Two Stupid, Weird things

two weird things happened today. 

this wasn’t one of them: the path season 3 is on Hulu, which thrilled me this am since i had no idea when it would come back. why do i love this show so much. it’s not that great. i guess, 1 cults, 2 the way it’s filmed so creepy, and 3 michelle monaghan. man! her character is super awesome and scary and relatable all at the same time. and in the first episode of season 3 — whoa! she never fails to move me.

anyway, here’s the 2 things:

first, my horrible ex-husband called me for the first time in 10 years. someday i hope to blog alllll about that nightmare. suffice to say that he is a true villain and sometimes immigration does get it right — he was deported to russia in 05. so he calls me as i was headed to my lunch date with mollie. im driving. he sounded the same. he lectured me about getting the kids in the best colleges (what?! hahaha wow. this guy), and then asked me to scan and send some old photos of him, and then said he had no regrets and has lived a pretty exciting life.  ive been researching NPD (narcissists) lately and dang. hadn’t gotten around to plugging him into the checklist, but wont need to now. i basically was like, ok yeah glad to hear you’re doing well, i gotta go. wtf. this man brutalized me AND the kids (they were infants). he humiliated me in public so many times. he almost killed me when i refused to have an abortion. he threatened me constantly with bodily harm and with stealing the babies. when i finally dared to escape him, he terrorized me. i slept with a gd gun under my pillow. that’s never a satisfying sleep. even after i fled california, he found me and tormented me. even after he was deported, he called and threatened me. and he was a scary guy; it was hard to ignore his threats. it really wasn’t until a few years ago that i could breathe a little easier, because the kids were old enough that if he tried to abduct them, they’d be able to fight back or escape. just crazy to have that door from the past opened out of nowhere and in the 5 min conversation, for him to gloat about how exciting his (deadbeat, drug addicted, crime-riddled) life has been. i mean, it probably was haha, but dont go bragging to me about it. “i have no regrets”, he said twice. i was going to write a scathing email, but opted for a short and sweet one. i basically said “listen i wish you well but we are not friends. you treated me and the kids terribly. you made my life hell. you have done nothing to amend for that nor have you done anything to earn back my respect or friendship.” so, he’ll probably have some lovely words in response, but w/e idc.

second thing: my stupid ass ex bf, the one i’ve been rambling on about for 2 months, the one i just told last weekend hey were not friends, sorry. you treated me like shit and im not into that anymore. (same script as above, huh.) well, he texted me a bunch today. like telling me his whole office has the flu (ignored). and he’s super scared he going to get it (ignored). and that his throat hurts so bad (ignored). and what do i want to do for the kids bday. this i felt was within the realm of what i will talk to him about (house business and kid business) which im sure is why he brought it up. nevertheless, i responded, “let’s worry about the kid’s birthday after we see if you’re still alive” or something. he sent a crying face (ignored). it blows my mind that hes just going to keep texting me like we’re…friends? i effing told him im not his friend.  if someone told me, hey im really not your friend, i wouldn’t be texting, oh my owie throat.  is it that he doesnt believe me? he has always said he thinks im lying when i say, like, standing up to him type stuff.  so that’s very possibly it. i guess its just ignore ignore ignore. he knows i have a hard time being mean, and he may think i think it’s mean to ignore him. but i dont. its rational. he’s a manipulator, and this is obvs more of his pathetic game.

not playing. i hope this is the extent of the shit he pulls.

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What Happened, Part 1

In Jan 2006, i was fresh out of an 18th month failed relationship. I had been unhappy in the relationship for a long time so, altho i was a little bit scared of living in a new state with no friends and no job, i wasn’t too broken up about it. i got a work book that had you write daily about the relationship. like one day you wrote all the great things about your ex, and the next day you wrote all the things you hated, etc. i didnt sweat the future or lament the wasted time, partly because it had been less than 2 years, but mostly because i was 31 and death anxiety hadn’t truly hit me yet. 

by february of 2006, i had a decent job, tho low paying, and i was pretty much over the break up and happy to be on my own. i wanted to focus on raising my kids and getting healthy. i started weight watchers again. i was doing good. eating right, exercising, taking care of business. i was self sufficient and pretty satisfied overall.

in July i had a weird idea strike me on my way home from work. i said to myself, hey universe, i think i might be ready to meet someone new. it had only been 6 months, but that last relationship was definitely over and any pain was healed.

in October of 2006, i was at work and got on myspace at lunch. i got into a casual conversation about russian authors with someone in a literature forum. over the next few weeks, we messaged thru myspace, continuing to have  purely intellectual discourse — nothing personal. altho, it did become personal, but i dont remember how. eventually we were instant messaging on yahoo (i think?). by november, it has become important to me and we “chatted” every night. in december we started talking on the phone. altho he told me later he thought it went well, i remember the first phone call as a real let down. his writing was very captivating and his lavish and intelligent praise and attention was very seductive (love-bombing). but the phone call revealed a weak voice and a less certain person. i decided to let that first impression slide. because it wasn’t the first impression if you count our written correspondences, nor was it a true in-person first impression, right?

we talked on the phone again soon and it became sexual fairly quickly. he made me feel safe and i was more open with him than i normally would have been. i told him secrets. then he told some of his. i was committed to respect his secrets, since he’d respected mine, and i have an open mind. but his secrets stretched my compassion and understanding. 

first, he told me he was leaving for Korea on Christmas day, just weeks away. he was scheduled to be there for one year. while i was disappointed in a way, i was also happy that i wouldn’t have to meet him soon. i wanted to lose 25 pounds before we met so that his first impression of me would be “perfect” like he deserved. but a year did seem like a very long time.

but his other secrets were tougher. he had confessed that he was a sexual masochist. at this point in my life, i had only had relatively vanilla experiences, and altho i’d read a variety of classic erotica, i hadn’t put a lot of thought into it. i was intrigued as i always am when confronted with something i dont know much about, but i was disturbed by some of his stories. incestuous stories of sneaking in and sniffing his mom’s underwear. masturbating in his sister’s rooms when they were off at college. various interactions with strangers he’d met online where he paid them money to either do nothing more than act bitchy, to requesting him to meet other men in hotels and insert objects into each other’s asses.

a normal person would have hung up the phone and been done. and i have so much regret at not having done just that. there wasn’t ever anything good that i got out of the relationship after this point, so it’s impossible to justify. as one might expect, it just got worse. i can only assume that it was the intense and overwhelming nature of the love-bombing in the first few months that set me on a path i wasn’t able to escape until now, 10 years later. that initial love-bombing was followed with teasing crumbs and a few minor love-bombings over the years, altho they were never as good. maybe because he didnt put as much into it, or maybe because they were always tainted with the pain i’d begun accumulating.

but at that time, i thought this was it. this was his openly confessed flaw and im sure i thought with enough love and care, i could help him. that was the dynamic that was set, the trap as it were, and i was only too eager to rush in. again, because of the love-bombing, but also because he convinced me of his shame and hate of this predilection–which turns out was true. he does feel shame and hate. however, he loves it too, and has the cake as well as eats it by compartmentalizing. he also convinced me that there was never any incest, he was not molested, nor had he molested anyone. and he was not sexually attracted to any family member, but that he was drawn to explore sexual taboos. he made this seem like a virture, nay a sacrifice he was making to becomeing his best self. but, more than anything he was drawn to powerful, older women, which is unusual so i was intrigued. and all this that he said is also true. in a way. and also untrue.

thus began my foray into the duplicitous nightmare of false realities, crazy making, and unattainable acceptance that has completely destroyed me. for now.

this is the photo i keep on my phone to help me stay focused, because it so perfectly represents the following 10 years of my life, to be detailed in future posts.

 

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