Please Don’t Say I Told You So

The back-story: Day Seven

He’s not looking for me. He’s not in love with me. He’s in love with the idea of me, of a little girl who’ll do as she’s told, suck his dick, and look cute in public. I thought he was a little Dom-ish for a while. I think maybe he’s just a 42 year old man-brat. He doesn’t want to dominate, he wants control, total control, using whatever means necessary. Either way, I’m not the plaything he’s looking for. He said I was, but I wasn’t.

If I’d been the girl he truly fell in love with, he wouldn’t have been so quick to jump right back onto Tinder. He wouldn’t have been so quick to say those things to me. Why would he say those things to me? Why would he make me feel so disposable when he knew that was the thing I hated the most? Feeling inadequate, inferior, disposable, easily replaced. Downloading Tinder was the last thing on my mind because I loved him, not the idea of him. Or maybe the idea of him? I don’t know. My head is a mess. I would need time to grieve and heal from yet another series of bad decisions. I cause my own heartache. This time around is totally my fault. If I’d have carried on ignoring his apologising messages he would have eventually gone away. Surely he would have given up and got bored at some point? It seems he has this time around. So far I haven’t heard from him in nine days. That’s the longest we’ve gone without talking since we met.

I thought I was everything he wanted. He told me that. Multiple times. Repeatedly. Over and over again. I thought he loved me because he told me that. I thought I was his perfect wife material because he told me that. I thought we would never break up because he told me that. I thought he was going to sort out his impulsiveness because he loved me … because he told me that. And he said it with his eyes too, the worst kind of liar. Real deception, real betrayal, real pain that really cuts you. He looked me right in the eyes and said those things. His eyes played the role just as well as his mouth did, and I swallowed up every last line. He had me in the palm of his hands, those magical, manipulative hands. Hands that had me agreeing to anything he wanted with barely a touch.

He doesn’t want me, he wants a woman, any woman, one who’ll do as she’s told. I’m not his woman. I don’t do as I’m told for a start and if I was, getting over me wouldn’t be so easy. Moving on, Tindering through. I’m probably one of a long line of women he’s invited into his home, fucked into oblivion, made to fall hopelessly in love with him before administering the ice cold blocking treatment.

I’m starting to question things now. Things I never paid much attention to before. He always clears his phone – Whatsapp messages, texts, calls. He told me it was because he never had any free space but now I’m wondering if there was another reason – if there were messages I weren’t allowed to see.

He always locked me in when he left me alone in the house. After I first noticed that, I kept an eye out for it and he did it every time. I can’t shake that out of my head now. I never had a reason to leave to be fair, but locking the door from the outside seems a little excessive. Why would he lock the door from the outside? Why didn’t I think of trying to get out?

He seemed to want me there all the time too. He’d leave so I didn’t have to – he’d go to the shops and it was okay, he didn’t need me to go with him. I was like his pet. He didn’t ever want to take me home, always asking me to stay one more night, one more day. That last week we spent together, he told me he wanted me to move in with him a number of times and each time I laughed it off. He wasn’t joking and I knew he wasn’t joking. Even in my rose-tinted view of him, I knew that wasn’t a great idea. Whenever I laughed it off, he got a little annoyed. I could see it happening. I just didn’t want to see it happening.

And then there was all the fighting, the fuse lit by the smallest of things, followed by that ‘incident‘ in the kitchen. The comments I received, mentions of ‘rape’, I can’t get them out of my head now. It’s like when I think about it, about all of it, I get tunnel vision, like the rest of the world fades away. It makes my heart beat really fast and my hands get sweaty. I need to sit down before I fall down, light headed and scared. I feel really small. Small and scared. Foolish too. I can’t believe I went back for a second round. I was really stupid and although nothing happened, I could have put myself in a really bad situation. What happened if I said no and really meant it? Would he have listened? Would he have stopped? What if I tried to leave and couldn’t because of that locked door? Why would he have locked the door? Why would he have done that every time? And why didn’t I notice it before? What if he screamed at me with the same venom in his voice that I heard in those last voicemail messages? What if screaming wasn’t all he did? I’m not so sure he didn’t hurt his last girlfriend now, the girl who accused him of battering her. I know it got thrown out for lack of evidence but something about his demeanor when he was just the slightest bit annoyed makes me wonder if there wasn’t some truth behind what she accused him of.

Now, post Brown-Eyes, nine days after I blocked him and counting, I still feel small. It feels like I’ve done a hundred rounds in the ring. I ache for him all the time and it’s not in a good way. Before I ached when I was around him become I was so tense all the time, watching what I said, scared to upset him and light that fuse. And once that fuse has been lit, there was no stopping it. I ached post-sex (so basically all the time) because it was never just soft and gentle, or it was but it wasn’t. And now I ache because I’m sad and I miss him. Just because he was a bad man doesn’t mean I didn’t fall for him hard. It hurts now. I’m pining although I know I can never go back. Never.

He crawled into my head, he looked into my soul and he saw everything I could offer right there in front of him. And then he trampled all over it, deeming it not worthy. I bared my soul. I gave him everything. I told him whatever he wanted to know. And it was all for nothing. Well, not for nothing. I gave him the ammunition to make me feel like this, to know what things to say to really hurt my feelings and fuck with my head. And now I’m sat on my back step, crying in the rain because I wish I could just switch off. I wish it didn’t hurt so much, those things he said and all the ways he made me feel. I wish I could undo the last few months of my life to a point where he didn’t exist. I believed him. I was foolish enough to believe him. I was even stupider to give him a second chance. But I had to, and in the end I got to where I needed to be. I now know and wholly appreciate that Brown Eyes is bad for me. He has the ability to make me feel so good about myself one minute, then so low the next, too low. He shouldn’t have that power.

So I’m taking it away. I’ve taken it away.

But wow, it really hurts.