(Cole) 4/7/14:

     Hello everyone.  I hope that you are all doing well, and I certainly hope that you are doing better than I, as things are not going so well with me, and this time, it’s more than just a lack of solid work that has my stomach in knots, my appetite nothing short of non-existent, and my sleep, when I get it, wrestles and full of disconcerting images that my creative, overly-stimulated mind can concoct.   

It’s amazing how well we can fuck up a good thing, isn’t it?  Or maybe that’s just me.  Within a matter of hours or even minutes, something wonderful in our lives can turn sour, or else disappear altogether.  If you read my previous post, you would know that things were going really well between the Rapist and I, in fact, really well would almost be an understatement.  I finally felt like we were on the same page.  Even when we weren’t spending time together we would text each other all throughout the day, joke, laugh, send “selfies” (ugh, I hate that word!).  When we were apart I still felt a connection, I felt loved and desired.  As soon as he got off night shift he invited me back over to watch movies and have a sleep over.  He ran errands in the morning, put the key under the mat for me, and shut himself in his downstairs guest bedroom with blackout curtains so he could take a nap and I could let myself in without having to wake him (our typical coming-off-nightshift-routine). 

I arrived around four, but knowing that he had been up until past one in the afternoon, I decided not to wake him right away.  After all, I didn’t want him only getting three hours of sleep and passing out on me early.  I wanted to spend as much time with him awake as I possibly could, and was also looking forward to sleeping in with him and walking the dogs together in the morning.  It’s something so simple but that I love doing with him so much!  So instead of waking him I let his dog in from the garage, poured myself a martini, and decided to read upstairs on his couch for a while with the dogs, and let the gorgeous and tired man get an extra hour or two of sleep.   

He awoke around five that evening, and we started watching movies.  I’m not exactly sure what sparked the argument, but it started off small and quickly escalated.  I do not fight with weapons.  I fight with words.  My tongue is a double-edged sword that can pierce right through the heart, and more often than not, with the Rapist, it does.  The rapist wrote this to me once, after I had sent him a particularly scathing and verbally abusive letter:

“Part of the reason I love you is your writing. You send me the most beautiful letters ever! I crave reading them! With that said, some of them that you write me rip my heart out and tear it to shreds. Then they stomp on it and give it the middle finger…”

I am fully aware of this power.  It’s not that it is always my desire to unleash the “dragon”, but when I am upset, I find myself lashing into him, breathing fire, claws out.  It turned into one of those kinds of fights.  I called him all kinds of things.  I called him a spoiled bitch.  I told him that I worked twice as hard as he, that he didn’t deserve all the things that he had.  There was a lot more said than that, but those are the gems I decided to include in the high-light reel of our one-sided argument.

     My words were harsh and unwarranted.  The Rapist really did not deserve to be spoken to in that manner just because he made right decisions in his life and I made wrong ones.  And I do not mean to defend my behavior.  I simply want to explain my current situation, so that the reader can think about how they would feel if they walked the past year in my shoes…  

I’m not going to start from the beginning.  It’s too long and convoluted a story to cover in this post alone.  If you have the time and you’re curious, however, feel free to go to my very first post and read up until now.  It’s been rocky for a while, to be sure, but I’ve managed to keep a pretty good spirit, and I’ve also somehow managed to keep my head above water.  It’s mostly the past two months that have hit me so hard.  Going to New York for my brother’s wedding bled me, but of course, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.  I was postponing getting a “real job” until after the wedding, because I didn’t want to have to ask a brand new employer for the time off.  Also, I was still working for my bosses from the power plant, assisting in helping them flip a house they had, and I didn’t want to leave until the house was done.  I love my bosses, loved the work, and wanted to see the project through.  Unfortunately for me, I spent every last “buffer” cent I had to fly and stay in New York.  On top of that, the house I was working on was basically finished and went on the market when I returned to California, so all at once, I had no more money, and no more job.  These days, it’s all money going out and next to nothing coming in.  The money I do have coming in I need to spend on gas so I can continue to work, which leaves little money for bills.  Each month I have to decide which bill (singular) I can afford to pay.  It’s like bill roulette.  Car payment, car insurance, phone bill, credit card, or rent?  It’s difficult to choose.  Not to mention the rent that I owe my partner in crime, who is kind enough to let me freeload off of her until I get back on my feet.  I know I’m not a “loser”, but I pretty much feel like one.

Is the Rapist sympathetic?  Yes and no.  I mean, sort of.  He has done some really wonderful things for me.  He let me stay at his house when he was away, so I could use his resources and save mine.  He has given me gas money as well.  These were incredibly nice gestures, and I am indeed very grateful to him for all he has done for me.  But sometimes, a person needs a little more than tangible gestures.  They need emotional ones.

It’s true, I am embarrassed by my situation.  I am a proud woman, and the last thing I would want from the Rapist is his pity.  I abhor being pitied!  What I want is respect, and for us to be equals (outside the bedroom).  I don’t like feeling inferior.  Also, I don’t want to be a downer of a girlfriend.  I don’t want to be all mopy when we hang out together, so I put on my happy face, which isn’t difficult to do when I am around him, because he is my happy place.  When I am around him my anxiety melts away and I feel great.  He knows that I am not in a good place, though maybe he isn’t aware of exactly how dire my situation really is.  In any case, while I am grateful for all the tangible things he does for me, and believe me, there is a lot, sometimes I wish he would just take me in his arms, squeeze me tight, and tell me that everything is going to be ok.  He doesn’t do that.  He never has. 

Not even when my neighbor tried to break into my house when I was living in SLO.  Sure, he stopped by after work the next day, for about an hour.  But he didn’t stay the night with me.  I guess he thought I could take care of myself.  And he’s right.  I can take care of myself.  But just because I can doesn’t mean that I want to be the man in my life all the time.  Sometimes it would be nice to take the load off my shoulders and set it to the side.  These days the only person assisting me with my emotional burden is Marge, and I will be forever grateful to her for all she has done for me, and continues to do for me… 

So, am I making excuses for my behavior with the Rapist?  Yes.  Do I have a reason to be upset about my current financial situation?  Yes.  Do I have any reason to take my anger out on the Rapist?  No.  I don’t.  He has nothing to do with why I am in the situation I am in.  Just because he has an incredible job (where I also used to have an incredible job), has a nice house, nice things, and can pay his bills, doesn’t mean that he deserves a verbal lashing just because I had those things unfairly taken away from me.

The next morning at around six-thirty, I awoke to a text from Marge.  I responded, and then rolled up next to the Rapist to hug him, a physical, non-verbal apology.  He pushed me away and asked me to turn my ringer off.  I rolled over to the far side of the bed and put my phone on airplane mode.  He woke back up before I did and made coffee.  We didn’t speak much.  We were both still upset.  He informed me he would be leaving for the gym at 9:45.  It was already nine.  I poured myself a cup of coffee and began to get ready to leave.  He tried to speak to me but, like a silly girl, I refused to speak back.  I was running behind.  He would have left before me but I insisted on taking the dogs for a walk before I left for home.   He told me I didn’t have to.  I told him that I knew I didn’t have to, but I wanted to, not just because I love his dog, but because the dog deserved a walk, as did mine.  On my way out the front door, he tried to coerce me to kiss him.  I refused.  He implored.  I gave him a quick peck on the lips and then I was out the door.  He has refused to speak to me since.

After I returned, half hoping he would drive down the street where I was walking the dogs to see me one last time before he left for town, I wanted to take care of a few things.  I guess I wanted to do the things I did half out of love, and half out of spite.  I know he likes things done a certain way.  His previous girlfriend before me lived with him (another story in itself.  Probably there will be an entire post devoted to the type of woman he typically dated before me).  She didn’t have a job, and she was basically his slave, or at least his bitch.  He paid for her everything, and in return, he never had to lift a finger.

The last thing I did before I left, after emptying his recycling and opening his upstairs windows to air the house out, was grab the very delicious one quart can of Mission Brewery “El Conquistador” pale ale out of his refrigerator.  He had bought it for me the day before, and he proudly presented the can to me the evening that I arrived.  He said he bought it because it had a skull on it (I love skulls) and because he knew I liked holding a big ass can or bottle of beer in my hand, which is true.  More often than not, at home, I’ll be sipping on a 22. ounce bottle of Firestone or Lagunitas IPA, or else one of those ridiculous cans of Fosters (“Australian for beer” AKA the Budwiser of fake Australian beers).  I didn’t drink the beer the evening we were hanging out together because I had started drinking martinis as soon as I had arrived, and I didn’t want my tainted, overly-saturated palate ruining the flavor of this very special beer that the Rapist had bought special for me. 

At the time, of course I knew it was in some way wrong for me to take it, as I’m sure that although he did buy the beer for me, he meant for me to drink it in his house with him, not for me to take with me to drink without him.  But I took it anyway.  I was irrationally angry, I was poor, and, well, I just really wanted that damn can of beer!  I considered it mine, so I tossed it into my bag before slamming the front door closed behind me, carelessly chucking the key (with semi-violent force) under the mat, and practically peeling out of his driveway. 

Sure, I was angry, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was being an irrational, vindictive little cunt.  I realized this.  I know I can be quite harsh.  But I can also be very quick to apologize.  And I usually am, though sometimes it takes me a while to apologize.  Not because I think instantly that I am wrong or right, but because sometimes I know I can be irrational, and I need time to roll my thoughts about my head.  I can be quick to pick up my sword, and quick to apologize, but when a situation seems somewhat cloudy or ambiguous, I need time to consider both sides of an argument.  I do this because I think it is only fair.  I know that I am not always right.  This thought often occurs to me shortly after an argument, but before apologizing, I need to seriously weigh both sides of an argument, even if one side is mine.  I do not wish to be unfair, only to try and understand what is causing turmoil at the most basic level.  I have explained this to the Rapist several times.  Sometimes, during my times of trying to decide which of us is the “crazy person” and which of us is the “rational person”, I will go several hours or days weighing both sides of the equation. 

The last time the Rapist and I really fought was when he didn’t have the courtesy to wish me good luck before my job interview.  I didn’t speak to him for three days.  In the end, I concluded that while yes, it was incredibly rude of him, and he could have been way more supportive and interested in what was going on in my life, that I didn’t need to get quite as upset as I did.  Did I have a right to be angry?  Yes.  Did I take it a little too seriously?  Yes.  So I can’t help but wonder, is he ignoring me to prove a point, or is he just being an asshole?  Is he ignoring me because I ignored him and he is teaching me a lesson, or is he really just that pissed off at me over something that, in my mind, is pretty minor?                      

    

If my tongue is my greatest weapon, then the Rapist’s greatest weapon is his silence.  He knows the anxiety I feel when we are not speaking to each other.  He knows that each hour that passes without word from him is every much the double-edged sword through my heart as my vitriolic words are through his.  The thing I can’t wrap my head around is, what exactly did I do to deserve so many days of deafening silence?  We’ve verbally abused each other seemingly hundreds of times for almost two years, but we always come back to each other.  Neither of us can really stand not to talk to the other for more than a day or two, give or take.  So why is he being so cruel and indifferent to me now?  I certainly didn’t say anything more harsh to him than I have before, so why the current lack of compassion? 

And then all of the sudden it occurred to me.  Why am I the one beating myself up over my behavior, when he should be the one beating his-self up?  If our situations were reversed, I would be bending over backwards to do anything I possibly could to make him feel comfortable, loved, and more like a man.  If the situation were reversed, I would have scalped heads a year ago and laid out a game plan to take care of business!  So why is it that I am the one who feels like an asshole?  Why is it that I am the one apologizing and whimpering when it’s my life that’s being stitched together with dental floss and buttons that are popping off and hems quickly fraying at the seems? 

He does do nice things for me, yes, but he can certainly afford to do so.  So what about all the times that I really couldn’t afford to do or buy the nice things that I did for him, but I found a way to do it anyway, because I just loved him so much and wanted to make him smile?  Does that count for nothing?  I really don’t want to play that game, but which means more?  When a person who has no money yet spends everything they can to make another happy, or when a person has plenty of money to throw around, and makes you aware of all that you take?  The proverbial “Gift of the Magi”.  True love means both are selfless, and give everything they have to make the other happy.  I don’t believe in fairytales, but if I did, I would be sorely disappointed in life…