So I took what I thought was my only option: I broke up with him publicly, before I lost my nerve. I did it in a tweet.

I was slammed for that. Tactless! Vicious! Heartless! Poor Lucas Dormer dumped by “love of his life” Bettie Hughes via Twitter! Is she secretly hooking up with former flame Isaiah Redding?

Lucas’s fans, who hated me when we were dating and sent me a ceaseless flow of death threats, took things to the next level. I was too ugly for Lucas. I was a slut. He’s going to find a woman who deserves him, who’s pretty and talented enough to be with him, and I’ll regret what I did for the rest of my stupid, meaningless life. Emails and comments bombarded me until I locked my accounts (coward!), but they emailed my family members, friends I hadn’t spoken to in ages, my middle school teachers, my neighbors.

Lucas milked the breakup for all it was worth, crying to every media outlet. Turned the whole world against me. I’ve seen video clips of him wiping his eyes on a concert stage: “She’ll be sorry. I even pity her myself. Someday she’ll look back and see what she had and be sorry.” Waves of girls in the audience whooped in agreement, booing my name. I remember one of them held up a big white posterboard, covered in glitter, that had a picture of a Little Debbie Swiss Roll on it and the words blink if you want me to kill her.

In less than two months, he was professing his love for someone else, a soccer star named Dani. He rewrote our story, claiming that now that he was in a perfect relationship and found his true soul mate, he could see that he never actually loved me at all. Dani was his first love. She’d be his love until his dying day. They lasted longer than I expected, breaking up only a few short weeks ago.

A slow, quivering exhale leaves my body as my stare burns through the picture of us kissing. I wish I could reach inside it and yank that Bettie out. There are a few comments mixed in with all the Bettie-bashing, about how fucking weird it is to ruminate over the marriage he might have had with an ex-girlfriend he’d never even been engaged to. Not to mention, the engagement ring he posted is the first picture that pops up when you Google “giant engagement ring.” Others have tagged Dani with #DodgedABullet.

Any time I’ve ever tried to defend myself against Lucas, his horde of fans come back swinging with a vengeance. I am the villain. Any claims to the contrary don’t fit their narrative.

Now that I’ve deprogrammed myself, I am able to identify this picture as staged. He took pictures of everything we did, planning activities around photo ops. Constantly grabbing me, pulling me to him, even when I was busy. Hugging me while I was on the phone, hugging me while I was typing up emails, hugging me when I was trying to get dressed, trying to eat. Holding his phone out, snapping pictures. He did it especially when I was in a bad mood, annoyed with him, because it forced me to put on a smile. Forced me to let him hold me, kiss me, for the camera, when I needed space. Love bombing.