While in Spain, Olena Yaremishyn was staying with a “friend” named Alyona in Zaragoza. She did not like this girl and constantly complained about how horrible she was. I noted that she had done the same when speaking of her flat-mate in Kyiv and the few friends she had talked about. The depraved, derelict, drug addict Rachael in Canada who she would talk to on the phone like the closest thing, then complain about afterward. The other drug addict in Cyprus who she hated but kept around in case she needed her. She never had anything positive to say about anyone that I recall, including her Mother and Father, whom were both, according to her, abusive and neglectful. She even accused me of being an evil, bad person, but was unable to name a single thing I’d ever done to wrong her or hurt her. Towards the end of things, she said that she never told anyone she loves them, not even her family. The only real, raw emotion I ever saw from her was anger and fear. I think she is so gripped by fear because of the way she chose to live her life. It seemed she allowed this lifestyle to harden her to the point of being negative, hateful, and intolerant of anything that didn’t benefit her desires.

We had agreed that she would come to Madrid on a train to meet me at my AirBNB. She did not want me to come to Zaragoza. She was afraid of letting me meet Alyona, the woman she was living off of, saying she would be jealous of me. It really made me wonder what was going on there that I did not know, but I made the trip anyway.

When my flight arrived Olena was sick in bed and could not meet me. We were stuck inside for the first few days, with her bedridden, fighting fever and chills in sweltering heat. I stayed in the apartment mostly all this time to care for her, leaving only to quickly shop for necessities.

My understanding of me coming to Spain was that we would spend these few days together to see how things go, as well as plan how to get her from Spain to Canada. Shortly before leaving for Spain, the Uniting For Ukraine (U4U) program had started in the US and I urged her to consider this option, but she was dead set that she had to go to Toronto, refusing to even consider coming to me. She would get really upset when I would even try to talk about coming to me, before, during, and after my visit. She was also very stiff to any intimacy while I was in Spain, pushing me away violently over simple hugs and hand holds. This behavior was normal in the limited time we spent together. It was very strange that she was telling me she wanted to be with me, to start a life and family together, but she refused intimacy or making it possible to actually live in the same country. I was very confused, but she had a lot of carefully crafted lies and I went along with the plan because I cared about her and wanted her to be safe and in a place where she could be happy.

Things in Spain were really strained and I was starting to feel like she was not going to ever want to be intimate with me. Her excuse was that sex is a really big deal to her and that she had only been intimate with 7 men in her entire life (more on this lie in a later blog post). She also told me that Ukrainians are not open to intimacy, another lie. I tried not to push it on her, but I also felt like it did not match all of what she was saying when we were making plans to spend our lives together and start a family. It caused a lot of friction during the visit and at the end even the goodbye felt empty.

We were however, successful in getting her authorized to move to Canada. She could start working immediately (though she never actually worked a single day in the entire 8 months she spent between Canada and USA) and already had a place to live, so it would alleviate some stress for us both and she would be very close to me.

After her arrival in Toronto, she asked me to help her with her resume. She sent it to me, but when I asked her some questions about her work history she got extremely upset. She was defensive about it and I didn’t understand why. I now know that it was because her jobs had all been doing these scams. She had invented the entirety of her job history for the previous six years. Even made up company names and enlisted scammer friends to verify her employment. I don’t believe she ever intended to find a job and work though. This was all a ploy to make it look like she was trying. She made a lot of effort to look like she was trying in all areas of her life and relationships, but she clearly had no intent of following through on any of the promises.

I later learned that while in Canada this person who offered her a room, was a man from her village in Ukraine. He was living with his fiancée Anya when Olena arrived to them in Toronto. I was told by Olena several weeks later that she was also sleeping with this man and he was telling his fiancée that he would leave her for Olena. Anya did eventually leave, as did Olena. All this time in Canada she was telling me that she still wanted to be with me, but refused to come to the US or allow me to visit Totonto. At one point I even told her that I was sick of the bullshit excuses and I was going to drive up to see her. She freaked out and told me even if I come she won’t meet me. She was still taking my money, I was paying for all of her travel, etc. I now believe it was more than just that one man she was sleeping with in Toronto.

She did eventually get authorization to come to the US under the U4U program from a kind volunteer from Santa Fe, New Mexico that she found on Facebook. Once this came through she planned to visit with a friend in Chicago for a few days before coming to me. She asked me to come to Chicago to visit with them during this time. When I got to Chicago she was very stiff and cold. She wouldn’t let me hug her or touch her. She wouldn’t even let me near her. It felt like she went out of her way at every turn to get as far from me as she could. Both physically and mentally/emotionally. After a few hours together she had told me that she would not come to be with me. She did not want to see me while I was in Chicago, so I went home a few days early. I now know this was because she planned to go to Texas, but she had never told me this.

A couple of weeks passed by and I did not hear from her. Then she started to contact me again, saying she was living with a family in Houston, Texas. Grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, and two children. She was working for the father of the family doing outside sales. She liked it and said she was good at it, but she could not drive and the job required this. After just a few days she stopped working all together. She continued to live there for 4 months longer, despite the fact that she had no income and no way to generate money to help with living costs. It seemed odd, but I assumed they were just nice people helping a poor Ukrainian refugee as she told me. During this time she was not asking me for anything and we did not talk much.

There were 3 incidents that occurred where she called me from Houston, crying and having a meltdown because she had gotten in a fight with the father in the family. One night she called and asked me to fly her to me, so she could come be with me. She claimed he had drugged her, then raped her and that he was abusing her. She said she had tried to push him off and tell him no, but she was paralyzed from the drugs. That is the part where the story really starts to unravel and the truth becomes impossible for her to hide. The web of lies she had woven became impossible for her to keep up with and I began to see a lot of cracks through the surface. (Spoiler, she had not really been raped…)

XOXO B Poster