Delusions

I had a brief friendship with a woman who convinced herself she was in a six-year-long relationship with a man who didn’t know she existed. 

On the first day we met, I hugged her as she cried about her broken marriage to her ex-husband. She confessed that he was everything she wanted, that he was perfect, until the night after they said their “I do’s.” They were playing a card game at the dining table with their daughter when, out of nowhere, he slapped her across the face. She remained in that relationship and went on to have four more kids with him. She fell pregnant for the sixth time, but her body didn’t allow her to carry the child through all the beatings she took. The thing is, I don’t know if any of what she told me was true. 

She divulged to me and practically anyone else who would listen, details of her Prince Charming. A man who had been sent to redeem all the wrongdoings of her past relationship. He was half her age, an international musician, and one of two members in an electronic band. Based off appearances I thought it was an odd pairing, but I thought to myself “weirder things have been true.” In one of our conversations, she told me her partner would pay tribute to their love by posting photos of himself wearing her favourite colour. A non-verbal reply to a photo of her own that she had sent him, in which she painted her eyelids gold and purple. He would send her subtle messages by wearing a particular jumper on stage; to let her know he was thinking of her. A testament of love.  She even had two tattoos of his band’s album cover and logo, one above each breast. She labelled this dedication as being “branded.” A testament of love?  

I have a lot more discernment now than I did then, but I believed the stories she was telling me. I thought it was more reasonable for a woman to be wearing a wedding band from a man’s proposal, over parading around a ring that she had bought herself and declaring it to be a product of another’s commitment to her. But something felt off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. So, I shared my thoughts with my housemate, who gave me a prompt I’ll never forget. “Can you imagine them eating ice-cream together.” A simple cue, no double entendre, no ambiguity, just a clear invitation to visualise the possibility.  I couldn’t imagine the scenario. I couldn’t even picture them sat next to each other, and as time went on it only became more ridiculous and less imaginable.  

I mean sure, men go out of their way to have secret relationships all the time, famous or not. I’ve experienced it first-hand. With a man who had his image printed on t-shirts that were worn by people nation-wide.  

In a couple years I’ll be older than he was when he was found dead. 

A man that was the “face of the company” (which has since gone bankrupt) who was trying to fly me out to Puerto Rico to join his relationship with his model girlfriend. 

They’ve just had their first child.  

Good for them. 

A man who was a vocalist of a band who was later outed for being a sexual predator.  

My involvement with him was so long ago that I sat staring blankly at my computer, struggling to remember his name. I had to go through an old social media account and backtrack through conversations to find his name. I looked him up and found he got hitched a couple of days ago.  

Good for... 

A less notable man who I caught the attention of was a winner of an American reality competition TV series. His way of approaching me was by telling me I was his dream girl but that I might be too young for him...at over twenty years my senior, he was right.  

The last article written about him was published three years ago and it seems he’s completely fallen into the shadows of stardom.  

Looking at the social media presence of the woman who believed she was engaged to an international DJ illuminated a clear and full image of the reality of the relationship. She tagged her ‘hubby’ as her twinflame in her Instagram bio. She even named her dog after him...the same dog she created an Instagram account for her, tagging herself as the dog’s mummy and her hubby’s account as the daddy. Her stories were full of support for him. One was even posted backstage at an event he was performing at, featuring his decks and an audience that were going wild for him and his performer counterpart. This story was captioned with “It was so good to see my baby perform today.” But this picture wasn’t taken by her. It was a screenshot she had taken from a photographer’s account. This became a pattern of hers I noticed. Taking footage recorded by others and posting it as if she was the one who captured the moment. I thought back to another story she had told me, where she had surprised him at one of his shows. In full rave attire, with fishnet stockings and a skimpy bodysuit that barely contained her voluptuous figure, she ran up to him to greet him.  

He reacted by running from her as fast as he could in the opposite direction. 

Her Instagram posts grew more concerning with each passing day. She shared videos of her supposed fiancé, claiming she had inspired the songs he featured. She mentioned him in nearly every caption and held conversations with herself under his posts. 

In one comment, she wrote “my purple jumper” beneath a selfie of him wearing his band’s merchandise. The jumper was not purple. 

On another post, she left a thread of comments repeatedly telling him she loved him. In a separate thread, she expressed grief and betrayal, venting frustration, declaring the relationship over. But further up, a comment left a week later offered forgiveness, taking him back and professing her love once again. 

All a one-sided conversation. 

It didn’t end there. She flew all the way to his motherland where she stayed at a hotel proudly posting a picture of a message that was left by staff as a welcome gift. In an array of markers, there was a happy anniversary message addressed to both her and her husband. Wishing them a lifetime full of happiness and love. She shared this and the view overlooking her balcony, saying that she had the best night seeing her baby.  

I stopped following her after this and titrated our communications, hoping she would stop asking to catch up after I realised just how unwell she was. Eventually, she did. It’s now been roughly two and a half years since we last spoke.  

Recently, I checked her social media and saw that she now performs locally as an entertainer. She appears at events where a host introduces her by reading a script she has written, announcing her to the audience awaiting her stage presence. I know this because she uploads footage of these performances to YouTube. 

In her most recent upload, the host referred to her as the “taken property” of the musician’s band. She also titled the video “Tribute to Our Love”, once again naming the band directly. 

The only other information I know is that her ex-husband has full custody of their children, and she seems to only visit on celebrations such as birthdays.  

Growing up as a daughter to parents who both worked in the public sector of mental health, I have heard countless stories of people lost in delusions but had never encountered it myself to this degree. The closest I can think looking back was someone I was friends with when I was seventeen. Identifying as non-binary, they had adopted the name of a fictional character from a popular American TV series, depicted as a school shooter...They told me and many others that they had multiple personalities, a mental health condition that has since been renamed dissociative identity disorder (DID).  

Many may recognise a fantastical representation of this disorder from films like David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), James Mangold’s Identity (2003) and more recently M. Night Shyamalan’s Split (2016). In which the films portray a power struggle of personalities fighting for dominance, with a narrative that acts as a metaphor for internal psychological conflict. However, many discredit the existence of this being a legitimate disorder altogether. One of them is my own mother. This friend of mine who claimed to have multiple souls living inside of her, told me that two of her personalities were even dating each other, and that the person I was often speaking to was her dominant personality. At the time I didn’t question it, I had an overly accepting mindset of “Why would someone lie about that?” A way of thinking that allowed me to continue surrounding myself with people who crafted their realities and would shape mine too, with lies, grand misrepresentations and narrative rewrites.  

Ten years ago, when a friend lied about their mental health, it was before the rise of internet personalities fabricating disorders for attention. Yet the act of Pseudologia Fantastica; pathologically lying to garner attention, has been well documented throughout history.  

Many stories dating back to the sixteenth century are centered around a historical figure by the name of Johann Georg Faust. An astrologer who gained notoriety through his use of black magic or con art, depending which sources you rely on. He claimed he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Witnesses even declared to have seen him accompanied by Mephistopheles, a demon who would shapeshift into the form of a dog, horse, bird or strange beasts that they couldn’t relate to a specific animal. It was also documented that he boasted about being able to recreate any of Jesus’s miracles; turn water into wine, raise the dead, conjure food, create life and levitate. In a society ruled by paranoia and the church, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he was exiled for heresy, blasphemy, and dealings with the devil. But he was nothing more than a fraud. Johann Georg Faust died while conducting an alchemical experiment. His mangled corpse was found by his students and the state of his body only continued to feed speculation among locals, as they believed the devil had come to claim his soul. In a game of broken telephone, these events transformed from a death caused by a laboratory explosion to a room being found splattered with blood, claw marks on the walls, and a body torn limb from limb. 

Circling back to my pre-adolescent years, my mother would tell me stories of her patients. Stories that breach medical confidentiality. One of my mother’s patients believed he was God. He would run around naked and paint his nails purple. A  colour that seems to be a favoured by those living out their fantasy separate to the timeline of reality, but that’s a skewed rationale based on the handful of recollections I can account for. Regardless, we are facing an unprecedented epidemic due to the current climate of the world and everyone’s access to AI and other tools that are being used to feed delusions. We have more access to celebrities than any other generation before us. We can connect with someone on the other side of the globe in seconds, but that’s not without pitfalls. There are grown adults who put the names of famous men in their bios and announce that they are the center of their universe. Individuals who write perverse literature (if you can even call it that), about A-listers they fantasise about, casting themselves as their lover in the stories they write. People who believe they are in relationships with actors that are publicly in long-term commitments with people who, let’s face it, have a lot more to offer that person than you do. Apps are being released to generate videos of conventionally attractive men hugging you based off the exportation of a single image. People who never grew out of the phase of putting up posters of their crushes on their walls when they were teenagers and carrying that habit all the way into their thirties and forties. Or on a more sinister scale, those who buy into conspiracies of alien races ruling the world, with theories that intersect with antisemitism and racism.  

People are unwell and it’s only going to get worse as the boundary between reality and fabrication blurs with the advancement of technology.