I Finally Got There.

*Long post alert*

I have a hundred and one unfinished blogs stored away, so I’ve decided I should probably make my way through them and get them finished. I’ve been super busy. The good news is my career / work life is going spectacularly. I seem to be earning more, socialising more, and generally having a good ol’ time being me. Bear and I are still doing our thing, Bestie and I are working our shit out, and with the exception of my cervix not behaving itself once again, I can’t really complain about life. Bestie and I are even house-hunting together again which is magnificent progress. We viewed a place yesterday and loved it. It just feels like life is on the up …

It’s because I got rid of some dead weight, I reckon. And that’s the good news. There’s bad news coming.

You see, I did that thing a while back where I got back together with a certain someone. Again. I know, I know, I can hear you groaning from here. I get it, that’s why I didn’t tell you … Twice now. I knew what you’d all say.

I gave him one more chance. Even after everything that happened, after everything he said, he managed to somehow grind me down. He sent me Instagram message after Instagram message and when I wasn’t responding to those, emails started. He said all the right things so I went running back. Plus he did that thing that all true narcissists do – they use sex to gain power. And you know what I get like once I find a guy who really ‘gets me’ in bed … Like a moth to a flame. A stupid moth at that.

Once again, everything was fine all the time we were at his house / I was around him. We talked things through and for a while, I genuinely thought we were making progress. There were no real arguments, just silly and stupid bickering, and he played my body like a true professional as and when required. He started *not* getting heated up about things that would normally have pushed his buttons, and I honestly thought we’d turned a corner. But when I went back to mine after a week-long stint at his, everything blew up again. That’s when I realised. Actually realised this time, although I do appreciate I have said that before.

Although we were fine at his, I started to notice little things. Public arguments with his son over Facebook, for example, which I felt were petty and ridiculous. There’s no need to call your son a cunt publicly. Not just to friends either – the post was made public on purpose. That’s disgusting behaviour. He’s a father. If he could be so abusive to his own flesh and blood – his son – I didn’t even want to imagine the words he’d say about me. Luckily, I didn’t need to imagine. He actually said them to me. Well, emailed them to me. I’ll get to that in a moment.

He left the house to go to the shop one day and the first thing I did was check his front door. I heard him turn the key in the lock after he’d left, and it made my skin turn cold. I jumped off the couch, ran over to the door, closed my eyes and pulled on the handle. It turned. The door opened. He *wasn’t* locking me in his house every time he left like I thought before. Phew.

That’s good news, right? Well, no. Because at that moment I realised something else. If I really trusted him, I wouldn’t have needed to test the door in the first place. I didn’t trust him. I was waiting for him / it to blow up again. He may not have lost his shit yet, but I was walking on egg shells waiting for it to happen. I found myself always making sure I had a ‘Plan B’ – hidden money for the train in case he told me to leave and wouldn’t let me back in his house, making sure that people knew where I was whenever I went to see him, turning my location settings back on, and the ‘Find a Friend’ option too … He didn’t make me feel safe anymore. Quite the opposite. His words may have won me over, and I may have given him a third / fourth / fifth (whatever it was at that point) chance, but the bubble was already burst. I loved him, but I was also quite scared of him. Although I wasn’t sure why.

Towards the end of the week I spent there, I remember thinking that something had most definitely changed. I didn’t hold him in such high regard anymore, and I no longer cared what he had to say. When he talked, I zoned out. He started to bore me. His pity-party and all those crazy mood swings? They were boring. It was repetitive. I was there for sex, sex and some affection perhaps, but it wasn’t about him any longer. He no longer had my attention.

I remember being sat on his couch just before I was due to leave, desperately trying to remember all the stuff I’d taken to his. I had to pack everything up – everything I’d ever left there. I knew I wouldn’t be back. I knew it had changed. I knew he’d start a fight with me within a couple of days of returning home – that’s just what he always did.

He didn’t let me down.

I “wasn’t there for him” the exact moment he told me he needed me (because I was working), and he lost his shit. But this time I didn’t care. I knew we were done. I didn’t even try to argue with him, or defend myself against the bullshit things he was saying. I literally didn’t care anymore. He’d already lost me.

Before he’d even had a chance to finish writing his message, I blocked him. Again. Once more he made his way around the messaging services until email was all we had left. I blocked him everywhere and just went to bed. When I woke up the following morning, I was met by the most disgusting emails I’ve ever read, and my mother actually cried when I read them out loud. You know it’s over when you tell your mum what the guy did. Once she knows, there’s no backtracking!

I’ve gone back and forth over whether or not I should share those messages on here, mostly because I want to forget about him, about the whole thing. I’d much prefer to forget that he even exists, but for real this time, not just for a few weeks until he wins me over again. Because that definitely isn’t happening.

He certainly doesn’t deserve any more ‘air time’, that’s for sure, but I feel this story serves as a warning for other women – women who go running back to their man “one last time” because he’s “definitely changing this time”. He isn’t changing, girl. He won’t ever change. Once a psycho, always a psycho, and it’ll just get worse too …

I woke up to an email telling me how much of a selfish and ungrateful bitch I was because I’d said “Are you sure?” to his friend when he offered me a ride. That’s right – my politeness and making sure I wasn’t putting anyone out was met by a chorus of “you selfish bitch” and “you’re so ungrateful”. I responded by telling him that I didn’t want to hear from him again, I’d had enough, and that I was now moving on.

Throwing in a bit of racism now? Yeah? Well done, mate. Casual racism is the one thing guaranteed to put me off and you knew that. Big claps to you for digging your own grave. For the record, he was accusing me of sleeping with my tattooist.

We didn’t go to the party together. Obviously.

How are you really meant to respond to that? I certainly didn’t know how to deal with it so I ignored it.  I don’t even live on an estate … ? By this point though, I really was well and truly finished with the dick. Words are a great way to win me over, but they’re also the quickest way to lose me too.

I thought that would have been the end of the matter seeing as I still hadn’t responded. Apparently not.

You seriously couldn’t make this shit up. But wait, he still wasn’t quite finished yet. Ten minutes later, I received yet another torrent of verbal diarrhoea. Are you ready for it?

Well, isn’t he a little bowl of ice cream dipped in sprinkles? But, it was a good thing. I needed to see what he was really like, didn’t I? I needed to see the really grotesque things that would come out of his mouth (or an email) to see what he was really like. I needed to see the ‘abuse’ he was capable of. Let’s call this what it is.

And what is he? He’s just an old, bitter, lonely man who pushes everyone away because of some overinflated ego. Or, at the very least, some sort of undiagnosed disorder. Or narcissism.

I had so many things to say about those disgusting emails. I kept tapping blog posts out and deleting the words again, refusing to give that man any more of my time or my heart. In the end I stopped writing. Until now. There’s a reason for that, but that’ll come in the next blog post.

He doesn’t have the same appeal now. Between the public slaying of his son, and the really shocking things he sent to me, he removed himself from my life. It’s hard to argue with something when it’s right there in front of you in black and white, and those words – the words HE said, they were awful. They were abusive. They were disgusting. No one has ever said things like that to me before, and I won’t let anyone get away with saying those words to me again.

That man won’t get another chance to fuck with my heart. I know I’ve said that before but I truly believe that when it comes to relationships, no one can tell you when enough is enough – you need to learn that for yourself. I have now, and I have moved on. My Bear is crazy (actually diagnosed crazy) yet so far it’s been the sanest courtship I’ve ever had. It’s early days for us, and I’m certainly not letting my heart get carried away like I did last time, but I like him. That made me realise something too – that guy that said those disgusting words in those emails – he’s nothing. He’s just another bump in the road. Another guy. Another dickhead who broke my heart and said or did horrible things to me. There will be other men after him, probably a few, and those men won’t talk to me like I’m a piece of shit. Those are the kind of men I should look for. Not the guy who — USES other women to try and make me jealous.

The saga is over now. He can’t get in touch with me. Everything is blocked, every method of communication is ‘spammed’. The bubble has burst and now he just makes my skin crawl.

I finally got there.