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 �what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux "i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes note random entry image credit design by : ilazarn ikmal powered by : diaryland |
appearances, red flags, deception.
2019-07-29 @ 11:01 p.m.
i can't remember if i ever wrote about this guy? i tried to look back at around the time i think i met him but i can't find any entries where i mentioned him (my glances were admittedly VERY cursory). but there is a guy who boss does wholesale stuff with so sometimes the guy sends his friends and relatives to pick stuff up for him, or sign, or pay. so back in the winter sometime, i met one of this guy's friends, who was this incredibly cool guy! like we had so much in common, and he was so smart and interesting and had this incredibly strange and diverse range of interests. i didn't like him like him, but he seemed really cool and i looked forward to him coming back so we could chat again. as i said last time, i'm a really weird cup of tea, so to meet someone and instantly be connected and engaged in sometimes breathlessly exciting, animated conversation about SUCH a wild variety of topics that we both had in common was fucking exhilarating. i've only had that experience a handful of times in my life. so anyway, dude's sister comes in today because she has been dating boss's friend. cool. she's talking talking, telling me about all of this drama going on in her life all the while smacking her child and telling him to sit still and be quiet. i'm like ugh, i guess. he was sweet and bored and just wanted to join in the conversation so he'd have something to do but she seemed to just want to unload. i'm like okay, we've met like 3 times but whatever man. so she's telling me how she's expecting in january (wtf!?? the guy is in the middle of a really shitty divorce right now, is a workaholic who often comes to us and complains that he doesn't have enough time after work to work more(!), and is going to have a baby with this girl he's been on and off with for the past year?? what are you doing!?) and starts saying something about how her existing kid's father is a deadbeat and she's been wrapped up in court with him for the past year trying to get child support. i'm like wow that sucks, and notice that we had a document for her brother tucked aside in a folder. i said i don't know how close you are with [brother], but let him know we've had this for him since february. so then she starts going on about how their relationship is complicated, and she loves him but doesn't agree with his life. i'm like oh? (i'm typing up invoices and shit while she's talking, and there's a lot) and she starts telling me about how he had never really re-adjusted to life after being in prison for 8 years, and how he was fucking selling drugs, stealing cars, doing crazy shit. someone beat him for money so he and his boy went to their house and tied up the whole family, and pistol whipped their fucking 9 year old because he wouldn't stop crying. he's flipped out, tried to beat her up, tried to beat up their mom, has been shot multiple times (he only told me about getting hit by cars multiple times in his life), is generally fucking crazy. then she's like, well you know, i get it. we had a pretty bad childhood. among other stories, she told me of how when he was 8 or 9 his grandfather bought him a new bike and he left it outside by a tree that night. of course, because they lived in a shitty neighborhood it was stolen, and his grandfather was so mad about his money getting wasted that he choked him and beat him so hard he broke his ribs. this was absolutely wild shit. boss came back eventually and she started talking with him. she left and i told him some of the stuff he was telling me. he didn't even make the connection at first that she and the guy were related, but then he was like holy shit, he seemed like such a normal guy! like just any regular college looking dude you'd meet. absolutely cannot believe it. so of course, it got me thinking about how deceiving appearances can be. but also, how a person can show you and tell you about this certain version of his or herself that is perfectly accurate and true, but is missing certain vital details. because of this situation with PM, i find myself wondering a lot about how to know if a person is a fucking closet psychopath. while i was washing dishes (of course - i don't know why this is the activity that always elicits this train of thought) i kept trying to figure out for myself if i knew. did i see the red flags and just ignore them? and if i'm being truly honest with myself, i think i did. i mentioned the other day the way he would casually lie about things, large and small, all the time. of course he told me that he NEVER lied and would certainly never lie to me. and i was like derp, okay! i believe you! i think that i 25% percent believed that he wouldn't lie to me, that he was telling ME the truth because i was ME, and he promised he loved me and would never lie to me. 25% of me really did believe that, but the other 75% was that i was terrified of being alone. no one outside of the family knew how insane my mother was (is), and i was so embarrassed and ashamed of myself for being so desperate for her approval that i would fuck up my own life in pursuit of it. how do you explain that to someone, your best friend? i spent my whole life explaining my illogical decisions away as my own, because it was humiliating to say that at 30 years old, i was doing something "because my mom is making me." with boy i was able to stand independently of her for the first time. when i told him once of a situation she had put me in, and he got to see her sneering manipulation in person, he actually grabbed me by my shoulders and said "fuck your mother." it was the first time i had been introduced to that, like, as a concept. oh, you mean i can just ... not talk to her? that's a thing? fuck yes i'm in. so i did do it to myself, and in fact there were many times that i sat there thinking that very thought. boy would be yelling at me, berating me for something stupid and small, making some kind of veiled doublespeak insult that he of course meant offensively but could plausibly deny. there were so many times i was sitting there thinking, "he is insulting you right now! you know he DOES mean it like that? why aren't you saying anything!??" but i was drained, i was exhausted, i had no one else in my life to support me. in cutting off my mother, i also cut myself. boy and i were in it together, alone together, an island in the middle of the ocean. i knew i couldn't do it alone, so i clung desperately to the lie. i had to, to keep the last little bit of my sanity. but i still knew it was a lie. on ytbe now there are all these compilation videos make of askrddt threads, which i enjoy because i can listen to them while i'm getting ready in the bathroom or washing dishes or whatever. there have been several about your worst date, or your craziest encounter, or that moment when you narrowly escaped with your life or some shit. anyway, the thing so many of these have had in common is that gut feeling, that little voice, that instinct that just tells you to stop, go, duck, move, run! whatever it is. bad date, bad relationship, creepy person, impending accident. it's all the same. there's always a feeling. i crushed mine down for so long that i am always afraid i killed it and it won't come back. i got so many ... off ... feelings with boy but i was so determined to not be lonely and a failure that i convinced myself they were nothing. i did this so much that i think by the end, he was just laughing at how pathetic i was. he barely tried to hide it. a couple months after he moved out from my house, i went to his for the weekend and there were all of these cigarettes in his ashtray of a brand he didn't smoke (the famous "the women's brand"). that, and the fact that my pillow smelled like girl's hair. it smelled like nothing that he used. i noticed the pillow first, then just little things around the apartment. then the ashtray. it upset me so much, and was building up and building up inside of me. i was trying to think of a good reason for these things together but could not. finally, seeing how upset i was silently becoming, he asked all aggro (as he always did when he knew he made someone upset), "are you okay?" and in tears, i asked him if he was cheating on me. and he never said no, but instead told me i was being ridiculous and annoying and he simply just hooks up with a lot of dudes from grndr (this, i was okay with, but he was obviously lying). i said oh yeah? what dude smokes [girl cigs]? and he was like ... omg! i don't know! some just do! and i said do i really need to like check your phone and shit? i really don't want to be like that. and he's like wow, really? you want to check my phone? and against my better fucking judgment, because now i can say honestly to myself, i didn't check because i didn't want to see what i knew would be there, i instead told him that i didn't want to HAVE to check his phone, i just wanted him to not lie to me. and he said he had never lied to me. i said what about x time and x? and he just laughed and said well, i mean except for those. and like a piece of shit, i said okay, and threw away the very last of my dignity and pride, and probably sucked his dick later that night. i am sure that all that came of this weekend was that he learned to clean his ashtray out immediately after someone left, and to hide anything they left behind in a garbage bag in the fucking closet. on that note, i have to stop. the conclusion is: don't fucking ignore red flags and don't sit there and try to convince yourself that they're not a big deal. the end. i stayed up way too late last night baking so today i had amazing snacks but i'm pooped. i also need hours at work because of this fucking TRIP in 37 days! jesus christmas, it's almost here. until next time, <3 |