D is, that is….

I’m not playing though.  I am sooooo tired.  I really don’t need the games and bullcrap.  There’s a way to see who is visiting the social networking page.  I’m really surprised to see that he visits my page often. 

He must be disappointed to see that I’m living such a sedate and boring life.  LOL.

I haven’t contacted him.  I won’t.  But he hovers…expectant….

K tells me, “I TOLD you!  He can talk trash, but he still wants you.”

I hit the ground running.  I only have today with the kids.  Tomorrow I work and have first call.  I’ll likely not get home until very late.  Tomorrow will be a wash. 

No rest.

Last week was one of loss and sorrow.  My colleague, who I was mentoring, caught her fiance doing drugs.  The phone call I received was tearful, “He’s on the needle!”  My heart broken as I listened.  She decided to go home to NY; she has no family here.  Was she giving up?  I told her that she wasn’t, that if she were my child I would insist that she come home.  She told no one else about her problem.  She called out every day and packed.

Wednesday I stopped by after work, played with her pit bull while she vented.  I helped her wrap her plasma TV in bubble wrap and cardboard.  “When was the last time you ate anything?” I asked her.  It had been a few days.  I told her I’d take her out for something, preferably somewhere that served wine.  She looked at her clothes, “I guess I should change…”  I teased her gently, “I ain’t taking you out in Hello Kitty pants!”  She smiled and changed and we set out.  It was nearly 10 pm.  We found a sushi place and I set us up with sushi and wine.  She ate and talked, filling me in on her history. 

Her mother is a junkie too.  Her grandfather has buried 5 of his 7 children.

My heart broke a little more.  Junkies are a way of life in her family.  No wonder she’s had so many junkie boyfriends.

Then she told me that I was a true friend, that I’d never been selfish, that she knew she could trust me.  She knew I wouldn’t tell everyone of her troubles. “You’re true blue all the way, sister!” she says.

She’s right.  I held her hand in the operating room, and I hold her hand now in the restaurant.

It struck me as ironic, of course.  D was the opposite.  I wasted little time thinking about it before I returned to my spider roll and her tears…

I didn’t get to bed until 2 am. 

I was sad eyed on Friday.  Too many losses….

No contact with D.  I told him off. 

K scoffs, “That’s never stopped him before.”

I tell K that I’m raw.  I can’t “go there”….

 

“Thank GOD we’re with you this weekend!” my oldest son sighs.  He’s not happy that I have to work this Sunday.  His younger brother makes a disgusted noise in the back seat, “Mom, we hate going to dad’s house.   How much longer do we have to do it until we can live with you only?”

H will never learn.

 

He boldly hails me in chat.  Cracking a lopsided joke to get the response he wanted.  Only this time I told him no.  I told him that I was too devastated by his treatment of me to ever think about seeing him again.  I told him that he played off bad behavior by claiming to be an asshole, but that it wasn’t an apology.  He certainly wasn’t my friend.  I told him that he used people and that he didn’t know how to be a friend.

Then I told him that I thought he was too cowardly to contact me.  It’s fine, because I never want to see him again.

Let D put that in his pipe and smoke it.

I’m hoping that maybe I’ll sleep tonight.

 

I get a call from A.  He needs his sander back, and it’s sitting at my house.  He asked for it a month ago.  I tell him that I’m heading over to pick up mail today.  I’ll grab the sander and drop it off at his place. 

I call J and talk to him all the way to my house.  It’s a 30 minute drive from the place I’m staying at now.  I pull up, grab the mail and the newspapers (puzzling since I cancelled the subscription).  I scrutinize the yard, which needs attention. 

My yard. 

I unlock the door and walk inside.  The house feels different.  I walk around from room to room.  I’m trying to put my finger on this new feeling.  What can it be?  I look around.  Angel me stands in the doorway, smiling.  Devil me walks into the kitchen, turns and leans against the refrigerator. 

“I need to live here.  It’s my house.  I need to move in and live here,” I announce it to the empty space.  It echos a little, but it occurs to me that my house will be my sanctuary.  I will be able to relax here.  It will be good. 

D doesn’t cross my mind at all.

When I leave, I head for A’s house.  I meet his mom.  He’s living with her since he lost his job over a year ago.  She’s nice, down to earth.  We are nurses, so we have a common bond.  She’s German.  I’m German American among other things, so there’s a comfort level there.  I hang out with A, his neighbor, F.  I pet all the pit bulls. 

Then I head to the grocery store. It’s full of bratty kids and fat people speaking Spanish.  I shop silently, purposefully.  I head out through the parking lot.  I feel tired, hungry, small and alone. 

For the first time, I understand that I will feel better when I’m living in my own house.  I tell Devil me, “D will leave me alone then, because I’ll be far away.  I will build a nice porch, have fill brought in for the yard.  I’ll even water and seed it so that my yard will be nice.”  She listens nodding.  Who will visit?  Neighbors.  My friends who live out that way.  C may come over.  I want to have a fire-pit out back.  I have friends who want to visit from out of state.  A few have never met me, but we’re fast friends on the internet. 

J scoffs when I talk to him.  He thinks D is going to wait until his sister has left to try to contact me.  I shrug.  Who cares?  I’m certain that I’ll live too far away once I move.  J isn’t convinced.

Angel me isn’t convinced either, “On some levels he knows that you treat him better than his friends.  He hides behind his whole asshole facade, but he can’t be cool about how he feels about you.  I’m willing to bet that he’s very upset that you frequently meet J for drinks.  He’s working.  If he’s going out, he’s warned his friends not to mention his presence in their posts.”  J doesn’t think he’s going out with friends.  He gets too upset with them.  He can’t hang out with anyone for long. 

I’m too tired to deal with any of this…

I get up to feed the animals.  I’m dressed but my hair is uncombed.  My youngest has an appointment at lunchtime with his therapist.  He’s happy that he’s with me, “I can talk to you.  I can’t talk to dad anymore.”

I get ready at the most leisurely of paces.  H drops our youngest off, and he hugs me when he’s safely inside.  I look at him quizzically, “What’s wrong?  I know your dad took you somewhere special.  How did it go?”  He sighed and grabbed a plate.  His dad got him breakfast at Dunkin Donuts.  He has a doughnut, a croissant with egg and cheese and an orange soda.  I cock an eyebrow.  He said, “I asked for Orange Juice, but they screwed up the order and dad wouldn’t let me change it.”  

Typical.

He tells me about the outing.  They went “ghost hunting” at a local cemetery, “It sucked balls, mom.  We walked around and his girlfriend and her sister acted like they were picking up messages from the ghosts.  It was embarrassing.”  He tells me that his brother found his dad’s girlfriend’s niece to be attractive so he went off with her.  He admits that the girl was pretty hot.  Somehow I knew this was more the whim of the girlfriend than anything else.

Predictably, Angel me snorts laughter, “He NEVER would do something you wanted to do.  You went alone or he ridiculed you.  Guess she must be pretty special.”

She must be, I laugh.  Heaven knows I never meant shit to him.

My youngest admits that his dad’s girlfriend is fat (“Fatter than you, mom.  Like her ass is really wide and she has big boobs that sag bad.”  I don’t know what to say to that).  She doesn’t strike him as intelligent.  He doesn’t like her.  He’s going to find many faults.  He’s scared that his dad will move her in.  She has kids too.

Therapy goes well.  I find out that my youngest finds it easier to talk to me, and that it’s hard for him to talk to his dad.  I pay $50 to find out what I already know.  I call H and relay it all to him, but he’s busy with his performance, “I don’t want him to believe he can LIE to me….”  He isn’t listening.

I call my oldest for the rest of the scoop.  His little brother was right:  the niece was hot.  Her aunt was heavy, “Mom her boobs sag to her waist like an old lady.  She’s not very smart.  We walked around in the dark.  I sort of abandoned my brother, which wasn’t cool, but I like the girlfriend’s niece.”  I sigh because he doesn’t know her name.  I tell him to research local ghost hunting tours.  Trespassing in graveyards here will earn you a ride to the pokey.  We have too many Santeria practitioners here.  They like doing their animal sacrifices in graveyards.  He’s horrified to have forgotten that.  He reiterates that these people aren’t the brightest folks.  I wave it away, “It doesn’t matter.  I just don’t want any of you to get into trouble.  You’ll be a shining star to them if you find somewhere to really hunt ghosts.”  He gets it.

He’ll never learn how to play the game if he listens to that dolt I divorced.

“Ma?  The new girlfriend is fat.  Really fat.  About your height, but over 200#.  She’s kind of annoying, because she wants to be friends with us.  She tries too hard.  We were both polite and nice, but I think dad is going to move her in.”

He wants someone to cook and clean.

He’s pretty annoying himself.  They’ll make beautiful music together.  Part of me wants to laugh, and part of me wants to slap sense into my ex.  My youngest is afraid that they’ll have to deal with this ridiculous woman. 

I don’t have the heart to tell him that she’ll tire of his dad once she realizes that he’s a violent alcoholic.  For the moment he has me to blame, but eventually she’ll become weary of his excuses.

My youngest is 13.  He’ll deal with the parade of side show freaks that are H’s girlfriends for five more years. It breaks my heart.  I wish I could snatch the kids up and take them far away.  He’s never going to figure out how to parent his kids.  He’s a bigger asshole than I ever suspected.  One of my friends asks me what I expected.

“I expected him to find someone pretty and quiet.  I wanted her to be quietly religious, sweet, a phenomenal cook and keep a spotless house,” I say.  I wanted her to be everything I wasn’t.  My friend is silent, and my words hang like heavy smoke.  It occurs to me that I wanted something better for him, so I would disappear from his memory.

As if 28 years would be easy to forget.

“I’ve disappeared before.  It’s kind of nice actually.  People forget you very fast,” I told a friend.  She was horrified, “Why would you want to disappear?  I would think that you would want people to remember you!”  I shook my head, “No.  I want them to forget me.  I don’t like people to think about me when I’ve gone.”

It’s bullshit, of course.  My students remember me.  I hear from them when they pass their licensing exams, when they apply for jobs, even when they discover that they are going to become parents.  Nurse T says, “No matter that chapters close and life moves on.  We all love you Ms ____!  That never changes.  You lifted us up and taught us so much!  We will always love you!!”  Tears blurred my vision, because I know that many of the nurses I taught will affect change in the profession.  I’ll never know who they touch, who they “bring to the light”.  I only know that I made an impression, that I planted a seed.

So much for moving into the shadows.

I click through the notifications on the social networking site.  D has made contact again.  J is right.  He doesn’t give up easily. 

I won’t contact him

“Vanish in the air.  You’ll never find me…”  ~  Sting “Wrapped Around Your Finger”

Bullshit really.  But I won’t be the one to contact him.

 

The moon is huge and full and golden.  I gaze at it while I stand outside, waiting for the dog to finish her business.  Normally I would text D and tell him to go outside to see the moon.  I won’t ever do that again. 

I wait for the tears, but they don’t come.  Angel me places a warm hand on my shoulder, “It’s getting easier.”

Not really, but it’s not as painful.  When she asks me about my plans I tell her that I’m tired.  I’ll have one cocktail, eat a little dinner, shower, blog and go to bed.

M hails me in chat.  He’s coming down in a little over a week and he wants to see me.  I don’t brush him off.  I think it will be disastrous, but he’s hot to see me.  He’s wanted to hook up for 3 years.  He’s a successful attorney who dates models and showgirls.  I have no idea what he sees in me, but I figure, “Why the hell not?”  If it doesn’t work out, then he goes back to California.  We revert to barely speaking to each other.  No harm.

My cell buzzes with an incoming call.  It’s J, so I answer it.  It turns out to be a mutual friend, who is on a wary date, and who is very tipsy.  She’s afraid of falling for J’s charms, “I’m like his sister.  Like you are.”  She’s getting sucked in, and she’s finally realizing how charming J can be.  I tell her to relax and have fun, but she’s a little scared.  I remind her that she doesn’t have to do anything.  The call will end up dropping.  I’ll find out what happened later.

I go to log off the social networking site, and there is a new notification.  D has made contact.

I stare at the screen for a few seconds.

Then I log off. 

Of course, on Tuesday I was too busy to have gone out anyway.  We had a dinner planned at work, an Easter dinner.  So everyone who worked the later shifts was asked to bring a dish for potluck.  I decided to bring chicken salad so I headed into the grocery store after work, purchased 3 rotisserie chickens and the rest of the ingredients to make a huge batch.  By 10:30 pm I was stashed the huge container in the fridge, and slipped the candied nuts in my lunch bag.

After I cleaned up the kitchen and showered, I checked my phone.  Not a word from D.  I checked the social networking site.  Not a peep there either.  The last text had suggested that we wait until a weekend that we were off to go to the expensive restaurant. 

Something clicked, the last loops swiftly tied, and the noose tightened.  I typed an unmistakably venomous email, calling him out on it all (with the exception of his lie fest with C and J – no reason to throw them under the bus).  In the last paragraph I told him that he would have to call me to clear things up, that I wasn’t a fool, and that I wasn’t going to waste my time on someone who expected so much and wanted to give me nothing but grief in return.  I used uppercase and the “f” word a lot.  You’ll have to take my word on it.  I didn’t want to cut and paste it here.

Surely I will never hear from him again.

I tell J about it in a text yesterday.  He tells me that D will call sooner or later, “He’s not done.  He’s never done with you.”  I tell J that I’m done with D.  I’m better off alone.  J has no answer for that.

The chicken salad is a big hit.  In fact, all the food is great.  We’re still working so we eat in shifts, then I head out to pick up the kids.  My weekends will be different now.  I’ll have the kids sometimes, those will be the easy weekends.  Then there will be weekends when I’m alone. 

I’m not looking forward to the loneliness, but it’s better than being with someone who doesn’t give a shit about me.

 

Sure enough, he’s easing back in.  This time it’s different.  He doesn’t realize that his friends have turned on him.  They’re weary of his games, how he treats me. 

He forgot that this time the friends he lied to were my friends first.  Sometimes the ties that bind us when we are children are as strong as the ties that bind families together.  My heart was heavy.  It still is.  I don’t smile as much as I usually do.  My mind goes far away, and my eyes become sad.

Angel me follows behind with a hand on my shoulder.  She’s there always, afraid to leave me because she needs to hold my soul fast to Earth.  I’ve told her that I don’t have a soul.  She doesn’t listen though and her hand is warm on my shoulder.  I sigh a great deal, and she pats me when I do….to bring me back.

Yesterday, I check in on the social networking site.  My friend is supposed to be down from KY, but his father just passed away, so I’m wondering if he and his wife are making arrangements, postponing their trip.  Nothing on his page….Then a chat box lights up.

D has typed, “Still wanna go to that place in FL”

I stare at the screen.  Devil me looks at me expectantly.  She knows me all too well.  I begin un-spooling the rope, feeding it in measured lengths.  Figuratively, of course, for the rope exists for D to hang himself with. 

I type in the name of the restaurant in Ft Lauderdale, very expensive.  Then I remark, “That’s one hell of a nice place to celebrate a birthday.  Am I still paying?”  Rude?  Of course, I am.  However, it’s equally rude and incredibly ballsy for D to spend time badmouthing me, not speaking to me, shunning an earlier dinner invite from me….and then ask if I will take him out to dinner.  I key in “Yes, that was the restaurant I was going to take us to.”

Immediately he shifts gears, “Was = not going to.  We cool.  Its all good.  I’m off tues thru thur.  My sis is coming to visit next week.”  I tell him that “was” means nothing, that he shouldn’t put words in my mouth, that if I’m going to spend $175 on dinner and drinks I don’t think the meal should be rushed through during the week.”

He agrees.  I tell him what my call schedule is, when I have the kids.  Tonight would have been the only night I could see him.

I send him a text “Do you want to see me tonight?”  It’s a test.  He’s sent me a text saying that he wants to wait until we have a weekend off together to go to the very expensive restaurant.  He texts me hours later to tell me, “Not tonight.  Some other time.”

I know it’s trivia night at the tavern he frequents.

I smile ruefully at Devil me, “Strike two.”  She sits back, smiling, “Makes you want to tell that fat fuck to have the fair weathers or his antique dealer friend take him to the expensive place for dinner, doesn’t it?”  I laugh in spite of the pain.  I’m still feeding the rope out.  I’ll never take him to the restaurant.  Why would I take someone out who doesn’t want to spend time with me?  It’s truly over, but I’m too akin to Devil me to leave this without fucking him over.  It’s not a public humiliation, but a personal one. 

He’s got it coming.

 

 

My oldest child tells me to go out and decompress with friends, “You’re too stressed out, Mom.  Go have a couple laughs with J.  We’ll be fine here.”  I ask if he’s sure, and he looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, “I’ll be home by 12:30.”

I get cleaned up and primp a little, even though it’s only a local watering hole and it’s just J.  I arrive before he does.  While I’m walking across the parking lot, he swerves in, waving crazy and pulls into a parking place.  I laugh, “You drive like shit!”  He limps over and gives me a half hug.  He tells me that his mom is getting pissed off that he’s always going out.  I laugh, “Did you tell her that it was only me.  I’m not like real, or anything….”  He groans and says that she just wants him to stay home more.  His step-father isn’t well.  To be honest, she isn’t either, diabetes is taking it’s toll.  I tell John to spend some time there hanging with the family. 

The bar isn’t busy, but J thinks that it will become busier as the night goes on.  We order drinks from a young blond waitress with big, fake boobies and 6 big gold hoops in each ear.  She asks me what a Cape Cod is.  I tell her, and as she walks away I look at John, “At least she has boobs…That’s something.”  He laughs, “Seriously?  She’s worked here for at least a year and she doesn’t know what a Cape Cod is?”  I wave it away, “She probably meant to ask me WHERE Cape Cod was..”  We giggle at our mean comments.  We’re still waiting for our drinks 10 minutes later.  She comes back to take our order again, because she’s really a walking, breathing blond joke.  This time she remembers to put our drink orders in and brings them back to us, smiling.  She sets J’s drink in front of me and mine in front of him.  We thank her and switch them after she walks away.

J takes a sip of his Long Island Iced Tea and makes a face.  He squeezes his lime and orange slice into it, gazes longingly at the lime slice in my Cape Cod, so I quickly squeeze it into my drink before he can steal it.  “You don’t look happy with your cocktail, Pardner,” I say.  Without a word he pushes it towards me, I take a sip.  It’s awful.  I try mine, “Thank goodness a Cape Cod is easy.”  The joke was on me, because my drink is equally terrible. 

We drink them anyway.  The DJ is setting up to start his gig at 10 pm.  A tipsy man at the bar asks if there will be Karaoke.  I announce that if there is I’m paying my tab and leaving, “Karaoke is Japanese for ‘Get the hell out of the bar, you just think you can sing!”  Tipsy man comes over to tell me that I’m really funny, “I’ll have to remember that!”  I wink at J, “You should write it down so you don’t forget.”  Tipsy man proceeds to start asking people sitting near him for paper.  He returns later with paper, questions J and I to see if we’re a couple.  Then he tells us that he’s an author, has me write down my quip (which I didn’t find all that hysterical) and my name (I only put down my first name) so he can credit me.  Then he walks away.  I look at J who says, “I thought he was going to be smooth and ask for your digits.”  I shook my head, “Too drunk.”

The manager comes over and takes our next drink order.  He has a shiny, bald head.  J tells me that he has an after hours club in the warehouse district.  A topless bar, not even close to being on the up and up, so J says he’d be scared to go, “I’d be afraid that it would be raided.”  The manager will be the one who brings our drinks from then on.

Boobs comes back and asks if everything is okay.  I resist the urge to say, “It would be more okay if you actually brought us a drink”, but I decide that when I pay the tab I’ll just let her know how not okay we were by giving her a less than stellar tip.

We drink and we talk.  J shows me carpet burns on his knees.  I raise my eyebrows, “Really?  Who?”  He laughs and tells me that he hooked up with N.  She wants to hook up on occasion.  J will never change, so I laugh too.  He tells me about some of our other friends, who make him look tame. 

Then he asks me about D.  I shrug, “He sends perky, happy emails and texts.  I reply in a way that conveys my deep annoyance.  I’m not even nice.  I’m so coldly polite that he’d have to be completely retarded not to know that I’m not happy talking to him.”  J sits back, “He knows.  He’s biding his time.  He knows that you’ve always broken in the past.  When you do, just realize that it’s just a familiar game and that you’ll end up crying again.”  I don’t say the obvious, which is that I shouldn’t even talk to D since he IS an asshole.  Instead I sit back and look disgusted.  I also don’t say that I won’t go over to D’s house, that I won’t talk to him on the phone, because I know I’ll end up with him again, believing his bullshit.  J knows that too.  He tells me to treat D like a “bootie call”, “Just go over, fuck him, then leave.”  I look miserable.  J continues, “I guarantee that he’ll not be happy with that.  He can talk big when you aren’t here, but he was wanting you to stay the night all the time.  If you were nothing more than someone he wanted to have sex with then he wouldn’t want you to stay.”

Angel me whispers, “Projection.”

The lies that D told, that I was looking for a daddy for my kids, that I was looking for someone to live with me, that I was looking for more.  Those were obviously easy to disprove.  But if D was projecting, then the picture was far more disturbing.  I had told him many times that I wouldn’t live with anyone, that I’d never marry.  I had reiterated over and over that my kids have a dad, that H will get the parenting thing right given some time.  D isn’t comfortable with kids, but he understood my desire to spend time with them (or so it appeared).  He threw back cocktails at the same bar, at the same table with C and J, and announced that he’d never date another woman who had kids.  C had remarked, “That narrows the playing field, D.  Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a woman having kids.”  To me, C had confided, “As fat as that motherfucker is he shouldn’t be so damned picky.”

D had always gotten distressed and argumentative when I swore I’d never live with someone or that I’d never marry.  He had suggested that I get “black out” shades in my bedroom at the new house in case he ever needed to crash when he was working nights.  He said he wanted to take me on a weekend vacation to the Keys, to the west coast. 

He said a lot of things, nice things. 

Angel me whispers, “Maybe he was the one who was starting to expect too much.  Easier to accuse you of the same.  Then he can be big and bad in front of the boys.  He doesn’t realize that he looks like a fool.  He even admitted that he knows he’s an asshole.  But how many drinks did he throw back that night?  How much liquid courage did he need?”

“HELLO?” J waves at me to bring me back.  He knows I’m thinking about D.  He jokes to bring me back.  I end up getting up to dance to dreadful music.  Our drink quality never improves.  The service sucks.  People leave.  The bar never gets busy.  I head to the restroom and a young lady strikes up a conversation.  She compliments my dancing, my bravery because I’m the only one in the bar dancing.  I tell her to come dance with me and she does.  Then I get her talking to J.  I check my phone.  It’s 12:15 am.  “Time to go,” I wink at J.  He doesn’t walk me out.  I leave him talking to the girl.  

He gets no where with her, but that’s okay too.  

I go home and get on the computer.  There’s an email from D.  It’s all rainbows and unicorns farting glitter.  How fucking annoying can he get?  He talks about a mutual friend who he works with, the guy fell asleep during a meeting.  I snidely comment that soon he’ll be finishing his work week and he could celebrate his birthday.  Then I tell him that I’d offer to take him out to dinner but I’m sick of being rejected.  

He can’t act like I’ve been vague.  Devil me snorts laughter, “Yes he can.”

When I go to the social networking site I check to see who commented on a funny campaign poster that someone cleverly photoshopped and that I posted for laughs.  Two of my friends have taken over the thread and now run with it, witty as hell.  I’m going to play the obtuse blond on this one so I feign ignorance, hoping that they take it over the top.  It’s not a role that I play well though, and it begins to fall flat.  Surprisingly, D chimes in, and he’s adopted the same obtuse role, different from his usual sarcastic self.  T jokes that she and M are on a different page…obviously.  I take the joke in a different direction and make a saving throw for D. 

Devil me giggles, “So much for not wanting to have anything to do with you.  He just sacrificed himself in public, sounding like an idiot.  Mighty kind of you to save his sorry ass.  Why comment on it anyway?  Why send you emails about stupid shit that happens at work?  And he wants C and J to believe that it’s only about getting sex from you?”

He’s a poser.  The fair weathers can take him out to dinner.  They won’t, of course.  Hopefully, they won’t call me in early so I’ll have no excuse to take him out either.  Devil me laughs, “Not that you have to make excuses.  He said ‘No thank you’.  And then the wealthy friend who dates gay boys cancelled on him last minute too.  I wonder if she even offered or if he was just bullshitting.”

Serene, fresh as a daisy.  Hanging with the kids.