An Archive of Violence: Notes from a Survivor (Part 2)
Irene Sanchez
Xicana Ph.D.
I breath in and out. My heart rate has been up for hours today (3/24), ever since all of this. For years. But really yesterday when I found out yesterday afternoon that the poet had contacted my current job when I got hired. Instantly my body was back in this space.
He contacted my current job too?
After contacting my old one in Azusa in 2020.
After contacting the curator of the art exhibit I was just apart of.
After leaving comments when I did an event during Covid.
After a fake IG page
After saying he would destroy me if I ever shared this.
After saying we would go to “war”
After
After
There’s hundreds of afters. No, really, there is. The idea of listening to them all is overwhelming and gave me a full blown anxiety attack for the first time in years when I did listen to a handful. I didn’t even have this happen when listening to Sean Arce and him beating me. This is why I wrote in that first post in this series that yes it was this bad.
Or maybe I am imagining things. It’s all in my head and delusions apparently.
People may question why someone would record. Say it’s calculated or vindictive, but don’t realize it was for protection and safety of myself. He threatened me often and more than once, I did things I did not want to do.
But what myself and my family want to know now in 2026, that even after I finally left Matt Sedillo in 2019, why won’t he leave me alone? If I was dangerous and horrible and all the things he said? If I had blocked you years ago how does he even know what I am doing?
He promised to break me down so many times. Said he was going to be methodical in how he did it. Bit by bit. He was and still is.
Today, I barely got through my day of teaching. I go to my first class, my students all turned which most never do. I sensed something off. See just before this I was listening to music, in my zone to be happy, to be upbeat, to not show any other emotion. Big mistake. I had forgot for that moment as I tried to get myself to be ok for the day, the big news of last week. We have some space to dialogue before lecture. I held myself up, but also reminded.
I am done teaching the first class. I go to my office and say hi to a colleague. She didn’t know. I said it’s ok most people don’t. She says you always seem happy.
I thought back to 2014 when my therapist at the DV shelter in Seattle asked me, “with all you’ve been through, how are you still functioning?” That was before these two men.
I get through my next class turning putting the happy upbeat professor mask back on. I go to my car and drive home. I listen to music. I try to forget how a friend wrote me and I saw the message as I walked out, nothing more than, get this next one out ASAP.
Yes, this one.
I get home. Struggle to find what I was listening to on my phone the other night. It was too much. My husband and son Quetzal were home already. I tell my husband well someone I guess mentioned legal action against me. He said it’ll be ok. I’m like he’s trying to just destroy me like he said. I had heard it the other day. It wasn’t the first time or only time.
I try to find it to show proof so someone will know. I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t imagining things. Was I? I am back there now as I listen again.
So much proof yet I’m called sociopath, psychopath, narrsissist so many names. And as I began to really listen, I realized everything they’re saying now is all of what he drilled in my head for those years.
3 years.
3 years.
3 years.
3 years.
In front of Quetzal.
He would repeat words until they were engrained in your head. Until you start to believe it and if you doubt it, if you dare question it you had hell to pay, why? Because he’s great. So great. So much better than me. This is not the only time things like these happened. It was constant for the majority of the relationship.
“You are sociopath, you are a narcissist, if you don’t admit to it, you’ll…you are a sociopath and a narcissist, you make everything about yourself. Everything is somebody else’s fault. You think I make everything about myself, I don’t do that, you know who does that? Nati (?) does that, Nati is the guy from Eastside Cafe, you know who else does that? Robin D.G. Kelley does that. You know who else does that? THE WORLD. Because I’m more impressive than you. And that’s just a fact. I am better than you. I am smarter than you. I am more impressive than you so I get more acclaim that you do and that’s just a fact. Ok. It’s just a fact. And you think it’s me making everything about me, no it’s the world making things about me because I’m just more impressive than you are. You are impressive, but you’re not as impressive as me. (I tell Quetzal to go to the bathroom) You’re very impressive, but you’re not as impressive as me. And if you want to be impressive like me you’ll have to work harder. You have to make more demands of yourself, you have to stop making excuses, you’re so full of excuses. You’re constantly full of excuses. And you tap out, and you quit, and then you lash out. You’re good enough to get into this kind of area, but you’re not good enough to get over here because you don’t push yourself hard enough and you make excuses and that’s who you are. Someone who can go here, but not here. And the only times you ever get here is because of me. And then you and aaa and then you just you tap out and then you lash out. You have to find somebody to blame. You’re always a victim of something. It’s not me that makes a bigger deal of me, its the WORLD that makes a bigger deal of me. And it’s not because I’m a man. It’s cause I’m better than you. I’m a better poet. I’m better at coming up with ideas. I’m just better. I work harder than you. I intellectually work harder than you. I push myself harder than you do. Because you make excuses.
You make everything about you. You talk about the best thing you can do for Quetzal is be nice to me. Fuck that. The best thing I can do for Quetzal is be nice to Quetzal. You make that about you. You make everything about you.
You’re a sociopath. You’re a narcissist. That’s why you’re an abuser. You’re hating is just a manifestation of abuse. Hating and diminishing is what abusers do when they don’t have any power. So you’re still an abuser. You just don’t have any power. I’m tired of it. You won’t deal with it. You won’t get to the root of it. You are a narcissist. You are a sociopath…”
-Matt Sedillo (Best Political Poet in America)
He had a habit of messaging women lies about me, how he wasn’t with me and how I was mean to him. That’s how that first one began. Just calling me mean. Over the years more would be added. People found out he cheated fast. He had wrestled me for his phone when I found out and this became lies about me assaulting him which I had to agree to because he gave me no other option after I ended up needing to move after the 9 months lease was up and he invited us to his mother’s home. .
A woman shared her message when I left him. He had told her things.
The same story.
The same story.
The same story.
The same story, but different, details changed, added, or subtracted.
The three of us tear up at the words, and the sound of Quetzal as a small child.
I see my husband crying. I’m crying.
My son says it’ll be ok.
We laugh when he says he’s the greatest and people don’t realize how great he is.
How his mom tried to tell me to leave him because he was mean. How she told me she never said things he would tell me that her and others would say about me. I found out he told people I said things about people even if I hadn’t. What is even real at this point? That’s how it felt all the time.
I lose it when I heard one of me crying and how I wanted to leave. I wanted my son. I wanted to be healthy. Healthy. With my son. Healthy.
My husband goes to pick up our toddler.
While he is gone I continue. My fitbit alerted me of my elevated heart rate as I sat at my old laptop at home. It got up to 137 for 30 minutes. I had already hit pause.
My husband walks in and hugs me. We cry. Our toddler had his fake doctor stethoscope. He says mommy sick, I’ll check her. My husband lies me down and turns on the fan. He says to breath and listen to something or whatever I need.
I can’t function. Or at least I feel like I can’t anymore. I move to the floor. I move to the chair. I drink some water and lie on the bed.
As I feel heart beat slow down, my muscles twitch violently. I remember my fibromyalgia diagnosis in 2018. That is what I had just listened to. 2018. It hurts. My body hurts from all this.
Too much. Too many times. And yes for all those keeping count. Too many men.
I had been trying to stay in my zone pretending to be happy even while with Matt. I had to. I realize I have still been doing this. Pretending to be happy, like none of this had an impact on me or Quetzal. We tried to forget, but it is impossible. This is a person I had finally broke up with and left, blocked him and yet he continues to constantly keep tabs on me and what I do, make fake accounts to harass back in 2019/2020, and tries to contact my places of employment as well as community folks who I work with or do events with. He did that with a virtual event I did in Riverside in 2020. An event organized by a now judge I have known since he was a lawyer. I log before the event to prepare, they say we have it all under control. Security measures. I am confused. They ask if I’ve seen the posts. I look, the judge calls me. He tells me to let him know if anything else happens with this person.
About a year later I did. I saw that a poetry event was being organized by the same organization at the same museum. I contacted the judge. He said he didn’t pick the poets, but was going to handle it. Matt was removed from the line up.
He stopped for awhile after this, I think, but I don’t know when folks come to tell me things now about how he contacts them about me, so from when I left in 2019, he never stopped. He had always wanted to perform at that specific museum (the one that had the art exhibit I was apart of and who he contacted the curator of in the fall). I am sure he perceived it as me taking it from him or “hating” on him as he always told me, but no, his own actions and harassment got him removed.
I listen to how I had to praise him. I had to take all blame all the time. I don’t recognize this woman. She’s weak. That’s what he has said. Weak. Lacking. Piece of Shit. That he made my poetry “career” while I said I didn’t want one and that I didn’t want to be like him. I told him he was mean when he’d bash other poets. So many poets. Sometimes he’d make me agree with him and if I didn’t he would make me pay for it one way or another.
He was mad when I applied/went to VONA to study with Willie Perdomo. He came with me up north so every night I had to go back with him where we stayed with his friend that he also tried to kick me out one night there too and and I was pretty late to workshop the next day. One day he Ubered to the city since I had my car to meet me for an event. It was a reading for VONA faculty. On the way back in the car down to San Jose (the workshop was in Berkely) the whole time was him saying the event sucked, the poets suck and me telling him he’s mean and he said I was embarrassing him by even being there in the first place and how he’s better than Willie as a poetry instructor and poet overall.
“Willie’s good, but I’m great”. He got mad when I went to Pink Door too saying Rachel McKibbens was going to “use” me and I’m like how? He didn’t like the fact I talked to her online AT ALL. He didn’t want me to do anything outside of him or in service of him. He lies so much, but even with listening to any of this or reading about it, I know he’s Matt Sedillo right, the greatest, because the world says so. Me, who would believe me anyways?
On top of him bad mouthing many poets/people and how that made me uneasy again as if I was there in that moment again. Telling him there’s no need to do that. How he’s so great and no one is as great as him. All the time.
He always dangled the fact I lived at his mom’s house she tried to even tell me to leave him. Wish I could’ve or had people to talk to, but I felt trapped. He owed me $6,000 at that point. He only made about $10,000 a year back then I discovered. Expected me to pay for trips to Mexico and a conference in 2019, towards the end of the relationship, he got mad when I said I could only afford one, the trip to Mexico I agreed to and him suggesting my credit cards he would take and max out. He said I wasn’t helping him enough. I said credit cards are not available. He was angry as usual.
He would always convince me to stay after drilling in my head he didn’t want me there. He didn’t treat his own mom well (publicly she’ll protect him of course along with the cousin who Matt pushed for being mean to me in the hallway one day) He called her dumb, got mad at us for asking him to help clean, always needing my car or money (from me or her), cheating on me, telling women only a few months into the relationship these same stories he told me when I found out he was talking to a woman and told her I was mean and I was making him leave my house, he saw me with his phone and wrestled me for it. A woman messaged me awhile back telling me he did this to her, told her things bad about me and flirted with her and she didn’t know.
Him yelling for me saying the word “feminism, yelling at me in front of my child, breaking me down. I was in a difficult place and he knew it when I went to live at his moms house, I wasn’t speaking to my family back then for a bit either so eventually I couldn’t leave anyways because of the financial situation. Always putting me down and telling me to go, but later going back on it. Making “deals” with me to do certain things to stay. Always wanting me to praise him, getting mad at events if I didn’t take enough pictures or “good ones”, mad if I didn’t get him opportunities or find ways to get him connections. He told me he “made me” I was lacking (that one made my son cry and he still remembers) he would repeat these things over and over and over so much gaslighting until I would break. I was so broken. When I told him it was impacting my kid he said don’t give me that bullshit and how it didn’t impact him. It was too much, I had to stop.
This is a long one, it started over laundry needing to be folded.
“I will destroy you and I’ll have no sympathy” He threatened to contact my work and take a letter he had previously forced me to write how he wanted it and sign as well as make 10 copies (January 2019)
I am sure people will say I should’ve shut up too. I made him do these things or say them. I asked for it right? Hours and hours, three years of horror.
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I am under the fan trying to slow my heart rate and breath while hugging my toddlers plushy weighted cow, my older sister got for him at Christmas. We all call it “Diaz”.
I don’t want to be this woman either.
Scared.
Anxious.
Sick.
Exhausted.
Sad.
Worried.
For a moment I was afraid of other thoughts coming back.
But I hug “Diaz” the cow.
I realize I’ve been hiding this so deep inside my body. I pushed all of this to the back of my mind so much so I forgot a lot of this.
This type of abuse is often difficult to see. But it harms, it hurts, and it can kill.
My husband had told me if in ten minutes my heart rate didn’t go down we’d go to the hospital.
Breath.
I think I’ll make it.
I hope I make it.
I wonder if I did the right thing.
I wonder when the legal action will be and how expensive it is for a lawyer
I need to get through this first.
It is terrifying to write this, but it’s also terrifying to think I am sick because of this.
I just want my family and to be healthy.
Why can’t Matt Sedillo leave me alone?
Why does he keep tabs on what I am doing. I am nothing and no one. I heard it 100s of times along with so many other names and agreed to so many other things.
I left him in the spring of 2019, we hadn’t really been together, “together” at this point… He had cheated on me since that first year. I knew he had never stopped. Women told me about messages.
But he did cry when I left and left me a voicemail begging me to come back that he could get me a poetry book, but it was shocking considering he told me to leave all the time and then made bargains with me to stay or empty promises. I told him I didn’t care about a poetry book. I still don’t. It is hard for me to read poetry now.
It was not good. I had to pretend or else. I had to sign things, do things, say things or else. It was not good.
What I have now is good.
Why can’t Matt Sedillo leave me alone? Because he is making good on his promises to “destroy me” from 2019 and before maybe?
My toddler comes in as I’m typing on my phone remembering. I’m still hugging “Diaz”. He had his “doctor” supplies. He says mommy I’m going to check you.
“You got hurt mommy. We need to check your temperature.” He says this as he’s poking my forehead with something from his doctor kit.
I laugh. He sees me hugging his cow. He runs away to play in the living room.
Soon after, dinner is ready.
The four of us sit down to eat dinner. We bow our heads. My husband prays every meal, for us, for family, for food for everyone, for safety, for violence in the world to end, to give me the strength to do this before I wanted to or was ready, but I realize I wasn’t ready at all and never wanted to revisit this time period.
I really didn’t want to have to do this now or ever, but I know it’ll never end if I don’t. And he probably won’t stop. And people will help him. Why? Well because he’s better than me of course. He’s more impressive than me. He’s more intelligent than me. He’s the best political poet in America because important people say so.
To understand people who do these things, you have to know they are covert in how they operate. To the public they may seem “charming”, successful, and charismatic, but it is always the opposite behind closed doors.
I do not recognize the woman in these recordings during these years. I realize now it was from the fact I had exposed him cheating at the beginning that things began to get worse. I was upset about the cheating and lying, but also that as he was engaging with women, he had falsely claimed to this woman that I wasn’t “nice” to him, all this while he was in my home, not contributing, using my car (he didn’t have one), and doing these things. Later another woman would message me and tell me he did this to her, flirting with her while claiming I was mean and I have since heard other stories. Over time the claim I was “mean” because worse.
This is horrific and although there are many things now in mine and Quetzal’s life that bring us happiness, it could still be a whole lot happier if Matt Sedillo would finally leave me alone. I left in 2019. He has not stopped. He will not stop and we are unsure what else to do if he keeps contacting my places of employment, harassing me on social media with fake accounts or his former girlfriends account, as well as contacting people in the IE I am in community with or anywhere else.
I will modify my request from my first post now.
Our only ask, just leave me alone. I already told you one too many times. You have impacted a child’s mom, you impact the child and all those around them, something you still won’t apologize for and I am sure you never will.
I am nothing and no one anyways. Right? Guess I don’t deserve an apology and neither does Quetzal, but part 3, Quetzal has some words for you all.
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Part 3 will be posted along with this one. It is from Quetzal. His words, how he wanted to write it. Please don’t judge for the cussing. He is mad. He has also been impacted. I wasn’t trying to censor him. He’s on spring break. I’ll be spending some more of it with him now that I am sick again, resting and grounding.
Part 4 eventually will be dedicated to a woman who for over a decade contacts every ex I’ve been with ever since she first contacted me when her and a former college friend dated. The same one who contacted Quetzal’s dad. The one these men I warned to stay away from, but these men abuse people so of course they use what they learn about you to attempt to harm you and tell others to paint the picture.
Quetzal’s dad is the only one who told her to stop contacting him. Sean contacted her when I was trying to get away and she contacted someone I know who finally alerted me after previously checking if I was ok without specifics. She says in 2019 she didn’t care if I shared the messages she sent to Quetzal’s dad anyways so may as well now. She said they’re the truth. I guess it must be true because she said it, right?
Xicana Ph.D. 