I was listening to Howard Stern back in April, when he brought up the Johnny Depp defamation lawsuit trial. I had known about it but really wasn't following it, so the next morning I was all over Youtube watching the trial unfold.
Just a side note, before we dive into this article, I’ll be writing on the “circus” aspects and highlight moments on marabelleblueunfiltered.com. This article will focus on the components of what can happen when two destructive people come together with existing issues, including my own personal experience of narcissistic abuse, however in my case, the other person was the destructive one. I just ended up making a poor choice.
Just to share a bit of the background of how this suit came to be. In 2018, Amber Heard wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, describing “abuse” she experienced from a past relationship, and in that experience, she placed herself as the “poster child” representing women who have experienced that type of abuse. Seems as though, Amber Heard thought, by writing this article, this would be another way she can stick it to Johnny Depp, by continuing her ploy of making him look bad, while gaining sympathy from the public. Too bad Amber Heard failed critical thinking. If she had a little bit of knowledge in this area, she could have outline one of the possibilities that Johnny Depp could sue her for defamation (this not including the UK trial as it is irrelevant for this article), among other things. But people with narcissistic tendencies rarely think anyone would dare challenge anything of what they claim to be truth.
From my point of view, it seems Amber Heard took advantage of the opportunity to expose “abuse” during the “Me Too” movement, thinking it was easiest way to play victim and gain sympathy from a public who met the breaking point of abuse within the entertainment industry. It was like committing a crime during a catastrophic event and then thinking no one was going to notice the trickle of lies and in her case they did.
In addition, I don’t believe she realized how much of an outstanding reputation Johnny Depp had with his fans, in comparison to her and the relationship she had with him. Usually the media tends to sensationalize celebrity relationships, as if the average couple doesn’t have the same type of love and respect for one another. I did notice there wasn’t the same type of overstatement when it came to their relationship and I don’t ever believe Amber Heard was well received with or without Johnny Depp. The trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard began on April 11th and after weeks of back-and-forth testimony from friends, former employees and questionable psychiatrists, and of course, the “15 minute of famer” who clapped back at Amber Heard’s council, Morgan Tremaine, the case went to the jury on Friday May 27th.
On June 1st the jury came back with a unanimous decision in favor of Johnny Depp.
While neither received the compensation damages they were looking for, originally Johnny who was asking for $50 million received $5 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages, Amber Heard was award $2 million compensatory damages and basically was called out to be a liar. From what I understand, the judge may have lowered the award on $5 million award for Johnny Depp, due to what is the total amount allowable by law in Virginia.
As his attorney, Ben Chew stated, even in closing arguments, this wasn’t about restitution in compensation this was about restitution in having his reputation restored.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about what narcissistic abuse is.
The Mayo Clinic defines narcissistic personality disorder as, “one of several types of personality disorders — is a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”
When I moved to Arizona in December of 2016, it was just me and my pets. All of my friends and family were back home, my home, New York City. I literally left my entire life, everything I knew and started a new life here.
After a few months of living here, there were times I wondered if I made a mistake and thought maybe I should go back home. But honestly, there was nothing waiting for me back home. I gave up my apartment after 8 years of living in the one place I loved, despite the slumlord landlord, who purchased the building and moved in every ghetto piece of shit he could find. It was easy to forget how much I struggled something awful in the last few years of living there both emotionally and financially, especially when he took over that building. And even knowing that, it didn’t stop me from being homesick.
I took advantage of the free time writing my book, An Illegal Affair (which will be back up soon, I promise). Before I left New York, I remember telling a friend of mine, I believed once I finished the book, my true love will appear to me. Funny how that doesn’t work, because the night I did finish, for some reason, I diverted from going on Facebook to share I finished my initial draft and instead logged on to a useless virtual bar site to play a secret admirer guessing game.
There was one in particular, who caught my eye and I wondered if he was the one who chose me and long and behold, he was the one. For anonymity purposes, we will refer to this person as ShitShow and if you’ve watched my YouTube videos, he has come up from examples when it comes to relationships of the bright red flags to look out for when it comes to people like him.
After a few days of speaking offline, he shared a recent picture of himself, because you know these online sites, no one ever puts a recent picture of themselves. He had aged quite a bit for someone who was younger than I was, I figured why not give him a chance, even though I was reluctant on where all this might go. After so many years of failed online dating, I was trying to push past discarding people quickly just based on a picture and putting an effort in giving someone a chance, even while not my type or height for that matter (yes, I’m that girl, I love tall men).
He came off as a decent person, although there were some questionable behaviors.
Within a week, he disclosed feelings of falling in love, even though he found it impossible, it seemed he felt a connection which he couldn’t quite explain while I was feeling nothing.
I will use this past experience as a comparison.
Back in 2008, I met someone and the attraction was instantaneous. A similar situation occurred in July of 2019, where I felt an immediate attraction. I remember him talking to me and I was lost in his eyes, but I did not want to acknowledge what I was feeling. Having been tainted by Shitshow, I did not trust myself to feel anything romantic for anyone and not knowing if they were just another person who will eventually toy with my feelings.
I thought it was great someone felt this way for me, but I had many questions and still wasn’t sure how to go about how to handle this. For someone to tell me they loved me in such a short period of time didn’t sit right with me at all. I was afraid to share with friends because I wasn’t sure how they would react to someone saying they loved me so early on. Part of me didn’t want the enchantment to be taken away, but most times when I video chat him, I wasn’t really feeling an attraction.
While I was struggling with this “Universe” concept of trying to push past the judgment, of looks, height, etc., the universe was also sending messages of big red flags.
Born and raised in Canada, he told me a story about working for his dad who owned a tech business, which led him to working in midtown Manhattan well before 9/11.
He seemed to convince himself we must have passed each other at some point on 6th Avenue. I’m almost positive that didn’t happen.
He mention the business ended up shutting down to the restrictions of what you can fly with on a plane after 9/11 and eventually his dad lost the business entirely.
The day ShitShow arrived to my apartment in Phoenix, as excited as I was to see him, I was taken aback. I was greeted by what looked like a very malnourished person, with tattered shoes and clothes that looked like he just pulled them out of a clothes bin.
In the midst of regretting moving forward with this disaster, I was still thinking I can fix this. Perhaps I was being harsh and judgmental and I should put that aside and get to know him now that he was here in person.
From day one, it became a logistical nightmare. His behavior was unusual. He talked a lot about his past and being victimized by people he encountered throughout his life claiming how he was going to get them back and some will probably disappear and when I hear about it, I will know why. Not that our conversations didn’t entail this during video chat, but this was one of the red flags I chose to ignore. I chalked it up to someone who was in touch with their feelings.
In the beginning he seemed to entertain our “commonality”, but I soon found out we actually had nothing in common.
Other than realizing we had nothing in common, he spent most days either sleeping, watching YouTube or playing video games in conjunction with drinking and smoking cigarettes. He began to insinuate I should give up my writing and social media and should take up playing video games, something I had zero desire to do. I had a job, plus I was half ass editing my book because most of my time seemed to be spent babysitting him. If he wasn’t crying about his past, he was telling me stories about being victimized.
It was extremely draining. I couldn’t relate to anything he was sharing. Even if I tried sharing solutions, he would look at me like I was the crazy one. There were times he would walk away and when we would argue which was 99% of the time, the next day he would behave like nothing ever happened. Even bringing up the topic, he would shake his head as if he had no recollection of the argument from the night before.
He had no desire to work, although he claimed to be looking for a job.
When the day came to move into the house my parents and I purchased, he took up residence in the room across from my bedroom. At this point I was fine with that because any imitate desire had left me and this relationship was literally less than a month old in the physical sense, like when he arrived here.
I wasn’t sure what to make of anything and the few people I spoke to in confidence, one of them being my cousin, had genuine concerns about my safety.
From my own personal experience of meeting someone with full on narcissism and enduring a year and a half of hell with them, most people with this type of behavior will rarely think no one will catch them in their lies, on top of that, wasn’t well received with any of my friends.
This coupled with financial issues, it came to a point the money he had ran out, maybe because it was more important to spend the money on fees for the ATF to have two of his firearms brought here, which personally, I did not approve and there, another reason to sleep with one eye opened.
He didn’t care about anything that had to do with me. He didn’t care I was broke every fucking time he needed money for cigarettes or liquor. His attitude was worse without them. He was easily irritated by me and my animals.
His irritation only escalated when my parents finally arrived to move into the house we purchased. A life long dream for my parents to become homeowners and he was ruining the whole experience for them. He was rude. He didn’t want them going into his room, one he didn’t pay rent for and locked when he was inside, apparently on his computer looking for a job.
I was concerned for my parents while I was at work, because at this point, after he had threatened my mother after she made a tasteless joke, I didn’t trust him at all. It was bad enough one of my dogs died from cancer under his watch, and I will always question how that happened.
Instead of finding a loving relationship, I found a presumptuous leech with a homeless person energy and a victim mentality all wrapped into he had all the answers with no room for correction because after all he had all the answers. It was as if he was the whole stage, from the director, boom mic operator, set designer, best supporting actor and of course best actor of all time, hence the reason he acquired the name “ShitShow (his name here)”.
No matter how many times I have watched shows regarding scammers and “Dear John” situations, as I sat there and said out loud, “how did they not see how this person was scamming them”, it happened to me. He did everything in his power to make me believe my friends were bad, yet trying to make me believe he was all I needed and without him I would be lost. He criticized my wellbeing, my mentality and even called me fat once and said he never said that, all in the same breath. There were other things that happened, I will leave out from this article as I am not ready to disclose this information.
When I pushed past my shame about the choice I made, my sole focus was to get rid of him. I begin connecting with friends and sharing details of what was going and getting suggestions on how to remove him, not only from my home but from my life completely. I had to make him think it was his idea in the way he wouldn’t blame my parents, being he had made comments in the past on how he was going to get rid of those who “screwed him” in his past. Remember, he had guns shipped here without my permission and I never underestimate anyone’s state of mind when they feel threated in any way, shape or form.
The man was delusional and even made suggestions he was willing to stick around, even if I met someone else. Believe me I was not interested in a “third party” situation and even if I had agreed, he would have been the third party.
Now going back to the Universe…the concept still applies. I believe certain events happen for a reason because while the path was set out in the beginning, I took a detour because I didn’t listen to my gut in the first place back in 2017 when I knew there was something not right with this man.
My car broke down, so I had to use other alternatives to get to work. During that time, ShitShow was going out of his way to try and find funds to fix my car. Thankfully someone came through and I told him to take those funds and go back home so we can set our lives in order. I told him since he couldn’t find a job here, it was better he go back home and find a job there, save all his money and I will save mine so I can get my own house and when I was set up here, then he can come back.
He bought the whole story and let on his own accord.
I remember the morning he left, he hugged me goodbye and in the same breath he said, “I don’t wish anything bad for your parents but them being here has cost me to lose 17 pounds”. I threw my arms back and looked at him through the only light from my window and said to myself what the fuck?
Once he was gone, I went into his room and I was shocked. There were tons of garbage bags all over the floor containing empty bottles of liquor and soda bottles and other bags were filled with left-over food.
I got rid of everything because I didn’t want to hear my mother’s comments, as she made herself the poster child of his victim not realizing the things, he was doing to me and she will never know what really happened.
It wasn’t until a few months later, I completely broke ties with him, which is a whole other shitshow of emails how everything wrong that happened in his life was now my fault.
I made it clear we should not be in contact anymore.
I felt safe when he was finally gone, but a whole other issue began to transpire, which I didn’t expect.
It started off subtle. I would have dreams of ShitShow behaving like we never broke up and begging me to take him back. Months after I had met this other person, the nightmares became violent, especially in 2020 during the pandemic.
Most would keep me up at night because I was afraid if I fell back asleep the nightmare will continue. Some had me running to my bedroom window to see if he was standing out there waiting for me. I wasn’t sure why I was having these types of dreams but listening to different perspectives on narcissistic abuse and gaslighting, I realized what was going on with me.
For Amber Heard to claim she was a victim at the hands of Johnny Depp, she couldn’t even begin to understand abuse, even by the mere meaning of it, and yet, there are people who will still claim this is all Johnny Depp’s fault, while Amber Heard is just an innocent victim in a ploy to make all women look bad when they report abuse.
These are all lies. Why? Because I am speaking from the perspective of being abused and not saying anything about it. And even though I’m talking about it now, no one knows who ShitShow is. I took down any pictures I had posted of us and believe me, it wasn’t a lot. This wasn’t a type of relationship to brag or be proud of, if anything I was embarrassed.
Thinking about the relationship with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, I can only imagine Johnny not wanting to disclose the reality of their relationship – and now having seen what happened at the trial, one can understand why.
Ben Chew, Johnny’s attorney made a comment in response to a news reporter that Johnny owned up to his behavior and didn’t make excuses for it, however, who wants to outwardly disclose they have a problem and that problem has compounded within a dysfunctional relationship.
When Whitney Houston came on the scene, she was dubbed as the good girl singer with a voice of an angel. Then she met Bobby Brown and her life turned upside down. Many were quick to blame Bobby Brown for her addictions, never realizing Whitney Houston may have had an addictive personality already and it was just a matter of time before she acted out on those addictions.
You see, in the world of celebrities, the job of a publicist and a managing team is to make the artist look good at all times. No one knows what’s going on behind closed doors and it’s not up to any one of us to decide what that is. They, the celebrity, just want you to see “perfection”, nothing more.
One will always ask, why does someone stay in a dysfunctional relationship. The answers will vary, but no one has a right to judge why a person stayed and why they didn’t leave sooner.
Maybe Johnny Depp believed he could have stayed in that relationship. Maybe he thought Amber Heard will change. And while I do believe there was abuse on both of their parts, Amber Heard is not a victim, regardless of what anyone says. As a person who struggles day to day and still have nightmares, I only have one thing to say, Fuck You.
I think to myself, I should have known better having a con/scammer into my life. Someone who thought he can just throw charming words and poetry and making me believe I was worthwhile, when in reality I was the joke, hence the reason why I fear relationships to this day. Not because of commitment but because of feeling love, allowing love and being in love.
Sometimes, we don’t control when that happens, as I have learned from present experience and even then, I wonder if someone will ever love me for real and not for pretend, not for money or take me for a fool, just because they can.
People have a false sense of the “abuser” assuming it was always be a man, never believing a woman too, can induce the same pain to another person, whether it’s emotional, mental and/or physical. In 1993, a made for television move, “Men Don’t Tell”, starring Judith Light and Peter Strauss, depicts an abusive relationship where Peter Strauss is the abused and Judith Light is a violent abuser. The plot explains the reason why he stayed in the relationship, was to protect their children from her. I’m sure there are many snowflakes floating around not even knowing about this movie, because in this day and age everyone gets their feelings hurt by even the slightest of words, never wanting to acknowledge the truth about anything in life, especially in a case where men do get abused. If anyone thinks all women are this picture perfect, remember, no one is picture perfect. Everyone one has baggage, it’s what we do about that baggage that leaves room for improvement.
And then there are people like Amber Heard, who get bored an invite unnecessary drama in their relationship because they think they can.
Here’s where Amber Heard failed in proving her case:
She didn’t think the ramifications of her behavior would not bear penalties.
She was only looking to make Johnny Depp look like a terrible person in the public eye.
Chances are, Amber Heard didn’t have a good reputation to begin with, well before meeting Johnny Depp.
Amber Heard was proclaiming herself as a hero and a voice to all abused women, when in reality she doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but herself.
Amber Heard conveniently forgot and failed to understand, she too, played a part in the dysfunction of the relationship.
When she was caught in her lies, she tried explain those lies with more lies, on top of those lies, only to make her outrages sort of nonsense, well, outrages.
Anyone who appoints themselves as the poster child and spokesperson for all abused women, should question that person’s motive, just something to think about. Sharing an experience of abuse isn’t easily forthcoming and for some, it takes years before they can come forward to share their story. My abuse occurred towards the end of 2017 to the early part of 2019 and it’s just now I’m sharing about it.
Keep in mind, the both abused drugs and anyone who’s smart knows the combination of drugs and current dysfunctional behaviors will only erupt in inconsequential disaster, including arguments, unfounded accusations and jealousy on both parts from what the other was suspected of doing, whatever that may have been, in the day, in that moment.
Amber took advantage of that opportunity to make a mockery of Johnny Depp, by taking pictures and/or videos of him while incapacitated and/or arguing with her, thinking that would make him look bad, never realizing it also didn’t make her look good, because when you truly love someone, this isn’t the path you take to help them, even when they don’t want the help.
There are ramifications for making false claims and while everyone may not agree with the verdict, either from being a victim themselves, being blinded by the lack of information on these types of topics and/or just going off from what they see on social media, Johnny Depp should not be the sacrificial lamb for anyone who has experienced their own abuse, especially if he has experienced it himself. Again, this is not putting Johnny Depp as a saint, simply stating if he too, experienced abuse, he should not be hanged to dry just because someone is making a claim it was all him and not her, when Amer played big part as well.
The sad part of this is, no one understands what it is to be with a narcissist, until you have experienced this terrible mental and emotional abuse for yourself or any abuse for that matter, this includes being conned or scammed. For Amber Heard to believe this is some form of a “setback for women” is just another exponent to keep the lie going.
Amber Heard doesn’t speak for me because she is the equivalent to the person who shamed for being me.
If you don’t know what narcissistic personality disorder is, I recommend watching Dr. Todd Grande - https://www.youtube.com/@DrGrande. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor of Mental Health (LPCMH) and a Licensed Chemical Dependency Professional (LCDP).
People like to believe celebrities are these perfect beings, living in big mansions with zero problems. If this was the case, we would probably see less suicides.
Johnny Depp proved it was more important to set his reputation straight than thinking money will bring back his good name and reputation he built for so many years. It is important we educate ourselves before assuming the worst of someone, especially when it comes to celebrities. People either put them on a pedestal or “cancel” them out because they got their feelings hurt.
Money doesn’t fix everything. It can buy you whatever you want, but it won’t buy you love or happiness with another person you care about or don’t care about. Respect in a relationship with another person comes first. If you don’t have that, perhaps you should not be in a relationship until you love yourself a little bit more.
Until then. Take care of You.
