Back again

This is a very personal post but one I need to share. I would never put it on Facebook. This is the place I share the realest parts of me and I’m very selective about who I let in. I feel safe to write these things. Writing has always been the way I cope, and the 14 year old poet in me that begged her friends to listen to her writing would get such a big kick out of this place.

I learned a long time ago that the writing is for me. I need so desperately for some of these feelings to leave my head. I need now to hold myself accountable for the decision I made for myself. Because I’ve betrayed myself for so long, time and again. Even when my best friend and sister were saying it would never end. Even now when my mom is saying in clear terms I am NOT to take him back, I don’t trust myself completely.

I’ve been in love with a narcissist for over two years. Having been totally screwed up after my second divorce made me the perfect target for abuse. How can I know love from a man when I see it when I’ve chosen so wrong for myself? Why did I never see myself clearly? Why do I pick assholes and bullshitters and raging alcoholics?

I’m 41 years old, and I know it’s time to stop blaming my father who was the first raging alcoholic bullshitting narcissist that never validated my worth...or the older boy in my life who sexualized me at 4...or my step father who got a little weird and then disappeared from my sister’s and my life...or my first husband who was mean and who abandoned our children...or my second husband who just quit one day...and now Jamie.

Just looking at his name I still have so much sweetness for him. He was just like my dad. Big promises. The coolest and sweetest guy. It started because he was left by his wife and he was a mess, and I just thought I saw in him the ability to love someone so much, it devastated him. I saw the way I love in his heartache. Someone who would never quit.  

It should have ended the first time a gun was involved, but I already loved him so much I burned up my car engine driving to Knoxville at all hours of the day and night to be with him. My feelings for I-40 are multidimensional. And I had myself a wild, romantic time.

I used to record all the days we were together. It was the thrill of my life and he taught me things about my heart and body I had never been sure of.  He leaves me with confidence to move onward and upward.  While I have been conditioned for sick men to penetrate my world, I have been conditioned too to survive them.

He gave me a black eye right before last Christmas.  I walked around with the evidence of all I had endured in that relationship to date: really strange correspondence with an old girlfriend and even more disgusting pictures and texts from the ex-wife he claimed to despise (I could have spared myself so much pain with the first lie that he had been divorced for “about a month” when we met...troublesome as that really is anyway, he had only been out of his house for about a month...but he hooked me by the time I figured this out...this broken man needed me...and I saw him through his divorce).

It could have been done when he smashed the board where I hand painted all our dates.  That was the first time he hit me.

And I’m pretty sure I did the apologizing after.

Then the truth that cheated on me with a woman described as having “uninvitedly grabbed more dicks” (This will be mentioned again later on in the story).  A bar whore at the bar I was now a regular at.  She fell in love with him and went crazy when he wouldn’t leave me to the point that she did all the things that opened my eyes.

He hated his wife for cheating and boasted of his moral compass.  He got me with the line that he was just looking for a true friend, and I believed him.  I didn’t think he could do it.  I saw how shattered he was when it was done to him.

But late one night there it was: a Facebook Messenger message from Laura.  Man, I knew it about her at least.  When she broke girl code once and sat on the other side of him instead of me...and twice when she invited me to a pool party and told me that he would be there...we had already been together for over a year and 10,000 miles...why was she telling me about my man?

He said that long distance relationships never worked out, but I knew I could do it.  What would I not do for the hope of my forever love? I thought I knew so much having been through so much and not making the same mistakes twice, I would never quit.  

When the truth was in front of me, I was the best version of myself- at least in terms of minding my mouth and emotions.  I became the best detective.  I watched her unravel through those messages when I kept staying another day.  The whole bar was talking.  For as little as it’s worth, he was embarrassed.  Everyone knew she was inheriantly gross.  I walked in that bar with my head held high, knowing what they all must think of me- so fucking sad- but I supported my man who still maintained that nothing happened.

The next time, when she was there, she left her seat at the bar and came out to the deck and sat down across from us.  I would claim that I am very smart about people, but I’ve let this man I’ve lived with now 5 months get away with so much, believing he was just messed up and time would reveal his true heart and soul...but I did know she was about to start something.  And the fact that “Your Cheating Heart” was playing on the jukebox did not escape me.

She bought me a drink.  When he left the table, she started to unload.  But I told her I already knew everything and I wouldn’t let her disrespect my man to my face when she started the sentence, “he’s being a douche.”  But then she followed me into the bathroom.  I didn’t let her talk, still, but instead told her, woman to woman, she didn’t know MY man or what she might be getting herself into.  

He texted her hateful messages because of this with my knowledge, and I was glad for her to see this part of him.  And when she texted me with clear words: he cheated on me, I just handed the phone to him.  And he told a watered down version of the truth with many omissions.