Sometimes I just disappear. It's a thing I do. I lurk in the background, and responding becomes too tiring, too anxiety inducing, so I don't. I get the messages, I click and read, and I go back to my life. I try not to do this to people too often, it's a byproduct of who I am, I suppose.
The truth of my life is that I am embarrassed by it. It's hard to explain how I went from one path to another so quickly, how I ended up in a scary situation again and again, and how my stupid bad choices in adulthood have managed to almost be my undoing.
I moved out of my alcoholic mothers house when I turned 18, I ran from it, more like. I graduated high school just three weeks after my 18th birthday, and I left thinking I would never look back. From then, I have never stopped running.
I left to California at 19 for a man I met on the internet, he was 23, and charming and he could rescue me from my sisters house where I was neither wanted nor cared for. I left at a run, again thinking I would never look back.
California was a testament more to my stubbornness than to a successful lasting relationship. Within my first six months there I miscarried a child I didn't know I was carrying, and from there the relationship began its steady decline.
I left him, after three and a half years, more than half of which he was cheating on me, the other half he was generally treating me badly. Why did I stay? Why does anyone stay in a bad relationship? The sex was bad, the love was sour, the relationship had long died when I finally took my leave.
I came "home".
I moved in with my older brother, and his then wife (now ex wife). I managed to live there for less than 6 months, before moving into my own apartment.
I then met someone, or re-met someone, depending on how you view it. I had known him in my youth, and he had been my first kiss a million years before.
Meeting him again in adulthood seemed a sign I was on the right track, and I worked hard to keep that relationship going. I loved him so powerfully, I thought that we could survive anything.
Within TWO WEEKS of us getting together he confessed to me that he had gotten into a car accident, and he had been drinking. Charges hadn't been filed yet, but they would. I stayed, through some fool hope that if I stayed true to him now, he would stay true to me later. It was a fool hope.
Our relationship lead me down the darkest path I have ever been on, and by then end of it I hardly knew how he had gotten there. How WE had gotten there. His felony charges of vehicular assault had made finding jobs nearly impossible in the city, I lost my job because my life was falling apart, and thus my job followed. We moved in with my father, and then my mother, and then a tweaker shack in the woods because we couldn't afford more.
That house nearly killed me. I lived there for two years, it has been nearly two years since I was there and my body is still recovering from it. The walls were filled with black mold, the ceiling filled with rats, and the property was owned by a hoarder.
Actually, if you want a good indication of where I was and how dark and scary my path became, check out Hoarders the TV series. Season 9, Episode 4... Linda is my old landlord. I lived on one of her properties. I nearly died there.
After leaving I was hospitalized, and have been again and again since then. An aggressive bacterial infection, which has even recently come back again, has had me down and out. I have been stuffed with antibiotics, steroids, inhalers, pain killers, and lord knows what else. I am tired. But I am still fighting, because what else is there?
Loving him nearly killed me, and leaving him was hardly the empowering liberation people imagine. He began using drugs, and quickly became abusive. Mostly emotionally, but it ventured into physical territory more than once. I was hardly kind to him either, but it was all such a mess. He became my constant nightmare.
I have a reoccurring nightmare which stars him. I have his child, and I am living in that old tweaker shack with him, and he is there. I am chasing him, begging him to help me with the child becasue it is dying. He won't. The child dies. That's the dream.
I had that dream long before I left that house, and now a child has died there. A real live flesh and blood child. A small family who could afford no more moved into my old tweaker shack in the woods, and they lost their two month old baby to it.
I got away, escaped to my alcoholic mothers house. It was better, because I was no longer dying. There was someone there to care for me, and help me through all of this sick. I have been out of work much of the time, I am looking to rectify that now. I love to work. Being idle has never suited me, but right now it makes me sick. Everything makes me sick. I am working on that as well.
I lived with my mother for six months before I met a man. Another nightmare. How do I choose them so well? A sociopathic nightmare this time.
Before him I had dated narcissists and fools. I had dated man children and lay abouts. I
had never dated a predator before, until this man.
Last summer, he swept me off my feet. It wasn't hard, I was hungry for it. I was starving for love, and he was beautiful.
I don't mean figuratively. I mean still he is one of the most attractive people I have ever seen. Every way he moved felt sensual, everything about him set me on high. He had a beautiful little daughter too, and of course he used her to make me love him.
I had known him for six weeks when he convinced me to travel to new mexico with him. He was from there, and he assured me that we would be there for less than a month before returning to my home in Washington.
It wasn't until the road trip down that I started to see him unraveling. It happend so quickly from there, I can hardly explain how it happened.
The first thing I realized, was that he was an alcoholic. Something he had managed to hide from me until that point.
Until the trip down, when vodka shooters began appearing everywhere, and his eyes were glassy and red the entire way. With his six year old daughter, me, my dog, and himself he disregarded the safety of us all, but I was half way through Utah before I realized what was happening.
Call me oblivious if you want, but he had built his whole life around hiding his true nature from people. He was so good. The love bombing, the sudden cold, the little comments that made me feel... less... It was all done with such grace that I hardly knew who I was. My empathic self was entirely in his grasp.
He made mistakes, though. Too many mistakes. He's a sloppy user, as it were. It
became clear before we even passed the state lines into New Mexico that he had no intention of returning back to Washington with me and my dog. That had never been the plan.
Upon my arrival there I waited, observing for several days before deciding for sure that I needed to leave. Several things happened all at once.
Firstly: The drinking continued, and now he had added cocaine.
Secondly: He insisted I could not have my animals, all of the sudden.
Third: His continued disregard for his daughter, her health and her well being. Any and
all behavior he exhibited that lended to he idea that he cared for her was more a show to keep me thinking that he did. The moment he was satisfied that he would be fine in the hands of someone else, he was only all too happy to drop her wherever to pursue his own endeavors.
Fourth: The Chameleon thing he does. His personality is adaptable, not just slightly, but entirely. He flits from one type of person to another, mirroring their behavior exactly, being exactly who they think he is. Watching him when his two personas must collide, when he is around two people who know two different sides of this parroting technique he does, he flits back and forth between personas in the blink of an eye. I watched with interest, but I was already quite sure I was leaving at that point.
Finally: The rat story. I hardly know how to explain the rat story. I am an empath, and an animal lover, and the rat story nearly made me vomit. I was with him and people he knew, and we were drinking. He starts telling this story, and he is laughing so hard he can hardly breathe. Of how, as a teenager, he and his friend microwaved a rat to death together. Slowly. When he saw how upset the story was making me, rather than stop, he pressed onward. He liked my discomfort. He liked my uneasiness. He liked to see me upset, and he continued the story despite me asking him not to more than once.
I left the next day, in a furious flurry of madness and packing, several of my favorite things did not make it home. God bless them into nothingness, he can have them, I don't care.
I packed up my dog, two suitcases full of stuff, and I hitched a ride to a hotel where I stayed for three nights until my flight left.
He harassed me with phonecalls for months before giving up on me.
I came home from New Mexico with an aversion to men, an aversion to love, to dating, to people.
I had, finally, been defeated by it. I didn't want to fall in love, not now, not ever again. Love hurt too much and people only let you down. I had decided fairly firmly that my goals could be met by me myself, I don't need much. I could live a quiet life in a small home with my animals and feel complete satisfaction.
It was when I felt this, this sense of complete oneness with myself and my goals, and no desire to incorporate anyone else into it, that I met my current partner. Well, we had slept together once, many years before. It was neither forgettable nor memorable, it was simply... not the right timing. It felt organic and good, but just... not a good time for it. Meeting again as adults was a whole other thing.
It took him a while to convince me to give him a chance. I stubbornly resisted, because I was going to do it on my own. I was going to do everything on my own so help me.
He waited, though. We spent time together, and all the little ways we are compatible began to shift into view. All the things he brought to the table that I had yearned for, all of them laid out before me for the taking. Still I resisted.
The chemistry was intense, but I ignored even that, for fear it was not right, this was going to ruin me beyond anything recognizable. But he came over, and we listened to music or watched films, exchanging little brushes and little looks, but never crossing that line.
Until one night he came to me and I was feeling hot. It had been ages since I had had a good lover, even a half way decent lover, in my life. I had grown accustomed to bad sex, and began to think that good sex would never be a part of my reality.
But he was there, and I wanted to be touched, and I teased him coyly about having not been able to cum lately. The look in his eyes said that he took that challenge to heart, but he still kept his hands to himself.
It was with a shaking kiss, my kiss, and then another. Ooooh they were sweet. The kind of kisses that make you weak in the knees and overwhelm you. And then he was on me, pressing my tattered sweat pants down, exposing myself to him, and with his face just inches from me he looked up into my eyes and asked "Do you want me to do this?"
That was the first moment I knew that I wanted to do more than just fuck him.
We were in the blissful post coital cuddle stage when at first a problem arose. I did not know it then, but it would be the seal that broke on my illnesses. My eardrum ruptured, and I was in agony for a very short period of time.
First hospital visit.
Following that one, I had mumps.
FUCKING MUMPS.
Following that, a cough that became bronchitis, that lead to the discovery of the infection in my lungs.
Lung treatments and what all else.
And he's been there, by my side. A true partner in all the things. I love him so much, and I know without doubt that he loves me. We moved in together a while ago, with our mutual best friend, Matt (yes, he is best friends with my best friend, the man I think I will marry was only that far away from me the whole time. The best friend of my best friend.) He became my strongest supporter very quickly, and I learned I could rely on him and his love.
Life is good. I have the best sex. All the time. We hardly ever go a day without making love at least once, or twice, or more. We can hardly keep our hands to ourselves.
And I think for once, I might be doing it. I might be on the right path.
A maddening concept.
I am tired of running, though. I have been running for years. I have found comfort in his steady presence. I have found solace in his soft hands and warm eyes. He doesn't set me on fire, like my exes did, he cools my spirit down. He nurtures, he is soft where they were hard, he is kind where they were cold. I keep waiting for it to end, but even his bad days are not so bad so far.
I guess that is where I am now, wondering what the future holds.
Hoping I can stay healthy long enough to get and keep a job. Hoping the infections stop, and this new treatment works. Hoping that this partner keeps getting better, 9 months in, and things are going beautifully well.