I have a number of incapacitating fears, which influence my daily behaviour. "Lake monsters" and "the Blair Witch" may seem to be fears with no basis in reality, but I'd rather not take chances.
There's no downside to staying out of dark, creepy looking lakes and I've never really liked camping, so avoiding these two issues doesn't cause problems in my daily life.
Then there are the things I fear the most, for three reasons: they're founded, they keep happening and when they do they fuck me up.
I've been fucked up since Friday and my last conversation with Alex, and I believe "fucked" to be the technical term so I'm just going to keep using it.
First he told me he had a girlfriend, which was bad. But then he didn't tell me good-bye which is actually worse. He told me he wants to keep talking to me, to stay in touch, to keep hearing from me and to see me.
When I'm in Kelowna he wants me to call him, he wants to see me, he wants to spend the night with me and he wants me to attack him just like I always would. But it would be my choice of course.
For not the first time I was so happy I wasn't on the phone, because I was stunned. When texting you can take a minute, but if he was hearing my voice he would have known that I had lost all capacity for speech and so I was saying nothing.
I cried instead. While texting, it looks like I might just be too busy doing something fabulous to respond right away, and I'm totally not having a meltdown at all.
There was no thinking clearly because all I could think of was the word GIRLFRIEND in blinking neon. I asked him if this all meant he didn't want to talk to me anymore and he asked me if I didn't just see everything he wrote.
What I meant was if I go to Kelowna to visit it's a special occasion. Just keeping in touch and talking the way we do isn't. He typed out everything he said over again and added the words, always. Always.
Then I got it. Me of all people, how could I not see it? I'm already complicating my life unnecessarily with a married guy and his open relationship with his wife - Alex is in an open relationship.
Obviously his girlfriend has met him for longer than a minute and has surely recognized that asking him to be monogamous would be like asking him to ovulate so they must have agreed upon an arrangement.
Just to be sure, I asked him if they were open or if my karma would take a hit. The answer was a bit of a surprise. Not open, but my karma would be fine.
"You and I are special. Right?"
I would agree Alex is special. I would agree I should probably be classified as having special needs.
Either way, I told him I agreed.
(His version of how we are special is likely very different from mine. Part of me wants to think he was admitting we have a rather strong connection. The other part of me admits we're special because I'm the easiest girl to cheat with. I'm in his city and then I'm gone again, significantly lessening the chances of getting caught.)
Alex was happy then, because now there were no probs!
I felt like vomiting at that point -- a fair indication there may be probs.
He asked me about my love life which seemed particularly cruel and I told him there wasn't one.
(Not any more. Not as of five minutes ago.)
After I shared a few racy details about my sex life just to somehow demonstrate I'm wanted in some way by somebody, Alex told me again I'm his favorite. It's something we've always said where normal people might say I love you.
You're my favorite, and I miss you and once or twice the occasional I love you. I couldn't not say it back so I told him he my favorite too. Special and my favorite.
I also told him there's better reasons I should be his favorite other than my sex life is unconventional. He replied absolutely - I'm very witty. Not exactly what I was fishing for.
He did seem happy I have a sex life at least, and that reminded him of another good reason we really didn't have to worry.
According to his logic, he and I have never really done it, so there's really nothing to worry about at all. It's like nothing. We can get together with no problems.
Certain that if I looked up "irony" on Wikipedia I would find my driver's license photo and home address alongside a description of how I had been so careful to not be just another girl that Alex has had sex with in hopes that he would view me as somehow better than that, only to have this decision render me so unimportant and inconsequential that a night with me would hardly even count as cheating on his girlfriend, I told him I agreed already.
We've already agreed we're special, and I won't feel bad.
(This is partly true. I won't feel guilty for messing with this girl's boyfriend. Perhaps because her name is Shelley or perhaps because I can't help feeling she's taken something from me and has it coming, but either way she's not my problem. Yes, I may be a bad person.)
(I will however, feel really badly for me.)
Alex agreed that he won't feel bad either - not at all. It's his life and it's what he wants.
I had to stop. I had to go. I had to go puke up prune juice, which is really kind of a blessing. Wasting Weight Watchers points on prune juice is an insult. We agreed we'd talk later and I'm sure he went to bed with his girlfriend and I ran for the bathroom.
This is my problem. Well, I have many. Included in my long list of incapacitating fears is the fear of being dumped in a certain way. Nobody likes rejection, but any time I've had a relationship end it's been the same way.
It's so devastating I pray that one day a guy will break up with me because he's gay, or because he's suddenly Mormon or because I'm afraid of lake monsters and hate camping but that's never what happens.
I've had three boyfriends in my life. That's not a very high number, but occasionally when asked how many sexual partners I've had I like to roll that number out. A girlfriend of mine only counts men she's had sex with more than once and doesn't include the married ones. I believe this to be a fine system.
These ex-boyfriends all have something in common though, and it's how and why they ended things despite slightly different circumstances. I'm thinking this is why I've crossed over from being naturally sad over Alex to completely losing my shit. And prune juice.
Boyfriend #1 upon being asked why he brought the girl he was cheating on me with home to meet his mother when I had never met his mother. And yes, I really want to know.
Well you see Bambi...there's two different types of girls in the world. The kind you bring home to meet your Mom and the kind you fuck. You're the second type.
Boyfriend #2 upon being asked whether we might continue a dating relationship of some kind when he's moved to a new city after accepting a job offer, three days prior to the move.
Are you kidding? Wow. Umm...it's just that you're not really worth changing my life over, you know? I kind of thought you knew you're just temporary.
Boyfriend #3...well actually I left him. His last words to me in person were expressing surprise that I actually dared to leave him. He never thought I would. To be fair, I didn't leave him so much as flee the province he lived in. The only speeding ticket I've ever received I got driving away from the home we shared. Totally worth every penny.
I considered including the Bomb Tech in this list but he didn't actually come out and say anything. He just cried on my shoulder, talked to me constantly, took me on dates so far out of town the areas are designated on a map by the words "here there be monsters," told me I needed to have patience for nine months and then found himself a real girlfriend. I may want to list him as #3.5.
I can not shake the feeling that my role will always be as the other woman. That I will always be the girl on the side, not the girlfriend and never the wife. No matter what I do, I will always rate second-best.
It's to the point now where I just invite it some times. Why not play to my strengths? I'm currently play-mate and nothing more to an incredibly hot firefighter. I may as well milk that for whatever it's worth, because I won't get any better.
On the other hand, Alex was always different. Special. If given a choice between having sex so good with the firefighter that it actually leads to world peace, or sitting in silence watching paint dry with Alex...I'd be staring at a wall for a couple of hours. World peace be damned.
My fear is that I'm missing something. It's invisible to the naked eye but guys can see it, or smell it or hear it the way only canines can hear a dog whistle.
Whatever it is I'm missing means every guy I have a relationship with is going to come to the same conclusion and I can't change this fact.
Even Alex. And he did.
Part of me is trying to feel flattered. He wants to hang on to me because he cares about me. He wants to keep me in his life because we do have a connection, he does want to be with me but I'm really geographically inconvenient.
I don't live where he does, and while it seems a short distance to me I may as well be in Timbuktu for all the good it does him. He would want me to be the girlfriend, he just doesn't see it as possible.
The other part of me knows it's the same as always. No matter how close, no matter how connected, no matter how much in common I'm not good enough for the main stage. On the side is OK, but I'm never going to meet his mother.
And now I'm a little messy. Embarrassingly messy. That conversation was like an earthquake. Not a small, "Did you feel that?" kind of an earthquake but the kind that permanently rearranges topographical maps going forward.
It's fitting I'm on an island because the aftershocks are monster waves of salt water.
I was standing in line at Tim Horton's the day after, and the couple behind me started talking about how it won't be long until the stores have their Christmas displays up. That's all it took.
Christmas. He's going to be spending Christmas with her. He'll spend Christmas with his girlfriend. She'll be with him for Christmas.
By the time the girl at the counter told me I'd have to wait three minutes for my tea the tears were flowing. There was no hiding it, there was no stopping it...I was full on messy.
I'm sure she's never seen anybody seemingly so shaken and upset at the prospect of waiting three minutes for tea. On the plus side, she didn't make me pay.
It keeps happening. Out of nowhere, a random realization about Alex and his girlfriend takes me out at the knees. I'm trying to preempt them either by pretending we never had that conversation, or mentally preparing myself for every possibility.
I still have Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Chinese New Year to get through and then it's...oh holy crap. Then Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day!
So far I've broken down over the thought of weekends, vacations together and the fact he's changed his Facebook status. I have a seemingly endless imagination, so relief is a long ways away.
It's noticeable. Both eyes look infected. I've told everybody it's my allergies again and now I've actually broken out in hives on top of the swelling. I may just tell people I scrubbed my mascara off with an africanized killer bee hive and just be done with it.
His new relationship is plenty enough to mourn, and it's a prospect I've feared all along. I knew I'd be heart broken and I wasn't wrong. What I should have been even more fearful of is my new role within his new relationship.
Suddenly camping doesn't seem so scary.
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