I fell in love with a sociopath, and I lost my mind.
I ran past every red flag. I stayed through all his grief over someone else. I wrote poems, songs, blogs. I fell in love in a way I never have, and faster than ever.
He was mesmerizing, and knew it. His eyes, his confidence, his boldness, his intelligence. I was addicted from the moment I saw him, and the fact that he initiated a conversation with me made me feel like the luckiest girl alive. Our connection was intense. We spent an embarassing amount of time just staring at each other. He made me feel like we were the only two people on earth. He was so charming, and he knew just what to say to get what he wanted.
What he wanted was rarely sex. In fact, for months we barely touched each other. I felt like I hardly knew him because he didn’t let anyone in. He loved to argue with anyone about anything, he loved saying wild things just to shock people, and he had no problem making me feel humiliated in public. He would choose to be sensitive or caring when it was going to benefit him. He just wanted to play a game with me, and it was so confusing and felt like torture. I never in my life understood the desire to self harm until this point. Self harm finally sent me to counselling. I was constantly sick to my stomach from my own thoughts.
One day I crossed him and he decided he would get back at me by making another girl his girlfriend; a girl that I knew and crossed paths with almost daily. Him and I had slept together the day before I heard this news. I can’t explain the hurt I felt. He did it because he knew I wanted to be his girlfriend, and he never gave me that. But despite my anger and hurt, it wasn’t long before he persuaded me to be his mistress, claiming that he made a mistake and was going to leave her. That’s when sex became much more desirable to him. The cheating went on for months. I felt like I lived for him, and I wasn’t happy unless he was around. I was crumbling, constantly wanting more, wanting different, and he relished in that. He loved keeping me just within reach, even when he dated someone else. After I’d lied to everyone and even lost some friends during this time, I finally told him I couldn’t do it anymore, it was too much. It’s me or her. I could tell he didn’t expect it. I scared him, and he finally left her for me.
Then we were together, officially. Together all the time, every day. We went on vacation to another country, and we talked about moving in together. We shoplifted a lot, and joked that we were famous criminals in love. We were happy somehow, despite all we’d been through, until a drug and another pretty girl got his attention. He cheated, and tried to make the end of us sound like my fault. I saw a photo of them together just a couple of days later; he was flaunting her in my face. I was broken. I told him not to call me, not to text me. I told him to never speak to me again, and after I ignored a couple of texts pleading ‘don’t leave it like this’, he listened.
After four entire years went by, I had the scariest depression of my life so far. I didn’t want to be alive. I felt I had no direction in my life and being in love is not what I thought it was; I still haven’t felt that strongly for someone else. Some may say that’s a good thing. When I started having anxiety attacks that stopped my breathing, I decided to see a doctor, which led me to medication and a therapist. My therapist tried to do an exercise with me that involved saying goodbye to him, and I said I’d try it, but when we began the exercise I burst into tears. I never was able to complete it. A few months after the depression had finally passed, I felt it was time to do something big. I needed some kind of closure to release myself from years of hurt and blame and what-ifs, and to make it known how badly I was treated. I didn’t want an exercise; I wanted the real thing.
Since we had blocked each other indefinitely on every social media after our breakup (we hadn’t seen or heard from each other in about 5 years), I took one shot of tequila (for bravery) and wrote him an email asking for a conversation.
To my surprise, he responded almost instantly with his cellphone number. It hit me then what I’d done, and I was shaking. He agreed to meet me.
(more soon)
myskittishramblings 