“Think of your biggest mistake. Be grateful you will never make it again.”
Several months ago, I thought I saw my last mistake at the gas station by my home. I didn’t look back, I didn’t turn to verify, I just said the word “NO” and kept on. A very close friend had died recently so later that afternoon I received the text from Mistake saying he was sorry for my loss.
I let him know that during my time of grief, the last thing I needed was to hear from someone who treated me like shit and who reminded me of how low my life decisions had come to with him. I was not appreciative and he rebuttals with his blah, the conversation ending with him saying he never lied to me and I said “yeah you did boy, many times”.
So this is just an emotional shit storm because I had been doing soooo good. My depression was clearing out, I was happy, feeling good and then I am hit with the idea that even in MY neighborhood, that he normally would NEVER EVER go into, he would be there. Anywhere. Anytime. It pissed me off and it made me have major anxiety.
My karma caught up with me almost instantaneously when a couple days later I am told by my friend, his sister in law, that his mom passed a few months ago unexpectedly. So I humbly sent the text I knew would be ignored, saying I realize I looked like a fucking lunatic but I was truly sorry about the loss.
I had no issues with her, he did not love her. He hated her. This woman is the very reason The Mistake is the way he is today because she did not love or care for her children in a motherly way, AT ALL. So needless to say I always fully knew Mistake had mother issues, deep ones. We talked at length and drunkenly about the topic, many times.
I do not expect to ever hear from him again as I have blocked his number. Something I should have done two years ago instead of trying to believe there was something more to a legitimate psychopath.
A few weeks go by and my son sends a text saying he saw the Good Christian at his work. To which my daughter replies to the group with a “well, never going there again”. Which I fully, immediately related to. It being a grocery store in our immediate neighborhood. I tell the son if he ever happens to ask about us, you just say “no thanks”. I was informed he was also there the next day and that he actually goes there quite frequently.
I immediately had a couple flashbacks. When we had first met, when I shopped, I didn’t really buy meals for the whole week. I mostly would stop by the store on the way home and the kids and I cooked what we wanted, when we wanted. It was drilled into me by the Good Christian when we moved in together, that he “wasn’t going to live that way” and we had to meal plan and shop weekly because he needed to make lunches to take and whatever.
So this fell to me to meal plan and shop for a blended family of 6 trying to incorporate everyone’s choices on a shoestring budget. These meal demands eventually over the years came to a point where I was literally yelled at and he threw a FIT because he would have meat at EVERY meal (I served a vegetarian dinner) and then later it was demanded he have his dinner by 5 pm every night because that was HIS schedule.
There would come these phases where he would insert himself into the process, pretty much as a total take over of the operation and I would spend one week under his dictation of food and preparation. One week because we would go to the grocery store, he would get physically angry and upset, lecturing me about how I loaded the grocery cart wrong as we were shopping and decide the process took too much out of him and he wasn’t going to participate anymore.
Having these memories flashback on me from years ago, is painful and depressing. I know for a fact I had another flashback during this recollection period that I had blocked out. It was him literally screaming in my face. It sets in place a domino effect of recollections and events that make me realize how weak and stupid of a woman I was for so very long. How I could physically and emotionally watch myself crumble over the years into something that was not recognizable as me. I had developed legitimate health problems because of his abuse. I had to rely on mood stabilizing medication because I was ALWAYS DOING THE WRONG THING. Constant criticism, becoming worse and bolder over the years. I saw instantly when I decided to stand up for myself, his hatred of me come to a full boil. He was unhappy with this woman he demanded her to be in how she led her life and thought her thoughts and now he decides I’m not what he ”wanted” me to be?
I did a quick google search because I do not want to know anything more than I have to about this asshole, but I want to know why he is in my neighborhood when I was very happy under the impression he was over an hour away with his super wilderness woman who loved and worshipped him.
Apparently that went to shit and he has been living in my area the past yearish while I’ve been nestled in for five.
It pisses me off and for awhile it made my anxiety run amok every time I left the house. But i was reminded if its been this long and I haven’t run into him yet, there’s a good chance I won’t.
I don’t want ANY fucking chances.
I fucking hate him.
The intensity of the constant fear and anguish has died down, which is why I finally felt it was time to get some writing done and out.
Especially because I had a dream last night that The Mistake had died, and it felt like a relief to me.
I often had tried that theory of just pretending someone was dead and you could ignore or move past trauma that way but I can’t fool me. It was never going to be a thing. The dream wasn’t graphic, it was very matter of fact, he was dead, I was in his apartment which oddly had WAYYY more light in it than normally would, and I was like “ok”. Just let it set in. My brain went to the trying-to-fool-yourself idea again but instinctively it went back to being ok. So thats not a normal feeling. It was a good feeling. A healthy feeling.
I’m supposed to forgive myself for making the bad decisions of staying with someone who used me and gave nothing back, for not thinking better of myself and assuming I deserved that somehow. And I think I do, not really, but I remind myself all the time that that is what I have to do. The dream didn’t resolve that but for some reason, the notice of death put a calm over that time period, I can’t explain why the weight feels lighter.
I live my life pretty much how I want right now. I go where I want, I eat what I want, when I want. Work is successful and while I worry about my future and still need to come up with a plan for a career change, my health is great, my finances are within normal ranges, I buy what I want.... I really cannot complain about anything. Life has been pretty awesome. I am lonely as hell, and I haven’t dated since over several months ago and I had a terrible date with what I can only describe as a “wet paper towel of a man”. It was just simply fucking ridiculous and I actually felt angry the asshole wasted my time and knowingly so being that he had literally NO interests, NO hobbies, NOTHING to talk about. I got tired of leading the conversation, watching him hamster sip his vodka cranberry (he held with both hands), that I watched the clock go by a full two minutes before he said “so, uh, you live in an apartment?”
I had to physically turn my body away from him and put my arm up on the bar as a barrier because he kept poking his knee into me. Blowing his vape smoke at me. We were to meet at 7 at the bar, I was inside waiting when I checked my phone at 7:20 to find he messaged at 7 to say he was here. I said “you’re waiting in the parking lot? For over 20 minutes?”
Yeah, I was pissed off. I made an attempt to at least have a night out, maybe of interesting conversation (prior dates both went on in great detail about their depression issues on our first and only dates), and the universe gave me THAT. I deleted all dating apps and said “never again”.
So I made an attempt to flirt in real life. Pretty openly and obviously only to find out with one, I wasn’t even on the radar and the other also, just no interest.
It makes me uncomfortable to have my friends say “you’re so beautiful, you’re the best chick, blah blah blah, don’t know why guys aren’t interested in you....”
Well, I don’t know either and I guess I can be ok, with NOT being with yet another asshole, I don’t have anyone to share anything with.
The other day I was curious and tried mentally fantasizing about being physically close to an attractive man I saw. Maybe kissing him. The thought of it seemed so foreign to me, you may have asked me to start building a bookshelf right then and there. I couldn’t see it. It made me physically uncomfortable to be that physically close to someone. To be so intimate. So that made me cry.....
I’m in this arena where I am constantly alone and I am viewing everyone else’s relationships. Watching one leave an 11 year one to just walk gracefully directly into a new relationship in a matter of months.
I can’t have a conversation with a man that at some point doesn’t involve him saying “I was testing you” on some stupid fucking idealistic topic. FOR FUCKS SAKE.
*sigh*
Healing is happening, I was in a very dark, very bad place for awhile. The stress and constant change in the world itself at this time has been chaotic at best and I am coping with that on a “it is what it is, be safe” basis. I’m still figuring out what I want for the future but treading knowing I can’t really make plans because we rarely end up where we thought we would be anyway.
