(Cole):

     I hope everyone is doing well.  As for me, I suppose I have survived an assassination attempt.  Aside from that, I am doing great! 

     I have always trusted my instincts, and for the most part, they never lead me in the wrong direction, so why do I tend to doubt them from time to time?  The times when something seems too good to be true, so you wish it was true, even though you knew better.  Ever have one of those moments?  That was basically the way I felt about the Giant throughout our entire “relationship”.  Everything was so perfect, too good to be true, but at the same time something straight up stank.  That, and the fact that I never wanted to see him naked.  It’s like this meme I saw on facebook one time.  It said “love is like a fart.  If you have to force it, it’s probably shit.”  Well, that’s the way I felt about the giant.  Sure, I slept over a couple of times, and I mean actual sleep, but even lying in bed with him was very uncomfortable for me.  I didn’t like his giant man head in my face, when he woke me up with coffee and the New York Times, so most of the time I would just roll over and grab his arm. 

 

I liked his arm.  It was big, strong, and he had a nice black and white sleeve running up and down it.  His arm was sexy.  His tattoos were sexy.  He, however, was just not sexy.  His palate was sexy.  His knowledge of wine was sexy, and I hate to be shallow here, but chemistry simply cannot be forced.  If you don’t want to rip someone’s clothes off, you probably can’t make it work, and as the meme said, if you have to force it, it’s probably shit.  A person is a package deal.  Too bad I couldn’t just date his arm and his palate… 

     Like I said, I should have trusted my instincts.  I was hesitant from the very beginning, but my desire to find a reasonable replacement for the Rapist threw smoke in my eyes, and against my better judgment I tried to force out a fart that turned out to be shit and I ended up with a big ole’ stinky mess on my hands.

He isn’t hassling me anymore, but once I told him to take a hike he upped his game, and was so incredulous that I dumped him (as apposed to the other way around) that he was emotionally flailing about, trying every manipulation tactic in the book to get me back.  We’ve all heard them before at one time or another, but this guy used so many opposing, contradictory tactics, so carelessly, so violently, that I became quite callous and cruel. 

Crazy motherfucker went from telling me I was an awesome badass to telling me I was heartless, and from telling me he was trying to kill me, to telling me he wanted to kill himself.  It all came flying at me in such rapid succession it was comical, and I don’t even care if that makes me an asshole.  Maybe I am heartless, as he was so quick to point out, but I also have enough of a backbone to not be manipulated by someone who is clearly spewing manipulative phrases at me to try and coerce me to come back. 

For the most part, I ignored his texts, and I certainly ignored his phone calls, but some of the texts he sent me were either too baffling or hilarious for me to ignore entirely.  Let’s see…   

                

I suppose the one that that baffled me the most was the text he sent that read “I am trying to kill you.”  He didn’t say ‘I am going to kill you’ or ‘I want to kill you.’  He literally wrote “I am trying to kill you.”  What in the hell does that even mean?!  Was he slowly trying to poison me?  Had he slipped ruffies in my beverage before and he underestimated what a high caliber tolerance I have?  I couldn’t feel him sawing at my neck and I didn’t see a little red laser beam anywhere on my person, so what exactly did he mean? 

     Me, being a naturally born, sarcastic asshole, really, really wanted to text back “really?  I don’t feel anything.  Maybe you should try harder.”  But I didn’t.  I was still sarcastic, but I think slightly less provocative, because to be honest, I was starting to think the guy might be slightly mentally unstable.  So instead I replied with “Oh.  Did my ex husband hire you?  Good thing I have a 12 gauge and I know how to use it.  Yawn…”

Let me find some of the other gems he sent me…

“I don’t deserve you.”  True…

“You are such a donkey!  Have a great life, cunt!”

“I have never wanted anything but your happiness… I don’t understand why you are being such a bitch!”

“Run Forrest run!  You are a gutless turd!  No one will ever love you as I do!  In ten years you will see.  Don’t call me.  Infantile donkey!”

“Love is sacred!  Spontaneous! It supersedes everything!!  It is the most powerful thing in the world!  I bought a gun at Big 5 today and I wanted to use it!  All my friends are trying to fix me!  I am done… I wish you all the best!  I think you are great!  I know I am an idiot.  I am sorry for that!”

 

To which I could not help but reply:

“What?  You can only buy shotguns and rifles at Big 5, and there is a waiting period.  What are you even talking about?”

To which he replied:

“My friend is a manager there.  I have a shotgun.  It’s a guaranteed and rather efficient end.  If you’re gonna do it, do it right… right? Xoxoxoxoxox”

So then I felt obligated to text:

“Don’t pull a Hemingway on me.  Please!  Think of your children.  Don’t be ridiculous!” 

(In all honesty, I knew he wouldn’t actually go through with it, and what I really wanted to say was “Oh yeah?  Go for it.  Pull the trigger.”  However…  Despite what anyone says, I actually do have a heart, and I would have been devastated, had he actually accepted the challenge and pulled the trigger just to be “right’, or to prove a point, so I bit my tongue.  I will not be held responsible for the death of another human being, even if it is at their own hand…)

He replied with: “I can’t live without you!”

I replied with: “You did before you met me…” 

One of the last gems he provided me with was: “The whole town is babysitting me.  I am in a deep funk!  I told one friend about my mindset and he called my mother!  I am starting to scare myself!!!”

     Did I really not see that coming, or did I just ignore all the signs in an effort to squelch my feelings for rapist by simply replacing him with someone else?  Did I think I could skip one or more of the seven stages of “grief” by simply distracting myself with a willing and interesting decoy that could possibly turn into something serious? 

    

     The thing is, I still love the Rapist.  I do love, I feel loved, I know that I am loved, and I know that I am in love, but it is, for the most part, an intangible, unobtainable thing.  It eludes me, slips through my fingers and often leaves me more disappointed than fulfilled.  I was hoping to rid myself of him as a part of the myriad other improvements I was planning on making in my life that I thought should accompany turning thirty.  Quit smoking, drink less booze, drink more water, eat healthier, eject toxic relationship with the Rapist and seek a positive, healthy, functional relationship with someone good for me, and whom I could see out in the open.  (New year, new decade, new start.  A fresh palette and a clean canvas, to paint my life afresh.) I loved the fact that the Giant and I could and did go out to dinners, out to lunch, dine well, gallivant, etc, but while gallivanting with the Giant, all I could think about was how much happier I would be if I were gallivanting with the Rapist instead. 

     You can’t choose who you love, unfortunately, and if you have love at all you are incredibly lucky, so why am I having such a difficult time just accepting things with the rapist the way they are?  Should I not just be grateful that I have found love?  I am lucky.  I’m incredibly lucky to love someone so much and to be loved in return, but after a year and a half I think I deserve a little more than what I am getting.  I am not trying to sound ungrateful or unreasonable, I just think that relationships take the effort of two people to properly function.  I clearly put in more effort into the relationship, am most often frustrated and angry, yet am still unable to walk away, after several attempts to break it off.  I can’t leave, yet I no longer want to wait for things to progress the way I feel they should.  I don’t want to look for anyone else because I know I am not ready to give someone else the fair chance they deserve until I am over Rapist.  I don’t want to put my profile back up on the dating site because I really have no interest in seeing someone else.  So what do I do?  Take things one day at a time?  Try to turn my brain off?  Do nothing but work and lock myself in my bedroom and read all the time?  Turn off my emotions, thoughts, feelings, ignore the bad and focus only on the good, the positive?

 
Why can’t just loving and being loved be enough?