Fast forward about a year. I'd been seeing him again, staying over most nights, and he got down on his knees one night and begged me (in tears) to be serious with him, said he was ready for a commitment. I said no, but planned to tell him in 2 weeks that the real answer was yes but I felt he should have to wait after what he had done. I fully intended to take him back though, I was already head over heels in love with him again, if I had ever actually stopped... 2 weeks went by. The two week mark went by, and the day came where I planned to tell him I wanted to be with him. I said "I have something to tell you." He said "I have something to tell you, too..." I told him to tell me his thing first, and he proceeded to introduce me to "Marla" (names have been changed, obviously), who he'd met on a trip to the city. "What did you want to tell me?" he asked. "Nothing." I replied. Another year went by. He was still dating Marla on the weekends, and I was finally getting to a point where I was ok with the whole situation, and could hang out with him as a friend. That is, of course, until one night when we were hanging out, and he kissed me. And I burst into tears. I asked him how he could do that and told him I had finally gotten to a place where it didn't hurt me that he was with her and not me. Then I left. The next day I went camping with some friends at this 3 day festival thing a bit north of where we lived, by a big lake with some live bands. He showed up (he knew I was going there because I had told him). He then proceeded to try and convince me to come home with him, said I was all he could think about, etc etc. After hours of him wearing me down I gave in and said I would come with him if he brought me back the next day. So I went with him and we literally had sex all night. The next day he brought me back. We started seeing eachother. I was screwed up in the head.
Fast forward a few more years. He's seeing Marla. He's seeing me, telling me this that and the other, telling me he really wants me but she had gotten pregnant and had a miscarriage and they told her as a result she may never be able to have kids, and he felt guilty, so he had to stay with her "for now." Then a mutual friend, Joe, tells me they are getting married in 2 WEEKS. I didn't even know. Ace tells me it is because she is in school and has a stable career plan and that's why he is marrying her. I was so upset. I begged him not to marry her, told him I still loved him, told him about that day so long before when I was gonna tell him I wanted him back but didn't, told him I had had a miscarriage with his child and had never told him, and told him to marry me instead. He said it was too late. I said I was going to need time if I was going to be able to be his friend again. He cried and said ok and he was sorry and this didn't mean he didn't love me. The MORNING OF his goddamned WEDDING, he called me, crying, begging me to promise I would talk to him again. That didn't go very well, I wound up crying too, telling him I didn't know if I could but if it was ever going to happen that he had to give me more time. I tried to kill myself shortly after he got married. I won't go into details. Obviously, it did not work.
Fast forward another year or so. He won't stop calling, trying to see me. Coming by. Calling. Coming by again. When I tried to say I would not talk to him again, he harassed me. He said "Fine, if you won't talk to me I will make your life a living hell until you have no choice but to talk to me!" Then made good on it by not leaving me alone. Finally I gave in and said Fine, that I would talk to him if he would stop the harrassing crap. So fast forward more, I was stupid, I slept with him. Said it couldn't happen again, that was a lie. Because it did. Thus started our affair, 8 yrs long. Through the birth of his 2 children. I tried to end it so many times because the guilt was KILLING me. I actually was in therapy because it was tearing me apart, especially after they had kids, and so on.
Fast forward to January 2010. Marla's leaving him, had a boyfriend. She moves back to where she is from. He tells me he still loves me. I start sleeping over every night but then going home. Eventually a few weeks of this and he says why do you go home, why don't you just stay. I move in. He tells me he needs me. That he loves me. At first, everything is perfect, he smiles every time he sees me, brings me flowers, cuddles with me watching tv, makes love to me almost every night. Then as time goes on, he gets moodier and moodier. Marla won't let him see his kids for a few months, all the while I am there living with him, watching him go through this, supporting him, making sure he is well prepared for every court date (to the extreme, at one point he was so prepared he went there alone and he was more prepared than Marla AND her 4 lawyers...), making him dinner every night, loving him.... He keeps telling me he's moody because of what he is going through. I am as supportive as I can be. He keeps snapping at me, saying more and more mean things to me every time he is in a bad mood. One night he got drunk and went down to the basement and was down there hanging out with his friend/neighbor. He turned on his stereo (which, by the way, was connected to a PA system so needless to say it got LOUD) and turned it all the way up. I was on the top floor (2 floors above) with a migraine, it was blasting. I went down to the basement and asked him to please turn it down because I had a really bad headache. He ignored me. I texted him from upstairs, "please turn it down." He ignored me again. I texted him a 2nd time and a 3rd time because it hurt to move and I didnt want to have to go all the way downstairs from the bedroom where I was lying in the dark with the fan on me. But he kept blasting the music.... Fast forward an hour or two, we got into a big fight. He said he wanted to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. I tried to explain that I was not trying to stop him from doing what he wanted, I had only asked him to turn it down because I had a really bad headache. He called me names, said I was just trying to control him, etc etc. Mind you, he was drunk. Next day he said he was sorry and brought me a rose. I forgave him. That's just one example.
At one point he told me he wanted more kids and that he wanted me to be the mother.
So fast forward to 5 months into me living with him. He was going to be getting his 2 kids for the weekend finally, for the first time since Marla had moved out. We had discussed it and decided that at first, I would go back to my apartment the first few weekends he had the kids (I still had it because I was stuck in my lease), to make it easier on them. So the first weekend arrived, I kissed him goodbye Friday morning when he was leaving for work, and he kissed me a few more times than he usually did every morning... this would be the first time we had been apart in 5 months, mind you, So I said "If you keep kissing me goodbye, I am gonna start to cry!" He laughed and kissed me and said "Its only 2 days, I will see you Sunday night after I bring the kids back."
Spoke to him Saturday night, when he called, and I said "I miss you" He responded "that's nice." I said "That's nice? You don't miss me?" He said "Do you really want to know the answer?" I said "Well, I didn't until you said that which makes me think something is wrong!" He was quiet for a moment, and then said "No, I don't miss you, I am just enjoying my time alone and with the boys." I said wow, does that mean you don't want me to come back?" He laughed and said "no, not at all" I said "Ok, then I have nothing to worry about then, right?" He said right. He said he would call me the next afternoon to let me know when he was leaving to bring the kids back to Marla, so I could come home. Then we said goodnight. Mind you, that entire weekend I missed being there with him so much, I couldn't wait to go home an see him again. So the next day at noon I texted him at about noon asking what time he was leaving with the boys so I knew when to come home. He called me and said the boys were napping and he would call me when they were leaving a little later. 5:00 rolled around, and I called him, he didn't answer. He called me right back and said he was already about 3/4 of the way there (she lived 2 hrs away) and that he needed time to himself and he didn't want me to come home. I heard something in the tone of his voice, and I was so let down, so I said "wait, you don't want me to come home now or you don't want me to come home at all?" His response was "I don't know." I got upset, because I had only brought enough food with me for 2 days, and he knew it. I started to cry and he said he would call me a little later after he'd brought the kids back. 9pm comes and he calls and says he not only doesn't want me to come back but he doesn't want me living there anymore and I should come get my stuff the next day. I said what happened? He said "nothing happened I just need time alone." Over the next few weeks, he told me one reason after the other as to why he wanted me out. Sometimes he said it was him, sometimes he said I drove him away, sometimes he said it was cause this, that, or the other. He gave me like 5 different reasons, actually. One of which was "Every time I told you I loved you, I lied. I never meant it. I never really loved you, I only said it because you wanted to hear it, and I didn't want you to leave." That felt awesome, as awesome as open hear surgery without anesthesia. What all the different reasons he gave me were don't matter, really, anymore, because I have no way of knowing which, if any of them, are true. Oh and then just recently he told me Marla had told him that she didn't want him back but if he didn't kick me out and stop speaking to me she'd make it difficult for him to see his kids when he wanted to.
That was in August, when he kicked me out, the first weekend of August actually. It is now October 22, we barely speak, except when he decides to torture me. Like when he made me look at some girl;s pics and said "what do you think of her?" I said I don't know, why? And he said "she invited me for the weekend. I'm gonna go spend a weekend with her, we're gonna be involved." I was so hurt by that, being as he had been calling me, asking me to come over, and that night he asked if I wanted to spend the night. So we made love and THEN he did that. I was so hurt I couldn't even speak. Not to mention she's skinnier than me, so that made me feel like he didn't want me anymore because I wasn't skinny enough, or I wasn't something or other enough for him anymore. It made me feel worthless, actually.
Has anyone out there ever felt the way I do now, I wonder? My friends keep saying things like "you've got to get over it, move on." They are right, but they seem to be expecting me to get over it right away. What they aren't thinking about is that it was 20 YEARS. 20 f'n years. Not just the 5 months I was there. Since I was 15 I was in love with this man, and I could not seem to say no to him. Like he was a drug. To steal from the book/movie Twilight, he was "my own personal brand of heroin."
Until next time, I will leave you with this quote I found about heartache:
"I don't know which I would rather believe... that you never did care or that you eventually stopped." - Anonymous
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