even more anxious as I slipped back into my apartment and tried — and failed — to focus for the next eight hours.

I ended up breaking one of our deployment pipelines. Twice. I mean, I fixed it both times and everything worked out in the end, but it wasted enough time for everybody that I was sure they were silently watching and judging me through their screens. So the moment it hit 5:00, I shut everything down and decided to go for a walk for once. Maybe what happened earlier was all just a daydream. Maybe I was just losing it. I just had to wake myself up, take my mind off things and focus on reality, and then I’d stop feeling like I was stuck and had to do something but had no power to do it. Like I was being suffocated.

But I didn’t even make it to the lobby’s front door. Some guy in a dress shirt and tie, again, someone I have never fucking met before in my life, came through the door before I could get to it. He called out “Tom!” (my name) in a friendly way as he walked toward me, as if he and I had planned on meeting at this exact time. The moment I saw he was wearing the same sort of transparent face mask as the woman earlier, I froze in fear.

Man: “Can’t wrap your head around VPC configuration, eh? Well, you’re looking at the perfect tutor for getting you up to speed.”

No. No fucking way. Not my work, too. Not the specific thing that always gave me trouble. I wanted to SCREAM into this guy’s stupid smiling face, but the receptionist was there along with some people coming and going through the doors. So after another near-panic attack, I figured the best way out was to shut this case before things got any worse.

Me: “Sorry, I think you’re mistaking me for someone else.”

Man: “C’mon, this isn’t the time for jokes. I know it’s you. What’s the point of hiding from someone who wants to help you?”

That last part hit a nerve because it reminded me of what that woman said earlier: “I’m just here to help.” And sure enough, when I looked at his face, all I could see was a huge smile, one that was way too genuine if that were even possible. At that point I couldn’t take it anymore.

Me: “Come with me.”

I led him over to a smaller hallway off to the side where it didn’t seem like anyone was passing through.

Me: “Look, I don’t care what it is you’re trying to help me with, but can you please just stop?”

Man: “Stop what? Offering free help and guidance? That’s—”

Me: “No! I mean, stop fucking spying on me.”

Man: “What do you mean? I’m not spying on you at all.”

Me: “Bullshit. Then how do you know something as personal as my job weaknesses? And how do you even know me and where I live?”

I glared at him with a sigh of confidence. There was no way for him to weasel out of those questions.

Or so I thought, because he just laughed. Somehow, he did it without changing the shape of his mouth — did that mean he was silently laughing to himself the whole time? And the same with the woman earlier? Both in the moment and while writing this, I felt my skin crawl.

Man: “It’s openly available information for anyone looking to help out. That’s all I’m doing. I just want to help you succeed in your career, Tom.”

I was about to mouth off on him — “The fuck you mean openly available?” — but before I could, he went up beside me and put his arm around my shoulder as if we were old buddies.

Man: “Life is scary, especially work, and especially your first full-time position. So I know that deep down, beneath your anger and confidence, you’re feeling lost. You won’t admit it, but you need help from someone like me. That’s why I came here for you. So what do you say?”

This should’ve been where I shoved him away and told the receptionist he was a shady character that needed to be kicked off the premises. But — dear god do I hate to admit this — what he said actually made me drop my guard. I was getting the same feeling of relief and acceptance as I did when Driver Guy offered his help to me all those nights ago. And, come to think of it, the whole time he never did anything bad. He was literally just a friendly valet. So if this mentor guy was saying the same sort of thing and offering the same sort of help, why wouldn’t I accept?

But something was wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong. Something he said — “You won’t admit it, but you need help from someone like me” — I couldn’t tell why at the time, but it gave me a serious case of that suffocating feeling from earlier. Maybe it was paranoia, but it was less about the feeling of being watched, and more about feeling like something was being taken away from me.

Something that I would never get back. Something that I pictured him devouring whole between the huge, always-shining teeth of the smile that was now right next to me.

That did it. I shoved him away, ran to my apartment even as he shouted my name over and over, and slammed down the lock on my front door.

I slumped back against the door after that, hoping that the receptionist saw us and kicked that freak out of the building. When I looked down, I saw my phone on the floor — must’ve fallen out of my pocket in all the mayhem. Looking at it, all I could think about was the person I’d called and texted the most over the past week:

The Driver.

It had to be him. I was sure of it. Who else had gotten to know me recently and could leak out my personal info? So I picked up my phone and dialed his number, ready to suss him out for taking advantage of me like this.

But he didn’t pick up. I must’ve dialed a dozen times, and got nothing. It’s possible he was busy, but the timing of everything, plus my mounting suspicion, made me seriously doubt that. So I wrote an angry text instead, but the moment I hit send, I had this horrible anxiety suddenly grip my chest like an icy hand.

I fucked up.

I seriously fucked up.

Now he knows I know.

So what is he going to do to me now?

I tried to figure out a worst-case scenario, but then it hit me that there was no way for me to know. I had no way of knowing exactly how much about me he knew. If he was the one who leaked something that private to the mentor guy, who knew how far the rabbit hole went? And I had no way of proving any of this either. I’d probably sound like a crazy person trying to oust a well-meaning person with no proof.

Eventually, I felt the hardness of the door at my back, and convinced myself that I would be safe as long as I stayed in here and kept it locked. It worked — until it didn’t. I can’t remember what exactly I was thinking, but I remember scrambling through my entire apartment, opening and unpacking everything while fearing that I’d find a camera or something worse. Even while checking my work laptop and PC for spyware, I was in a frenzy, mind racing, finding it hard to breathe as the suffocating feeling started to feel real.

I kept at that for god knows how long until I just suddenly blacked out, probably from exhaustion and panic. Must’ve been a deep sleep, because when I woke up I was so groggy and couldn’t remember what led me to wipe out on the floor. What woke me was my phone vibrating on my stomach. It had some notifications from Discord, which made me laugh because it was probably my friends sending dumb memes like always.

It wasn’t. They were DMs, all from a user I didn’t know.

User: “Hey! I heard you were feeling down about how your parents refused to talk to you after moving out, so I thought I’d tell you what to do to improve your situation.”

Then they went on in a much longer post to give some detailed life advice. To be honest, it all sounded really good, but that couldn’t distract me from the two enormous elephants in the room:

How could they have known something I was sure I’d never said out loud to anyone?

And how in the ever-loving fuck did they know my Discord handle?

It all came back to me then and there, everything that happened yesterday. Maybe it was because this person was just pixels on a screen instead of a terrifying in-person smile, but instead of feeling scared, I was pissed beyond belief.

Me: “Why the fuck are you doing this? Who gives you the right to know something that personal? That’s an invasion of privacy if you didn’t know.”

User: “Sorry if I came off too strong there. I’m just trying to help you out with problems that you’re too afraid to tell anyone. It’s natural to keep it all to yourself, but that’s not healthy, right? You’re strong, Tom, but you don’t always know the best way to reach out to people. That’s why I’m here to help you.”

Again, I felt like I’d hit the same brick wall as when the mentor guy had said something similar. I stared at the text for a long time, but eventually, out of nowhere, my fingers moved on their own.

Me: “Why do you get to decide that?”

That was it.

After sending and reading that over, everything finally made sense. The unease at all these people even though they were ‘helping’ me, and the suffocating feeling that went with it. Now I knew what was causing all that:

They were choosing what parts of me to share.

And they were keeping me from deciding that for myself.

I didn’t want people to know that I was struggling at work, or that my parents had practically disowned me — but what did that matter if some other people decided to put everything out there outside of my control? Throughout this text conversation, I had been standing straight up, but now I sunk to my knees, feeling completely powerless. It was like I was losing the grip on myself that kept me together, because they had seized all the parts of me instead.

My phone buzzed with the user’s response, but I didn’t even read it as I desperately sent back:

Me: “Stop. I never asked for this. Just fucking stop.”

User: “I’m sorry to say this, but the info didn’t just come from nowhere. So you must’ve had some involvement.”

I wanted to throw my phone at the wall because I knew exactly what they meant. But was it really my fault that I decided to tell that fucking driver about myself? Was it my fault for trusting someone who really did make my life easier? And did I really tell him enough to figure out everything? I thought back to his balloon analogy and hated how it sounded like something true and inevitable in my mind.

My phone buzzed again, but I never got to read what came next. Because at that moment, I heard a metallic rattling come from my front door.

The rattling of a key.

I think I momentarily whited out in sheer terror — I can’t even remember what my reaction was. All I know is that the next thing I saw was my open door and someone standing there with a key in hand.

That’s when I screamed.

Man: “Please calm down! Sorry for startling you.”

It took me a while, but I realized that the man in front of me wasn’t the Driver — which probably would’ve given me a heart attack. Instead it was an older man wearing a sweater vest and glasses, and although he had one of those transparent face masks too, I could see that he was giving a concerned frown — rather than a smile like I’d been expecting. That last part was probably why I just stood there and let him continue talking.

Man: “Let me introduce myself. Here.”

He handed me a business card, which stated that this guy was, of all things, a psychiatrist.

Psychiatrist: “You’ve been suffering mental issues for quite some time, and let me tell you, they’re not something anyone can deal with on their own. So I’m here to offer my assistance. By being around you, I can help you with your mental state at any time, and monitor how you’re progressing.”

What he actually said was probably longer — I’m paraphrasing because in the moment I was freaking out the more he explained. Mental issues? Since when? When I asked him, I immediately regretted it.

He knew everything. Everything.

He knew how I’d spend most of my nights after work, even before quarantine, just laying in bed, barely moving and waiting hours for my brain to turn off.

That the reason I stopped hanging out with friends after uni was because I was so anxious and tired and detached around them.

That I regularly contemplated giving up on school, and now work, just to make everything in my life stop moving, make it all stop pulling me apart in every direction.

It was all super detailed and on-the-mark, as if we’d already been having therapy sessions for months now. Which, looking back on it, made this even more nonsensical because I’ve shown that side of myself and shared those feelings with absolutely zero people. But it was like he read my mind, because before I could come to that conclusion he started talking again.

Psychiatrist: “By knowing this about you, I can help you rehabilitate and eventually overcome these issues. You don’t have to carry them all on your own anymore. We’ll work them out together.”

I sound like a broken record, but he had a point. With this professional psychiatrist already knowing the details of my problems, he’d be able to help me out way more than what I could’ve done for myself.

It was… very relieving, actually.

It made me realize that all this time, I wanted someone to know about me and the shit I was going through, without me having to take the time and vulnerability to put myself out there. This guy already knew, and he didn’t judge me for it, and he wanted to help me with it. When I looked at his concerned face, and grasped his business card in my hand, I felt like I had found the way out I’d been searching for, for god knows how long.

Again, his timing was perfect, because right as I finished that thought he handed me a signup form. I reached out and took it, and I think I teared up while doing that because I was just so overwhelmed. He made the kind of warm, polite eye contact you’d expect from a therapist and then smiled at me. He smiled — and that’s when I saw it.

The front door. It was wide open.

Because he unlocked it.

Because my lock — my permission — didn’t matter anymore.

Because he gets to decide. Because they get to decide how unguarded, how easy to open, my front door is.

Not me. I have no say. No control.

And at that moment, I did lose control — of my body as I shut the door and then socked the guy in the face so hard that he immediately crumpled to the floor.

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything, because I didn’t give him any time to spout more bullshit, between me pummeling his head nonstop and me finally saying things I should’ve said way, way earlier.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what you want to do with all that shit you found out about me. I get to decide when to share it, who to share it with, if I should even share it at all. Me, get it? I GET TO DECIDE. ME, ONLY ME. DID YOUR FRIEND HEAR THAT TOO?”

In hindsight, it was kind of ridiculous of me to think that there was a transceiver or camera transmitting back to the Driver — but I was still convinced he was watching over me somehow, so I just kept punching harder to make my point.

I don’t know how long that went on for, but eventually two things got my attention: the psychiatrist’s lack of movement and the gross, oily feeling of blood covering my hands. When I finally looked down at his head properly, I nearly puked my guts out.

And then I think I whited out for a bit — I just killed a man in cold blood inside my own home, and my brain was crashing from trying to process that. When I could feel myself breathing again, still hunched over this psychiatrist’s now-dead body, I felt a weird kind of inner bliss. It wasn’t pretty, but I finally won myself some peace and quiet from at least one of the people who were taking me away from myself.

But that’s the thing: that was just one guy. Who’s to say there weren’t more? I looked over my shoulder at the front door and scrambled to lock it. But I couldn’t even feel relief from that, because looking down at the proof of my crime reminded me about the key: was it really just that one key? What if there were more “helpers” arriving and ready to unlock my door right now? I looked at that sole entrance into my apartment and felt dread knotting my stomach.

The front door, any shut door, was useless. They knew. They already knew. I didn’t know how, but that Driver and his twisted network definitely knew that I’d murdered one of their own. I dropped to my knees and started shivering all over, feeling like was I already being watched and punished with no way out.

But that’s it.

That’s what they want me to feel.

If I let myself think I don’t have control anymore — control over what people can and can’t know about me — then they win. These fuckers that drove me to literal bloody murder would have the last laugh.

And I’m not gonna let them. I already did that by writing this whole thing up and describing all of their techniques, all of their ways of preying on people like me to change the way they think so that stuff like this sounds acceptable. In the end I didn’t cave. I broke free. But it cost me losing enough sanity to beat a person to death. That, and knowing that I’ll be behind bars while the people who got me to this point will get away and repeat this on who knows how many other people. But at least I’ll get this information out there and warn hopefully a few other would-be victims.

I’m running out of time. I actually don’t know when the cops will arrive but somehow, some way, those other “helpers” will do something and I’ll be fucked. So to make sure I get this all posted before I lose Internet access probably forever, let me just end it with the simple, obvious thing I should’ve already known from the begi

DON’T LET THEM IN DON’T GIVE YOUR PRIVACY AWAY SHARING IS UP TO YOU NOT THEM DON’T GIVE IT TO THEM DON’T