Soleil

And so I was like doing a bunch of paintings of Elliot Smith and I posted it online and my ex found me through that.

He messaged me and was like, oh my gosh, this is so cool.

I've never met a girl.

He found my MySpace, basically.

He was like, I've never met a girl who has all the same music and movie taste and you love Elliott Smith and you're an incredible artist.

And so we started talking and we talked forever.

For a long time.

At this point, I was living in Somerville, South Carolina, and he was living in Columbia.

And he knew some people that I knew.

We talked for years.

And I didn't actually meet him in person until I think I was 19.

We were just really young, and we were both going in very different directions.

I had also just broken up with somebody.

And so we started dating like a year later.

And...

You know, there were signs that things were not going to work out well.

It's easy to see now in hindsight.

But at the time, like, I was just—I was a young girl.

I was in love with somebody.

And, I mean, to be perfectly honest, I just didn't really have a good handle on what a healthy relationship looked like.