Secret Sex Idiot
He was doomed to be a rebound and the relationship was a bit of a paradox. I was looking for some steamy rebound fuckboy sex and I found the guy, knowing his emotional integrity was weak. He kinda seemed like a broken bird but I was pretty past trying to fix those ones. I knew he was kind of a shit human, I wasn’t looking for a life partner. So, the rebound. We all know how that can go. Either you attach emotionally or you don’t. I was good on emotional attachments, I’d just separated from a very abusive person so I was alright. I didn’t need anyone. Perhaps that’s why he liked me. Soon after we started sleeping together and I took care of his desperate dog, he rapidly expressed his love for me. How crimson red this flag he flew and how sad it made me. I knew, I knew. Yet, I stayed. I stayed. So dumb, dumb.
I don’t speak much about this one, we’ll call him Mick. I think it’s because I feel pretty responsible for all of it. I knew from the very beginning that it was a shit show. Now I get why men are so stupid when it comes to women. The sex was outstanding and walking away was nearly impossible. So many men suck at the sex and this one was incredibly good. I don’t know exactly how he did it, but well done Mick.
Moving on. I have not fully realized the pain it caused of course. Since I blamed myself fully, I didn’t want to admit that this breakup sucked really bad, pretty unnecessarily. I don’t know, maybe not. I kinda put up a fight at the end. Oddly, I started really liking him once we get into it. We were getting into a groove, we had little jokes, it was kinda great in a way. When he ended it, I was in a deep depression over our dog’s death (that story is for a different time). He didn’t really seem to know how to handle my grief and kinda wanted it out of his life. So, he kinda shoved it away aggressively. He said this thing, “I’m kicking you out” multiple times. I will never forget it.
Once I remember that phrase, the rest is too painful to even speak of. I know it was about him and not me. No rational person with emotional maturity would say something like that. It still hurts, the repeated blows, the attempts to hurt me when I was already so down. Depression during a relationship, rocky or not so rocky is difficult. As you may know, depression is about trying to appear not depressed - all the time. That work is difficult and then add a relationship’s extra issues. Add someone else’s childhood trauma, add your superpower of empathy. It becomes all too much. Mick was also a bit secretive. I honestly found myself feeling crazily suspicious, a new feeling for me. I knew his ex wife was religious and held him to standards of near chastity and perhaps he turned that into a secrecy fetish. I don’t really care anymore.
Here’s what I do care about - after I was no longer able to live in our place, I had to make some hasty and thus, bad life decisions. I chose a very bad roommate who affected my life to this day. I know what you’re thinking, how bad could it have been? Bad enough to have put me in jail and make me move to Michigan with my parents and abusive sister. My dog died, I went through a bad breakup, I had to move in with a crazy stanger to a shitty apartment, I lost my job, I went to jail and had to go through a year of very expensive court appearances, I had to move out of state and into my parents home where my sister abused me, I called the cops on my sister and my parents kicked me out and I had to move in with a friend and his wife and the wife kicked me out because “they no longer had sex because of me” and I eventually got my own place in a shitty apartment and for some reason, that shitty apartment was like heaven. Then, my only friend in town killed himself. After that, I got a job at a grocery store right before covid and then got a very very bad case of covid and the symptoms lasted two years. I went back to work and the brain fog was so intense, I walked off a ladder and broke my arm in two places causing me to be out of work for 6 months on workers comp. During that time, I started trying to self improve. I started learning Korean, it helped a lot. This began my path to healing.
I know it seems like I went off topic. But, I think about a particular night and it was what changed things. It was a trivia bar night in the neighborhood of Logan Square, where Mick lived. I went to trivia with friends and immediately texted Mick. He met up and that started our trysts. We could’ve simply ended it after one night, we didn’t need to meet up at all. He was the one who gave me HPV after all. What a complete pain in the ass that’s been. I try not to think about the what ifs. What if I hadn’t gone to trivia night? It’s that kind of thinking that paralyzes me now. I tend not to go out these days, afraid of the what ifs.
The thing is, I’m not regretful of Ari. Perhaps he’s regretful of me… not the point. The point is, I’m here now and I feel like I’m healing. Things have even gotten better with my mom. I feel even grateful. Yes, the last 4 years have made it difficult for my career to get back on track. In fact, I worried I’d ever work in my field again and I still may not. But I feel hopeful, some days more than others. It is difficult dealing with life without Pippin but I’m even better at coping with loss and change. Who knows, maybe I’m full of shit. I still think about suicide, that may be part of who I am forever but I’m better about voicing my bad days. I still feel tears well up so I know there’s still work to be done. I’ll probably always be a cryer and I have compassion for myself now, whereas there was a lot of shame before. I have every reason to cry and have triggers.
If there were to be a point to this rambling, it would be this. Don’t waste your time on people who aren’t good and empathetic. Had I walked away from that hot steamy sex idiot when I saw red, I might have avoided some pain and perhaps even been emotionally capable of meeting someone good and empathetic.