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Believe it or not, it's true.
Sep. 26th, 2015 09:03 pmA little bit of history:
From my junior year of high school until I was around 26 or so, there was this boy-then-man who was my obsession. There was so much off again, on again, soul-sucking, gothic romance, destroying, consuming, hateful, passionate US, that when it ended (his idea), I was certain that I would never survive.
And in a lot of ways, I didn't. I don't say that in a melodramatic way, I say it with utter sincerity: I died a million deaths (great and small) as I clawed my way to more solid ground.
We were unhealthy and destructive and hated each other, I think, as much as we needed each other. I have no real idea -- beyond the conjectures I've put together over the years -- of what it was in me that he needed, but I found in him something as beautiful and broken and desolately ugly as I.
When I still lived at home, he would call me, waking me up, and make me fall asleep with him on the phone. Other times, at more holy hours, he would call and not speak until I said our "code word". I would sneak out to be with him, more often than not just sitting and wanting him more, I thought, than he wanted me.
When we lived together, he I would watch him while he slept. He would wake me from deep sleep and take me hard, skin me with rough kisses and bites that left livid bruises for days.
Nothing about us made sense and we never were really happy with each other; but our misery, in its own beautiful way, was exquisite.
He called me a witch in the same way he called me other names, none of which were tender endearments. I convinced myself that his actions showed what his words couldn't, and looking back, I imagine I spun myself a web of lies so I wouldn't see the reality of what he and I were together: his words, just as much as his actions, were the truth of what his heart held.
But the witch thing....
I remember so distinctly how in the hollow of my chest I could feel the phone ring before it did. I'd be in another room and make my way to my room before I realized I was doing it, then I'd just sit on the bed and in a moment, he was there on the other end.
During one of our numerous painful off times (this time is the last time, he'd always say) I lit white candles and surrounded them with bits and pieces that I had collected on our meanderings, I burned creamy-papered notes scribbled with a plea for him to come home and touched with a kiss that was a lingering memory of moonlight and hot, humid exhales.
It worked.
It continued working.
Until the time, where he said this time is the last time, and I let it be.
I dreamed of him -- if not every night -- at least a few times a week for years. He plagued me, haunted me. My heart broke each and every day and NOTHING I did, no place I went seemed to be free of him. I wanted him back, but didn't if that makes any sense. But I knew, in that same hollow place where my heart used to be, that when I dreamt of him, he was dreaming of me. Whatever devilish wire that stitched us together wasn't completely gone.
And it never would be.
This week he was on my mind every day, almost obsessively so. A few days ago, out of nowhere, I had this remembered thought of taking him some of my mom's iced tea at his work. I remembered how much he enjoyed it. I remembered the slant of the shadows, the closed in tang of the shitty apartment he was painting, the brown carpet that I will forever equate with "rental". All week, I have had to work at shaking him from my thoughts and I've become increasingly annoyed because they just pop in with no real rhyme, no real reason.
Today my mom called.
"Guess who called me, drunk and wanting something?"
I didn't need to guess, did I?
"X called, wanting to ask me if he could come by and get a glass of sweet tea. He said he'd been missing it. I guess his wife left him."
I heard the smirk in her tone. Me? There was, I'm sure, a resigned look on my face.
Balanced with the end-of-it-all splintering of self was a continual outpouring of vicious thought, a laser-focus of gypsy curse that sometimes scared me...just not enough to stop.
His first wife? The one he left me for? (My friends and I called her Boobzilla and there were times, dear reader, I would have shanked a bitch had I encountered her.) They had two kids together. Word got to me each time she got pregnant, he was pissed. When they were born (girls), he was even more pissed. Boobzilla ended up getting hooked on meth and there were lawyers and messy divorces and she went after him in a very woman scorned way. I am glad I never encountered her with my shank.
There were drunk calls to my mom during that time, too.
New wife, I guess, was educated and refined and they had a baby -- a girl. That's really the majority of the information that made its way to me, because I've become good at deflecting and redirecting all mention of him.
While I don't know/don't care what happened, I am honest enough to admit that I want to spit on the floor when I think of him and am subtly pleased at how long my impression has lasted.
And here I am now. The Mister and daughter are gone for their annual Daddy/Seija Disneyland trip and I have been playing video games and reading and sort of cleaning and sort of thinking about work and periodically thinking how wonderful it would be if, as the coup de grâce, I published a highly successful and lucrative memoir of...us...and he found out about it. How he'd find out, I'm not sure; not a reader, that boy.
Anyway.
Hi.
..............
From my junior year of high school until I was around 26 or so, there was this boy-then-man who was my obsession. There was so much off again, on again, soul-sucking, gothic romance, destroying, consuming, hateful, passionate US, that when it ended (his idea), I was certain that I would never survive.
And in a lot of ways, I didn't. I don't say that in a melodramatic way, I say it with utter sincerity: I died a million deaths (great and small) as I clawed my way to more solid ground.
We were unhealthy and destructive and hated each other, I think, as much as we needed each other. I have no real idea -- beyond the conjectures I've put together over the years -- of what it was in me that he needed, but I found in him something as beautiful and broken and desolately ugly as I.
When I still lived at home, he would call me, waking me up, and make me fall asleep with him on the phone. Other times, at more holy hours, he would call and not speak until I said our "code word". I would sneak out to be with him, more often than not just sitting and wanting him more, I thought, than he wanted me.
When we lived together, he I would watch him while he slept. He would wake me from deep sleep and take me hard, skin me with rough kisses and bites that left livid bruises for days.
Nothing about us made sense and we never were really happy with each other; but our misery, in its own beautiful way, was exquisite.
He called me a witch in the same way he called me other names, none of which were tender endearments. I convinced myself that his actions showed what his words couldn't, and looking back, I imagine I spun myself a web of lies so I wouldn't see the reality of what he and I were together: his words, just as much as his actions, were the truth of what his heart held.
But the witch thing....
I remember so distinctly how in the hollow of my chest I could feel the phone ring before it did. I'd be in another room and make my way to my room before I realized I was doing it, then I'd just sit on the bed and in a moment, he was there on the other end.
During one of our numerous painful off times (this time is the last time, he'd always say) I lit white candles and surrounded them with bits and pieces that I had collected on our meanderings, I burned creamy-papered notes scribbled with a plea for him to come home and touched with a kiss that was a lingering memory of moonlight and hot, humid exhales.
It worked.
It continued working.
Until the time, where he said this time is the last time, and I let it be.
I dreamed of him -- if not every night -- at least a few times a week for years. He plagued me, haunted me. My heart broke each and every day and NOTHING I did, no place I went seemed to be free of him. I wanted him back, but didn't if that makes any sense. But I knew, in that same hollow place where my heart used to be, that when I dreamt of him, he was dreaming of me. Whatever devilish wire that stitched us together wasn't completely gone.
And it never would be.
This week he was on my mind every day, almost obsessively so. A few days ago, out of nowhere, I had this remembered thought of taking him some of my mom's iced tea at his work. I remembered how much he enjoyed it. I remembered the slant of the shadows, the closed in tang of the shitty apartment he was painting, the brown carpet that I will forever equate with "rental". All week, I have had to work at shaking him from my thoughts and I've become increasingly annoyed because they just pop in with no real rhyme, no real reason.
Today my mom called.
"Guess who called me, drunk and wanting something?"
I didn't need to guess, did I?
"X called, wanting to ask me if he could come by and get a glass of sweet tea. He said he'd been missing it. I guess his wife left him."
I heard the smirk in her tone. Me? There was, I'm sure, a resigned look on my face.
Balanced with the end-of-it-all splintering of self was a continual outpouring of vicious thought, a laser-focus of gypsy curse that sometimes scared me...just not enough to stop.
His first wife? The one he left me for? (My friends and I called her Boobzilla and there were times, dear reader, I would have shanked a bitch had I encountered her.) They had two kids together. Word got to me each time she got pregnant, he was pissed. When they were born (girls), he was even more pissed. Boobzilla ended up getting hooked on meth and there were lawyers and messy divorces and she went after him in a very woman scorned way. I am glad I never encountered her with my shank.
There were drunk calls to my mom during that time, too.
New wife, I guess, was educated and refined and they had a baby -- a girl. That's really the majority of the information that made its way to me, because I've become good at deflecting and redirecting all mention of him.
While I don't know/don't care what happened, I am honest enough to admit that I want to spit on the floor when I think of him and am subtly pleased at how long my impression has lasted.
And here I am now. The Mister and daughter are gone for their annual Daddy/Seija Disneyland trip and I have been playing video games and reading and sort of cleaning and sort of thinking about work and periodically thinking how wonderful it would be if, as the coup de grâce, I published a highly successful and lucrative memoir of...us...and he found out about it. How he'd find out, I'm not sure; not a reader, that boy.
Anyway.
Hi.
..............
