the old-school guestbook archives
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the last ugly chapter in the whole awful story ~ July 11, 2002 - 9:52 p.m. sometimes it happens, I guess. to me, not often-- but once in a blue moon it happens to me too. once in a blue moon, life becomes a jerry springer episode. you're just living your life, minding your own business, and suddenly you find yourself standing outside of a house you used to live in, screaming where's my camping gear, you fucking psychopath! I'm still very angry. and very freaked out. I've been alternately crying and slamming stuff around all day long. but I'll try to tell the story without doing my karma much more damage. I lost it, yesterday. that much is true. but the psychopath, the one who pushed me over that edge-- he's the one who's really lost it. I didn't even recognize the person I saw yesterday. the one I came this close to having arrested. broken leg and all. from the beginning, more or less: a note, from jeffrey, in my guestbook, warning me not to go over there alone. the man is disturbed and these things can turn ugly really fast, wrote jeffrey. and I shrugged it off. I mean, the man has a broken leg. but jeffrey's very intuitive and very connected to me. I should have paid more attention. I just hadn't even imagined how ugly he could be. even after getting the bizarre e-mails out of the blue, telling me to get my shit out of his house, never speak to him again, and stop hanging out with our friends. so I borrowed a car and arranged my day so that I could go down to santa cruz to pick up my stuff. I planned to say very little, I planned to stay calm. let him be as ugly as he wanted to be, I was going to be a zen little island. he'd informed me that my things would be moved into the shed for pickup by me "on or before wednesday, july 10th." so it being that day, I showed up in my borrowed car and my stuff was not in the shed. and ozone was nowhere around. and of course, not answering my phone calls-- because I was never to contact him again. are you starting to get the picture about what kind of headgames are going on here? out of nowhere, he demands that I get my stuff, makes a ridiculous deadline (I got back into town on tuesday and discovered I had to go and get my stuff on wednesday)-- and then he doesn't show up. because, for whatever reason, he's back to treating me like complete and total shit, after that brief period of remorse and look how much I've changed! so I refuse to let his ridiculousness get me into a bad state, for most of the day. since he's not there, I dance around in the yard with biff the cat, playing the dead loud on the car stereo (wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world...), and then I get stoned in the driveway and take off for the farmer's market to have some fun. run into lots of friends at the farmer's market, eat yummy organic food, flash blissed out smiles at all the freaks, dance at the drum circle. I make it a productive day. I get an HIV test, which is actually kind of cheery because I've been taking good care of myself, for the most part, and since I haven't had sex in months (gee, ever since the fucked up relationship with what's-his-face...), this test will actually be meaningful. I also do laundry, which I've been needing to do since before high sierra. I keep trying to call psycho boy to find out when I can come and get my stuff, but then I lose the signal on my cell phone. lose the signal in the middle of downtown santa cruz. and it takes me a while to realize that there is absolutely no reason why I should not have a signal in downtown santa cruz. unless, of course, the person who's name the phone is still under has called the company to cancel the service. and when it hits me that of course that's what he's done, something inside me starts to cook. starts to boil. all kinds of potential employers, new friends, old friends, grant applications, contacts, etc. have THAT PHONE NUMBER for me. that's why I wanted to keep the phone when we broke up. and he said that because it would cost him more to cancel than to finish the contract, that would be fine. and I've been fully reimbursing him for the bills. we had an agreement. and he had to get it shut off, just to fuck with me. because he was doing everything possible to make sure this was all as nasty, ugly, and painful as possible. like he was taking revenge on me for something. god knows what. the man doesn't talk. so I called him again, from a payphone. still no answer. when my clothes were in the dryer, I drove back to the house, a few blocks away. he was finally there, shoving my stuff out onto the driveway. it's after seven o'clock at night by this time, and I've been waiting for the fucking psychopath who won't talk to me all day long. and I'd been planning on staying calm, on saying very little. but by now, the thing that had been cooking inside me was boiling over, and the cell phone thing was what really pushed me over the edge. it was all so unneccesary. so ugly, and hateful, and vengeful, and deranged. there were reasonable, adult human ways he could have handled all of it. he could have e-mailed me and said "here's the deal: my girlfriend wants me to cut all ties with you, so I need for you to get your stuff, put the cell phone in your name, stop talking to me-- and we're gonna have to work out something about sunday night dinner." I would have been fine with all that. especially the not talking to him part. really the only reason I was trying to maintain a friendship with him was out of some sense of obligation for time shared and for the sake of peacefulness in our social group. because, to tell you the truth, I can't stand the guy. can you blame me? so I show up and he's shoving my stuff onto the driveway, and he looks like absolute crap, he looks psychotic, he looks like nobody I've ever seen before in my life. and I mutter about freakin' time, and I pick up a crate to haul it to the car. and he says, in this arrogant fucking tone "I had things to do." as if it wasn't HIS absurd deadline to begin with. as if I didn't have better things to do than wait around all day while he fucked with my head for his own personal entertainment. so I asked him why. I demanded to know why. why he hates me so much, and so suddenly. why he couldn't have done all this in a reasonable manner, instead of treating me like shit for the last and final time. and yes, I was probably yelling by now. I lost control almost immediately. no zen little island. just me and the psychopath and my own voice rising out of control. he just kept staring at me like he wanted to kill me, ice cold and ugly, and saying "just take your things and go," with this dismissive little wave. and I refused. I wasn't leaving that house without an answer. because I knew I never wanted to talk to him again, and I needed an answer. why do you hate me? why are you working so hard at hurting me so much? what have I done? why are you such a horrible person? all distilled down to one question: why? after about the 25th time I asked, he finally said "I don't have room for you in my life." and you know, that's just fine-- I am more than happy to wash my hands of his whole petty, narrow, ugly, sad little life. and I am wildly relieved that I got out of it when I did. I just wanted to know why he had to be such a horrible person in the process. I mean, why not come to me like a sane adult human and tell me that you need me out of your life? why not make a time for me to come get my stuff-- and then arrange for my stuff to be there? why order me to come and get it, and then not be there and not answer my phone calls? why not tell me you're cancelling my cell service and fucking up my whole attempt at a professional life in a single afternoon? why not answer the question when I ask you why? why lie to me and say my friends have decided I'm not to come to dinner anymore? I confronted him with that one, and he said "I didn't lie, they're just not backing me up." riiiight... he's the one who's acting completely deranged, and I'm supposed to believe that everyone else is lying? alright, deep breath. I'm really trying to let go of the anger. it's not easy. he says they're my friends now, that I can have them-- that they chose. can you imagine? I mean, who the hell insists that their friends take sides in a breakup? all of this seems to come from the deranged 12-year-old aspect of his personality. why not at least answer my phone calls until after you've finally shown up to give me access to the stuff you've demanded I come and get? and remember, all of this came out of the blue, at a time when I thought that we were fine. when I was finally starting to feel like maybe he was an okay human after all. so we're in his basement, the basement of the house we rented together, and I don't even know if his girlfriend is upstairs listening, and I sound at least as psychotic as he does, because I'm just screaming at him, telling him that he's a horrible person, the worst person I've ever dated. which is true. demanding to know why he's doing this. "I told you why..." and I tell him again, that I'm not asking why he's cutting me out of his life, but why he's being so mean and ugly and nasty about it. why he feels the need to hurt me like this even though he claims it's not because of anything I've done. right. so you're beating me emotionally for no reason. thanks. and of course, he starts threatening to call the police, and I keep telling him that I won't leave without an answer. when he sees that the police don't scare me, he threatens to pull a gun on me. you read that right. yes he has guns, lots of them. and he's one of those people who shouldn't be allowed to. his exact words were I can punch you in the face, I can pull a gun, or you can leave-- you choose. are you threatening me??? I literally could not believe it. NO ONE has ever threatened me like that. no one except the newly crowned worst ex-boyfriend ever. he used to be the worst person I'd dated in my adult life-- he's now even beaten out the guys I dated in high school. and he tried to backpedal. tried to call it not a threat. "I was just presenting it as an option..." right. that is such complete bullshit. you threaten a gun because you feel powerless and you want to scare someone. and I know for a fact that the police would see it as a direct threat. that happens to be an area of the law I know quite a lot about. there was more screaming, and I demanded to know where my camping gear was. the green backpack full of my cookware, my propane stove. my propane lantern and its carrying case. he was the last one to handle those things, and they never made it to the corner of the basement with the rest of my stuff. he claimed it was out on the driveway, but it wasn't. I've sacrificed my camping gear to the gods of bad relationships. it took me a long time to accumulate, and it'll take a while to replace. but whatever. it's worth it to me if it means I never have to go back there again. I stayed in his basement, screaming until he gave me an answer. it was bullshit, but here it is: because this is the way I do things. the headgames, the blind hateful nastiness, the lack of common human decency, the fucking GUN THREAT-- are all just how he does things. not psychopathic at all, no sir. here's my theory, from the bits and pieces I've been able to put together: the new girlfriend is insecure. god knows why, it's not like women are exactly lining up to take psycho boy off her hands. she feels like he's still got too many ties to ex-girl (me). so she pressures him to cut said ties. which he does, as meanly and horribly as possible, so that ex-girl will hate him and keep her distance, that way he won't have to do any of the emotional work of keeping her at a distance. or maybe the new pain meds are doing something to the lithium that he takes to keep the bipolar disorder in check. or maybe he's just psychotic. who can say. something was definitely wrong with him that night. whatever it was, he's succeeded in his goal of making sure I never again start to think he's an okay human. obviously, all that growth and change he talked about was just more of the same bullshit. and I would love to be able to feel more compassionate toward him, but I've done this too many times and he's beaten me up a bit too severely. I no longer think he's basically a good person. I think he's a horrible person. I think he's the worst person I ever dated. I think if I never see him again, I will be very happy. did I ever tell you-- of course I didn't-- that the day after our first date I got sick and threw up all day long? he's just this bad mistake I made, you know? I've learned a lot from it, but lord it's been some hellish road. so after he gave me his "answer", I loaded my stuff into the car. I stopped to ascertain that my camping gear was not there, and screamed my camping gear's not here, you fucking psychopath!-- a true jerry springer moment for the benefit of the neighbors playing basketball on the other side of the fence. and stopped a couple of times along the way to lean against the car and weep. finally got it all and headed back to the laundrymat. couldn't stop crying. my whole body shaking, now that I was out of there and could feel how he'd hurt and scared me to the core. packed up my laundry blindly, threw it in the car. and then I thought about that gun threat again, and just filled up with rage, especially as I felt again that moment of fear-- oh god, does he have one nearby? because when I'd blithely thought I'll be fine, he's got a broken leg-- I'd completely forgotten about the guns. and I'd been scared, for just a moment, when he threatened me, and I was so furious that he'd gotten the fear he'd wanted. furious that he felt like having guns gave him the right to make those threats. and terrified that someday he might make that threat and follow through. so something inside me snapped and I stormed across the street to the payphone and started digging through the phone book for the non-emergency police number. I came this close to having him arrested. taken off to jail, broken leg and all. but I stopped myself. I stopped myself because I knew that I was still hysterical, and maybe not in the best state to judge whether calling the police was the right thing. so I called keri instead. I called her and said james just threatened to pull a gun on me, and I really want to call the police, and I need for you to talk me out of it. "wait-- what??" was her first response. then we talked some and she helped calm me down, reminded me that calling the police would just escalate the situation. do you want to come over? she asked. and oh yes, I did. I drove over there and keri talked me down. we decompressed together and I told her the whole story. she's as baffled by his behavior as I am. ian went over to ozone's to see if he was okay, and keri and I just talked, about the whole situation and about all kinds of things. she reminded me that even though I'd lost control, I'd been pushed there, and I hadn't done anything to start the whole ugly mess in the first place. you were just with the wrong guy for a while, you know? keri always knows how to make me feel better about ozone. I smoked excessive amounts of pot, dosing myself with it until I was floating and no longer constantly on the edge of hysterical weeping. we watched the harry potter movie and I fell asleep on the couch. drove home today with my carload of reclaimed possessions (minus, of course, camping gear)-- and stopped at the cingular store to reactivate my phone. with a new phone number, of course, and a pre-paid calling plan since I have no credit to speak of. I'm trying to think positively about all the contacts I've lost because of losing that phone number. I'm starting over. in all kinds of ways. even though it was so ugly and painful and filled with nastiness-- and even though I've spent the whole day crying and hurting and trying to keep from curling into a fetal position while I'm working-- I'm so glad it's over. the whole mess. truly and finally. I don't have to try to be his friend, I don't have to try to see him in a better light. he's a horrible person, and a bad mistake I made. but it's all over with now. the last thing I said to him? you make me a bad person. now I never have to speak to him again.
(((rings))) |