Hi SickInSanDiego. I’m gvralls, the friend of Nguyen mentioned above, just came back after a long time away from this forum. My old username was tied to a defunct email so I created this name. Let me please share an update. It is kind of therapeutic to read what I had shared before. It hasn’t been more than a few weeks since I last saw Nguyen but we finally broke up. I don’t miss her at all but I was in a type of “trauma bond’ that took time to break. Here is what transpired in a nutshell, and this is my interpretation.
Nguyen lives in Canada and I’m a short drive across the border, in USA. Covid hit and March 7th 2020 was our last day together before things really changed. Canada closed the border and my company got really busy. Where she lived, neighbors were calling the police if someone left home to visit another person, it was extremely harsh with curfews too. US airlines continued to operate Canada/USA though, so by May 2020 we were back together as she flew down to be with me. We had a marvelous time because casinos were closed, it was so nice. We slept long hours and relaxed and did not argue or fight at all. Looking back, this was the only time we stopped fighting, when the casinos closed. It gives hope to gambling addicts that if you can break this habit you might stop arguing, if that’s an issue in your life.
Canada had this 14 day quarantine scheme, so she would stay with me then go back and be forced to quarantine alone at home, then I’d buy her another ticket and she’d fly down, getting covid tests which was just ridiculous but that’s what we had to do. We traveled to hot springs and the California coast in our camper van. One of her kids killed themself that summer, could have been only covid isolation issue but I think it was mainly from abuse as a child, both parents were out gambling every night and there was a note left behind which I read, saying this.
Distraught from her child’s suicide, Nguyen persevered and we saw each other more often than before, and she had several manic episodes in which she insisted she would kill herself but it was all words, as she did not do anything to hurt herself.
Tribal casinos all opened up soon after but Nguyen was low key and not losing a lot of money. The border closure wore on and on. By May 2021 Nguyen got first vaccine and was fine. A few months later she got shot #2 and I was on the phone with her immediately after, she had a severe reaction. She had slurred speech and very weak but insisted on leaving the clinic alone. Right away she became hysterical and angry at the drop of a hat. I won’t go into too much detail but she yelled and screamed at me and I did not put 2+2 together. She started being very mean, and blocking my phone for hours, something she had never done before. Nguyen was tired of the border closure, quarantine, and just became hysterical and her face changed a lot too, she looked a lot older. Her personality became more extreme, so when she came to visit she would have to gamble more and more and get really mad so it wasn’t joyful in the least. Then in November she was introduced in Canada to a widower who had some money, not terribly rich but on par with what I own, and she ran off with him. I took this soooo hard. Nguyen then played this game in which she insisted she did not like that guy at all, and continued to come see me. The border opened for car travel so we started seeing each other more, but she was angry and really insisted on gambling every single day and she had changed her personality. I still kept this going but 6 months later she had moved into this guy’s house yet still insisted he was old (late 60s) and she loved me. How crazy is that? So I was part of this crazy triangle but I kept a level head and distance from her because I could see she had changed, by this time I concluded, after reading many other discussions, that the vaccine can cause personality changes that mirrored what happened to her. This is not conclusive but it’s my opinion.
I ended up taking Nguyen on a monthlong trip overseas but she was acting strangely. Eventually her kids (in their 30s) started saying she had to stop seeing me which is fine. She wouid still call every day and run down here every two weeks but only for two days and it was all for gambling and I felt uneasy especially with her personality lacking love and just focused on gambling. She apparently gambles with friends constantly in Canada as well, as they have card games almost nightly which go from late evening until mid morning.
I went no-contact with her and said maybe next year we can see about getting back together but now that this entire year 2023 only seeing her maybe 12 days total, it’s a relief to be away from her and I don’t miss casinos at all.
How are things going with you? What do you think of this?