I was
so very depressed after learning I was a victim of being scammed. I just
could not understand what was happening to me. How could this person
use me like that and how could I have allowed this to happen. I have to
share how I met him and why I could not understand. I was divorced 15
years ago, remained single trying to focus on raising my children,
healing myself from a 10 year failed marriage. I was not ready to put
myself out in the dating world, did not like who I was and did not want
to make my children go through the process of bringing someone new into
there lives. Divorce just does not effect the couple, it effects the
children more so than a marriage full of resentment, arguing. They feel
at least my parents are together. Anyway after getting them raised and
on there own and me liking who I was finally, I decided to do the online
dating thing. It wasn’t that I could not meet people or interact with
them, but it was
the new social media way of finding a potential companion/relationship.
I did my research into online dating, the supposed safe way of meeting
people.. I never heard of romance scammers and it didn’t even cross my
mind they were out there. I signed up to a paid dating site, had my
share of mutual responses both local and out of state men. I met this
man who was widower looking to get back into dating after 3 years, we
conversed on that site several times before he gave me his phone number
and asked to speak with me over phone. Even this went on for about a
month and then we met in person, had a brief relationship before he took
a job in Malaysia.I checked out his contract with whom he was suppose
to work for, checked out business and made sure it was the truth. He
even said he understood if I didn’t want to continue with him being so
far away and for a long period of time.. We kept our relationship online
and by phone for over a year, never once did
he ask me for money, never asked for anything but my time and
attention, we even had video messaging. It wasn’t until about a month
before I found out about the scam, he was due to come back to the
states, told me he over stayed his work Visa and needed to stay longer
work to come up with funds. I started to receive gift cards to help him
make purchases and to ship to him so he could get the extra funds. I
never thought I was doing something wrong until I was visited by a
Postal Inspector telling me I was being used as a mule to purchase
things and reship, that gift cards were stolen from other people. You
can image my shock, my slap in the face. I confronted him immediately, I
was outraged. I was being prepped all along, that my so called
relationship with this man was a fake.
Anxiety immediately took over, I couldn’t
think, sleep, eat or concentrate at home or work. My daughter found
SOTH, where I immediately went to for help. As I’ve said I did not know
there was such a thing as romance scams. I wanted answers, needed know
why this happened to me. I eventually had to seek Mental Health therapy.
That was my eye opener to depression and how the medical field and
public really did not know how to treat my type of depression. I asked
how can this be? How can the medical field not know that there are
people out there suffering from devastation from romance scams. Why
isn’t there any adequate help and resources out there? So my search
began: I found a lot of subjects on credit card
scams, scams on natural disaster relief programs, financial institution
scam. But not one article on romance scams. Wow that said a lot in it’s
self..
We go thru a lot of
emotional changes after we have learned we’ve been scammed. It is best
described as we suffer a loss much like divorce, death of a spouse or
end to a long-term relationship. It is similar to PTSD (post traumatic
stress disorder). The devastation of losing the person we thought loved
us but betrayed us is overwhelming. We experience embarrassment,
humiliation, our self esteem is crushed, we become angry and want
revenge, we want answers to something that cannot be answered. To us we
believed we were in a relationship, to them it’s just another job, we
are just another person to help them in there crimes, we are not even
considered a human being to them, that is why we cannot understand or
find the answers. And then depression sets in to the fullest. We miss
and crave the attention that our scammer gave us, the sweet words, the
attention we so wanted and most of all the love we had. It is
documented that 6.7% of the U.S. population suffers from some type of
depression. These symptoms range from everyday struggles, the up’s and
down’s of daily living to chronic mental health conditions such as
Bipolar, Manic depressive and the list goes on. We all experience
loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness, anxiety, sleep deprivation, lack
of concentration and mental fatigue. With romance scam we reach all of
these symptoms quickly in such a very short time. So that was why I was
floored that our Mental Health professionals know so little of what we
are going thru, why they have a hard time understanding what we are
going thru. Most just want to give us medication as they do not know who
to counsel us.
Most therapies tell us we need to confront
what it is that is causing our pain, our depression. Find answers and
begin our closure. It’s just not that simple for us as romance victims.
We try to get by each day with the interaction, we try everyday to find
ourselves again, we grieve, we cry and then we accept what has happened
and we talk with people who share the same experience as we do.
Our healing begins by
shutting out these people, by not letting them back in, we begin by
educating and protecting ourselves from them, learn there language,
learn who the scammers are online from the real ones. Help educate
others about them. We cannot change who the social media site allow on
there, money is there motivation and as long as they receive there fees
they are not interested in what happens. We heal by knowing we are
special people, we have large hearts, are caring people and never give
up on that. We learn to like who we are again. We all have depression in
our lives, some may require medication to assist us for a time and
that’s okay. And we when we feel down, talk to someone in your group who
understands. We all learn from every experience in life, some lessons
are harder to learn from but in the end we can, we survive. We are the
winners.
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