I lived with a woman for 4 years, who chased me for 7 years.
We had been friends for years, but i was very shy and our friendship had meant too much to me to ever ruin with a relationship. I wish i would have listen to myself, cause that’s exactly what happened and i watched in unfold before my very eyes in the exact way that i predicted it would. Despite popular opinion, i do get tired of being right all the time. It’s a curse.
We were young, but we had been in love for a very long time. Finally, with 30 on the horizon and teetering into the end of our twenties, she moved back home from a few years spent in North Carolina, which was miserable and frought with anxiety for her. I should have seen the red flags but i was still very untrusting of my instincts and dealing with my own mental illness. To be honest, she caught me with my guard down and preyed on my weaknesses. I didn’t know it until very much later.
She would come over my house very late into the night. I have never been much of a sleeper so I am always awake. My window was on the ground level so friends would just knock on my window to let me know they were there and i would meet them at the door so they didn’t have to interupt my parents who we’re brooding and strict. My friends were terrified of my parents, especially my step father who never had a nice thing to say or a hello to any of my friends. It hindsight it was a generation gap thing, but I never asked to be born, and i certainly had never asked him to move into my house with my mother, so we had our differences.
In the wee hours of the morning, she would come over and hang out with me through the night. we’d talk for hours and watch three stooges re runs, laughing our heads off, getting closer and closer. I was very wounded, having left a very bad relationship that i was still reeling from some 2 years later, and also manifesting some very serious mental illness in the form of PTSD, so my head wasn’t screwed on too tight, and she took advantage of that weakness. She was very abrupt in her approach. She would say things like “i need someone to have sex with. I don’t trust anyone else, i trust you, so i’d like us to be able to do that”. I would shyly laugh and turn my eyes to the ground. People with this kind of honesty always made me uncomfortable, but she’d push on with “I’m serious. If you don’t want to do this i really need to know.” I tried to tell her that i was damaged goods and it might not be a good idea, she persisted, swearing that she could fix all that, which i knew was bullshit. She would sit behind me on the edge of the bed and put her arms and legs around me in an embrace and say things like “See how well we fit together.” It was total manipulation, and i fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
She was actually the woman that took my virginity, so we had that connection, on one fateful tryst of ours, it happened somehow so she has always had my “V card” so now, years later, she was back to collect more.
My other relationship, fresh out of highschool, ended with a lot of pain. We were simply too young to be that much in love. She was going off to college, and i had no clue what i wanted to do with my life but play music. I certainly wasn’t going to college. High school was traumatizing enough. I was just kinda floating through life unsure of what to do next, working a shit job at a dunkin donuts and feeling miserable all of the time.
The girl was definitely persistent. I tried to back out cause i was feeling this pit in my stomach every time she said something referring to “us” or being a “thing”. My stomach would turn, something wasn’t right. I didn’t know what it was cause i had definitely been in love with her in my youth, living two houses down from each other. She was “the girl next door”, and she was beautiful. She had been a constant object of my desire throughout the years. Why wasn’t i feeling it now?
I asked a friend for advice, which was probably a bad move considering this person didn’t know anything about life or love. I had to guide him on a lot of his own bullshit. He simply said “Dude, it’s Jen. Go for it.” Which made sense to me, everyone knew that we had a thing for a long time. The only people that didn’t know were us, and now in our twenties it seemed like it was a sure thing. I decided to not trust my gut and to go with it.
I have always had a certain sensitivity, a certain sixth sense when it comes to things. My mother tells me stories of me just knowing things as a kid that I shouldn’t have known. Names of people I shouldn’t have known and what they had done. I just pick up on things, I’m not exactly sure what it is, but i have learned to harness it and listen to it, finally. It’s always right, and there have been so many times where i have tried to convince myself that its wrong and I am being ridiculous to think that a gut feeling has any actual decision making clout. Lesson learned and hard!
So we did it. We got together. I let her in. She slowly became my world, my girlfriend. It was hard for us to even refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend because it was so weird after all these years, RED FLAG. We slowly let ourselves get tangled in it, we let our roots grow deep into each other over the course of 4 years.
During this time she struggled with her own mental illness of depression and anxiety. She would have these really bad bouts of self loathing that made no sense to me. I am not stranger to self loathing, but i like to think that i know how to separate my crazy from reality. She never seemed to be able to do that. She would listen to the negative voices in her head and run with their scenarios until she was in tears and somber face, convinced that she was a horrible person. I couldn’t see it clearly at the time, not like i can now, who ever does.
It wasn’t all bad, we had a lot of good times and a lot of love. She definitely opened my world up sexually, and i followed her lead. The things we did together still boggle my mind for how we ended up. We’ll get to that later in this story, but for now we’ll stay on topic.
Rather quickly, she started to pick at me. She would make constant comments on my mannerisms and eccentricities, trying to point out little flaws that i had in my daily routine or thinking, to which i really didn’t care about. Sure, i do things a little unorthodox but it doesn’t harm anyone and it works for me. I have my own way of doing things and it has always worked for me. She just couldn’t seem to make peace with that fact. She had to constantly point out my short comings and turn things into a big deal.
We got an apartment together and it instantly became “her” apartment and i was just living there. My stuff was to be out of sight and out of the way while hers was everywhere, which is fine by me, i don’t really care, but don’t ask me to act like any of it is mine. I’m not going to touch your stuff our clean your stuff. Suddenly, I am not contributing to the apartment. I’m not cleaning up after myself, I just go in my room and stay there, where she clearly pushed me into. I went into this relationship as a loner. She was well aware of how i am. I need my alone time, but she would always have a “quick question” while im reading or have to open my door to say something or tell me some arbitrary story that has nothing to do with me and i don’t even care about. I patiently listened, but because I didn’t react the way she wanted she would turn it into an issue. The words “why do you hate me so much” came out of her mouth more than once. I never said anything of the sort. I didn’t hate her at all. In fact, i loved her. I just wanted to unwind after working a shit job all day. I wanted a few minutes to myself and not have to hear her prattling on about something that i have no clue about. I can’t even make heads or tales about the story or the characters in the story that shes talking about, so why do i even need to hear this anyway? It might have been a little cold, and i tried to do better, but i am simply not that person. I couldn’t be this person that she wanted me to be. I just couldn’t, as much as i tried.
She started going out to bars with friends and coming home drunk and not wanting me to see her that way. I started to notice that she might have a problem with substances. She had a tendancy to indulge, and not know her limits. She’d drink till she was sloppy and come home a miserable mess. I grew up with an alcoholic father so drunk people freak me out, and i wanted nothing to do with it. I can’t stand the personality shift, it jars me.
We eventually moved into her childhood home cause her mother went to care for her own mother, and her father was disabled and living in a home. This left the house vacant, so we paid rent towards the mortgage and we could live there. A house to myself sounded like a great thing. No old lady below us pissed off that we’re making the slightest bit of noise. No feeling like we’re paying too much money to live in an apartment that is not nearly worth it, and on a shitty part of town filled with bars and drunk people constantly walking up and down the road. The drivers side window of my van was smashed in with a brick by shitty neighborhood kids who ran off laughing. That was 200 dollars out of my pocket that i didn’t have, to replace the window.
We moved into her childhood house and everything went downhill very fast. She couldn’t sit still in her own skin. She had to pick at everything. Nothing was ever right or perfect enough for her. I wasn’t doing enough, when i clearly couldn’t be doing anything more. I had to constantly check in with her, letting her know where i am, when i’ll be home, what my time frame was. I had to wake her up to let her know that i was leaving for work because it scared her to wake up and realize i wasn’t there. These were things that I was not comfortable with, but i did them anyway because she asked me to. I have always been a loner. When i wake up in the morning for work I am always in a bad mood. I am not a morning person and waking up is hard for me. To have to go out of my way to wake her up to let her know that I am leaving for work is kind of annoying, but I did it cause I can be reasonable. It was a constant obsession to know where i was, where I was going, what i was doing. I don’t know why? I’m not sleeping around, I am definitely not the type of person to be pulling bullshit behind anyones back. I’m way too high strung and mentally unstable for any of that shit. Most times i was at band practice anyway, which i have to turn my phone off cause we had a policy of ‘dont be on your phone’. This was never enough for her, and it caused a lot of fights where she didn’t think she was asking for much, and i assured her that it was getting in the way of my life and daily comings and goings. She tried to tighter her grip around me and manipulate all aspects of my life,
We went to a doctor and got her on psyche meds. She started taking prozac and klonopin for anxiety, and started talking to a therapist cause it was clear she had some psychiatric issues going on here. For a while, the meds seemed to be working. She was lightening up, things were going ok, but she was putting on weight cause of the meds and she would pick at her face seeing pimples that weren’t there until her face was a mess of red blotches. The meds worked in some areas but this issue was bigger than simple depression. She hated the weight that she had put on, even though she had been too skinny to begin with. She had a bit of a cocaine problem from her last relationship and she had lost a lot of weight and gotten very gaunt and bony. To see her actually filling out was nice. She never looked more beautiful to me, but she couldn’t see it. To her, it was fat, and she was getting fat, and in the girl world that is a NO NO. It never bothered me, not for one second.
In the midst of having to constantly check in with her and let her know where i am, she suddenly stopped coming home. I was to report my position all the time, but when she didn’t come home from hanging out with friends all night, that was no big deal. I was to assume that she was just staying there. It turned into days away from home, and it left me sitting alone in a house that wasn’t mine wondering what the hell was going on.
A friend of hers, who was an out lesbian had a crush on her for a long time, and was very forward about it. She didn’t want to be just friends, though she insisted that she didn’t want to be in a relationship with this person. I even asked her if something was going on between them and she denied it. She reassured me that I had nothing to worry about, she could never do that.
Slowly but surely the worm started to grow, and she would be home less and less, and i started to feel left out of the equation.
One day she laid me down next to her and asked me if i thought she was gay. I was silent for a minute and then i realized that she was trying to say something without saying it. I asked her if she felt that way and she quietly admitted that she was feeling that way. I burst into tears cause i realized that our relationship was over and everything had been a lie this entire time. She was trying to reassure me that it wasn’t a lie, which didn’t make sense if she was gay.
We sat there and cried, we held each other, we tried to talk it out. In the end i just had to get away from her. I was one of the most painful things I have ever been through. I had let this person into my life, when i was so weary of her in the first place. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship, but it did. I didn’t want to ever have to break up with her and lose her cause I wasn’t sure I could recover from that, but i had to do all of that. I had to pull the knife, slowly and painfully from my guts and push my entrails back into my body, pick myself up and walk away to heal.
Over the course of weeks she went back and forth from being gay to not thinking she was gay, and she was making a mistake. She was just confused. She didn’t want me to go. I told her i had to leave, that I couldn’t just stay around here and let this dig at me. She asked me to stay, she begged me to stay, and somehow i did.
She started dating her friend and she slowly moved her new girlfriend into our home. I was so beaten up and traumatized that I wasn’t strong enough to stand up and say “this is fucked up and it’s killing me, so i have to go”. She wanted both of us. She wanted to keep us there all to her self. When her girlfriend got uncomfortable, finally, with me being there, then she sat me down and asked me to leave. Again, we burst into tears. I had nowhere to go. I didn’t have a job at that point. She had exhausted me of every resource that I had. She drained me of everything and at my lowest and weakest point she asked me to leave.
I called my alcoholic father and asked him if I could stay with him for a while, which he agreed to. I lasted a week there before he drunkenly stuck his finger in my face for not taking a shower in the morning. I was depressed and traumatized from a really bad relationship and break up, I was sleeping all day, of course i wasn’t showering. I needed understanding, not judgement and regulation. I felt a rage rising inside of me with this old drunk man in front of me with his finger in my face. It took everything in my power not to throw my fist and knock his front teeth down his throat, because thats what i wanted to do at that moment. That’s what I wanted to happen. I wanted to take everything out on his withered old ass. All the years of him never being there for me, and the one time i actually needed him, this is what i got. I felt that rage rising inside of me and intrusive thoughts slipping into my consciousness. All i did was snicker at him and say “ok, man.” That was the last words I spoke to him for 7 years,
The next day I called up a friend who had a room for rent in his apartment. This friend was kinda only good in small doses and bit hard to get along with but i was in a spot and i was desperate and i knew I couldn’t stay at my fathers house.
One week later and I am moving again, to a shitty apartment in North Syracuse, with no job, not a dollar to my name, not even a bed to sleep in. My life had fallen the fuck apart,.
She wanted to remain in contact with me because we shared a dog together. I had taken the dog with me to my fathers, but I couldn’t have it at my new apartment, so I had to bring my dog back to her house. She assured me I could visit and she would bring the dog by my apartment for a few visits, which we did a few times.
My depression grew to an all time low. I was finally diagnosed with PTSD. I wasn’t talking to either side of my family because they were equally crazy and didn’t know what to do with me. I had an episode where i grabbed my mother in a threatening manner when she was a little too harsh on my niece, who i had raised from a baby. I had seen the damages that growing up like that had done to me and I wasn’t going to allow my mother to do it to my niece. I lashed out in anger and I should have handled it better, but I was not in my right mind.
I went into self imposed exile for 7 years from family and most friends. I had to lick my wounds and heal. Years later, talking to close friends about it all, they all reported that “none of us knew what to do, we didn’t know how to help you.” I can’t blame them. I am a slippery character. I don’t let people help me, and I very much keep to myself and handle my own business. How could they know how to help me, especially in a situation like that.
I contacted my ex on a day where i felt a little less raw than usual. I told her that I needed her to not contact me anymore. I could no longer control myself and I wasn’t sure what I would do or what I would say to her if she kept acting like we could be friends. I couldn’t handle it. I asked her to respect my wishes. I had learned through friends that our dog was sick. She had bone cancer. I told her that when the dog dies I don’t need to know. I don’t want to be contact. I simply wish to be left alone until i report back saying that I can be contacted. She reluctantly agreed, based on the fact that she had been pretty beat up emotionally from all of this as well. It was just better if we parted ways. It’s been almost 9 years now, and I only saw her once when i ran into her and her girlfriend at a clothing store in the mall. We pretty much ran away from each other. I was with my new girlfriend who i quickly found in the store and said “we gotta get the fuck out of here! Jen’s here and I don’t want to see her!” We ran for the door and BAM, ran right into them doing the exact same thing. I caught a glimpse of her and she just looked away and looked at the floor. She couldn’t even look at me. Couldn’t give me the decency of acknowledging my presence. That kinda pissed me off, but I let it go. I just walked away and we left the mall and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.
Last i knew, she and her girlfriend were selling drugs out of that house. Her girlfriend was making millions selling drugs, and keeping her supplied with drugs as well, so it looks like she just fell into complete corruption and turned into a vile human being. I removed myself completely of any of that. I asked people not to say her name around me. Don’t tell me what she’s doing. Don’t tell me what she’s up to. Don’t tell me that she’s constantly inebriated. I don’t want to know. She made her bed, she can lie in it.
All of this happened, and I didn’t even want to be in a relationship with her in the first place. I should have trusted my gut, and that was the last time I ever went against my better judgement. It was a hard lesson and one I will not soon forget. Now, i have nothing to offer anyone. The world gets nothing from me. You want something from me? You’re talking to a wall. I filter all my friends and relationships. The damage has been done. I have healed, but the scars remain. I am just an outsider and i always will be. There is nothing I can do about that fact. I ask nothing from anyone, anymore. I see old friends and i have to hear things like “so i hear you’re like a recluse now?” to which i reply “was i ever not a recluse?” which they come back with “Yea, but i hear it’s way worse than it’s ever been.” I hadn’t even noticed. I just stick to myself and do my own thing alone, now. I have no need for other people. I have a handful of friends that I trust, but they leave me alone and don’t expect much from me. If you need something from me or need me to be more present in your life, i just disappear. I just leave. You’ll never see me again. That’s the discipline. I am anonymous and unimportant. Go feed off of someone else. I’m not your man.
Some might say that I am broken, or damaged. I have heard tell of that. I just no longer care. Whatever i am, it works just fine this way, and I see no reason to change it. I am not rocking the boat. I am staying down this time. Everyone else go about your business.
