'Can't I just be charming?'

The last three and a half weeks, sleep has been off-kilter. I've been distracted, wracked with nausea and nerves. Jangly. Neglecting important stuff. Preoccupied. Overheated? Confused? The causes could be many: the onset of summer, grief, perimenopause, you name it.  But that it isn't why. The reason is because almost a month ago a man my eldest describes as a 'Villian pretending to be kind,' made contact after blissful months of quietude and a sense that I was healing, getting to a place where my ego.  A narcissist, most definitely.  Quite possibly a sociopath, an internet predator to be sure.   One who openly states has no remorse about posting intimate photos of a woman he was involved with, having lied to her and told her he was widower.  'Didn't I use the widower line on you,' he asked casually. 'No, just divorced. You basically parroted my story back to me.'

I found the article in September of last year.  He'd disappeared so suddenly, I had rather hoped he had died.  I was sitting in the airport lounge at Heathrow, preparing to fly to my grandmother's memorial and the idle thought of 'I wonder what happened to X' flicked across my mind. And then, there it was: 'Local man stalked ex-partner after break-up and posted naked photos of her online.'  

The article is poor journalism but the story has all the makings of a bad Lifetime Movie. Basically, this jackweed courted this woman, developed a relationship with her, all under the guise of him being a widower.  He was, in fact, partnered with someone he'd been together with a least a couple of decades. They have two children. She is very much Not. Dead.  His take is that he didn't really do anything that wrong and that the woman in question overreacted, you know...to being stalked, lied to, manipulated, and harassed. I mean, how dare she, really? How dare she go to the police and make such a big mess about a silly naked photo circulating around the internet. And to ruin his Ex's life with her drama? How dare she? Ad nauseum.  (Personally, I'd like to meet this woman, buy her lunch. Maybe have her coach me on how to break the spell).

'What do you think THAT kind of woman might say in her Victim Impact Statement, Rachel?' He wrote in passing when he made contact his first few days out of prison. I mean, we all know he must have basically sent out feelers to all his past conquests to see who would bite.  Why did I bite? I guess I wanted to know the backstory. Maybe I thought he'd apologise. Maybe...no...no maybe. The romantic in me wanted to believe he might actually care about me, or at the very least desire me. I wanted to be special...I don't think I can change anyone but I thought for a brief moment maybe there was something more than just a bored, middle-aged guy who did not give a toffee about what he was destroying.  Why not just have the awkward conversation? You need an adrenaline rush, go mountain climbing or bungy jumping. Don't manipulate people into caring about you. 

Yesterday evening, an opportunity to clarify a few things and move forward presented itself. The idea of speaking to this person was both thrilling and terrifying. And when I heard his voice, it was like ice water.  The conversation was brief and bordered on abusive. When it ended - I felt a weird combination intense relief, deep annoyance (with myself, more than anything) combined with a deep pain, a bereftness.  

Say what, now? I know. I know.  Lust and desire not add up to love, but when mixed with maladaptive schematics, taps existing trauma bonds, and self-destructive tendencies....well, ordinary life, as Harvey Pekar reminds us, is pretty complex stuff.  And when you have not been touched by another adult person in a sexual or sensual way in 4 years...well...yeah. 

I am not unhappy single. And I don't regret ending my marriage, as much as I love and respect my former spouse.  But I do get lonely, I do miss having a person, I do miss the feel of a lover's mouth against the back of my neck. I'm human, after all. And for a brief moment, I almost allowed myself to believe that this guy would be a good stepping stone to being ready for real intimacy again. 

I only ever met this person once, a major lapse in judgment on my part. I definitely was not thinking it through. The  And in non-Covid times I don't think that would have happened. I have a routine for meeting new people. Coffee, near a bookshop or museum. I book something for a few hours after, so there isn't haste to make rushed connections, snap decisions.  But 6 weeks of what I now know is love-bombing during a time when the world was closed, well...I was not unlike Joanne Woodward's character in 'A New Kind of Love:'  I'd defrosted too fast and my knees were weak.  

During that afternoon, the sex was incredible but he was not. He called me a dirty cow,  he lied about his relationship status, and we had unprotected sex though I did use a diaphragm and would spend the next 6 weeks terrified I might be pregnant. 

At one point in the afternoon, he told me a story I think he thought was charming, about how he once heckled the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain at the Royal Albert Hall. Yes, a grown man heckled, shouting out 'Judas' in a reference to Bob Dylan going electric in '66. I remember him being very annoyed that I knew anything about Bob Dylan.

It was only a few days later that the doubt about his relationship status began to seep in. The lovebombing tapered off. I was hurt.  I did a bit of detective work (thanks Hallmark Murder and Mysteries and all of the detective fiction I read) and began to suspect he was married. If not married, definitely not unattached. I also discovered that he had lied about his business still going; it had closed in 2019, pre-Covid. 

I didn't call him out on it, I simply wrote saying that we were clearly on different journeys. And for a month I felt devestated that I had been played. He cropped back upon the radar - narcissitic hoovering, I've learned - and the correspondence continued until 21 July, when I flew out to the US. The day before he was sentenced for his 'exaggerated' behaviour. 

This man, he uses his daughters to attract women. He lies, lovebombs, belittles, gaslights and Hoovers. It's so textbook, it's demoralising that I allow it to happen. But the trauma bond...it was intense. Also, he looks my dad. Like, they could brothers. I didn't realise it until I saw my dad last July.  Even now, without his beard? This guy looks like my dad. Specifically? Not unlike the photo of my father's corpse I had to identify. 

What do I DO with that? I mean, what kind of headflockery IS that even? Why am I writing this out in a semi-public space? Because I am ashamed and angry with myself for being ashamed. I'm angry with myself for leaning into co-dependent patterns and for putting myself at risk. I am hurt that my ego blinded me to the reality of the situation.  I'm angry with him for being able to get my attention, for playing with my emotions, for hurting me and other people.

Ah, the bruised ego - which clearly it needed, to be honest. As though I thought I was above falling under the Houdini-like spell of a narcissist, that I was above that kind thing. But I am not, because I am human, I like romance, I like sex, and for a brief moment, I almost liked this guy. I suppose a small part of me still does. 

I've recognised that I am in a particular purgatory, a particular hallway. Yes, I'm healing, grieving, blah, blah, blah- not just my dad, not just my career but who I used to be, old romantic relationships, old friendships that have moved on. Maybe that's why I had been dreading moving on, meeting and dating new people. And so it goes. 

The relief I felt after the phone call, when we did the mature thing that people do  blocked each other from social media and the like has been palpable. But I am also really confused at how heartbroken I feel. Not over him, persay, but yeah. It's so different to the grief around my parents, to the heartbreak of losing James Robert. Even the decline of my marriage didn't hurt like this...this, this hurts like it's 2000 and a young man breaks up with me 2 weeks before I'm flying out to Boston to see him. This hurts like that. It hurts and it doesn't and it makes me so relieved I've never done narcotics, because I probably wouldn't survive. 

So now I am inviting my shame, my anger, my hubris, my grief in. I'm setting the table for them, letting them stay as long as they need, because they are as part of me as my laughter, my light, my ability to love and be loved. And one day, not to far down the road, my future selves tell me, I won't even remember what this guy looked like, much less the sound of his voice. 

It's not a bad thing to stop marking time with the wrong person. Except that for almost 2 years I have been marking time with someone who is the wrong person. I'm not actually even sure I know who he is... I know that this man for me is so dangerous...it must be like what doing cocaine is like: the jolt of adrenaline and the high from the car-and-mouse sexual conversation so intense...I just...I don't know which way is up.  But I do know that what I've been leaning into, the patterns and coping mechanisms are not serving me and are actually part of how 

 Is it a cresting of grief? Nerves? Worry about dying along (which is ridiculous, because ultimately, we almost always die alone). Is it because I'm lonely? Because my inner 17-year-old has been feeling sorely provoked, my inner 3 year old feels lost, and my 44-year-old self could do with a bit of romance and kissing on street corners? I don't know, honestly. All of the above ?

But there was a moment today when I was walking that I thought 'I'm just going to sit here, right here and just not move.' I didn't, because I was in the middle of the street and that wouldn't be a good idea, now would it?

This hurts so much more than I want it to, in weird places, different to 2020 because this time, I let him in knowing he was a villain. He wasn't even pretending to be kind, just an emotional vampire draining my light, my energy, and my power. A low rent version if

I cannot quite believe I am capable of still hurting like this - like the little girl who gets left behind, who doesn't get asked to the dance, the one who gets stuffed in her locker her sophomore year of high school. All because I challenged, pushed back, asked questions.  Actually, that's not true: I was mean, as well. This man-child, he provokes me, brings out my ire and all of my issues - Daddy, Mommy, sexual abuse, co-dependency, passive aggression, all if it All because a 52-year-old jackass played with my emotions, sexed me far too well, then and bruised my ego, maybe broke my heart a bit, again. The lessons I need to learn to become a better human are not yet completely fleshed out. But I am ready to listen and to learn, to feel them.