The Story of Us

The Story of Us

I feel you around me,

Beside me, inside me.

Your Breath, my lips,

Your hands, my hips.

 

The fear dissipating,

The storm, abating.

The calm of the sea,

An understood liberty.

 

Together, Apart,

The Ending, the start.

Your skin and mine,

My leaves, your vine.

 

Your mouth brushes.

The chill on my skin.

Your lips are parted,

And warm within.

 

You Pull, I push,

I leave, you come.

The story of us,

Forever undone.

The time I spent with you I refer to as the “Decade of Darkness”.  There is a saying that states “the devil will come to you disguised as everything you ever wanted”.  I now know this to be true.

I was young and naive when I met you, coming out of a divorce with my husband who had come out to me a few years before.  I had not dated for years and was relatively innocent when it came to understanding men.  You were eleven years my senior, coming out of a marriage of 26 years.  You were a retired veteran and had been a deacon in your church for the past 3 decades.  I remember the first few months, I was captivated by your display of chivalry and maturity and even recall calling you “my angel”.  And yet, looking back at my diaries during that time, I was expressing doubt and concern about you.  I even stated that “something was not right” and I “must listen to my intuition”.  Even so, I denied the voice of concern that was always present when I was with you.

I spent years swept up in the preoccupation and pursuit of you.  You spent years taking advantage of my preoccupation.  I must have seemed like an easy target for you at the time.  You and I both were both separated, but not yet divorced.  Your behavior was one of rushing in, loving so beautifully and fiercely, and then withdrawing from me.  Having spent the majority of my life married to a gay man, the passion with you was all too consuming and represented something I never knew existed, but knew I did not want to lose.

I remember reluctantly giving you your space when you shared that you just needed more time.  I would interpret your cold and callous ways as you being “far away”, tied up in grief and regret, when in actuality these expressions were tactics to discourage questions or concerns.  If I did question, I was made to feel guilty and was called pushy.   I was convinced that you loved me deeply, but that you needed more time to divorce your wife and commit to me completely.  You kept me baited with emotional manipulation by withdrawing your presence from me, and threatening to break things off with me if I pushed to hard.  When I wanted to approach this topic with you, I often received the silent treatment or was told by you that I was “getting sick again”.  You would use my Bipolar illness as leverage to discredit my concerns and instill self doubt in me.

You continually reassured me during times that I questioned your faithfulness, that you had never lied or cheated on me, but looking back, there is too much evidence to ignore.  At the end of our relationship, you boasted of your sexual prowess, sharing how your current “victim” was completely enamored with you. I understood this, after all, “making love” was one of your favorite weapons in your arsenal among the others: stonewalling, gaslighting, and discarding.  I sat in silence with my jaw on the floor as you gloated about your new partner’s deep admiration for you, while in the same breath asking me to come down and sleep with you.  It was my first real awareness that I had given myself to someone I did not truly know.  All the little games you would play to keep me dizzy, doubting, and derailed.  All the little games you played to protect your fragile ego.   It makes me literally sick to my stomach because I am someone who would never cheat, knowingly.  You had me committing crimes, blindfolded.  The last two years that mark our end, you were still pursing me, inviting me to your home while you were immersed in a relationship that was nearly two years old.  I’m fairly certain you were cheating on both of us when I was disentangling from you.  It is this display of behavior that has allowed me to see you without the mask you wear, and it is horrifying and nauseating at the same time.  I gave a decade of my life to someone I did not even know.  We were engaged at one point, I almost married you.

Our “Decade of Darkness” is marked by a very “dark” event in our earlier years. As we grew closer, sharing holidays and taking trips, the pressure for me to be visible in your life boiled over into a breaking point.  My trust in you was dwindling as I grew more and more impatient that you had not divorced, as promised.  I had broken up with you several times, only to regrettably accept you back when you showed up at my door, apologetic.  In a heated exchange, I threatened to expose our relationship to your wife and adult child, in response, you choked me and  threatened to put a bullet in my head.  I should have walked away, reporting the incident to the police.  Perhaps, you would be in prison now instead of romancing another while attempting to contact me and flirt.  But, I was in shock at the time, and being a victim of child molestation, I shelved the occurrence and pressed forward.  You slept over that night and we went for breakfast in the morning.  Life went forward, and eventually you divorced your wife, but the event was shelved carefully for processing much later.  It was just too difficult for me to acknowledge that the love of my life choked me and threatened my existence.  Years later, you would deny that you choked me, stating through chuckles that you were only trying to scare me.  In our last year, in a response to an e-mail where I confronted you again about being choked, you continued to deny it and sent me pictures of what “a real choking looked like”.  You sent this knowing that I had to see a doctor to ensure there was no damage to my throat.  It was sore and I was hoarse for nearly two weeks.

As a victim and a survivor, I realize to those who have not experienced this type of relationship, it is unfathomable that I went back. The decade I spent living with narcissistic abuse was all too consuming and confusing.  I moved across the country twice to leave him and then moved back to be with him.  I’m a smart woman and never was a “doormat” in his life, we were apart more than we were together.  Still yet, I kept coming back because he made me feel, at times, loved and the chaos was familiar to me.  It sounds ridiculous, but this person gave me something I did not even know that existed prior to him, a feeling of complete acceptance.  Looking back now, I see it was not real.

Another major issue at play is that I do not have a close father figure in my life.  I do not know my real father and my step-father has always been distant. When my Narc came into my life with such ferocity and intent, I experienced what I had missed my entire life, love and intimacy with a man.  Because of this, I was unwilling to let go.  But, in time, I did.  The relationship with him personified the grief of never having a father, it brought that loss to life.  I could see the child within refusing to let go, determined to get what she needed.  When I finally left, it was because I knew that I was enough.  My Narc never gave me the love I wanted, but he helped me find the love I needed to be fulfilled and complete.  It’s a love story that ends with self love.  I’m taking the space to grow and am no longer desperate and searching for someone to complete me.  I’m excited to do that on my own.