My name is Eliana, and this is the story of how my three-year relationship ended. It didn’t end with a quiet conversation or a mutual decision. It ended with a 15-second TikTok video and 17,000 strangers knowing my boyfriend thought I was hideous before I did.
Derrick and I had been together for almost three years. I met him when I was 21; he was the charming guy at a party who knew how to fix the garbage disposal when it jammed. That felt like a green flag at the time. We exchanged Instagrams, started texting, and the rest just… happened.
Our life together had a rhythm. We watched Netflix documentaries on Thursdays. We had dinner at his mom’s house every other Sunday. We went on camping trips with his friends in the summer. He always remembered my birthday and actually listened when I talked about my day. In today’s dating world, that’s practically unicorn behavior. My last boyfriend thought “emotional labor” was a type of childbirth, so my bar was admittedly on the floor.
Derrick made me feel safe. He made me feel loved. The night before my world imploded, he was at my place. We made dinner together, talked about maybe moving in together when my lease ends in August. He kissed me goodbye at the door and said, “Love you, babe,” just like he always did. It was easy. It was normal. It was a complete and utter lie.
Fast forward to this Tuesday. I was scrolling through my phone during my lunch break at the salon where I work. My phone dinged with a text from my best friend, Amara. It was just a TikTok link with the message: CALL ME NOW in all caps.
Amara is not the dramatic type. She once texted “slight issue” when her apartment was literally flooding. My stomach tightened.
I clicked the link. And there was Derrick. He was at Throwbacks, the dive bar his buddies always hang out at on Mondays. I could tell by the neon Budweiser sign behind him that flickers every seven seconds; we counted once. He was clearly six beers deep, his face flushed, arm slung around his friend Xavier.
Someone off-camera, his voice slurred, yelled, “So, rate your girlfriend, bro!”
The look on Derrick’s face changed. It wasn’t his normal smile. It was a weird, cruel smirk I’d never seen before, like he was about to let everyone in on a dirty little secret.
“Eliana?” he said, leaning into the camera. “Honestly, probably the most hideous girl I’ve ever been with. Like, a four. On a good day.”
The bar erupted in a chorus of “Ohhhh!” and someone yelled, “Savage!”
Derrick just laughed and kept going. “But she cooks really good enchiladas and never complains when I go out with the boys, so I keep her around. Low-maintenance, you know?”
Then someone asked if he was worried I’d see the video. His response came without a flicker of hesitation. “Nah, she doesn’t even know what TikTok is. Besides, thinking about upgrading soon anyway. Too much baggage.”
The timestamp showed it was posted at 11:43 p.m. Monday night. While I was at home, doing a clay mask and texting him good night, he was publicly humiliating me. The video had 17,000 views. Seventeen thousand.
I sat there in the break room, just staring at my phone. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just felt this weird, cold feeling spreading through my chest. Three years. This is what he actually thought of me. A convenient, low-maintenance placeholder.
I texted Amara back: Coming over after work. Don’t tell anyone.
Then I muted all notifications, put my phone in my bag, and somehow made it through three more client appointments without completely breaking down.
After work, I didn’t go home. I went straight to Target and bought a cheap duffel bag. I walked the aisles in a daze, filling it with essentials: a toothbrush, deodorant, a phone charger, a couple of t-shirts. My total was $47.16. The receipt is still in my wallet, a flimsy paper artifact from the moment my life split into before and after.
I drove to Amara’s apartment complex at 6:13 p.m. and sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes, just staring at nothing, playing that video over and over in my head. Hideous. A four. Upgrade. The words were so casual, so cruel. I kept thinking about all the times he’d told me I was beautiful. When I was sick with the flu, when I was self-conscious in a bikini, when I dressed up for his company Christmas party. All lies.
When I showed up at her door, Amara didn’t ask questions. She just pointed me to her pull-out couch, handed me a glass of the cheap rosé we drank in college, and asked, “What’s the plan?”
That’s when I decided. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a breakup conversation. No tears, no begging, no dramatic confrontation he could tell his friends about later. I was just going to disappear.
We spent that night making a checklist.
- Block Derrick on everything: phone, Instagram, Twitter.
- Change all my passwords (he knew most of them).
- Call out from work for the rest of the week.
- Tell only my mom where I really am.
By midnight, Derrick had texted seven times. Normal stuff at first: Hey, what do you want for dinner? and You still coming over tonight?
By morning, the panic had set in: Where are you? Why aren’t you answering?
By that afternoon, he had called twelve times. Not one mention of the TikTok. Not one word of apology. Just entitlement. He wasn’t sorry for what he did; he was annoyed that I had found out.
I stayed at Amara’s for the next two days, hiding from the world. We binged all of Love Island—trash TV is surprisingly therapeutic when your life is imploding. I cried in the shower so she wouldn’t hear me and ordered far too much Uber Eats.
On Friday morning, Amara went to my apartment to grab more of my clothes. She said Derrick had clearly been there. Empty energy drink cans were on the counter, his jacket thrown over my couch. He had taped a note to my door: “Call me. We need to talk.” Still nothing about why we might need to talk.
The TikTok mysteriously disappeared from his account on Thursday night. Too late. It had already been screen-recorded and was making the rounds in our friend group. My phone was blowing up with “Are you okay??” texts from people I hadn’t spoken to in months.
The weekend was a blur of ignoring calls from unknown numbers—Derrick using his friends’ phones once he realized I’d blocked him—and jumping every time someone knocked on Amara’s door. Someone sent me screenshots of Derrick’s Instagram stories: vague posts about “missing someone” and “biggest mistake of my life” set to sad song lyrics. Classic damage control.
By Monday morning, I had 32 missed calls. I finally went back to work, needing a sense of normalcy. My manager hugged me when I walked in; apparently, the video had made it to her For You Page, too. She told me to take another day if I needed it, but I needed to focus on something other than the dumpster fire my life had become.
Derrick showed up at the salon during my lunch break. I hid in the supply closet while my coworker told him I wasn’t there. I heard his voice through the door, that familiar low rumble I used to love. He sounded tired. Good.
By Tuesday morning, exactly one week after I’d seen the video, the missed call count was at 37. His latest text, from another new number, just said: Please.
I needed to swing by my apartment for my mail. A package needed a signature. I figured 8:00 a.m. was safe since Derrick usually leaves for work at 7:30. I was wrong.
I unlocked my door, and there he was, sitting on my welcome mat—the one he gave me that says, “Home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically.”
He looked up when he heard my keys. And y’all, the man was a wreck. He hadn’t shaved. There were dark circles under his eyes. He was wearing the same Metallica shirt he’d had on in his Instagram story from two days ago.
When he saw me, he literally crumpled. Not in a fake, dramatic way. It was like his body physically gave out. He fell to his knees, tears immediately streaming down his face, saying my name over and over. “Eliana… Eliana…”
I just stood there, keys still in my hand. I felt nothing, then everything, then nothing again.
“Please,” he sobbed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I said those things. I was drunk, the guys were pressuring me… I never meant any of it. Please, just talk to me.”
I cut him off, my voice cold and steady. “I saw what you really think of me, Derrick. There’s nothing to talk about.”
I stepped around him like he was a piece of furniture, got my mail from the kitchen counter, and walked back to my car. He followed me to the parking lot, still crying, still begging. I got in, locked the doors, and drove back to Amara’s. He called five more times before I even made it across town.
That night, back in the safety of Amara’s kitchen, she handed me a White Claw and asked something that made me think. “Have you been noticing red flags with him all along, but just… filtering them out?”
At first, I was defensive. Derrick and I had a good relationship! He remembered my birthday. He watched The Bachelor with me even though he hated it. The bar is literally in hell these days, and I thought he was clearing it with room to spare.
But then Amara started asking specific questions.
“Did he ever make jokes about your appearance before?” Well, there was that time he said my favorite jeans made me look “kind of wide, but in a cute way.” And when I got highlights last summer, he asked if the salon “meant to make them that brassy.” He did have a weird habit of pointing out celebrities he found attractive—always the super-thin, “no-makeup makeup” types who look nothing like me.
“Did he support your goals?” I mean, he said he was proud when I got promoted, but he also suggested maybe I shouldn’t take it because the stress might be too much. When I talked about going back to school, he always changed the subject to how expensive it would be.
“Did he have equal standards for your relationship?” Thinking about it… not really. If I was 15 minutes late, I’d get a series of annoyed texts. But he could cancel our plans last minute to hang with his friends, and I was supposed to be the “cool girlfriend.”
By the time we finished our drinks, I had this sinking feeling in my stomach. The TikTok wasn’t some bizarre, out-of-character moment. It was just the first time I’d seen what had been there all along, without the filter of wanting to believe we were perfect.
Derrick escalated to a new level that night. At 9:17 p.m., Amara’s doorbell rang. Through the peephole, we saw him, holding the saddest-looking bouquet of grocery store flowers I’ve ever seen. Amara went full mama bear, opening the door just enough to block his view and telling him I wasn’t there. I could hear his voice cracking as he begged her to let him talk to me for just five minutes.
After she finally got him to leave, she found a handwritten letter he’d slipped under the door. Eight pages, front and back. It was a masterpiece of manipulation. Tear stains on the paper, promises to “spend the rest of my life making this up to you,” and explanations about how drunk he was, how his friends peer-pressured him.
But one line actually got to me: “I said those horrible things because I’m insecure and afraid you’ll realize you’re too good for me.”
For about twenty minutes, I actually considered calling him. That’s how messed up my brain was. He publicly humiliated me, and I was feeling sorry for him. Thankfully, Amara’s Wi-Fi chose that exact moment to crash.
Friday morning, my brother, Miguel, called. Derrick had shown up at his apartment at 7 a.m. Miguel, being the overprotective brother he is, told him that if he came by again, they’d be having “a different kind of conversation.”
By that point, I was starting to feel smothered. This wasn’t romantic; it was harassment. So, I drafted a text: “I need space. Please stop contacting me, my friends, and my family. I will reach out when, and if, I am ready to talk.”
I sent it and immediately turned off my phone for three hours. When I checked again, there were five paragraphs waiting for me, the gist being that he understood, he’d respect my boundaries, he’d wait forever… followed immediately by three more texts asking when forever might end. So much for respecting boundaries.
Sunday night, things took another turn. I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw it. Derrick had posted a video. A public apology. To me. He tagged me in it. Four minutes and twenty-seven seconds of him, sitting in his car with red-rimmed eyes, telling the world how sorry he was for hurting “the most beautiful person, inside and out.” The comments were a mess. His buddy Xavier commented, “Stay strong, bro,” as if Derrick were the victim.
Even his apology was a public performance, carefully filmed and posted for optimal engagement.
On Monday, I decided I needed to go back to my own apartment. I couldn’t hide forever. The drive back felt like going to a job interview I knew I’d bomb. My neighbor, Mrs. Rogers, nodded at me in the hallway as if I hadn’t been gone for two weeks.
Inside, my plants were dead. The air smelled stale. And then I saw them. Post-it notes. Everywhere.
On my bathroom mirror: “I miss your smile.” On my fridge: “Remember our first date here?” On my TV: “Our Netflix queue misses you.” On my bedside table: “I can’t sleep without you.”
I stood there in shock, a cold dread washing over me as I realized what had happened. Derrick still had the spare key I’d given him last year. He had been in my apartment while I was gone. My skin instantly crawled. The violation of my space felt just as creepy as his public humiliation.
I called my landlord immediately and explained the situation. He agreed to change my locks the next morning. Then, I systematically went through my apartment, ripping every single Post-it note into tiny, satisfying pieces.
That night, alone in my own bed for the first time, was weird. I kept waking up, expecting to feel his weight on the mattress. The next morning, as I was making coffee, someone knocked on my door. It wasn’t Derrick. It was Xavier.
He had apparently come as Derrick’s ambassador, telling me Derrick was in a “really bad place” and just wanted five minutes. I asked him if he remembered laughing in that video. He had the decency to look ashamed before hitting me with this gem: “You know how guys talk when they’re together.”
“I don’t want to be with someone who talks like that with his friends, drunk or sober,” I said. “Thank you for coming by.” And I closed the door.
That night, I went through my phone and unfollowed him on every platform. I took down the photos of us. I packed up the hoodie he always left at my place and the Xbox controller he used into a box and shoved it in my closet.
Then, around midnight, my phone lit up with a text from a number I didn’t recognize. “It’s Derrick. Please don’t block this number. I just need to know one thing. Did those 3 years mean anything to you? Because they were everything to me.”
I stared at the words. Three years of inside jokes and lazy Sunday mornings. And three years of small criticisms dressed as jokes, of walking on eggshells, of making myself smaller to make him comfortable.
I didn’t reply. I just added the number to my blocked list and turned off my phone.
The past week has been a lot. It’s been 32 days since I saw that video. On Saturday, I was at Target when a woman approached me and asked if I was “the girl from Derrick’s TikTok.” She launched into an apology for leaving a mean comment, saying she felt terrible after seeing his apology video. My humiliation has become my public identifier. And that made me angry. Not sad, but a pure, energizing anger.
That anger propelled me to make a list: Cut my hair. Join a kickboxing class. Apply for that certificate program I’ve been putting off. I chopped off seven inches of hair that same day. The stylist kept asking if I was sure. I’ve never been more sure of anything.
On Wednesday, things got intense. Derrick went on Instagram Live, drunk at 2 p.m., slurring about how he’d lost the love of his life. Then he looked directly at the camera and said, “I know she’s watching this. Eliana, I’m coming over tonight. We need to talk this out. I’m not taking no for an answer anymore.”
I called my brother, Miguel. He and his girlfriend came over and stayed the night. Sure enough, at 9:47 p.m., the doorbell rang. Miguel answered and calmly, firmly, told Derrick to leave.
The next morning, I got a text from Derrick’s mom, saying he’d lost his job for showing up drunk and that I needed to call him. The emotional manipulation was exhausting.
But that evening, something unexpected happened. Franklin, one of Derrick’s longtime friends who was in the original video, posted a storytime TikTok. The caption read: “When your friend humiliates his girlfriend on TikTok and you finally call him out for being toxic.”
In the video, Franklin explained how the friend group had a pattern of encouraging Derrick’s worst impulses. He ended with, “Eliana, if you see this, I’m sorry. We all failed you. And Derrick, man, get help. This isn’t about winning her back. This is about becoming someone who would never hurt her in the first place.”
He DMed me later. We ended up having a surprisingly honest conversation. He confirmed something I’d suspected: this wasn’t the first time Derrick had spoken about me that way. It was just the first time it was recorded.
That Friday, exactly one month after I walked away, I decided to tackle the final item on my list: downloading a dating app. Not because I’m ready to date, but because I wanted to remind myself that Derrick isn’t the only option in the universe.
As I was setting up my profile, my phone rang. An unknown number. I almost declined, but something made me answer. It was Xavier.
He sounded nervous, talking too fast. He needed to tell me something important, something about the original TikTok that might “change how I saw everything.”
“The TikTok wasn’t spontaneous, Eliana,” he said, his voice dropping. “Derrick planned it. And I can prove it.”
I met Xavier at a Starbucks, with Miguel sitting at a nearby table as backup. Xavier looked stressed. He slid his phone across the table, open to a WhatsApp group chat titled “Weekend Warriors.” The messages were from five weeks before the TikTok incident.
Derrick: Need your help with something, boys. Franklin: What’s up? Derrick: Trying to figure out how to break up with E. Xavier: Woah for real? Thought you guys were looking at places together. Derrick: Yeah that’s the problem, she’s getting too serious. Plus I met someone at the gym.
My face got hot as I scrolled. He went on to explain that he’d been talking to a girl named Adriana for almost three months, but he was worried about how I’d react to a breakup. He was literally asking his friends for advice on how to make me break up with him so he could look like the good guy. Their suggestions ranged from picking fights to, finally, one from another friend: “Just be an ass on social media so she sees it and dumps you.”
The last message in the thread was from Derrick: “TikTok might be the move. She never checks it anyway.”
I looked up at Xavier. “Why show me this now?”
He explained that he’d assumed the TikTok was just drunk stupidity, not a calculated move. He didn’t know about Adriana. He’d seen them together at Chipotle the day before, and Derrick was still lying to everyone, playing the heartbroken boyfriend.
It was the final puzzle piece clicking into place. The TikTok wasn’t a mistake. It was a plan that backfired when I disappeared instead of confronting him. He wasn’t devastated about hurting me; he was devastated about losing control of the narrative.
After 37 days of silence, I texted Derrick from my real number. “We need to talk. Today. 2 p.m. Java Hut on Maine. Don’t be late.”
He responded in twelve seconds. “I’ll be there. Thank you, Eliana. I love you.”
I arrived twenty minutes early to secure a corner table. He walked in at 1:58 p.m., looking showered and shaved, wearing the blue button-down I’d given him. For a split second, my heart did that familiar flip. Then I remembered the WhatsApp messages.
He launched immediately into a rehearsed speech about how sorry he was. I let him talk for exactly two minutes. Then I placed my phone, screen up, between us, open to the screenshots Xavier had sent me.
“So, who’s Adriana?” I asked.
The look on his face was like watching someone get hit with a taser. His mouth opened and closed like a fish. He stammered, trying to blame Xavier.
“Just tell me the truth, Derrick. For once.”
The excuses poured out. Adriana was just a friend. He’d been confused. He thought three years was too long to be with one person in your twenties. The TikTok was stupid, but he never thought I’d see it. “I panicked when you disappeared,” he admitted. “I realized I’d made a huge mistake. Adriana wasn’t worth losing you over.”
That’s when it clicked. He wasn’t sorry he hurt me. He was sorry he got caught.
I took a sip of my cold chai. “I’m not here to get back together, Derrick. I’m here to tell you that I know everything. And I’m done. Don’t contact me, my friends, or my family again. We’re over.”
His eyes welled up with tears that I’m now 99% sure were performative. “But I love you,” he said.
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t have spent three months planning how to humiliate me so you could be with someone else.” I stood up to leave.
That’s when he played his final card. “I broke the lease on my apartment,” he blurted out. “I’ve been staying with my mom. I thought… I thought we’d be moving in together next month, like we planned.”
For a brief, insane moment, I felt a pang of guilt. Then I remembered the cold calculation of his messages.
“You should call Adriana,” I said. “I’m sure she has room at her place.”
And then I walked out.
The next day, I got a text from an unknown number. It was Adriana. It turns out Derrick had told her he was single and dealing with a “crazy ex.” She had no idea I existed until she saw his public apology video. We ended up talking for three hours, comparing notes on his lies. We’re following each other on Instagram now. Solidarity, I guess.
Yesterday marked exactly 40 days since this all started. Forty days of pain, anger, confusion, and finally, clarity. I officially blocked Derrick on every platform and changed my number this morning.
Then I did something just for me. Remember that digital marketing certificate I applied for? I got accepted yesterday. Classes start next month. I paid the deposit with money I’d been saving for the apartment Derrick and I were supposed to share.
Last night, Amara and Miguel came over for an impromptu “Goodbye, Derrick” party. At one point, Miguel asked if I was sad about wasting three years with him. And the thing is, I’m not. Those years weren’t a waste. They were a lesson. A lesson about red flags I’ll never ignore again, about my own resilience, and about the kind of love I actually deserve.
This morning, I woke up to a notification that Derrick had tagged me in a new Instagram post. My finger hovered over the view button for about three seconds before I realized: I don’t care what it says. His words have no power over me anymore.
Instead, I deleted the notification, made my coffee, and sat on my balcony, watching the sunrise. I guess this is officially the end of this saga. To anyone out there dealing with your own Derricks: you deserve better. And better exists. Trust me.
