rejectedbyeharmony

[rejectedbyeharmony]

The end.

I don’t really know how to finish this, which is why it’s taken me so long to write.

Elliot went back to San Diego and I never saw him again. He would start texting or calling me out of nowhere every couple months. He would hit me with the full court press, and then disappear again. I never really understood why. In hindsight, it’s obvious that this man didn’t know what he wanted. Typical Libra man, projects himself as this great guy but can’t handle the reality that he’s not that guy. And he can’t decide how often he’s willing to put in the effort to put on the show.

Once I was in San Diego for work, and he knew before I could tell him. The company I work for has kind of a big presence so I guess when he started seeing our logo around town, he decided to reach out. He told me he would love to see me and catch up. I told him I would like to get some closure, and suddenly he wasn’t interested in meeting anymore. I learned later that he was also living with a new girlfriend. Sweet.

The final straw for us was political. If you know me personally, I’m sure that shocks you (dripping sarcasm). Hey, it was never a secret that we were on opposite ends of the spectrum. But when the man straight up rejected the idea of white male privilege and was ignorant enough to try to argue with me about it, I saw who he really was. I backed way off after that.

Then, randomly, his new girlfriend stalked me and had to contact me to tell me to “get over him and move on”. Who knows what new crop of lies he was growing for this chick, but he apparently had me saved in his phone as “Psycho Ex” and told her all these stories about how I wouldn’t stop calling him. I set her straight and she stopped bothering me. But a few months ago I stumbled across her Instagram. She was a sloppy, obnoxious-looking Southern California stoner. That’s not just speculative, she actually smoked blunts on her Instagram.

It made me really sad at first. Why wasn’t I good enough, but this Shrek looking bitch got him to move in with her? She clearly had no expectations of him because he’s probably the best thing that ever happened to her. And that’s it. He could

phone it in. He didn’t have to pretend to be that great guy he sold me when we first met. He could just be his schlubby piece of shit self with Shrekess and they would live happily ever after in the ogre wood. Looking at a picture of them together, I kinda snapped out of his manipulation spell. He’s not even that cute. His teeth are jacked and he has lazy eyes and he’s kind of gross now. But he looked happy so, good for y’all, I guess.

Elliot’s father died during this time too. So that’s a whole other layer of weird. When he didn’t come back, he told me his dad was sick. He lied about so much shit, it was hard for me to believe if this was real. But I’m actually glad that he’s not such a horrible person that he would lie about his father having terminal cancer. I know that’s the main reason he stayed in San Diego. But he never even gave me a chance to show how devoted I was to him. I would have dropped everything and move there if he asked me. But I guess I’m thankful he had the decency to save me from myself.

The post-Elliot world has been really gray for me. Every man I met got compared to him. I dated a few guys for a few months here and there. But nothing really stuck for me. I needed time to heal so I took a long break from dating, and started therapy. We focused on my self-image, my worthiness, and my goals. In a short time I learned to let him go, and I let my heart heal to be ready to give and receive love again.

Recently I met a man who I believe will be my last first kiss. He loves me in a way that’s different than any of these men before. If I knew unconditional, brazen love and affection like this before, I might have never settled for any of these men in my past. But I think this was the road that lead me to understand what I truly deserved, and what I bring to the table. I’m grateful for my experiences, and I’m excited to think that this man might be my forever person. I’m also grateful for the opportunity to vent and unpack more than two decades of pain, hurt, shame and disappointment. I know exactly what I want, and I’m empowered to demand it. And I’m ready to take the next step in life.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

Dear Mr. Parker

Dear Mr. Parker,

You don’t know me, but I am in love with your son. The time that we have spent together has not been long but I have connected with, and fallen deeply for this man. And he has made me a lot of promises in the time that we spent together. So when he showed up at my house like he promised this July, I thought that this could finally be real. The second day he was here, he asked me if he could move in with me. He said he just wanted to be here with me, and he wanted to start our lives together. He said all the things I ever wanted to hear.

 As you may or may not know, Elliot stayed here with me for six weeks. During that time, he claimed to have obtained a job here. He went on several interviews and even had to report to work a few times. He asked to use my parents’ computer to print, sign and return some paperwork, that he said was for his new job. He should've only been here for two weeks, before he flew home to get his car and Roxy and come back. But this job kept him here longer, and that made me happy. Every time he told me he was staying another week, my heart grew two sizes. I was so happy that our relationship was finally at peace after almost a year of uncertainty. 

At long last, the plan was for him to fly home to San Diego, where his car was at your home. My understanding was that you and Mrs. Parker drove to Arizona in Elliot’s car to get Roxy and drove back to San Diego. Elliot assured me he wouldn’t be gone long. He told me that his new job was going to pack and move his house out here, and that the moving truck would beat him back if he didn’t make a quick turnaround.

 Before he left here, he promised me that we were getting ready to start our life together. He told me he wanted to marry me. In the six short weeks he was here, he bonded with my family, and my friends. He spent a significant amount of time with my mom and my dad, and bonded with my sister and her husband. The thought never crossed my mind that I'd never see him again.

 When he got back to San Diego, his messages were few and far between and I could tell he was being distant. The day he was supposed to leave, he had nothing but excuses, to include blaming Mrs. Parker having another stroke. I was extremely upset with him, because I don't believe you should use other people's health as an excuse for not doing something. I have no idea what truth is in any of the stories, or whether your wife has been in the hospital at all. But I hope for her health and welfare above all. It makes me sad that Elliot thinks that I am such a monster that I wouldn't understand that he wanted to spend a couple days with his mom. But he is not the best at communicating, and it seems as though it is easier for him to lie than tell the truth.

 Over the next five days he told me a story about a road trip that he was not on. He told me stories about every one of his adventures on the road, to include a flat tire, Roxy getting sick and him having to find an emergency vet. On two separate occasions, while we were on the phone I heard a rooster crow. I asked him, “was that a rooster?” and he got flustered and denied it, but it was clear to me that he was around chickens.  I understand you keep chickens at your house in San Diego, Mr. Parker.  And I am not an idiot.

 He communicated with me until he was "an hour away”, and then I stopped hearing from him. I started to poke holes in his stories, and needed to find the truth for myself.  I went back to the downloads folder on my parents’ computer.  The paperwork he printed and signed was NOT for his “job”, but was short sale paperwork for his home.  Which was surprising to me, because he never mentioned the sale.  Once again, he disappeared for a few days to gather his lies.

 Then he sent me a text message that he has “so much to explain and apologize for”. I’ve heard this from Elliot many times before. And for the record, he has explained nothing, and he has not once apologized for lying to me. He insists that he never lied about being on a road trip for five days and coming back here like he said that he would, and not letting me down, and keeping my promises that he made to me, because he wanted to stay with his mother who is in the hospital. Now, I certainly hope that her health is better than he lets on, because if so, I would be very concerned about her.

 The strangest part is at the end. Elliot insisted that he did move back out here to live in the DC area again. He insisted that he did get a job, and he took it. And he hates it, but he is staying because he doesn't want to "burn any bridges.” Apparently he's not concerned about burning any bridges with me. I have asked him repeatedly to come to my house and talk to me. He has made plans with me a few times, and stood me up. He maintains that he can’t reconcile his feelings being hurt by some of the things I’ve said to him out of anger toward his apathy and lies. He takes no responsibility for all of the anger and confusion and hurt he has caused.

 All I've ever done is love and accept your son for exactly who he is. Even when he's lied to me, and even when he's let me down. I have consistently stood by his side, and loved him as hard as I possibly could. Your son told me he was going to marry me, we talked about what we would name our children. I don't know what's going on with him, but from what I understand of his life before we met, he didn't have these kind of problems. Or maybe he did, but I just think that it's such a devastating thing for him to be living with, and that it was important that his family knows. I hope that you can help him find some peace. I'm sorry we never got to meet, I was really looking forward to it.

 You don’t owe me anything. Not even a response.

 Katie

[rejectedbyeharmony]

Fuck Arizona, too

The day that he was to be traveling home, I had a very important interview that he knew about.  That day, I hardly heard from him at all. I was worried sick about him, and was so distracted at my interview that I bombed it. I left, and called him a few times, because he should have landed by this point in the day. He did not answer any of my calls, so I headed to his apartment to try to get some answers. He had a habit of using “falling asleep” as an excuse for not answering my calls. So I thought maybe I just needed to wake him up.

 When I arrived at his apartment, I noticed that there was a new doormat and a pair of children's rain boots at the door. It was now very clear to me that he no longer lived here. I called Elliot to confront him about it, and he wouldn’t answer. By now he should have landed and picked up Roxy, so I called the Old Town Pet Resort to check.

They didn’t have Roxy or Elliot on file. He had never taken her there. My brain was on fire and my hands were shaking, I threw my phone in the back of the car so I couldn’t reach it to call him again and I drove home.

I didn't hear from him for about a week. I woke up one morning to a pitiful voicemail from Elliot, crying that he has so much to explain and apologize for because he moved to Arizona. Ari-fucking-zona. I listened to the voicemail a few times before it truly soaked in. I didn’t really know how to react or respond so I just tried to get my day started. But every step felt like I was in sand, and my heart ached. I remember sitting on the stairs in my house and weeping. What did I do? What am I doing? Why doesn’t he love me the way I love him? But I wasn’t ready to give up on him.

Later, he explained that he was moving back into his old house because his property management company could not handle the maintenance and that he wanted to fix it up and sell it. I could not understand why he wouldn't have just told me that he was going to Arizona, and why he would go to such lengths to lie to me about being there. He claimed that it was to protect our relationship, he was afraid that if he told me that he was moving to Arizona but I wouldn't want to pursue a relationship with him. Uh yeah. He convinced me to end a perfectly good relationship. In hindsight, this seems not only incredibly selfish, but makes zero sense when considering how little he cared about having a future with me.

He assured me that he wouldn’t be gone long, and that he would be returning to the DC area after he took care of business there. We engaged in a long distance relationship for three months, and I begged Elliot to come see me in Virginia for just a short time. We called, talked and FaceTimed every day, but it was becoming unbearable to be away from each other for so long. On two separate occasions, he told me that he booked a plane ticket, and then he refused to send me proof, or confirm the dates that he would be here so that I could make sure to take off appropriate time from work. I started to notice a pattern in his lies. He would make up stories to buy himself time, when he didn't have a good explanation for his actions.

I finally started to see that he wasn’t just an indecisive Libra. He was a compulsive and pathological liar. And for some reason I thought I could save him. I started looking for some kind of self-help book to neutralize his lying. I thought maybe I could build trust that would make him change. One night when I was drinking, I admitted this to a friend who straight up laughed in my face about it. She was like “no fucking way dude.” I was humiliated and mad, and when I got home from the bar that night, I found that book on Amazon and sent it to him at his address in Arizona.

The next morning I saw the Subject Line: “Your purchase of ‘How to Stop Lying’ has shipped” in my inbox. God damn you Amazon Prime!! *shakes fist* I dove right into my app to find the customer service number. That’s how serious I was about stopping this delivery, I CALLED customer service. The guy who answered even seemed surprised like nobody ever calls. I asked if there was any way to intercept this delivery and he recommended I contact the local post office because it was sent USPS.

I called the post office in a panic and they pretty much told me I was shit out of luck so I braced myself for the delivery confirmation. Two days later I got a notification from Amazon that they couldn’t find the address and the book was being returned. My drunk dyslexic ass put the wrong address number in. HOLY SHIT. Bullet dodged.

 At this point I said that if he wanted to continue to pursue a relationship with me that he needed to make a plan with me. It was only fair that I know how much longer he was going to be in Arizona, and if he ever really planned on returning to the DC area. One day he called me and said “How happy do you think I could possibly make you right now?” To be honest, I was annoyed af with him and had really been pulling away. But he must have noticed because booked a flight here. This time there was a flight confirmation for proof. He said it was a one-way flight, because he wanted to stay as long as it took, in his words "to prove to you that this is real."

[rejectedbyeharmony]

If he comes back, he’s yours. Right?

Six months had passed, almost to the day, when I heard from him. It was a single period.

.

That was all he sent. But it threw me into a tailspin. I received the text when Tommy was in the shower at my house, and we were headed to West Virginia to take him back home, and spend the weekend with his sister. I was so distracted by this text the entire weekend, and it took me about six beers on Saturday afternoon to respond.

“No. Not now. I am happy. I am loved. Go away.”

Right away I got a response “oh hey sorry my nephew had my phone. But I’m glad to hear you are happy. I hope things are well.”

Fuck you. How fucking dare you?! I didn’t type that. Well, I did. But I deleted it. I think I just sent a passive aggressive thumbs up and threw my phone in my purse. The long drive home from West Virginia was made even longer by the annoyance eating at me over this text. So I called him.

He answered on the first ring. “Hey babe. How are you?”

Babe? Who the fuck? What the fuck?

I tried to calm myself, but I just said flatly, “I’m good. What do I owe the pleasure?”

“You called me.”

Here we go with the mind games... I was PISSED and snapped back, “I’m not doing this with you Elliot... why are you texting me out of nowhere? Where the fuck have you been?” I was sad. But it sounded mad. For the first time, I was experiencing anger over him.

Silence hung on the other end of the phone and it made a knot swell up in my throat when I heard him take a deep breath. “I have so much to tell you Katie. I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I got all your texts. I’m so sorry. Will you give me a chance to explain? Can I see you?”

I didn’t know what to do. I felt like he certainly owed me an explanation. But did I want to open this can of worms all over again? I was in love with Tommy, and everything was going so well.

“I’m not ready to see you. I’m sorry. If you need to explain yourself you can do it here on the phone.”

He proceeded to tell me he just needed some time to sort himself out. That he had to process his feelings and he knew that it wasn’t fair to stonewall me, but he didn’t know what else to do. Then, he asked me about my new relationship. I left most of the details out but told him that it was long distance “for now”, to let him know that I was serious and devoted to this other man. He wished me well and we ended our conversation.

Tommy got a job in West Virginia, which was a little disappointing because I didn’t know what that meant for us. But unselfishly I understood why he wanted to stay with his sister and help her with her three kids. I loved Laura like a sister and I was more-than-willing to make that 90 minute drive every other weekend to spend time with them.

When my birthday came in May, Laura threw me a party at her house in West Virginia. Elliot texted that week and asked if he could take me to dinner, and it felt good to tell him I had plans with Tommy. He, playing the perfect gentleman, wished me a good time and asked if he could see me when I got home. I still deeply felt like I needed an apology from him, and I never turn down a free dinner. So I agreed to see him one night.

I met him to walk his dog in the park around his apartment in Alexandria, and we went up to his place before dinner. I noticed the place was packed up and asked if he was moving. He said “yeah I’m not sure where to yet, but my lease is up at the end of the month so I’m trying to figure it out.”

We had dinner and picked right up where we left off. At one point, in the middle of us laughing about something, he reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “Katie, believe me when I say that I’m glad you found someone who makes you happy. But also know that I will stop at nothing to make you my girl again.” WHOA. Like 6 months ago I would have died to hear him say that, but my heart had finally healed and I was trying to move on. God damnit, those words tore my heart back open and it bled hard for Elliot.

I went home with him that night. And for two more nights that week. We stayed up all night drinking beers and watching The Office in his crazy Posturpedic foldy bed that vibrated. He was way too young to have this Cadillac of Beds. But he was a trust fund kid with fuck you money and I had never been with someone like that before and it excited me.

 From the very first day we reunited, neither of us could deny that we still held strong feelings for each other. I battled with the need for fidelity in my current relationship, and the want to reconnect with the one who got away. I explained to him that I couldn’t make a decision, and he told me that he cared about me and that he would wait for me to decide. He was adamant about getting back together.

 I spent some weeks thinking about the prospect of getting back together with him, all the while we stayed in constant contact. We had plans to see each other before I was leaving town for a leadership retreat, but he had to fly to San Diego suddenly that day with the news that his mother had a stroke.  I spent my entire trip to Kentucky worried sick, waiting to hear news from him once he arrived. With him fresh on my mind, it became devastatingly difficult to have happy conversations with my friends at the retreat about my new love, Tommy. They were all so curious about him and how our relationship was going. So, I confessed to them my affair with Elliot.

 It was clear that I loved Elliot more than I cared about my boyfriend, and my friends encouraged me to follow my heart. So when I came home, I ended my relationship with Tommy. I went straight to Elliot’s apartment to give him the good news, but he wasn’t home and didn’t answer his phone. I noticed something odd, that the blinds that his dog Roxy had previously destroyed had been fixed. He mentioned before that he was moving, but he didn’t know when or where. I went home sad that my excitement was crushed and he called me while I stuck in afternoon I-95 traffic telling me to come back. He had fallen asleep and couldn’t hear me knocking or calling. I was like “no way dude I’m stuck in this shit now”, then I asked him if he moved without telling me, and he insisted that he would never do that… he still lived there, but he had the blinds fixed.

I thought it was weird, but I brushed the feeling aside, because I was excited to see him and tell him I was single again. A few days went by and I hadn’t heard from him. I wanted to share my exciting news, but I wanted to tell him in person. And feeling ghosted by him really made me deeply regret my decision.

Finally I heard from him, and asked when I could see him. He said he was out of town again, this time in Portland for another aunt’s death, on his mother’s side. He told me he would be returning to the DC area on a Friday and that I should pack a bag and stay with him for the weekend. We made plans to go to a friend’s art show and a bbq that I had been invited to. He told me that Roxy was staying at the Old Town Pet Resort nearby; so, the plan was for him to get off the plane, get back to his car, pick up Roxy, and meet me back at his apartment. Plans this specific really appealed to my need for control, and he knew that was how to get me off my guard.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

Hybristophilia

My sister got married a few weeks after Elliot disappeared, and having to attend her wedding without a date was humiliating. The holidays weren’t easy either. We met at the beginning of cuffing season, and he totally spoiled my chance of nailing down another lonely guy for the winter.

Sometime after Christmas, I heard from my old friend Lauren. She and I had been friends for years, she used to be married to a very close friend of mine but I got to keep her in the divorce. At their wedding, ten years prior, I met her brother Tommy. He was a wild West Virginia guy with a pregnant fiancé and everything about him said trouble. So... naturally I gravitated towards him. Over the years we became very close friends, too. He got in more than his share of trouble, and ended up in prison. When he was about to get locked up, I told him, “I don’t want this kind of shit in my life. Please do not ever call me from prison.” I had just finished college and I was getting my own world right, and it just wasn’t in my life plan to have to worry about someone locked up.

So when I talked to Lauren, I asked about Tommy, she said “funny... he’s been asking about you too.” She caught me up on him and said there was a chance he would be released that April. I was really happy to hear that, and hopeful that this time in prison would get his head straight so he could live a good clean life going forward. I asked her to tell him I said hi next time she spoke to him, and she promised she would.

I heard from her about a week later, asking if it was OK if Tommy called me from prison. She said the collect calls are 3 cents a minute, and you can only talk for 15 minutes. I thought it couldn’t hurt to just let him know that he still had a friend on the outside, so I agreed to let him call me. The next day I got a collect call from the Baltimore County Correctional System. I nervously entered my credit card information and connected the call. Right away I could hear him smiling on the other end of the phone, and loud as hell he yelled “HELLO BEAUTIFUL!!!”

It knocked me off my feet. “Hey!” was all I could muster. I wasn’t expecting him to sound so excited to hear from me. I had no idea what prison was like but I definitely didn’t imagine that kind of enthusiasm coming from an inmate. Over the next couple of weeks he called me every few days and told me all kinds of insane stories about being in prison. Turns out, a lot of the stuff they show on TV is true. All of that shit happens. Murder. Inhumane conditions. Hooch made out of fermented fruit. Gangs. And drugs.

He didn’t talk much about the drugs, since that was the reason he was locked up. But he implied them when he told me about the gangs. Even though I knew Tommy had a history of being kind of a liar, all of this was definitely real. Maybe the most realness he had ever encountered. And it scared him, and humbled him. And I started to see him in a different light. He grew up in prison and became the kind of man who had goals and wanted more out of life. He even had aspirations to go to culinary school after working in the prison kitchen.

One day he asked me if I knew why he wanted to talk to me. I had no idea. He said “Katie, nobody has ever challenged me the way you do. You never pity me or encourage my bullshit, you always call me out. Even when I got locked up you told me you were too good for this shit and you didn’t want a part of it. And ever since then, I thought that’s the kind of woman I need in my life.”

I was stunned. Sure, we had flirted a lot over the years, but never emotionally opened up to each other in this way. I felt needed and wanted, and suddenly I couldn’t wait for April to come. The weekly calls turned into daily calls, and we started to fall in love with each other over the phone. I would stop everything I was doing every day at 8pm waiting for the phone to ring so I could get 15 minutes with him. And we would both cuss the automated operator when she would cut into our conversation to say “one minute remaining”. I’ll never forget what that heartache felt like every night, and how many I Love You’s and Bye Baby’s and I’ll Miss You’s and Good Night’s we could squeeze out of every one minute remaining.

Finally somebody somehow filled that void that Elliot left behind and I stopped thinking about him. I faithfully continued my relationship with Tommy through his release date, and made plans with his sister to be at the house when he got home. Our reunion was sweet and perfect, and both of our families were excited for us. For the first month he was out, he just wanted to spend some time with me and family before finding a job. I brought him back to Woodbridge to stay with me for a few weeks, so he could see some friends here, and meet my parents. Everything was going really well, and I was happy. And then Elliot texted me.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

[rejectedbyeharmony]

The Emotional Rollercoaster

I confronted Elliot about being in his ex-wife’s house and he immediately shame spiraled. His head hung low as he explained that he didn’t know how to tell me it was their house, because it’s “not like that with her” and “we are really good friends now”. He talked me out of my disappointment and back into his good graces. The basic fact that he was completely disrespecting his ex wife by having another woman in the house they once shared never crossed my mind. I wanted badly to be happy with him, so I put my blinders on, threw all rational thought out of the window, and believed every word he said.

Monday came and reality set back in. He told me that he worked in a secure building and he could not even have his cell phone on or with him during the day. This wasn’t weird because this is DC and that’s totally commonplace. But it was weird because the first two weeks we texted all day long. I would sporadically get texts from him, but it really tugged at my heart strings, because I just had a amazing fairytale of a weekend with this man, and then our communication nearly stopped during the next week. I tried to shake this off, historically I have been the kind of girl who needs a lot of attention from her man. This was going to be hard, but I told myself this is a personal growth opportunity to learn to not be so needy.

So I waited impatiently until our next planned date which was the following weekend for Halloween. I told him that I had two parties to go to, and I planned on wearing a unicorn onesie. He said that he had a Cat in the Hat onesie and he would totally be onesie twins with me. Halloween fell on a Saturday that year, so we planned to spend some alone time together Friday night. Friday afternoon, he drove out to Tysons Corner for a meeting. Around 4pm, he called me to say that he was leaving Tysons, he was going home to walk his dog, and then he would meet up with me. I did not hear from him after that.

My friend convinced me to go out with her and some friends that night to get my mind off of him, but I spent the entire time checking my phone. I remembered that he liked to go to the Rockit Grill in Old Town, which was a bar I worked at for many years. Somehow we had never crossed paths, but he loved that place so I thought he might be there. I left my friends and took an Uber to Rockit to see if he was there. I walked deep into the Friday night crowd and didn’t see him, I hung around for about an hour and nervously sipped a few drinks just waiting for him to show up. The awareness of how crazy I was being hit me, and I went to the bathroom to cry. I had a full-on anxiety attack in the bathroom stall while drunk girls knocked on the door asking me if I was ok. I took another Uber home, and cried myself to sleep.

The next day he texted me in the middle of the day apologizing, saying that he fell asleep. I was upset and wasn’t sure how to respond, but I asked him if we were still on for Halloween that night. He assured me that he would be at my house by 830 to pick me up and we would go to both of the parties together. That was the last time I heard from him that day. I didn’t go to either party, I sat home wringing my hands waiting for the phone to ring. I let him ruin my favorite holiday.

I didn’t really understand what was going on, and I tried to just chalk it up to “he’s not that into you.” I’m not so disillusioned in the dating world to think that I am for everyone. I am not perfect, and I have my flaws, and I am no stranger to rejection. But I was so confused how he could run so hot and cold. The next day he was supposed to come over and spend some time with me, and I didn’t hear from him at all. I didn’t hear from him for a few more days. I was beside myself, I really thought that I had met the one. I know this seems crazy and it’s hard for me to explain the connection I had with this man, but through the words that I’ve written my hope is that you, the reader, can somehow understand the type of bond that we forged in just a short period of time. Or maybe me, the writer, will see this from a different angle to help me finally heal. Either way, I wasn’t imagining our bond, it was very real to me.

I finally heard from him. He was in Annapolis, his aunt had died and his parents were in town for the funeral and his dad needed Elliot to help execute the will. His dad spent a lifetime working border patrol but wasn’t the best at matters of business. That was Elliot’s thing, so he stepped up to help. I suddenly felt at ease with the whole thing, and my disappointment went away. This seemed like that completely reasonable explanation you hope for when something unexplainable happens. I felt relief from my own tragedy in understanding the tragedy that his family had experienced. He told me he was really heartbroken because he was very close with this aunt, and I wanted to be there for him. I offered to meet him or spend time with him if he needed a shoulder to cry on. He took me up on it, and came to my house.

He laid on my couch completely overcome with grief and I held him close. I told him that if he wanted to talk he could, or if he just wanted to sit there in silence he could do that too. I was there for him in whatever capacity he needed. He laid his head into my chest and wept for a long time. I felt like this emotion was genuine and that he was working through some grief. He then looked up at me and told me, “I have to admit something to you. I lost one of my best friends the week before we met, and I never really dealt with the grief. Losing my aunt has made that grief compound on me, and that’s why I’m taking this so hard.”

It made complete sense. He was trying to distract himself from his grief by throwing himself into this new relationship, and then suddenly I wondered if this connection that we formed was real at all. Or if it was just something that he was forcing to not have to experience the negative feelings about losing a friend. I should have felt a little used and very upset, but for some reason I felt important. Like I completely missed it.

He stopped calling after that. I made excuses for him in my head about everything he was going through, and he couldn’t possibly make me a priority. But I still texted or left voicemails when I was thinking of him. I decided it was kind of like being in a relationship with a coma patient. I knew he could hear me but couldn’t respond.

After 3 months of radio silence, I decided that it must be over. And I tried to move on. This proved to be much more difficult than I could’ve ever imagined. I tried and failed at dating others, and I found myself constantly comparing them to him because he was exactly what I wanted. He was funny, well-traveled, open-minded, so smart, affectionate, complimentary, successful, and tall! I forgotten what it was like to date someone so tall, and I loved the way his 6’3” made my 5’9” feel tiny. Plus I felt like he got me. I consider myself a pretty misunderstood person a lot who has a hard time deeply connecting with people. I keep most people at arms length to protect myself from them ever seeing the real me, because I’m so terrified that they won’t understand. He seemed to understand me well. He made me feel like I never felt before and it was what I wanted to capture and find again. But I just couldn’t re-create it with somebody else. Until I got a call from prison.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

A Date with the Devil

After Matt and I split up, I didn’t waste any time meeting new people. I was so angry I didn’t give myself a chance to be sad. While we were together, a new dating app came out. Bumble was like Tinder in its functionality, but it was designed by women for women. So there was an additional layer of safety built in. Plus the formatting was super cute. I dated a whole mess of guys that summer and into the fall. But nothing was really sticking. A lot of guys who oversold themselves, ended up being very disappointing in real life.

Then there was Elliot. I swiped right for him on Bumble and after looking through his pictures and profile, I thought that he was... non-threatening. He wasn’t hot, but he was on my level. I wasn’t sure what to say because he hadn’t written any text in the profile, he just had a few pictures that made me smile, because he looked fun.

So I sent a message, which is customary for the woman to do first on this particular app. And I said “Elliot is my favorite name.” And this may or may not have been true, but one of my best friends recently named her son Elliot and I found it charming, and I had never met another Elliot before.

We started chatting and he immediately wanted to call me on the phone. I thought that was great, because I really found that I bond best with people by talking rather than texting. We spent the next couple days chatting on the phone as often as possible, and really starting to become very fond of each other.

On day three, he asked me to lunch on a whim, and it freaked me out. I made up an excuse, but the truth was that I was super intimidated to meet him because he seemed too good to be true. He, completely butthurt, ignored me for the next 12 hours. This was not the first time he manipulated my feelings. The night before, he laughed while we were on the phone and said “seriously is this a set up? Who put you up to this?” He made me believe I was such a great match for him, that the only logical explanation was that I was some kind of practical joke by his friends.

After he iced me out for the rest of the day, I texted him the next morning to apologize. He asked me to dinner in a week and said “if I can’t convince you to meet me in a week, then it wasn’t meant to be.” The date was going to be on the Friday before Halloween, which happened to be my only free weekend for the foreseeable future, so i couldn’t bail on this one. I agreed to dinner and joked with him that it “better be something nice.” I could tell he did his research, because later he asked if I had ever been to this French place in Woodbridge called Bistro L’hermitage, arguably the nicest restaurant in my hometown. I had never been there, and the idea of going to someplace so fancy for a first date really excited me.

Up to this point, most of my dates had been on barstools. It was rare that a man even offered to buy me dinner. But, here was this man, who was tall, charming, smart, funny, and was willing to take me to a nice dinner, and also pick me up! He drove his car to my house to pick me up. He didn’t even pull up and honk. He walked up to the door to get me. When he rang the doorbell that night my body was electric. I was so scared and excited, and when I opened the door, he kissed me immediately. He laughed, and said “I’ve been wanting to do that since we first talked on the phone.” I had too. We had chemistry and he made me feel a sense of admiration and belonging that I never truly experienced before.

We drove to dinner while sharing a cigarette, and laughed about getting the social awkwardness out-of-the-way. We pulled up at the restaurant and walked inside. It was something out of the 70s frozen in time, and everyone who was dining there looked like they had been there all along. We made funny faces at each other when we sat down and immediately started laughing about the absurdity of it all. He was just a guy who wanted to take a girl on a nice date, and I was just a girl that didn’t know any better. We spent our entire dinner giggling and people watching, and making fun of each other. And I really felt like I had met my match. This was already the best date I’ve ever been on, and we were barely see through the first course. We finished dinner with brandy, which seemed so sophisticated. He wore a suit. He had class, and I could tell he came from good stock. Whatever that means, I had heard it before and it finally made sense to me.

After dinner he asked if I wanted to grab a drink, I laughed and suggested that we go to the dirtiest dive bar I knew in Woodbridge, The Queens Gambit. He checked every box so far, but if he could hang at the Gambit, this one was a keeper. He had lived in Woodbridge before, and had only heard about the Gambit and it’s raunchy reputation. So naturally, we HAD to go there.

Our faces lit up as soon as we got inside, we beelined for the bar, and ordered the same beer and the same shot and proceeded to have a hilarious evening getting wasted together. He was very amused with the bar and the vibe and kept telling me how happy he was that we were there. He grabbed my hand and looked me in my eyes and said “god Katie, I am infatuated with you.” I was too. He was my person. I knew it.

At some point my friend Lindsay showed up and wanted to go to another bar, and us being the kind of down-for-anything people we were, followed. In our Uber, Elliot was charming with the driver and flirted with the older woman in a way that was playful, and sweet, but never disrespectful. I was drunk, but I really felt like this was the most amazing person that I had ever met. And this was, by far, the best date I’d ever been on. He followed me and my friends to the next bar, and really impressed them as well.

At the end of the night he mentioned that he had a friend that he was house sitting for, in Woodbridge. Odd that he hadn’t mentioned this before, but also kind of gentlemanly that he wouldn’t invite himself back to my house. We certainly could’ve gone back to my empty house, but he was offering… So I took the chance to spend more time with him. We went back to the house and were so wasted, that I don’t even think that we had sex. We just went to sleep. The next morning I woke up to find that he ran out to get food to make us breakfast. I thought that was really sweet, but his cooking was not the best. I struggled through the breakfast and he groaned as he realized that I was choking on his cooking. I patted him on the back for effort and wanted to kiss him, but I desperately needed a toothbrush. And a shower.

I suggested that I go home and shower but he didn’t want me to leave. I needed to get home and feed my cat, so I had to promise I would return in order to pry myself away from him. It was cute and at the time I didn’t feel manipulated, but in hindsight he really didn’t give me a chance to set any healthy boundaries.

Within hours he was calling, asking me if I wanted to see him again. I had plans to go to game night at my girl Lizz’s house, so I texted her first to see if it was cool if I brought Elliot along. She was all “cool” and he was all “hell yeah”. So I was excited. I thought this would be another great test of his level of boyfriend material if he could hang with a different set of friends, and participate in game night with the same enthusiasm as I would. Naturally, he didn’t disappoint.

We laughed the whole night, starting with the trip to her house. The drive from my house to her house can be shortcutted through the woods in Clifton. I drove fast and reckless through the winding dark roads that I knew very well. He squealed and pretended to panic, and called his sister on speaker, “I love you and I’m fearing for my life right now, if I don’t call you tomorrow, this girls name is Katie and she lives in Woodbridge and she took me in the woods to murder me.” We laughed with his sister on the phone for awhile, and said we couldn’t wait to meet each other. My heart was bursting and my face hurt from smiling. This was all happening very fast and it felt like a movie. But it never felt wrong or not real.

We had a great time at game night. This was the first of many nights when he impressed me with his gravitas and charm. Elliot had this way of building a bromance with every man that he met, and being a big brother to every woman that he met, and everyone just loved him. He would show me affection in front of people, and I would get these knowing smiles from my friends, that said what an incredible man I found. I was on cloud nine after that weekend we spent together.

Sunday morning we were making a second attempt at breakfast, this time he was my sous chef. The night before I kicked off my shoes in the dining room, so I went looking for them while we were cleaning up after breakfast. The sun coming through the bay window lit up a series of picture frames on the wall in front of me. There was a beautiful redhead in almost all the pictures, so I decided she must be the homeowner. And then there was a picture of her with Elliot. Their faces were pressed together and his arm was strongly wrapped around her shoulders. She looked protected and loved. They looked happy

My stomach sank as I recalled a brief conversation we had on the phone before we met, about how he and his ex-wife lived in Woodbridge. He failed to mention that we were in that house... That we made a weekend love nest out of their former home. We ate food off of their plates, that they may have received as a wedding present. And that we had sex in his ex-wife’s bed.

Every joyful moment of that weekend replayed in my head to cover over the grief I was experiencing with this revelation. This moment would set the tone for the next two years, and fine tuned the mechanics of how I would forgive every bad moment with a highlight reel of the good ones. That was the weekend I fell in love with a sociopath and let him slowly and carelessly destroy me.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

BOY BYE.

Ok I’ve had some time to cool off so I can finish this story. The point of this blog was to air out my baggage around love and relationships. But writing this story has made me realize that I never had a relationship with Matt. I had one with his child. That’s who I spent all my time with, that’s why I put my heart and soul into. I threw his birthday parties, I made sure we sent everyone Christmas cards, I hung out with other moms who had kids his age so that he had time to socialize. These things seemed important to me, as a parent. They were not as important to his actual parents, and it’s really opened my eyes to what a completely different childhood a kid can have when their parents put them first. This was not the case. All decisions made around the child were in the interest of mom or dad, but never him. Oh, and I was not allowed to have input in any of these decisions, but I was still expected to take on all the responsibilities of parenting him. Seems fair. Okay I’m getting upset again, let me get on with the story…

 Matt was a line cook at a golf club when we started dating. He was frying frozen food and making soggy quesadillas for the already half-in-the-bag club members. He cooked for me a few times and I could tell he had far more potential than he realized. I’ll never forget the time he cooked kale in a pan with ACV, apples and walnuts. It changed my life forever.

He mentioned that he spent one semester in culinary school, and one of his professors told him that he already had all the basic skills he needed to get into the restaurant industry, and he would get a better education in the kitchen than in the classroom. What Matt lacked in self-advocacy, he made up in talent. So I encouraged him to seek out better employment, but he worried about the schedule. Chef’s hours are hard. He would have go into work around noon, and wouldn’t get out until midnight or later. I worked regular hours, 8 to 4, so I promised to step up as a coparent in order to help him make his dream a reality. (Cue the Mean Girls gif: Because I’m SUCH a good [girl]friend.)

 For months, he and I were like passing ships in the night. Sometimes he would get up and hang with me in the morning, make me coffee and kiss me goodbye. Matt would drop his son at a babysitter’s house on his way to work, and I would pick him up on my way home. We would play and have dinner, and watch Paw Patrol or My Little Pony until it was his bedtime. Most nights it was pretty easy getting him to bed, but I dreaded it.

 This poor kid absorbed all of the trauma of the fights between his parents, inconsistency with schedules, being passed from adult-to-adult all day long, and vacillating between a house with rules, and a house with no boundaries. As a result, the kid had night terrors. Every night when I put him to bed, I would brace myself. I gritted my teeth and clenched my butthole waiting for it to start. Then, like a haunted house starts up every night, he would scream and cry for as long as an hour. Sometimes I would lose it, and I would scream with him. I would sit in my bed and scream and cry and curse Matt for not telling me about this before we moved in together. One time, I thought I might actually kill him. I imagined Matt coming home to a bloody mess, and me just sitting in a corner, eyes bugging out, rocking myself, repeating “he just wouldn’t stop screaming.”

 It stressed me the fuck out. I begged Matt to take him to a pediatrician that could help, but their agreement was that Amelia would take care of all the doctor’s appointments. Shockingly, she couldn’t ever find time to take this kid to get him the help he needed, she could barely keep a fucking job. It was devastating to me because all I wanted to do was just help him. I wanted some answers, some solutions… my heart broke for him. I dug deep into the bowels of the mommy interweb to get answers, but all I could find was that weren’t supposed to wake them up.

 Holy. Fucking. Shit. There was no solution to this problem. Talk about psychological warfare. I begged for the bedbugs over the night terrors.

 Matt was only home at bedtime once a week to experience this, so he didn’t believe that they happened every night. And his son didn’t remember them when we asked him about them. I was literally losing my mind. Matt and I fought about it constantly. One day, two of my closest friends—who are both moms—reached out and told me that Matt had contacted them. He explained to them, that because I wasn’t a parent I couldn’t possibly understand what he was going through, and that was my friends should be the ones to tell me I was wrong.

 What the fuck? How fucking dare you… I helped you excel in your career, I provided a home for you and your child, and I made myself a technical single parent every other week. I dealt with your ex’s bullshit, because you refused to, and this is how you thank me? He wasn’t the only one working on creating a career for himself. I had only recently finished college, and started working my dream job with my dream company. I was working my ass off, and he was totally out of line.

 Naturally, both my friends told him to fuck off. I felt so betrayed by him, that, not only would he go behind my back and try to turn my friends against me; but worse, he didn’t even give them all the information, making me sound like a control freak bitch (which is not entirely untrue, just not in this context.) All I wanted him to do was to take the kid to the goddamn pediatrician to find out what we can do to help him.

 Finally, Matt took the kid for a dental appointment, and even though he was four, his dentist was very concerned about the state of his teeth. He asked if we were doing regular dental hygiene. Matt and I brushed his teeth every morning and every night that he was with us, so we knew that we were doing our part. He called Amelia to ask her what she was doing, and she answered that she didn’t think she had to brush his teeth.

Louder for the people in the back: She didn’t think she had to brush his fucking teeth!!!

 She fed him garbage food all day, having no sense of nutrition for herself or her child, and she wasn’t even brushing his teeth. Clearly this woman had no business being a parent. I had enough. I told Matt I needed some space, and asked him to stay with his sister for awhile. Later, he got his son’s cavities filled, and the night terrors stopped. Weird…

 Eventually he moved back in. With no more night terrors, and this incident giving us an upper hand with Amelia, things seems to chill out. Life was much easier, and we were getting along much better. Then, one unfortunately day, I learned that my one of my best friends passed away. He lost his fight against liver failure, and it was very tragic and sad. I texted Matt on my way home “hey just found out JT died and I’m really sad, could you just be home and hang with me tonight?” It was his day off but he usually has something scheduled like playing Frisbee golf, or getting stoned with his friends or whatever, but I just needed him that night. We had been working hard on getting along, and asking him to sit with me that night was me raising a white flag. I just needed a shoulder to cry on. He agreed to stay home and told me he would see me soon.

 Imagine my surprise when I got home and he wasn’t there. And neither was his dog. I texted him and he said he “just ran out to get cigarettes and will be right back!” I couldn’t understand why he took the dog with him, but I didn’t ask, I was too preoccupied with my own grief to try to decode the actions of a stoner on his day off. One time I came home to him naked in our bed passed out and I just left him there. He came downstairs like “babe when did you get here I was in bed waiting for you.” Fuck outta here Sleeping Beauty, you were drooling.

So when he got home, he had a backpack and the dog on a leash and he was dressed to go somewhere. It was obvious he had something to tell me and I really didn’t really want to hear it. He started to tell me that he decided to leave me. Wow, could this have waited a few days, considering the circumstance… In spite of my anger towards him, I still didn’t want to be alone with my grief. I asked him to stay, we could order food and smoke a bowl, watch tv… and he said “I’m sorry, I can’t deal with you being sad right now.” And then, he left. And my heart broke and I never forgave him.

 I let him stay at his sisters house for a few days, and then I asked him to come back and pack up his shit. I was done. I was done getting treated like a babysitter for both him and his child. I was done being a mediator between him and his ex, because they couldn’t communicate. I was done being a life coach and teaching him to stay motivated and ask for more in his career. He had to go be his own man without me. And I needed to learn to grow on my own too. Codependency got the best of me with this one, and it was a hard decision to end it, but I knew it was the right one because he was dragging me down.

 My family could see this, but I couldn’t. I resented them for how they treated him, and how they never supported our relationship. But in hindsight, I’m grateful that they didn’t pretend to accept him. So many relationships before him lasted too long, because my family was complacent for my benefit. We were learning together that we needed to be honest about our impressions and feelings toward the men in my life. This became especially difficult in my next relationship, because he presented as such a great person, when he was really the worst thing that ever happened to me. The next story is the longest, the hardest, and the last. For now, at least.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

The Last Time I Dated A Friend’s Brother

Growing up, I had this best friend named Haley, and I spent a lot of time at her house. Haley, Sarah, and I were like the three amigos. We did everything together. I smoked weed for the first time in a tent in her backyard. She had an older sister who was away at college, and a little brother who always seemed to be around. It was like this kid had no friends, he was always bothering us. He was super annoying, and I vividly remember actually punching him one time because he wouldn’t leave us alone. I heard a few years after high school he had been dating a mutual friend, Amelia, and that they had a baby together. I was happy for them, and that was probably the only time I ever thought about him as an adult.

After my breakup with John, I decided to get on Tinder. I was having a hard time getting over him, and the idea of getting into a new relationship was not even on my radar. Instead, I was pursuing a casual dating situation. This was my first foray with this dating app and I met a few fun guys, and had some good dates, but nothing serious. I was traveling for work one week, and it occurred to me that Tinder matched based on location. So, while I was in North Carolina, I deleted the app to avoid matching with someone great that would be too far away. On the way back, sitting in the back of my coworker’s car while everyone was sleeping, I was bored so I downloaded the app, to check my messages, and started to swipe again as we got closer to home.

I saw a very familiar face, so I swiped right to dig a little deeper. Immediately, I got a match notification. I cracked up when I realized he was Haley‘s little brother, Matt. When we were kids he seemed so much younger than us, but in truth it was only four years age difference. But he had grown up a lot and got pretty cute over the years. He messaged me first, “If you promise not to hit me again, I would love to see you!” I responded with about four lines of HAHAHA, followed by “holy shit, how are you?” We chatted for a couple days and found that we had a lot more in common than we ever knew before. We were quickly bonded, and our conversations turned a little flirty. Eventually, we decided to hang out, and he came to my apartment with his son.

Now, I know that seems weird, and even now writing it if feels weird because… can you imagine meeting somebody’s kid on the first date? But I’ve known this guy like my whole life I just felt like he was a longtime friend introducing me to his kid! We hung out and played cars on my living room floor, while Matt and I caught up. His son was funny, adorable, and bad! Like, Dennis the Menace bad. Matt told me a little bit about his relationship with his ex, Amelia. It sounded a little difficult, but I had no idea how toxic it really was. In the beginning, I didn’t even weigh this into my decision to date Matt.

My bigger concern was Haley. We hadn’t spoken for years. The summer after Senior Year, I got the opportunity to travel abroad with some fellow students. This was a very eye-opening experience, and I was exposed to a lot of things in Europe that I hadn’t encountered in the US. When I got home, I told Haley that I kissed a girl. I hadn’t really worked through my feelings about it, but it wasn’t any kind of declaration of sexual identity… it was just confiding in a friend that I had a new experience. Haley told our friend Sarah that I was a lesbian. Sarah worked with my sister, and told her… and then my sister told my mom. So, here I thought I was just sharing a secret with a friend, and I ended up having to explain to my mom that I wasn’t lesbian. The truth is, I don’t know what I am, even now at almost 36 years old I don’t know. I have never had nor pursued a romantic relationship with a woman, but I’ve definitely been attracted to them. I don’t know if that needs defining either, because I don’t believe that sexuality is binary. Anyway... what I didn’t know, was that she didn’t think that was a big deal. She hadn’t spoken to me because I didn’t invite her to my very small wedding. I barely invited any friends, it was mostly family there. We had approximately 50 guests, there was one friend from high school (who knew my husband well) and a handful of friends from work (who were also friends with Joe). I hadn’t spent any amount of time with Haley since she told my secret.

But, Matt assured me that Haley still loved me and his family would accept me with open arms, and he was totally right. Being with his family again was like being in high school. But I dont want to mislead you, Haley and I didn’t pick up where we left off. She had new best friends, and so did I. But it was still cool, and we were cool. Once I had his family’s blessing, it didn’t take long for us to start dating, and for me to start coparenting his child. His ex-girlfriend, Amelia was a former friend of mine, but now treated me like I was a stranger. I don’t know with what went on in her life in the 10 years since we last hung out, but she was not the most mentally stable person. It affected the kid and deeply affected Matt.

He was very much a pacifist and never stood up for himself in their relationship. His vain attempts at trying to coparent were constantly thwarted by her miserable attitude and unreasonable, aggressive communication style. She had a horrible time keeping a job, and it seemed like our custody schedule would change as frequently as week to week. I encouraged Matt to get an official custody agreement with the courts, but he was honestly afraid of her taking the kid away from him completely, so he would lay down to her demands all the time. It was infinitely frustrating to stand by and watch her make him feel like less of a man. And honestly, sometimes it made me see him as less of a man, too.

I tried to create some stability at home by moving us in together. I bought a house out of necessity, because a 2-or-3 bedroom apartment would cost much more than buying a home in Northern Virginia. Our first couple months in the house were met with tons of problems. We moved in at the end of December. By the time we got everything unpacked and settled, we discovered bed bugs. It was hard to discern whether they had been transferred from the moving van, or the house Matt lived in before, or if they had always been in the house I purchased. Ultimately the source didn’t matter as much as the remediation, so we asked Amelia to help us out and take her son when it wasn’t “her week”. She completely blew the situation out of proportion and called CPS on us for endangering their son, when we were really trying to protect him. We had pets we had to move to his sister’s house, and we slept in her basement while our house was being treated. If you’ve never had bedbugs, let me explain what a complete mindfuck they are. I was not getting bitten, Matt was. Every morning he would wake up with welts all over his body that he couldn’t explain. But we worked different schedules, so we weren’t waking up together to see if we both had welts. He didn’t tell me about them until the third morning, asking if I also was experiencing this. That’s when we discovered the little splatters of blood on our mattress and walls from the bugs after they bit Matt. Even after the bedbug dog sniffed our entire home and the bug company assured us we were safe, we felt like victims in our own home. Every tiny tickle on our skin would send us reeling. It was psychological warfare.

Once we safely moved his son back into the house, I decorated his room first. We painted the walls, we made him a little toy/art workstation, and hung a huge light-up Bumble Bee, his favorite transformer, on the wall above his bed. Matt invited Amelia to come see our house when we were all settled. It wasn’t breaktakingly beautiful, like some of the homes I’ve designed in my career. It’s kind of like the housekeeper who doesn’t clean her own house, our house was cozy and humble. But we were proud of what we built together. This was the one and only time we had a amicable meeting with Amelia, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. She brought her son to us for our custody week, and walked him inside. We showed her around the main floor, and the kid noticed some candy on the kitchen counter. He asked me for some, and I said no, and he threw himself into a rage fit. He was jumping up and down, stomping his feet, screaming about wanting that candy. I stood back and waited for either Matt or Amelia to react. And they both just stood there staring at him in horror, like most people stare at other people’s kids when they are having a tantrum in public. I got down on one knee, at his eye level, and said “it’s not time for candy bud. It’s time for bed. We can have candy tomorrow. Ok? Now why don’t you go show your mom your new bedroom?”

His tears dried, and his face lit up. He turned, grabbed his mom’s hand and ran toward the stairs. I heard Amelia say, on her way up the stairs “you are so lucky you have three parents.” And I looked at Matt and said “he has one parent. It’s me.”

Now any parents reading this might be pissed at that statement, but trust me when I say, I believed it was true. I was the only one parenting him.  When he was with his mom, there were no rules and no boundaries. And Matt had the typical single dad attitude of never wanting to be the bad guy, so he also had very few rules. But when he was with me, there were rules. We sat at the dinner table to eat. We used our forks and spoons. We didn’t act like a fucking lunatic in public, and we said please and thank you. It was like trying to train a puppy, because he was constantly unlearning these behaviors with his parents. I was the only one who cared about him being a decent human being some day. Fuck me, right?

This is the part where I’m too mad to finish the story today. To be continued. 

[rejectedbyeharmony]

“Fun Bobby”

I finished school in September, and immediately got to work. I took the first job I was offered, because I hadn’t worked in any capacity for about a year and I was dying to earn some money again! The job wasn’t great, but it had me traveling out to Centreville, so I started spending more time with my friend Janna.

I used to work with her husband, and we have a lot of mutual friends. Although I had been invited to events at their house before, I never really felt like more than an auxiliary friend, and rarely accepted. She invited me to her Christmas party that year, and I knew many of our friends were going to be there, so I agreed to go by myself. When I walked into their house, freshly bleached blonde hair and wearing a T-shirt with a Fairisle pattern of dinosaurs (because what’s better together than Jesus and dinosaurs right?) I attracted a lot of attention. Through hugs and high fives from a dozen friends, I saw him. There was a guy at this party I didn’t recognize. He had the most magnificent beard, and a great belly laugh. I couldn’t take my eyes off him the whole night.

It took me a while to realize that he hadn’t taken his eyes off me, either. We did this dance around our friends for most of the party, making eye contact, and laughing together at other people’s jokes, before we even talked to each other. Janna came over when she saw us close to each other and said “oh my God! I haven’t introduced you to my brother John.” I don’t even know Janna had a brother, but I was so happy to meet him. And once the introduction was made, we were stuck like glue for the rest of the party. We quickly found we both deeply enjoyed making each other laugh while observing the rest of the guests, smoking cigarettes together, and grabbing beers for each other. As far as party compatibility was concerned, we had SO much in common.

Towards the end of the party, realizing that we had too much to drink, Janna invited both of us to stay the night. We agreed to stay on the pull-out couch together, giggling about it while Janna eyed us and told us to “keep it down”. He and I sat up for a while and talked, and watched TV. He was a perfect gentleman with me, he just wanted to cuddle and it was really sweet. I gave John my number the next morning, and went home with a huge smile on my face. I didn’t really know anything about him, but I knew he was really fun and I was really looking forward to spending more time with them.

Within a week he asked me out, and we had our first date. Another effortless meeting, sharing a meal and some laughs. Soon after, I was invited to his house, and met his roommates and friends. A few weeks in, we double dated with his roommates and went to this winery. We both got a little wine drunk, and we’re texting each other from across the table hearts and kissy emoji instead of engaging with his friends. We went outside to share a cigarette and he told me he loved me. I loved him too. I still didn’t really know anything about John. I just really enjoyed his company.

So we continued to spend more time together, and got to know each other. What I learned was that: he was really good at his job, and it was very techy and complicated and even though he tried explaining it to me, I never really understood what he did. He had been in a long-term relationship before me, with a girl who really broke his heart. And his sister thought that she wasn’t out of his brain yet. Back then, that wasn’t a red flag to me, it was a challenge. I did everything in my power to be different than her, or at least what I understood her to be. She was a spin instructor who was a little uptight and hardly ever cut loose. So I quit going to the gym as much, and I was one of the boys with him and his friends. We had a lot of fun together, and we were falling in love without really defining what a relationship looked like to each of us.

I would go to his house every other Friday after work and we would party with his friends, and have great sex and spend the night, sometimes spending an entire weekend together. On the alternating weekends he would come to me. And we got to know each other‘s families and friends. My friends loved him. I think sometimes they were more excited to see him then me. He was always so affectionate and sweet when we were around our friends, and I really liked that about him because he knew how to keep a healthy balance of engaging with other people, and paying attention to me. He was never clingy or jealous, and he was so charming and got along with everyone.

But sometimes he was cold. Sometimes he felt like an emotional zombie, and that charismatic, affectionate man from the night before was someone different laying in my bed. I didn’t understand why he was so different the next day. Still, I felt like I was just learning about him. There was so much I didn’t know. And so much I had left to discover.

About eight months into our relationship, I found out I was pregnant. His sister had been experiencing a lot of trouble getting pregnant, and that was the first thing I thought about when I realized I was having his baby. It felt so selfish and wrong that we had only been dating for eight months and could have a baby, and she and her husband have been married for years and couldn’t. I was terrified to have a conversation with her. It never once crossed my mind that we weren’t going to have a future together, so my only fear in talking to him was centered around his sister. Despite the wishy-washy nature of my emotional security, I felt like we had a really good relationship. I felt like we were adults, we had even talked about moving in together, and that our relationship was solid.

Still, it took me a while to tell him. But one day I got really sad about hiding this from everyone we loved. Plus, all of our social events involved alcohol, and somebody was going to catch on that I wasn’t drinking. So I called him, overcome with emotion, but deep down I was confident that he would tell me everything was gonna be OK.

His response seemed so foreign to me, and came sharp and fast and nearly knocked me off my feet. “Absolutely not, we have to take care of it.” I was beside myself. As a progressive feminist, I am and always have been pro-choice. My choice was to keep the baby, but my heart was broken when I learned that his choice was not. Ironically, this came from first conservative guy I had ever dated. I was sure, because of his faith and political beliefs, that abortion was not even on the table. It never even crossed my mind that he would say any differently. I was shocked, he had knocked the wind out of me. My heart was broken, and I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him after that.

I made arrangements with Planned Parenthood and I made him go with me. As we approached the building, John saw firsthand what anti-abortion activists did to women were already in distress. He fended them off of me, in complete shock of how they attacked me. And honestly, I think he was afraid they were going to physically harm me. He was disoriented and sweating a little bit as we checked in at the lobby, and he sat and took my hand and stared at the floor.

We sat silently for what felt like hours. If we had been anywhere else, he and I would’ve been scrolling our phones or making little observational jokes about the other people, or telling each other stories about something. But we sat silently. There was nothing to say. I got called back and the operation took about 30 minutes. And it was rough. At the end, I walked out with my chin held high, because I couldn’t be ashamed of what I did. I didn’t want it, but I also didn’t want him to resent me for making a decision we couldn’t agree upon. I didn’t know how I felt about him anymore, but I was grateful that he was there for me. We drove home in silence, he dropped me off and didn’t come in. I cried myself to sleep that night, disappointed and alone.

Our relationship after that somehow continued on without a stumble, as though that day never happened. We were drinking enough, so it was easy to forget, I guess. One morning I was up before him and wandered downstairs to his kitchen to find something to eat. His roommate was in the kitchen. As I opened the fridge he laughed “there’s only beer in there.” I was like, “God it’s Sunday... y’all still have a lot of beer to finish today!” Then, his roommate casually mentioned to me that John would be drinking that beer on the way to work. I furrowed my eyebrows at him, and said “Uh... like in the car?” And he said “oh yeah. He drinks a beer on the way to work, he keeps a cooler of beer at work, and he drinks a beer on the way home.”

Suddenly it became very clear to me why he was so different at night than he was the next morning. He was an alcoholic. Its fucked up, but the thought crossed my mind that maybe if I had told him that I was pregnant when he was drunk, he would’ve been that same charismatic, loving, affectionate boyfriend that I had fallen in love with. But I don’t regret telling him when he was sober. He let me see his true self and made me realize that I made the right decision, even though it was one of the hardest decisions of my life. The absolute hardest was ending things with him.

While I was in college I babysat for my friend Melissa. I loved her boys, and I would spend more time with them than I did with her! They were the first kids that ever made me want to have kids. So even after college when I was working again, I would still watch them anytime. She and her husband were going away for a weekend, and asked me to stay with the boys, and housesit too. I asked if John could stay with us; we had a house, two boys, and four dogs to take care of, and I could use the help. I thought this would be a good opportunity to see if there was a future with John.

So I invited him to play house, and, surprisingly, he happily agreed. I thought that was a good sign, and I was excited about the prospect of us revisiting the idea of having a family. As much as I was heartbroken over our decision to terminate my pregnancy, I still yearned to feel a sense of belonging in our relationship again. So we spent all weekend together at Melissa‘s.

It went really well. He was great with the kids, and the dogs, and the house! We laughed and got along really well, and he was really affectionate and sweet to me, despite the fact that there wasn’t a drop of alcohol in our systems the whole weekend. I thought this was an incredible turning point for us and made me really hopeful about the future with him.

At the end of the weekend, I mentioned to him “hey, we make a pretty great team. Thanks for hanging with me this weekend.” His response again came sharp, and fast, and knocked me off my feet. “Don’t get any ideas Katie, I’m not ready for any of that.”

....ouch.

Even writing this, I had to sit in silence for a while before I could continue the story. He really broke me. I just couldn’t understand why he would agree to do that if he felt that way, and how he could be so cold to me. I knew that it was over and even though I loved him I had to end it. We just weren’t meant for each other. And he needed somebody that didn’t want anything from him. And I wanted the world.

He wished me well and we ended everything on a somewhat amicable note, but it was sad for everyone involved. My friends called him “Fun John”, like “Fun Bobby” on Friends. My family thought we would get married, and I think maybe his family did too. I tried to continue to hang out with Janna, but every event she invited me to, John was there. I vividly remember how horrified and confused everyone was when he and I were pal’ing around at his niece’s birthday bbq a few months after our breakup.

It never got any easier to be around him especially once we started dating other people, so eventually I just stop spending time with that group of friends altogether. He and I have kept in touch sporadically, as friends. He has no idea how much I still deeply care about him, and it’s probably for the best. His new girlfriend seems aloof and uninterested in much. And he seems to really like that about her. Last i heard they were either married or talking about it. So, good luck with that John.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

Homewrecker, Part 2

Seeing his kids again for the first time came with mixed feelings. I could only imagine what they thought of me, or what their mother told them about us. What I didn’t know, was that she told her 15, 10, and 6-year-old girls that she caught their daddy in bed with me, that I was a bad friend, and I ruined their marriage. She blatantly lied to them to make me look bad. Worse yet, was that over the next two years I discovered that he had very little interest in being a dad. He would use me against them, telling his wife that I didn’t want them at the house. When in actuality, the whole time I was begging to get them more, because I was dying to connect with these girls. Cam and I had talked about having our own children, buying a home, and getting married. We were very serious about each other, at least that was the impression he gave me.

I worked part time while I was in college, and I would spend entire paychecks on those kids when they were with us for the weekends. I would always make sure that we had something fun to do, so they wanted to be there with us. There were times when his ex-wife would drop them off the weekend before school started, and they didn’t have backpacks, supplies, shoes, new clothes, or haircuts. I found myself mothering these girls, who secretly resented me and would never get close to me. I was fighting a losing battle. It was demoralizing and my stress was compounding with school and work and also having to deal with this and Cam’s apathy and ambivalence towards the whole thing.

The irony is that even though he seemed to not give a fuck about me, Cam was selfish, jealous and downright sociopathic when it came to me spending time with anyone. He tried to isolate me from everyone, even starting shit with my best friend for grabbing my boobs when she was drunk. He would refuse to go out us, but engage in text fights with me the entire time, ruining my night. Or if he would agree to come out, and then around 9:30pm he would say it was time to go. I couldn’t win when it came to spending time with anyone other than him, even his own children.

But I loved him, and even though every night I would come home, bitching or crying to my mom on the phone, I would walk in the door and be in love with him all over again. Maybe I had Stockholm syndrome, or some shit. It was very strange.

He was a pretty talented musician so I hooked him up with a friend who had a punk rock band, who I have known for a long time and really respected. Cam joined the band as their bassist and he really fell in love with that and being a part of that lifestyle. I felt like it made him feel younger and more confident, and our relationship was better after that.

But his confidence started to spiral, and I noticed him acting a little bit sketchy. He was a commercial electrician and he would meet new people all the time. I never had any reason not to trust him, but there was one week when I was preparing to spend a long weekend with some girlfriends at the beach, and he was really antsy to get me out of the house. I could just tell he couldn’t wait for me to leave. We were up each others asses a lot living in 1,000 square feet together, so we tried to keep a healthy amount of social space, but this was unusual, even for him.

Thursday morning before I left, I woke up to his phone ringing in the bed. He had left for work and the phone was still there. When I answered, he sounded panicked, “holy shit did I leave my phone there?!” I was like “yeah dummy...that’s why am answering it, just come home and get it.”

I have never before (or after) looked at a man’s phone because I think it’s such a violation of privacy. But, I had to look. He was acting way too sketchy, and I knew if I went looking for trouble, I would find it. I saw series of text messages, exchanging pics and planning a rendezvous at our apartment while I was away. I could not believe my eyes and when he got home to pick up that phone, I was just sitting in the bed, completely stunned. I held up the phone, with tears in my eyes and asked “what is this about?”

Have you ever seen a person turn green? I saw green wash over his face, as he bolted for the bathroom and threw up immediately. He stayed in there for a while and then came out with a tear-stroked face and sat on the other end of the bed sheepishly. In complete shame, he said to me, “I wasn’t really going to do it. It was just a fantasy. And I liked the attention.” He went on to tell me the story, and it was mostly innocent. One of his clients was hitting on him, and had started to flirt with him over text message after he finished the job. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t share that with me, considering how open we were with each other. Especially if he wasn’t considering doing anything about it.

I’m leaving a lot of personal details out but believe me when I say that this explains why all this started to begin with, why he wasn’t actually satisfied in his marriage. It was nothing I could’ve fixed for them. I was used as a pawn, and it ruined the next five years of my life.

I got away from him and I changed everything. I quit my job, moved in with my parents, focused on school, and finish my BFA. And during that time I got closer to my sister than I had been since we were kids, and she introduced me to the gym. And over the course of the next two years she helped me lose 100 pounds.

I’m somewhat of a nihilist, and I don’t think that fate is real. But I do believe the people come in your life for reason, to teach you a lesson or to help you transition into the next phase of your life. That’s how I look at Cam. If he hadn’t put through what he put me through, I wouldn’t have learned not to over extend myself for a man. Or to accept things that make you feel bad, or to let somebody make you so unhealthy and so isolated from your friends and your family that you can barely function anymore. In the same fashion as the boyfriends before him in this story, he has reached out to me lately, trying to earn back some karmic credit. I don’t hate him, and I have forgiven him. Because holding onto that is too great of a burden to bear. That’s why I’m writing all of this down, to release the skeletons from my closet so I can eventually move on. We’re over halfway there, thanks for riding this out with me.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

Homewrecker, Part 1

I never really considered myself an “active” homewrecker, but I can count on both hands the times that a married man has come onto me. I have asked them—and my therapist—what it is that makes me so attractive to unavailable men? I have gotten all kinds of answers including “you seem like you would just be into it.” I don’t know how the fuck I’m sending that signal out, but if someone could tell me how turn it off, I would appreciate it. Sometimes those men are husbands of my friends, and naturally I turn down their advances. But one time, the proposition was made by the wife.

One of my former roller derby teammates had a party at her house. I was 25 and I was just there to drink. When I was too drunk to drive home, she suggested I stay. In their bed. She told me she and her husband were having problems in the bedroom, and he liked me. Maybe I could help. I turned her down, but I really needed a place to crash. This was before a #MeToo world, but looking back I’m not sure if I truly had the wherewithal to consent. The rest of the night was weird, to say the least. And it ended in her storming out of the house in a jealous rage. A few weeks later I was moving to Orlando (yes I’ve backtracked a little), so I chose not to engage with my friend or her husband, and just move on.

It didn’t take long before my friend’s husband was texting me daily. Originally the texts were apologetic, he was begging me to give them another chance, and that she missed me and he wanted to make things right for her. But it didn’t take long before the texts turned into “I miss you, I want to see you, I need you in my life.”

He asked me for my address once, and I naively thought maybe he was just gonna send me a package. But he showed up on my doorstep in Orlando. Wtf. He told me he left her, he was living with a friend, and took a few weeks off and just needed to be with me. Holy shit. I was young and impressionable at the time and we had really bonded over the last couple months texting. I couldn’t deny the feelings I had for him. But I think I didn’t totally grasp the gravity of the situation and how I got myself involved in it from the beginning. I was in way too deep.

He stayed with me for about a week and during that time convinced me to leave Orlando and come home. So I disenrolled from school, quit my job, packed up my Volkswagen Cabrio as full as we could get it and we drove back to Virginia. For the next year and a half we dated, I lived at home with my parents and had reenrolled in school in DC, and he lived with his friend not far away. We spent lots of time together and he got to know my family and friends, who were so grateful to him for bringing me home.

I didn’t see or speak to his wife, or have anything to do with their children for that year and a half. Then, he asked me to move in with him, so we found an apartment in Alexandria that was closer to his work and my school. I knew that the next step was seeing his kids. When he and his wife were together, I was very close with their children. They considered me like family, and would follow me around like my little shadows. But now things were different, and I know there were some nasty things being said about me when they were at home with their mom. I wanted desperately to reconnect with them, because I dreamed of having my own family with him someday.

The next two and a half years were maybe the most devastating of my life, at least up until then. The rest of this story is really hard to write. In totally karmic fashion, cosmic energy has lead him to reach out to me while I’m writing it. Maybe it’s the universe telling me to forgive, let go, and take it easy on him. We are all human, we are all flawed. But that mother fucker betrayed me in so many ways and telling this story is the only catharsis I have. To be continued...

.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

Orlando

My parents were planning on selling their house and moving Orlando, and I was really ready to just focus on getting my degree so that I could move forward in my career. I had done a pretty good job of building a solid resume in the design industry, but I didn’t have a degree. So when the housing market crashed in 2008, and I got laid off three times in one year, I knew it was time to go back to school. It made sense to go to Orlando, so that I could live with my parents while I finished my BFA. So I got accepted to an art school and went down before them with every intention of paving the way. While I was there I dated a few guys, nobody really worth more than mentioning.

There was this guy Mike who I met online before I moved to Orlando, who suddenly was less interested once I was there, even though we had met twice before I moved. I went on a few dates with this guy Nate who is from Nebraska. He was a chef, and had a Santa-like jolliness to him. But Santa ain’t sexy. He was way too nice, and I wasn’t ready for anything serious. I think I got out of that one by telling him I thought I was gay.

I dated this really sweet guy named Paul. I met him and his whole family one night singing karaoke at this hole in the wall called The Nice and Easy. They served boiled peanuts and PBR and their patrons were some of the best people I met in Orlando. Paul’s family were real life carnies, who had run traveling carnivals and county fairs generations! Paul probably would have married me if I gave him the chance, I just was really focused on my career and not on growing a family. I was only 25!

There was Christian, the college professor. He would come over anytime I asked him to, but he never stayed the night and I never heard from him the next day. There was Robert, the HOT lawyer with a JD who never made time for me. Then Jacob, the Iraq vet who was addicted to painkillers over prescribed to him by the VA. Oh, and Corey, the one who I met at the mall, got really drunk and in a bar fight on our first date, and then left me a rapping voicemail when I left him at the bar. Florida: full of winners.

Then there was Jimmy, we went on one date and I could tell he was looking for something serious. He was a musician and a sweetheart, he had these cute curls and a great smile, and he was really easy-going and fun. But I wasn’t even sure how long I was going to stay in Orlando. About the same time I met Jimmy, a couple of disastrous things happened.

First, my parents realized they could not sell their house. The housing market was too unstable and nobody was buying, so they had to take their house off the market. Second, my roommate got involved in a super shady green card marriage and there were constantly sketchy people in our apartment that stole from us and smoked all of our weed. I had to move out of that apartment and in with a friend who was just barely scraping by, trying to raise a toddler by herself. I think we helped each other a lot, and although we barely knew each other at the time, I will always consider her my sister because of that shared experience.

But I digress, Jimmy and I weren’t in the right place at the right time. So I let him go, and he married pretty much the next girl he dated. They moved to Nashville to pursue his dream of being a working musician. He and I stayed in touch all these years, and maintained a flirty but platonic relationship. We texted and sent each other birthday gifts. We both love Dick Dale, and he makes sure to get his autograph for me whenever he’s in Nashville. Jimmy is the kind of guy to get tickets to both nights of The Beach Boys at the Ryman, just to get the full experience. And he would always download to me so I could live vicariously through him.

We have seen each other off and on for the last couple of years. I have other friends in Nashville and we get to visit while I’m there. It’s always fun, we love being around each other and I’m extremely fond of him. But he was married, so I always kept my walls up. Then he got divorced.

I knew things weren’t great with his wife, but what marriage is perfect? He never really talked to me about her but it always seemed like he was pretty unhappy. I can only assume she resented him for moving her to Nashville and spent most of his time on the road playing shows and recording. But I don’t know for sure.

He asked to come see me after the divorce. It was the first time he wanted to come to me, and I was excited to show him DC. It never even crossed my mind that he would consider leaving Nashville, but I wanted him to see all the cool parts of my city. Jimmy and I have ridden the line between being in love, and in strong like, for a decade. Every time we are together feels like a first date with someone you have known forever. It’s a little awkward, but electric, but comforting, but very weird. I hoped he would open up to me on this trip, tell me finally how he feels. But I didn’t get that. We had a great time together, he took some selfies with my cats to send me later, and we said goodbye.

Part of me wants to ends things with him but it kind of feels like nothing ever started. After we see each other he sends these wistful, somewhat cryptic texts that let me know he’s thinking about me, but also let’s me know he’s not ready to open up to me like “Scored an Al Green LP, a soft AF throw, and two coffee mugs at white elephant today. Hope we can link up soon ;)”

The saga continues...

[rejectedbyeharmony]

The Rollergirls

After my break up with Kevin, I really needed some time to figure out who I was as a person. I was living in this party house in Fairfax, VA with a bunch of dudes who were in a glam metal band called Hot Young Tang (true story—I doubt any of them will ever read this, but they’re probably going to give me shit for giving their genre the wrong name. To my very lovable music snob former roommates I say, whatever). While I was working two jobs (CAD drafting for a construction company during the day, bartending at night) and going to school, they were mostly just finishing school. They had these wild ass parties almost every day of the week, and sometimes when I would crawl home from shutting down the bar at 3am, people would still be hanging out in our house. On a Wednesday. And I had to be up at 6am for my day job. But we were young and dumb, and that was how we lived.

Through some MySpace connections, I randomly met this guy named Pauly, who was the coach for the AZRD women’s roller derby team in Arizona. I would follow his posts on MySpace and became really enamored with the culture and energy of the sport of roller derby. Shortly thereafter, the rollergirl craze hit the nation; there were TV shows and movies coming out. I just really wanted to be a part of this movement. It was so feminist and strong and sexy, and that was who I wanted to be. So, I talked to Pauly about moving to Arizona to skate with his league. He mentioned that there wasn’t a league in DC, and I thought “how the fuck do I start roller derby league?”

In the late fall of 2005, I posted on the DC Craigslist community page, literally, “Anyone wanna start a roller derby league?” I got two responses. So, we met up, we vibed, and we formed an LLC. We connected with our sister leagues in Baltimore and Richmond for more help. They told us to have a recruiting party. Now, this was long before Facebook hit it’s stride, and there wasn’t a lot of social media, so we made an ad and posted it on Craigslist and the City Paper. We made an open call for any women who wanted to join DC‘s first all-girl roller derby league, to meet us at the Black Cat on this particular night at a particular time. We got the ok from the venue, and set up a table with a clipboard. We were totally unprepared for that night, and I honestly kind of anticipated nobody showing up.

At least thirty women showed up, and according to WFTDA rules, we had half the amount of players needed to start a league. But it was a start nonetheless. So we made a message board, and looked for places to practice. We relied heavily on Pauly and our sister leagues to help us figure out how to make this thing happen. I was in love. I have to include roller derby in my stories, not only for the tie-in to my next relationship, but because it was one of my greatest loves, and hardest heartaches. Over the next three years we built DC Rollergirls. And during that time I met some people who I will consider my closest friends and my greatest enemies. One girl was both. She latched onto me in the beginning, and made me a piece of furniture in her weird life. I was extremely close with her children, her mother, and even her husband and I became very good friends.

I stepped away from team management when it became too much to handle with my work and school loads. And then, I got laid off from my job and lost my health insurance, and couldn’t skate for awhile. Unfortunately, the timing was bad, during a critical training period where we had broken into teams and started scrimmaging to prepare for our first public bout. Once I got health insurance again, I felt like I was so far behind my team in skills and ability, and I lost my confidence to play on the best assembled team on the league. Scare Force One was a dream team, we formed like Voltron and were a force to be reckoned with. And I never felt like I deserved to be a part of it. I let self-doubt get the best of me, and I put distance between myself and my teammates and started to create friction with them. By the time we were competing publicly, I was so insecure about my skills, I wasn’t even trying in practice anymore. And I had fallen to the back of the pack. I didn’t start our first game, and I barely saw the rink the entire bout. It was heartbreaking, because I knew I could do it. I had just convinced myself and my teammates otherwise. I was devastated, and I picked a fight, and I quit.

I burned bridges with women I considered sisters, I tossed a match and walked away. Most of my team wouldn’t speak to me for years after that, and there are still girls who were on other teams in the league who will not associate with me after the way I left. I’m not proud of how I handled myself. And I am actually shocked to share that last weekend, I spend a few days at a mountain home with some of my original teammates for a reunion. My ugly exit from the league was never even discussed, and we talked a lot of shit about a lot of people. But I could tell that they had forgiven me, and my soul needed that more than words can express.  

[rejectedbyeharmony]

He called me WaHoney.

In recovery from my divorce, I decided to get out of town for a little while. So, I moved to Richmond for a change of scenery. I had bartending jobs at night, I worked as a decorator by day, and I had really no focus other than partying and spending time with my friends. I dated a couple different guys when I was in Richmond, none of them are really worth mentioning in this story. But, after about a year down there, I decided to get back to reality and come home to Northern Virginia.

My mom got me a government job. I was back in the DC area blending in with all the other commuters for a while. I wasn’t sure about what my next steps were in my career or with my love life, the latter seeming much more important to me at the time. MySpace was the big thing, but nobody really knew the power of social networking back then. I think we were all more interested in learning to be low-level coders to add colors and music to our profiles. And who to put in our top 8. (Spicoli, duh.)

I don’t even remember how he found me but I got a MySpace message from this guy named “Beerbelly” who lived in Indianhead, Maryland. I wasn’t that familiar with Maryland geography at the time, but it sounded really far away. His message simply said “Hi.” I was offended. This mystery man who lived far away had the audacity to send me MySpace message, and I’ll he had to say for himself was HI?! My response came bluntly, “where the hell is Indianhead Maryland?” He responded, “if I had a boat, I’d only be about 20 minutes across the Potomac.” OK...That was pretty cute that he had even looked up how to get to Woodbridge… And that all that separated us were the disgusting waters of the Potomac River. I responded, “my knight in shining life vest!”

And that’s how it all started. We flirted for a few weeks, before he asked me on a date in Old Town Alexandria. I had been doing a lot of dating, and I really found that I wasn’t interested in any of the guys i was meeting. So, I had this funny habit of ordering food that was a little bit sloppy or gross to eat, or would leave me with really bad breath, to deter them from wanting to kiss me at the end of it. I had tried everything: buffalo wings, falafel, soup that I managed to slosh all down the front of my shirt. But this was a lunch date, so I ordered a tuna sandwich. With extra onions.

Our conversation was good, but I felt kind of meh about him. After lunch we walked down to the waterfront and laughed about the boat thing. It turns out, we had the same weird, dark sense of humor. I loved the way his whole body vibrated when he laughed and how he smiled at me. When we got back to my car, he kissed me. Tuna and onions and beer had all been in my mouth that day, and he went for it. I was impressed and completely smitten. And I fell so hard.

Keith is a complicated dude. He’s the youngest of his siblings, by over a decade, so he was mostly raised an only child...on a farm...by a helicopter mom. Yeah, she really hated me. His dad left his mom for her neighbor and best friend. Awkward. His dad was a racist, sexist, and an alcoholic, and not very pleasant to be around. But Keith seemed, at first, to have escaped their horrible genetics. He was a very talented musician (yes, for those keeping track: there is a pattern developing here), and craftsman.

When I met Keith, he was building hand-crafted speaker boxes with his brother in their garage. He would drive all the way to Springfield to pick out the wood, and I would meet him there. I know, picking out curly maple on a Saturday doesn’t sound super romantic, but I would revel in every second of it. I admired his appreciation for the lumber, and hung on every word when he would talk to the guys in the yard about the new batch of mahogany and how beautifully the book-matched veneers would look on the side of his boxes. We picked out tung oil and talked about joinery, and he never felt the need to mansplain any of this to me, he just let me absorb as much as I wanted. He was like a young, silly, Ron Swanson and I was head over heels in love with him.

Keith also used to build lap steel guitars. If you’re not familiar, they are these really intricately designed instruments that create beautiful sounds. And he wrote me songs with them. He had this cute nickname for me “WaHoney”, which was a derivation of my WAH1NE license plate that I had since the Pacific Sunwear days of my youth. He would write these hauntingly beautiful, melodic songs without words and sing “WaHoneyyyyy” over them to be silly. He was really sweet sometime. One year for Christmas, he bought me a star and named it “Shining Lifevest”. He was thoughtful and he remembered the best stuff. I had never been loved by someone who was so interesting.

The problem with thinking he was so cool, is that I gave him a pass on all his bullshit. He was always really inconsiderate of my time. Like, he lived two hours away, so when he told me he was “on his way” and I would call to check in two hours later, he couldn’t understand why I was so mad he was still fucking around with his guitar or something. Oh, I forgot to mention... when we first met, he didn’t have a fucking cell phone. I put the kibosh on that hippie horseshit quick.

Keith was very jealous. I was in a phase of my life that most of my friends were men. I had three good-looking male roommates, and my best friends—the guys I considered brothers—weren’t too shabby either. I never saw any of them as anything other than friends, but Keith was convinced I was sleeping with all of them. And when he would get to drinking, he always tried to start some shit with me about it. It was exhausting.

It could have been that he was just very insecure. Aside from being threatened by other men in my life, he was threatened by my self-esteem. Yep, that’s right. Back then, I loved myself. I didn’t have quite so many body image issues. I had lost some weight recovering from my divorce and I was super confident. But, he would try to knock me down a few pegs every chance he got. He would say stuff like “I think it’s time for some new jeans, those don’t fit anymore” or “your personal style is: too tight”. Yikes. Looking back, even though I was fat my whole life, I think his verbal abuse was a major contributor to my body image issues today.

But Keith never talked to me like that when he was sober. It was always when we were out drinking. In public. With our friends. He would humiliate me and I can recall several nights that I was crying, walking down the side of the road with him driving slowly next to me, begging me to get back in the car. We were SO much drama.

My friends, frankly, hated him. We would break up and get back together, and every time it would just drive a wedge between me and the people who loved me. They clearly lost respect for me, and that made me want to push them away more. This love affair lasted roughly 3 years, until I finally looked at all of him objectively. Not only was he a total piece of shit to me, but he adamantly insisted that he was never going to get married or have children. So, I decided he wasn’t even worth suffering for, and I let him go.

It took a long time for my heart to follow my head on this one. I pined after Keith for years, and would let him meet up with me when I was in Old Town because I loved the feeling of his adoration. But then he met someone else. And he married her. MOTHERF...

People change, I guess. But I’m grateful that he knew he didn’t want to marry me, so I could move on. He still follows me on Instagram and texts me here and there. I know deep down he’s still in love with me. But he created so much trauma and chaos for me, even just writing this story down has helped me finish letting go.

[rejectedbyeharmony]

And they lived Happily Never After.

Our marriage wasn’t all that much different than our relationship before the wedding. We already lived together. Oh, we got a joint bank account, but we weren’t really talking about kids or anything yet, because Joe was preparing to go into the military. I thought that his Boot Camp date would be fast approaching, but he still hadn’t even visited the MEPS center three months into our marriage.

One day the Army recruiter called the house looking for him, he was at work but I was curious, so I asked the guy “hey, so uhhh... what’s going on with Boot Camp? When is Joe supposed to go?” There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the phone and then he politely said “Miss, I’m not at liberty to share that information with you.” I said, “that may have been true three months ago but now I’m his wife and you have to tell me what’s going on.” The recruiter suggested that I talk to my husband, because he wasn’t going to Boot Camp “anytime soon”.

I was so angry my eyes were shaking. You know that angry when your throat is on fire and your whole body is vibrating, like you really understand what Carrie was going through at the prom. I marched my ass up to his job and confronted him. “JOE! What the FUCK is going on with the Army?!”

He looked embarrassed, and shameful. He said he needed to talk to me later that night, and didn’t want to talk about it at work. I looked around the grocery store aisle where he was stocking a shelf, and noticed a dozen people had gathered to watch and listen to the commotion I had started.

“Fine.” I puffed and retreated home. I chain smoked and paced until he got there, debating on whether I should make him answer me at the top of the stairs so I could push him down them. Thousands of thoughts rushed through my head like I don’t even understand why this is happening right now.

He finally got home and couldn’t even look me in the eye. He wasn’t going into the Army anymore. He had a criminal record that he couldn’t get expunged for a few more years, and the Army wouldn’t take him. This was a shock to me, first because this was like two years into the US occupation of Afghanistan, and I couldn’t believe they would hold that against him. But also because I married a guy and didn’t know this about him. Also I married a guy BECAUSE he was going into the Army.

I was devastated. And confused. And I felt taken advantage of. And then when I realized it had been mote than 90 days and I couldn’t get the marriage annulled, I felt trapped. I asked him to leave. He did.

He went back to Jersey for awhile and I think he ended up with friends in PA. There’s a lot more to this story that lead to our eventual divorce but it’s not terribly relevant to the theme here. It would be just lot of man bashing and could probably get him into a lot of trouble with his current station in the Marine Corp. so I will protect myself. It took us 7 years to get divorced, partly because I had a shitty lawyer, partly because I had a shitty husband, and partly for reasons I can’t really talk about here. But today when people find out I was married 8 years ago, I usually just brush it off as a “young dumb mistake”. And that’s all she wrote.