I Subscribed to My Ex on Twitch So I Could Finally Say Goodbye
Sam and I met in a Barnes and Noble right before New Years Eve of 2019. I had sworn off dating anyone to focus on my career and recover from my cross-country move from NY to LA.
But in a quaint bookstore off the highway in sleepy Ventura, I took a weekend to myself, and met someone who changed everything.
While trying to find the correct spot to get in line, I realized I was in the wrong place. The gentleman behind me quickly stepped aside when he realized what had happened, and let me get in front of him.
I thanked him, embarrassed, and took my place at the front of line. And as I waited there, it dawned on me what a kind gesture that had been. Turning around, I playfully asked what he was buying today, not expecting the man to have such a charmingly goofy smile, or for his blue eyes to be so warm.
He held out two re-prints of the manga Akira and my heart melted. I looked back up and quipped about the graphic novels and suddenly we were effortlessly chatting. When my spot in line was called, I looked back at him apologetically and said goodbye. He gave me a sweet look and shooed me along.
When I was checked out, I was surprised to see him waiting by the door, struggling on whether or not to leave. I walked up to him, and touched him on the shoulder.
To my relief, he had waited up to talk, and we exchanged numbers. Thrilled, I asked him if he was doing anything that day and he said he had to make it to a dentist’s appointment. I only found this out later, but after I left, his car refused to start in the parking lot.
For two and a half years, Sam became a best friend and a partner I had no idea I even needed. He had a guffaw that could make even the grumpiest people smile. And there were very few people out there who felt as healing as it did to be around him. He didn’t judge, and he heard you out when you shared things that may have made you feel stupid. I had never met anyone who made me feel so deeply adored and safe all at once — in a way that never felt manipulative or controlling. Something I wasn’t used to.
Sam was an incredible artist and sculptor, and soon enough not only did we find ourselves living and working together, but we found ourselves talking day and night about starting a two-man game studio — so we could finally play the kinds of games we wanted to see on shelves.
Within a year, we formed and ran a now-defunct Arts Non-profit that focused on helping artists become more financially independent. COVID shuttered our physical doors in 2019, and our online community dwindled shortly after. Determined to make the best of our time at home, we finally started putting together a proof of concept for a game, and wrote and animated a short together — meant to be shown to studios for the dream of getting picked up.
Except we didn’t see how hard we were pushing ourselves despite our stressful day jobs. We talked often about how much we feared the crunch of going back into the industry, and how it killed our souls, but in the same breaths we would turn the corner of our tiny two-bedroom in Burbank, and set unrealistic expectations for ourselves about releasing a game on Steam by the Holidays.
When things fell apart, towards the release of vaccinations in Spring, we blamed ourselves but lacked the vocabulary to say what exactly felt so wrong. As we pushed ourselves deeper into these expectations, I started to spiral deeper into depression, and ran away from dealing with my childhood demons in therapy.
Sam too, spiralled into his own depression, suddenly unsure if he had signed up for a commitment he had even wanted in the first place. I imagine he felt trapped. I began to fear more and more like one of us wouldn’t survive COVID––or that I would lose him forever. The more scared I became, the more I tried to pull him, and our work towards me for comfort.
There began to be days where Sam stopped wanting to go outside altogether, and played hours of VR shooter games, too tired to even have a conversation with anyone by the time I clocked out of work and cooked dinner.
The house began to clutter with undone dishes and unwashed laundry, and we began to bicker. Our game, seeming so within our reach, and suddenly the only thing we had energy to talk about — started to feel like an emotional trap.
Finally, days before Easter, and a month before becoming eligible for our vaccinations, we decided to end things after a particularly rough argument that left us both hurt and winded. I could see that he simply wanted me gone, and his space returned to him.
After almost three years of working so feverishly towards a future we both wanted to share so badly, we were suddenly unable to recognize each other. Hurt, I asked if he wanted me to move to a different apartment and he quietly sat in bed, saying nothing. I knew then, it was over.
It took me weeks of searching and applying in LA to find an apartment on such short notice. In the meantime, I slept on the leather couch the brothers had inherited from their dad, and cried myself to sleep as quietly as I could. When I moved, Sam and his brother graciously helped, and after the last box was moved in, I could feel a relief lift in him, as well as myself.
It was followed shortly after by a deep grief.
My romantic partner of almost three years, my creative partner, and my best friend was now gone forever. During all of that time, we had woken up almost every morning next to one another, and began to talk about making art.
A month later, he and his brother packed up and moved from Los Angeles to Austin.
Waking now meant doing so alone, to a contemplative cup of coffee, in a bed that still felt too big for just myself. Nights were spent on networking in Discord servers related to Animation — a field I didn’t want to give up just because I had lost my other half — or tooling around with my pilot scripts. On Tuesdays, I busied myself with therapy and poured my heart out to my therapist.
The first month without him felt like hell. I dug myself into work, phone calls to catch up with friends, and binging TV shows. I watched anything anyone recommended, hoping to wind down with good writing that I could possibly use as inspiration for my spec scripts.
I got lost in old anime, vampire mockumentaries, and even picked up watching Mythic Quest, a show about a video game studio––which blindsided me with a mid-season episode about a couple that meets in a game store and decide to create a two-man studio. I watched the episode many more times that month, sobbing each time I watched Doc and Bean fall apart, feeling like––in a way––I was watching an episode about myself.
Within a few months, I think made progress. I got signed on as a writer on a couple of small productions, which meant that at least something I was doing was working.
Months went by. First 2, then 5, then 7. August came and went, as did Sam’s birthday. He turned 30 without me there, a milestone passed, hundreds of miles away. I contemplated reaching out but stopped myself.
As each new month began I expected to feel less connected to my ex. To have the grief settle and mellow, finally. I tried going on a few dates to disastrous results. Things just didn’t feel right. At all.
Each time I came back around to missing Sam, I beat myself up, and flared up with shame. He didn’t want me in his life any longer, so what self-respecting person would keep trying to be in it? How would that allow either of us to grow?
The longer time went on, the harder it became to talk about the loss. After all, it was not as if anyone had died, yet I couldn’t help feeling like a huge part of my life had just died. And the more I kept feeling that regret, the creepier it began to make me feel. I began to somehow feel like I was betraying my ex, by not being able to get over him. It felt disrespectful.
During a late night cocktail hour in my room, I explored through artist hashtags in Animation on Twitter, hungry to at least use my nighttime hours to try to get myself ahead.
That’s when it scrolled across my screen: Sam, suddenly popping back in my feed, posting about streaming on Twitch. I was surprised. Firstly, because I hadn’t expected to see his face again, and also because he had decided to regularly take up streaming again — a hobby he had tried to make a professional go at, a year prior. Somewhere deep inside, I knew it he’d wanted to make it work.
Suddenly, I was clicking on the link, disregarding all the Adult Emotional alarm bells that were sounding in my head: Don’t you think you should just keep scrolling? This isn’t any of your business. Don’t do this to yourself.
Yet suddenly there he was — doodling again and chatting — just like I remembered, cheerfully putting together a large-scale pencil drawing on his familiar, oversized drawing pad. Part of me wanted to cry, but another part of me wanted to interact. Badly. I knew for a fact that he didn’t want to hear from me, though.
And then a feeling inside me formed that was unfamiliar. I knew it was crazy, anti-social, maybe, to do what I did next. But for once, instead of hesitating, and feeling ashamed, I decided to get the message out there anonymously. Feeling like some sort of clandestine villain, I created a new account on Twitch, linking it to an old email. Then, I waited for another stream.
The next time Sam started streaming was a few days later, as I was getting out of work. I logged onto my weird, burner Twitch account and clicked on his Icon, which read: LIVE. My heart started to hammer in my chest and I felt silly at myself. If I mostly kept to myself, he wouldn’t know it was me, and besides, I wasn’t going to stay for too long, anyway.
With a sinking feeling, I already knew I was trying to justify something stupid.
I popped in and out of the stream for the next hour as I did errands around the house, laughing at his interactions with an amorous German, and enjoying listening to him as he recounted what it was like to live in a different state.
I still felt creepy and guilty, but now slightly less so now that I knew he was okay. He was teaching college classes regularly now online, and was actively freelancing. He sounded confident and happy about his progress. My tired, aching heart felt a moment of happiness. He wasn’t here anymore, but he was okay, and that’s all that mattered.
I don’t know when I finally jumped in and began to interact as my strange, grammatically-challenged alter ego, but I began to chat with Sam about what he liked about his new home, if he liked his new job. It was weird and sad, but somehow it felt like meeting all over again at Barnes and Noble, as he began to tell me things about himself.
He began to recount that he had an ambitious project in mind, and he was trying to gather up the nerve to make it happen. I encouraged him, telling him that he could totally kill it, given time.
This made him visibly happy on camera when he leaned in to read the chat. My heart leapt into my throat, unsure whether it brought me joy or anguish to see him respond to these words. He thanked me, and shortly after I signed off.
Feeling giddy and foolish, and almost punch drunk, I spent the next few days biding my time. During my next therapy session, I admitted to my therapist what I had done.
“I’m really embarrassed,” I told him through our Zoom session.
On the other side of the screen, he sat in a bright-white office, decorated with blocks of modern art canvases on the far wall.
“Why are you embarrassed?” he hummed back at me.
“Well, because I know this is dishonest and stupid and I just want to grow up and move on. But it just felt — I don’t know — good to be able to say all the nice things I’ve been wanting to say this whole time.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“Yeah,” I squirmed in my chair, waiting for the catch, “But I don’t think it’s probably the best. Since it feels a little like I’m disrespecting his privacy.”
“And you’d be right,” he smiled calmly. “You did a good thing, but don’t do it again.”
I nodded at my therapist and promised myself that I really, really, would listen.
Except the next day, Sam jumped on stream again, and as I was wrapping up errands after work, and I saw the notification of his stream going live cross my screen. My chest ached, and once again, I found myself clicking and joining once again.
Once again, I promised I wouldn’t say anything, but felt compelled to compliment his work as he began to sculpt in Blender. He was getting so quick and precise with his sculpting now, a sign of considerable progress. I sent a few messages in chat, which he saw immediately, and perked up — recognizing my account name from the last stream. I refused to let myself take satisfaction at that, letting him know the work looked great so far.
Eventually he began to talk about a project he’d had on the backburner for a long time. It was something we used to talk about together almost every day, so of course I knew what he was referring to, but as my alter ego, I listened intently, letting him know how cool that sounded.
He seemed heartened, and nodded, saying he would message me and keep me in the loop about the project so I could play. My heart began to race again. Sure, I wanted him to create the project because he’d been talking about it now for years — but I couldn’t play it with him. Surely he’d find out somehow that it was me.
Another chatter — the amorous German — helpfully recommended that he start an email list or a Voice Discord, to communicate with everyone. My palms began to sweat, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. My therapist’s words came back to haunt me: you did a good thing, but don’t do it again. I typed some excited affirmatives into the chat and then signed off shortly after, hands shaking.
My third and final time popping into chat, Sam began to ask me questions about myself. Scrambling, I made up a story about a different hometown, and told him about a job I was working now, that he didn’t know I had. I turned the conversation back to him and he began to share his experiences being stuck in Quarantine during COVID. Time he’d been stuck with me, except he was careful to leave me out of the description.
He talked about his agoraphobia lasting for two years of our relationship openly for the first time, and my heart broke softly. He laughed and said that maybe it was time for him to start getting outside more, and into therapy, and without thinking, my alter ego wrote:
Do it. It’s hard to get started, but I know u will do it.
He started to laugh and thanked me, “Thanks, maybe I finally will get around to it. I appreciate that.” He started to clear up his drawing desk on stream for the night, and closed the book he had been using for reference––it was Volume Two of Akira––one of the books he had bought the first day we met, and one of his favorites.
I knew then I couldn’t quite keep doing this to myself, or to him. This was a turning point where things would start hurting more and more.
The stream finished up not too long afterwards, as the light began to grow dim, and his drawing came to completion. He gave it a once over, thanked us for joining him, and let us know he’d be reaching out about his game project individually.
I knew that even if I did end up receiving that message, I would let it sit, undisturbed in my inbox until he invariably forgot about me.
As it was meant to be.
I would stay here, to finally make something of my chaotic life, and he would continue on making magic in Austin — creating worlds and bringing people joy––hopefully, most importantly to himself.
In my mind, my one regret was making Sam feel like he was ever any less than himself. My doubts and fears — rather than addressing them clearly with him — I had made him feel responsible for, and suddenly he felt like he had to answer for a world’s worth of misgivings.
He wasn’t ever going to solve COVID or make us feel like we could support ourselves as artists just because he was someone I deeply loved. No one in the world could do that.
Realistically, I hadn’t been prepared or vocal enough to let my partner know that battling CPTSD was hard, especially in Quarantine — and that I really needed his patience and acceptance more than anything else, so I could finally go back to therapy.
If you’re someone struggling with a history of sexual abuse, triage is necessary. And you need to unlearn so much about your own self-worth to even dig into the worthwhile stuff. I just wasn’t ready. Either way — it didn’t matter. Now here we were, separated by state lines and hundreds of miles of desert.
Did I think that being someone else and typing out affirmations in a Twitch chat would change things? Or fix them?
Not really.
I know enough to know that nothing will change, that I the only variable I can change is myself. I can only grow, and hope to do better, with whatever future I build for myself. But I guess, in a small way, I’m happy I finally got to say what I’d been holding onto.
Do I think that people should make sock-puppet accounts to talk to exes that don’t want to speak to them anymore? No. I will not be re-subbing, and part of this essay is, in fact, to highlight concern that parasocial relationships are real, and humans are built to find meaning in everything.
Would he probably be really hurt if he found out the truth? Yeah, most likely. Any reasonable person would be. I regret that, too.
But I guess, despite the regrets , and perhaps this makes me selfish — there was something else that happened inside me — even if it was just for a moment.
I finally felt a fleeting moment of peace typing out the words:
Ur doing good. Keep going.
