Iris Clark: Hi, everyone. It's Iris Clark with The Valentina Campaign. I am here today doing a solo episode because I want you guys to know a little bit more about me, why I'm passionate about The Valentina Campaign, how I got involved in it, and all those details about me. So today, we're just going to start chatting. It's going to be way more casual than an interview style that we do usually. I'm just going to kind of talk through some of my personal experiences I've had with some issues that The Valentina Campaign discusses, like social media bullying, toxic relationships, hard friendships, things like that. I'm going to go into all sorts of detail on my experiences with that and why I feel passionately about talking about them on the podcast every week.

So to kind of start at the beginning of how I got involved with The Valentina Campaign, I am originally from California, but I decided to go to College of Charleston for two years. So, I went to College of Charleston and I have always loved doing social media work. It's one of my passions. And so when I was in Charleston, the fates aligned perfectly. And while I was also looking for some sort of social media opportunity, by some chance, my mom actually saw a Facebook post about a woman in Charleston looking for a social media manager for her campaign. And so, I told my mom, I was like, "Respond right away. I would love to work on it."

And so, I got in contact with Dylan. We met up for coffee, and it's been amazing since. I've gotten to do so many cool opportunities here at The Valentina Campaign. I make content, I do social media management, all those kinds of things, and it has been such a great opportunity. Obviously, I also host this podcast, which has been amazing. Podcasting has always been one of my dreams. So, all the fates aligned. And Dylan is just the best, and we get along so well, and I absolutely love her so dearly, so I feel so grateful that I got involved with The Valentina Campaign.

 I was in Charleston for two years. I started with The Valentina Campaign about a year ago. And so, I've been with The Valentina Campaign for a year, and I no longer go to College of Charleston, and I am back in California, working full time to work towards my entrepreneurial dreams as well as working on the Valentina campaign. So, doing a little bit of both, working on building my own business while also working on my social media work with The Valentina Campaign, content creation, kind of perfecting my skills in those, because I just love it so much and I feel so grateful that I get to be doing this kind of work for The Valentina Campaign.

So, I feel like personally I've really resonated with The Valentina Campaign's mission of creating a place for young girls to learn important skills, to build their sense of self-worth. Because a lot of my past experiences, specifically in high school, with social media bullying, toxic relationships, and friendships, I wanted to share because I feel like I see so many more things, like what I experienced happening today. And in the moment when I was experiencing these things, I felt like I was the only one who had ever had to deal with this in the past. I was literally like, "I am the only one. This is horrible. How can this possibly be happening to me? It happens to no one else." But that is just not the truth.

So many girls deal with these things, specifically in high school, even in middle school. And I wanted to come on this podcast today to really talk about my experience, because I don't want anyone to feel alone in what they're experiencing. And it is so much more common, and I really want to use my story to help others because I had this experience and I want to use it towards like a positive outcome, because there was so many negative aspects of what I went through that I feel like other people could hear and learn from and not feel alone. So, that is kind of why I'm coming on here to talk about those things today.

So, I'll just start at the beginning of my experiences with these things. Most of my life, I was friends with girls, I had a close girlfriend group, that stayed pretty consistent through all of my years of elementary school and middle school. Didn't really have too much crazy drama in those years. But once I got to high school, it started to get a little bit more murky in the way that me and my girlfriends wanted to have guy friends. It's like you enter high school and it's like, oh my gosh, there's more boys and everyone's getting older and that kind of thing. So, I wanted to have more guy friends. And literally, the first few weeks of school, I ended up making some guy friends, and our friend group kind of expanded into a girl and guy friend group. So, I'm sure if anyone has experienced that, you know how it can be. It can be complete chaos, and just who likes who, that kind of dynamic, and it can be interesting because you kind of start to, at least I started to go through a time where I really started to care what guys thought of me, like I would decide what I wanted to wear that day to see if the guy I liked noticed all those kinds of things, which are so normal. But yeah, I just kind of started to fall into a little bit of a pattern of really caring what guys thought of me.

I think that that's kind of when I was interested in having my first boyfriend, and I did end up getting my first boyfriend towards the end of freshman year. And let's just say this relationship was not good for me. I'll just say that. It was extremely hard for me to deal with. It was a two-year long relationship there was a lot of things wrong with it that at the time I had no clue was wrong. I thought they were extremely normal, because I had never been in a relationship before, a lot of my friends had never been in relationships before. I was kind of the only one to be starting to have a boyfriend at this time. Of course, my friends liked boys and people were liking people and that kind of thing, but nobody had really had a boyfriend yet, so I had never really seen another person's experience up close.

So, this relationship, for me, was extremely controlling. I faced a lot of issues with his jealousy and me only being able to do things that were in his comfort zone while he could kind of do whatever he wanted. And I will fully admit I enabled a lot of his behavior. It wasn't something that I was standing up against, because I didn't exactly realize it was wrong in the moment at all. I was 15. I think I had just maybe turned 16 when I started this relationship. And at the beginning, it was really great. It was really fun. I felt so excited. I finally got the boy I liked. I feel so excited. And then, slowly but surely, it just started to dip into this territory of being very, very bad. It was just really bad. I was told things that were just extremely not true. I was told, you know, I looked ugly in dance dresses I wore to dances. And when you're 16, that can really, really, really take its toll on you. And if anyone's experienced that, I promise you, it's not true. You look amazing. And the only reason they're saying that is because they're jealous or they're worried that you're not going to like them anymore, that kind of thing. It's a control thing. So, I was told I didn't look good in certain things. I was told I was flirting with his guy friends too much. He would always get worried that I liked other people that weren't him, while he would tell me that he liked other girls while we were dating.

It was one of those things that he made me feel like I needed him to continue to function and continue to be a part of our friend group. Because at the beginning we kind of teetered in and out of still being in our friend group, and it ended up being a point where we were the only ones left. Nobody really wanted to spend time with us, because we completely isolated ourselves from everyone else. And I don't blame them. I don't blame them for not wanting to spend any more time with me or him because we were MIA doing our own thing. And I was constantly feeling that I couldn't do anything else, but spend time with him. Because if I did, I would be punished for it. We'd fight every day. He'd fight with me about it. He would tell me how jealous he was of all these things. And it was just so exhausting to push up against what he was telling me not to do, so I started to give up. I just felt so isolated, I just felt like nobody could understand. If I told anybody what was going on, I knew that they were going to hate him, and I didn't want anybody to hate him, I wanted to protect him as best I could, so I really kept all these things to myself as best I could.

But I did, unfortunately, in this relationship, get to a point where I no longer exactly valued my life and I felt so small, that not existing sounded more appealing than living the life I was living, which is, I think back on that, being so young and it makes my heart ache for my young self now, just like knowing that's how I felt because I remember that feeling and It feels like it will never get better and you will never get out of that relationship. It genuinely feels like that is the end and I was literally only 16 years old. And I just have to reiterate to everyone listening it is not the end. That is not where your story ends. Keep going, you can get out. You have the opportunity to get out. I promise you you will.

I was just at a really low point. I started to dip my toe into using social media as a way to portray my life in a way that it was not. I tried to portray my relationship in such a perfect sunshine, amazing, like couple goals relationship. I don't know why I did that, probably because I had no other control in the relationship except for what I was posting. So, I made it seem like it was so amazing when every day I was put through the ringer for things that I didn't ever do anything. I never did anything wrong, and he would convince me that everything I did was wrong, or that I looked bad, or that I was not doing enough for him, or that I wasn't showing up enough when I was constantly available to him, and that was partly my fault. I allowed myself to be available to this sort of behavior all the time. I shared my location with him. I would be told, "I see you're at home, why aren't you responding to me?" I would get that all the time if I didn't respond to him. It was a never-ending cycle. And of course, we went through all sorts of ups and downs. We broke up one time. And then, of course, we got back together. It just was a complete roller coaster. It was so emotionally volatile. And it was one of those things that when we would get in a fight and I would say, "Maybe we should just break up," he would threaten me with things like, "Well, if we break up, no one could ever love you again." He would say things like that to my face and he would just threaten, "No one's going to want to be friends with you if you break up with me," things like that. And so, me being 16, I fully believed him. I was like, "Oh my God, maybe he is the only person who could ever love me. Maybe this is it for me. Maybe this is the only relationship that I can ever be in, because maybe nobody will love me," because when somebody tells you something enough, you start to believe it, unfortunately.

And so, going through all these things was so hard. And I eventually got to a point where a small little fight happened, and I couldn't do it anymore. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was done. I was like, "This is over. I'm done with you. No. Bye. I cannot do this right now anymore. I will not be fighting with you every day. I will not be coming over to your house and begging you to hang out with me. I'm sick of this. Bye. Bye. Bye. Like, literally, bye. I could not do it anymore." So, I broke up with him, and we kind of had a shared friend group at this time, because we kind of started to get our friends back after being isolated for so long because I just realized I needed to have friends. I could not be alone with him anymore in that relationship. And so, we kind of started to get our friends back. And so, we were in a shared friend group at this time and we still kind of talked for three months after the breakup, and a lot of it was still horrible. He would text me and threaten that he was going to do something to himself if I didn't hang out with him or if I didn't talk to him. And he would threaten that he was going to try and turn all my friends against me if I broke up with him. It was mentally so, so exhausting. Even being out of the relationship, still being in contact was so, so hard for me. And seeing him in these group settings, spending time with our friends was so hard. I couldn't do it anymore. He would stare at me from across the room and try and get me alone to try and talk to me. And I was like, "This is done. I can't do this anymore." When he kind of started to threaten me about things like that, I eventually had to reach out to his parents and kind of be like, "He is doing this stuff. I am no longer his girlfriend, I can't do this anymore." That was kind of the end of communication with him. I had to block him on everything. Yeah, I just had to block him on everything, because I couldn't keep doing it. He would start to make accounts, like fake accounts, and reach out to me. And it was one of those things where it felt like I could not escape. No matter what I did, it felt like I could not escape. But eventually, cut off all contact, blocked him on everything, he stopped making new accounts to try and reach out to me. And I thought I had finally escaped. I really did. I was like, "Finally, I'm out."

And then, slowly but surely, some of my closest girlfriends from childhood, who I've been friends with since I was literally five, six years old, started to distance themselves from me and spend a lot, a lot of time with him. And it started, I was like, "What is happening? What is going on? How could this happen?" Like, "What?" You know, they started spending more time together. It started to really kind of hurt my feelings. And I would see over social media when my friends or so-called friends would be hanging out with him and not hanging out with me and not reaching out to me or seeing if I was okay after the breakup. It was all kind of about him. And, you know, I saw things through many social media platforms about like them rallying around him, supporting a friend in a time of need and things of that sort. And it just started to get to a point like I already felt so gaslit in the relationship. I was out, and I was still being gaslit that I should have done something to make him feel better, even though I broke up with him, or I needed to handle my own issues with him. I was getting this information poured to me from my ex friends, to their moms. I was getting it on me at all times. And I was like, "Oh my god, the fact that nobody's understanding this scenario right now is crazy to me." But I had to start kind of backing off, because I was clearly not receiving support from some of my closest friends, and they were very much picking sides in which that was the last thing I wanted. I literally iterated to them through texting and stuff, and communicating that picking sides was never what I wanted in this breakup. I wanted to keep my friends, and I wanted him to be able to have friends. It wasn't like I was trying to maliciously cut him off from his friends. I never wanted any of it to be malicious. And he continued to chuck his bombs at me and try and isolate me, because I wasn't doing what he wanted me to do.

So, after a while, he started dating one of my ex-best friends from a while before, that current friend group. And I would hear through the grapevine that my friends were posting on their social medias, calling me names on their private story. And I would post on my TikTok like a song I wrote. I was writing songs, as the only way to cope with all the stuff I was dealing with, having barely any friends left, and I was getting extreme internet hate from it, of people I didn't even know, accounts I'd never even seen before. After blocking all these people, all of them across social medias, new accounts were being made. New people I had never talked to, never, never once in my life, were coming on my account and being like, "I'm so glad he broke up with you. You suck," all these things. And I was like, "Hello?" It was so insane to me and it hurt so deeply that he or whoever were sending the troops to come and attack me after he already had a new girlfriend, I'm like, "You have a new life. Stay away from me." It's crazy that people put in this much effort to try and tear you down when you're out of the situation. It's like, "You're making it so obvious how much you care about me. Leave me alone. I don't want you to talk to me. Leave me alone." It's crazy. So, I was just getting, you know, an influx of these people coming on my social medias or DMing me from random accounts I had never seen before, saying mean things. For a while, there was like a two-month period where every single weekend, I knew Saturday night I'd wake up the next morning, Sunday morning, and my house would be like TP'd. And I was like, "What?" Every weekend, I knew, me and a couple of my other friends who I did stay close with, who I feel so grateful for them, but I'll get back to that in a little bit, we would text each other and be like, "Remember tomorrow's Sunday, your house is probably going to be trashed." And sure enough, we'd wake up and either our sidewalk would be chalked saying something, I don't know what, I don't remember. Even neighbors would start driving by and be like, "Wow, it's an every weekend thing now." And I'd be going and like vacuuming up these pieces of paper in my lawn. Like literally, "What?" I think back and I'm like, "Wait, hold on. This actually occurred?" Half of the stuff I can't even believe was in my life that I'm living right now, because I feel so differently now.

But, yeah, so I went through all that and. I just want to say it's really, really sad to me how many people spend their time doing these things to other people who have no impact on their life. I had no impact on anybody's life. I wasn't doing anything. I was just sitting at home. It was during COVID and I was just sitting at home, not going to school in-person, doing my thing, not communicating with any of them. And sure enough, I'd wake up Sunday morning and my house would be trashed or I'd look on my Instagram and I'd get a DM request of someone saying something about me. And it was just like it got to a point where it didn't end until like maybe a year after I broke up with him, it didn't end. Because finally when I left and went to Charleston, it finally was over. Hell was over. But it just never ended, it felt like. It never ended. And it's sad to say, but these people, these people must have had lives where they just felt so miserable that they needed to take me down for whatever anger they had in them.

And I do want to touch on-- because that was just such a kind of heavy story about my experience and I just want to talk about like how to overcome these things if you're dealing with a lot of them or any of them like a toxic relationship or volatile friendships or any of those things, I want to kind of talk about how I overcame them and from being in that extremely dark place and not really valuing my life, how I got out of that. I have to say I never gave up. I never let myself get to the point where I was like, it would be better if I wasn't here. I had to not let myself get to that point because, luckily, there was always the glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel for me. I was like, "There's only this many years until college. There's only this many years until everyone graduates and leaves." I knew that eventually there was an end in sight. And I feel lucky for that, that I knew there was an end in sight, but I had to make sure I never gave up and got to that point, because my life is so much more valuable than how they were treating me and nothing that they said was ever true.

And I want to say I had to depersonalize a lot of the things that everybody was saying. After a while, like at the beginning, I took everything so personally. I was like, "Maybe I was the worst girlfriend. Maybe I was the one who was treating him horribly and I was never doing enough. And I was doing things wrong." I started to think that maybe that was true. And I teeter on thinking that was true and, you know, dealing with those things. And I had to realize after that long had gone by, I was like, "None of this stuff is even true anymore. None of it can even be true. None of it even has any truth to it." And it honestly never did. It was literally just a matter of I was a punching bag. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. And everybody was really mad for some reason in their own life to then say, "Oh my god, let's use Iris as our punching bag. Let's just use Iris as somebody who we just spend our time on the weekends going to her house and trashing her house, or whatever." They were just looking for somebody to, I don't know, bully. That's the truth. So, they were looking for somebody to kind of do those things to, and they were looking for a reason to be mad. And I had to realize, it has nothing to do with me anymore. I'm not doing anything. I'm sitting here alone with my mom, doing COVID school, sitting with my dog. What could I possibly be threatening to you? What could I possibly be doing to you right now? I was sitting at home all the time. I was doing nothing. So, it was one of those things where it was like, "I'm fueling no fire." The fire is just like, boom-boom-boom, like I'm getting shot at from all angles from these people when I'm literally not doing anything. It had been months since any of us had ever interacted and I was still getting whatever I was getting from them. So, just had to realize I became a punching bag. I became their way of getting their anger out. So, I had to make sure it wasn't personal anymore. It's not personal. It's all of their negative vibes and energy and anger that they are using against you, because you're the only one who ever did anything that they see as wrong.

And another thing is if others spend that much time thinking and posting and talking about you, you're the one in the power position. You're the one doing nothing and they can't stop thinking about you. That is powerful in itself. You just have to reframe it in your mind and realize like, "Why do they care so much about me? I must've mattered to them greatly or else they wouldn't have spent 10 months of their time shooting bombs and missiles through messages on social media at me. They obviously cared. So, it's just important to remember you have the power in that situation, because you don't care about them anymore and they can't stop caring about you. It's the truth. It's literally the truth.

And another thing is I know in these moments it can feel so extremely dark and it can feel like you're so alone and isolated and everyone hates you and why don't you hate yourself if everyone hates you, that kind of thing. And I just have to remind you like you have to appreciate those who stick around or who have stuck around whether it be your family, whether it be your dog, whether it be your cat, whether it be a couple of your closest friends that never have strayed from you. You have to appreciate those people. And I feel so lucky I had three of my girlfriends, two of them being from childhood and one of them being a more recent friend that stuck with me through this entire time. And as time went on, they were like, "Iris, oh my god, I am so sorry. I'm so sorry these people are doing this to you when you have done nothing wrong." And they have always reiterated the fact to me that I'm not wrong, I'm not doing anything wrong. And I feel so grateful for them. And if they're listening to this, I love you so much, and I'm still friends with them to this day. So I feel so grateful for them, and for them sticking up for me in times that they saw that I was being, you know, talked down about, and that kind of thing. I feel really grateful for that, and I had to really remember, there are people that are still there for you. There are people, whether it be a best friend you haven't talked to in six years, and you just reach out and say hi, like, "How are you? I miss you." There's always somebody out there who's on your team. And if you feel like there's not, I'm on your team. I, Iris Clark, am on your team, because I promise you it gets better and there's always a light at the end of the tunnel.

That's another thing, is that this isn't the end. This dark, dark time, whether you're in a toxic relationship like I was or really bad friendships or, you know, you're dealing with social media hate in one way or the other, there's light at the end of the tunnel. You will get through it. You will slowly but surely heal from it. And I have. I can safely say I have greatly healed from this experience that I had. I have had other relationships. I know that other people can love me. I know that other people can love me, though I was told that no one could ever love me again. I have made best friendships that would never do what these people did to me. They would never even think to do what they did to me. And that is just a reminder to you that life goes on, and you will have those new relationships and friendships that redeem your experience, that will make sure you know that they will never, never do anything of the sort to you. And I have definitely dealt with my fair share of trust issues since that incident with some of my friends who I'd known for 12 years kind of doing those things to me. I've had a fair amount of trust issues. And I felt so healed by not only the mental work I've done through therapy, which I also greatly recommend, but through these friendships who have deeply, deeply, deeply healed me and have made me realize that I'm so lovable and that I'm such a good girlfriend. I am such a good person. I don't have malicious intent. I am a great friend. I always show up. They've reminded me of these things and I feel so so grateful for that. So if any of my current friends are listening right now, I just want to say of course, I love you, too and I just appreciate everything you've ever done for me and made me really heal from those things.

And again, I just want to reiterate that you will get through it. You'll find new passions. You'll find a purpose. I have such a purpose now in the work I do because of this past experience. If I had never experienced any of the challenges that we talk about here at the Valentina campaign, I wouldn't have the same drive I have to do the work I'm doing, make the content I'm making and really create this community of girls. I wouldn't have that same drive. So, I feel grateful I experienced these experiences because now I have such a purpose in this work that we do here at The Valentina Campaign.

And I now know I'm so resilient. I'm so strong after getting through what I got through. Those were such dark times and I know that I can come back from whatever comes at me in the future. And I feel grateful for that inner knowing that I do know I will always bounce back, because I hit that point where I thought I was never going to bounce back. I thought it was the end. And it wasn't. It wasn't! I'm here, I'm filming a podcast talking about my experience to help other girls. How awesome is that? I am getting the chance to make my own creative career and build my entrepreneurial dreams and work on my art and music and none of it went away. I still get to live my dreams despite all of these things I dealt with in the past and the things that these people told me, none of it was true. Not a single thing that they ever told me was true. And that I have to reiterate to all the girls who might be dealing with social media hate, or people making false claims about you, or drama, or relationships, whatever it is, it's probably not true. The things they're saying about you are not true. The only person who can define who you are is you. You define who you are. Anything anybody else says about you is not true. The only person who decides what is true about you is you. Period. End of sentence, end of story. That is what I want to hit the nail on the head is, you define who you are, your passions define who you are, how you treat other people defines who you are. You define who you are. Period. That is what I want to iterate.

And again, just to kind of close out, I want to say I appreciate you all for listening, first of all. I know that was kind of a different episode and kind of heavy and you heard a lot from me this time because it was a solo episode. But thank you for listening to my story and thank you for being here, being a part of this community. And if you do need help, reach out for help. There are hotlines if you need to reach out to a hotline, if you're in a toxic relationship, if you feel like you can't get out. There are resources for you. Reach out to your therapist, reach out to a trusted adult. You do not have to face things alone ever, ever, ever, ever. There's always someone on your team. I'm on your team. The Valentina Campaign is on your team. And I just want to say you got this. If you're going through a hard time, you're not alone. You're not alone, period. You're not alone. And I just want to say that just to close out this episode.

But again, thank you all so, so much for listening. That is a little bit more on my story and why I have such a purpose behind the work I do here at The Valentina Campaign. And that feels good to get out off my chest. It really does. So, thank you all so much for listening. I love you all. If you're going through a hard time, I'm here for you. I'm your biggest fan. You got this. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. You'll do great things, okay? All right, guys, I will see you next time on For the Girls with The Valentina Campaign. Love you, guys. Bye!