Always With You

*Always With You: My Psychosis* is a deeply personal memoir about trauma, relationships, and the confusing reality of living through psychosis\. Shaina Sarich recounts the experiences that shaped her life, from an abusive relationship to the onset of voices and delusions that blurred the line between reality and imagination\. At the center of the story is Ryan, a real coworker whose presence became intertwined with the voices and beliefs created by her illness\. Raw, vulnerable, and sometimes uncomfortable, *Always With You* explores how psychosis can transform ordinary moments into something terrifyingly convincing—and what it means to look back once the voices finally become quiet\.

Prologue I don’t remember the last thing Ryan said to me. You would think I would. For years, his voice followed me everywhere. At work. My car. At the movies. In my bedroom. In the middle of conversations with my family. I fell asleep listening to whispers and woke up expecting him to still be there. Sometimes he told me he loved me. Sometimes he humiliated me. Sometimes he frightened me. There were days when I would have given anything for five minutes of silence. Then one day, I realized I had it. I listened. Nothing. I waited for him to make some sarcastic comment. Nothing. I went about my day expecting his voice to interrupt my thoughts the way it always had. Nothing. The voices were gone. They were really gone. Finally. Wasn’t that what I had wanted? Wasn’t that supposed to be a good thing? Then why did I miss them? Why did I miss him? For years, I had called him Ryan. Eventually, I would learn to separate the real man I had once worked with from the voice that lived inside my own world. Shadow Ryan. But in the beginning, I didn’t know there was a difference. And I had no idea what had just begun. Chapter 1 My first relationship wasn’t the healthiest to begin with, but things were exciting at least in the beginning. He was a nerdy pot-dealing stoner. I was a strait-laced prude. I had blonde hair, he had brown. He liked rap while I hated it. Opposites attracted, and we were opposite in almost every way. But there were certain parallels I noticed. I was one of three girls; he came from a family of three boys. His dad was a plumber and his mom a teacher. They tolerated me, and were kind to me, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say they liked me. He had two brothers Joshua and Kevin. His best friend and neighbour was Ryan Flagg; Ryan for some reason had made sure to let me know that he knew Alex better than me and always would, they would always be closer. I came to learn that things were very competitive. Alex said there was a ranking system for the people he cared about in the world. It went parents, brothers Josh and Kevin, best friend Ryan, then me. Alex had a taste for the expensive lifestyles. He was obsessed with money. But he wasn’t foolish, he wouldn’t automatically go for the most expensive things, he liked to save money on his purchases. But sometimes he would buy everything, like the time he bought out the gas station of all their tropical yellow edition Redbulls to which he had developed an addiction to while working night shifts. He cared about his car, his clothes and appearance, and most importantly, his bank account balance. And he and Josh and even Ryan were extremely competitive over pretty much everything. Their careers, their cars, their relationships, their wealth. Things started out okay, but as the years went on, the relationship slowly deteriorated and I noticed things. He became increasingly violent in a short period of time, something that had never been an issue in previous years and it was a side I had never seen before. He had lost interest in me and constantly fantasized about other people. He tried to convince me to indulge his fantasies, which I repeatedly refused, despite his many attempts to arrange an open relationship or threesome opportunity. My first boyfriend was also my rapist. He sexually assaulted me, but I forgave him and gave him a second chance at a relationship. I told him if he ever did that again, I would break up with him. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to me that I had been sexually assaulted. I just knew he had scared me and I didn’t like what had happened and I let him know it. And that was the end of it. We moved on and the relationship was good until 2013 when he brought up threesomes and involving other people in the bedroom. By 2015, this escalated to wanting an open relationship or swingers dynamic. He didn’t love me, he was just using me to experiment.