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an utterly random discussion

Thursday, July 28, 2005

The opposite of love

I have dated a lot of assholes. I'm pretty sure that I dated way more than my share of assholes, actually, like a lot of women I think I was attracted to them. Even though the type of guy might have shifted, from "bad boys" to Hispanics to artsy guys to corporate types, or whatever, but I think I was attracted to something in them, some trait that they all had in common. An asshole gene, if you will. So anyway, I dated a lot of assholes...but there was one in particular that will stand out in my mind for all time as the absolute worst.

The whole thing started off on a sour note. I was at a major transitional point, having just graduated from college and started my first job. I was dying to move out of my parents' house, but the job paid a whopping $16,000 a year (hey, we were in a recession) so that was totally out of the question. I was still technically dating the guy I was dating my senior year in college -- I think I'd been with him four or five years, and I had started dating him right after another guy, who broke my heart repeatedly for three years and then just disappeared into thin air. (Yes, literally.) I was naive and confused and all messed up inside but I was trying really, really hard to act normal. Anyway, I was at some party at the theater I was working at at the time and in he walked through the front doors. He was a friend of a co-worker, who had invited him for some reason, I don't know why, who knows, she might have had it in her head that we might hook up. Anyway. He came walking up to the front doors, wearing a long black overcoat, and the person standing next to me said, "Who's THAT?" Next thing I knew we were chatting, and he was jokingly asking me if I'd marry him. I thought he was handsome and funny and charming. I don't know what happened that night, I don't remember if we ended up going out for more drinks or anything, but we eventually did end up actually dating at some point. In retrospect given my precarious state of mental health at that point I shouldn't have been dating anyone at all, but, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

I think, in my immature 22 year-old-way, I think I had it in my head that I was just going to keep dating one guy after another until I found the one I was going to marry. I don't know why it never occurred to me that all of my previous boyfriends treated me like crap, pushing me around and telling me what to do, or just plain forgetting about me, or descending into overeating and sexual dysfunction -- that maybe I needed to spend some time NOT as part of a couple and take a good long look at myself and what I might be doing to attract this type of person, or whether or not I wanted to wind up marrying the kinds of guys I'd been dating. I was just kind of forging ahead, one guy after another, making the same unbelievably stupid mistakes over and over again. I don't know exactly what led to me accepting the kind of treatment the guy I'm about to tell you about doled out, but I can tell you that I thought I was worthless.

So we start dating. And now, looking back, there were a couple of signs that happened really early on that should have sent me running in the opposite direction -- such as when he admitted that he told his friend, my co-worker, the details about something intimate that had happened between us. I had to work with this person every day, and here he was telling me that, Ooops, I think I messed up, so sorry. (My response: don't worry about it. let's just move on.) Or the fact that every time we went out we'd end up at 2am at the Mexican restaurant where he used to work, where he would ignore me and instead talk to this 20 year old girl working behind the bar that he was "friends" with. (This girl was total trash, really cheap and coarse, with a real potty mouth and no class at all.) In fact, this whole arrangement made me so uncomfortable that I once I actually got up and left -- and he let me. Instead of following me out, he stayed right where he was and then went to breakfast with her and her friends. (My response: waited for him to call back and apologize and when he didn't I called him and, after he told me off for walking out like that, in his words for being a "bitch with an attitude", I CONVINCED HIM TO KEEP SEEING ME DESPITE MY TRANSGRESSION. Yes I am ashamed to admit that.) Or how about the time I came clean with him about the fact that I was seeing a therapist every week to help me with these debilitating panic attacks I was having and he told me I was, "being a pussy." (My response? I thought, "What a refereshing outlook, a real pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of guy.") With all this stuff happening in the first three weeks of our relationship, why I didn't see these for the huge red flags that they were, I'll never know. But instead of making me want to run, instead it made me more determined that he was the one. I must have had something wrong with my brain.

We dated for more than four years. And I will say that in some respects he was good to me. He had a great job and made a lot of money, and he was very generous. When I moved out of my parents' house into my own apartment I was very poor, and he bought me a lot of stuff that I couldn't have afforded any other way -- a big television, a vcr, rollerblades, lots of clothes. But in every other way he went slowly from bad to really bad to outright abuse over the course of our relationship.

I ask myself often, even now, all these years later, why I allowed this to happen. What buttons did he push in me that made me stay with him all that time? How little self esteem must I have had that made me vow to "do better" in the face of his outright cruelty, convincing myself that I "needed him" and that if I were just a better person or more understanding or more patient that I would be able to change him. Why did I allow him to isolate me from my friends and family? Why did I allow him to tell me what to do, and what convinced me that I had to answer to him for my every move?

Part of it was that he was a classic abuser, and I was the classic victim. Something in him was drawn to the something in me that fit that profile. Certainly my own lack of confidence was key. But part of it was also the fact that in some way, even though I was breaking away from my parents, he was stepping into their role -- the disdainful, distant, critical and controlling parents I was so intent on getting away from. Like the shrinks say, it was a pattern I was familiar with.

I am ashamed to tell you what I put up with from this man. He told me frequently that I was fat -- that I had a "fat ass", or that I needed to lose ten more pounds (even when I weighed 126 pounds and was a size six, throwing up every other meal because of acute anxiety) and "tone up" if I wanted to be really hot. (He should know...he was a frequent visitor at a local strip club, such a frequent visitor, in fact, that he would go in often, alone, and was on a friendly basis with a number of the bartenders there. Just like Cheers, everybody knew his name.) He told me that my fingernails looked bad, so I went out and got acrylics. He said I dressed badly, so I let him buy me all new clothes (plus I'd lost so much weight to try and fit his idea of what he wanted that I no longer fit into my old ones, which he ordered me never to wear again.) He frequently criticized my housekeeping, actually dry heaving when he saw a knife in my silverware drawer with a little spot of rust on it. He would hold a glass up to the light before he drank from it to check if it was clean enough. He would harp on things to a ridiculous extent. Some little comment I made once would turn into a weeks or months long obsession where he would keep bringing it up at every chance and haranguing me for it. He drank way too much, and would do really asshole things when he drank, which was frequent. Once he came to my apartment at 3 am, drunk, and wanted to sleep there because he was afraid to drive all the way home, and became instantly and off-the-scale furious with me when he realized that I didn't have a supply of his special contact lens solution. (To clarify: he had never brought over a supply or even mentioned this before. I didn't even know he used special solution. I had my own contact solution, of course, but that wasn't good enough. Apparently I should have thought of it on my own to identify and then go out and purchase the special kind of contact lens solution that I didn't even know he used and lay in a supply of it just in case.) I mean out of control furious, yelling and screaming and spitting in my face, veins popping on his forehead.

His anger had a life of its own. He would get really angry at the tiniest things and the anger would just grow and feed on itself until he was raging and yelling and saying the meanest things ever ("stupid cunt" and "shithead" made frequent appearances) and I just had to stand there and take it for as long as he felt like dishing it out. Trying to argue back or leave would make it even worse and last even longer. Often, he would get on a roll while we were driving in the car, and many many times we pulled up at stoplights in his BMW with him screaming at me at the top of his lungs and the people in the next car would look at me with pity and I would want to jump out of the car and pound on their windows and ask them to get me the hell out of there. Because at some point, the relationship ceased to be something I was able to get out of, and became some thing I was resigned to endure. I just lived to keep this guy from getting mad at me.

I could go on and on about the stuff he used to do...like how he was physically repulsed by mayonnaise, or cream sauce of any description, and would become sick to his stomach if forced to eat it...a sandwich instantly became inedible and a cause for an immediate rage meltdown if any portion of the sandwich came into contact with mayo, and you could not even cut his sandwich with a knife that had been used to cut another sandwich that may or may not have had mayo on it. I was the official taster. A dish would arrive at dinner at a nice restaurant and he would look down at his plate with this sick look on his face and I would have to taste it to determine if it had any cream in it. Or we would get into a fight in the car and he would pull over where ever we were and tell me to get out -- even if he was driving MY CAR. Or the time we went out with his friends and he got drunk and had a conversation with a female friend, another real classy broad, who told him she'd "do him anytime," and they went into great detail about how and when and where and what it would be like...and I was sitting right there listening to every word. (Although I also knew from experience that he'd never be able to live up to his own hype, so I didn't feel too bad.)

He was incredibly insecure. It would take him hours and hours to get ready to go out. He shaved whatever could be shaved, he plucked whatever could be plucked, he cologned and deodoranted anything that would stand still. He couldn't pass a mirror without checking himself out.

He was either unbelievably anal, or totally disorganized. There was no middle ground. He would spend a half hour making sure every clock in his apartment was set to the exact same time, to the second -- in other words, all of the clocks in his apartment had to change from 12:14 to 12:15 at the exact same time. But he had a spare room that was floor to ceiling crap. I don't even think he knew what was in there. At one point you couldn't even see his sofa because it was covered with laundry -- albeit clean laundry, but still.

But despite all of this, for whatever reason I couldn't break up with him. I don't think I even realized it was an option. I was scared of him, that's for sure. But I also know that part of me was waiting for him to propose. Yes. Propose. I guess I thought that was the brass ring I'd been reaching for (no pun intended.) I can only assume that in my addled mind my logic was that he would finally wake up one day and realize what a good person I was and start treating me right and ask me to marry him and we'd live happily ever after. I think I kept telling myself that if I could just hang on a little bit longer, be a little more patient, a little more understanding, a little more whatever that I would finally win. How ridiculous. How twisted. How sad.

Finally, one day, he broke up with me. And, for some reason, unlike all of the other times, I let him. I got out of his car and I started to cry -- he thought it was because I was so sad to see it end and actually started to yell at me to give him a fuckin' break with the waterworks and I just shook my head, no, no, that's not why...I went inside and sat on the windowsill in my bedroom and rested my head against the window and cried and cried with relief...I didn't know why I felt the way I did, I didn't even really understand why I hadn't begged him to stay with me like all the other times, all I knew was that I just didn't have the energy to do it anymore.

I don't know what happened to wake me up. Maybe my friend Brian telling me over and over not to sell myself short finally sunk in. Maybe a latent self-preservation instinct finally sunk in. I don't know. But I never called him again.

He would call me all the time, though. Late at night. Early in the evening. Sober. Drunk. It didn't matter. He would wake me up out of a sound sleep and say he was sorry. That he had been wrong. That he had been wrong about this, or that, or everything. I would just say yes, you were. And patiently wait for him to let me get off the phone. I waited for him to ask to get back together, but he never did. I don't know what he wanted from me. But I didn't even hate him enough to tell him to stop calling me. I was empty. I didn't care.

Gradually, I began to see what had happened to me while I was with him. I felt like I was slowly coming out of a coma. It took a really long time but eventually I realized that the whole thing had been one awful dance between the two of us -- a big, convoluted game that we were both compelled to play. I was truly frightened by what I had allowed to happen to me, frightened enough to stop dating cold turkey for a year. (Keep in mind that I'd been with a boyfriend nonstop since the age of 14.)

Lots of therapy. Time. Friends. Work. Time passed. Life went on. Over a year and a half later I was on the phone late at night and my other line beeped. I clicked over.

"Hello?"

"Hey." It was him.

Click. I hung up. I didn't even think about it, it was instintive, a reflex. It had been months since he'd called. I thought we were finished with these ridiculous phone calls. I was tired of being polite and I wanted nothing to do with him. Didn't even care enough to yell at him. Just wanted him off my other line. Clicked back over to the other line and resumed the conversation. Minutes later, the other line beeped again. I clicked over.

"Hello?"

"Hey!" He said.

Click. I hung up again. The phone beeped again.

"WHAT?"

"Hey, it's ME," he said. Apparently he thought that I was hanging up on him because I thought he was somebody else.

"Yes, I know," I said, exasperated. "What do you want?" He must have been stunned. This was not the same person he was used to dealing with.

"What do I WANT?" He said. "Where is all this coming from?" Did he actually sound hurt? This was a first.

"Look," I said. I didn't even know what I was about to say. The he words just going straight from my brain to my mouth. "You treated me like shit for four years. I don't want to have anything to do with you any more. Have a nice life. Goodnight." And as I moved to hang up the phone, I heard him saying, "I treated you like shit? Wait! Wait wait wait!" I thought to myself, I wonder how many times had I said the same thing to him. Now look who's begging.

He kept calling back but I didn't pick up. I kept hearing the machine pick up but I wasn't listening to see if he'd left a message. Later, I played the messages on the machine. There was only one from him.

"I don't know what you mean, I treated you like shit. I don't understand. But I wanted to let you know that the reason we broke up was because I was fucking somebody else, and I just didn't want to be with you anymore. Ok? Bye."

I shook my head when I heard this. So sad. So sad that he would leave a message like that just to hurt me. Just to get the last word in. Just to guarantee that I'd hate him forever. So sad that he's like a hurt little boy that has to strike out and hurt someone who hurt him. But mostly sad because I knew it wasn't even true. I guess he thought hearing that would crush me. But it just made me very sad for me, for him, for all the time I wasted on him.

About four years ago I bumped into the former co-worker who had introduced us. She was still friends with him, and she told me that he had gotten married to some woman named Inga or something like that. She had a young child from a previous marriage. I thought to myself, God help her. My friend told me that not too long ago she and her husband and my ex and his wife had gone out and my name had come up. When he heard my name, my ex reportedly said, "Oh, she hates me. She HATES ME!" I told her that she could tell him that she had spoken to me and that I could indeed confirm that I do hate him. I lied, though.

The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference.
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Heartbreaker

As you may know, I am a dog person. Big time. I like dogs better than people, for the most part, and therefore am on a first name basis with all of the dogs in my complex (their owners, not so much.) Some dogs I like better than others. For example, I have known Suki the Newfoundland since she was 10 weeks old and looked like a black porcupine. She is now fully grown and the sweetest dog in the world -- she weighs almost as much as I do and yet she is submissive to tiny twenty pound Mickey. She has an enormous tongue and is not stingy with her kisses. Neuman, on the other hand, is stingy with his kisses but I know he loves me anyway. Neuman is a mutt, and he thinks he is a person, truly. He does not understand that he is a dog and therefore does not relate to other dogs, but he loves people. When I see him I have to say, "Hello, NEUMAN." Then there is Wiley the greyhound, who I fell in love with on first sight over a year ago for no other reason than for his calm, dignified demeanor and for those big brown eyes. He likes Mickey. When they say hello, they go nose to nose...big dog, little dog, pointy snout to pointy snout. Wiley has very soft ears. Wiley actually smiled when he was happy.

About three weeks ago while on our morning walk, Mickey and I bumped into Wiley and his mom. I could tell right away that Wiley wasn't himself. His mom said Wiley hadn't been feeling well, and, in fact, had had a seizure. The vet couldn't figure out what the problem was except for some strange kidney values evident in his bloodwork. When we left, they were heading to the vet for some more tests. A few days later I saw them again, Wiley looked a little better, and they said they were heading for a neurologist.

Yesterday Mickey and I were on our morning walk and I saw Wiley's owners -- both of them -- without Wiley. I knew immediately that the news wasn't good. I asked, "How's Wiley?" And his mom just shook her head.

I said, "Oh, no."

She nodded and said, "We had to put him down."

And with that she threw herself into my arms and cried on my shoulder like her heart would break. I mean that literally -- I've never had anyone throw themselves at me before. Her husband stood silently beside us. We stood there like that for a long, long time, three people on the sidewalk, cars whizzing by, Wiley's mom sobbing her heart out. I had one arm around her and Mickey's leash in the other hand. Mickey stood there, wagging his tail in a confused way, wondering what was going on.

I kept saying, "I know exactly how you feel." It was all I could think of to say. I've been where she is. There are no words that will take away that pain. You've just got to cry.

I kept thinking that I hadn't showered or brushed my teeth. I kept thinking how tiny she is -- she's a personal trainer and runs triathalons and it was like hugging a little bird. I kept thinking that I hoped I was doing this right...I wasn't raised in a family where this sort of thing ever happened and I was hoping that I was being comforting and that I wasn't inadvertently making her uncomfortable in some way. I kept thinking that I was so tremendously flattered that she felt that I was the kind of person she could do such a thing with. I kept wondering what we must have looked like to the people going by.

Meanwhile she's still crying her eyes out.

Then she says, between sobs, "He (sob) loved you (sob) so much."

And then we were both crying.

Eventually she recovered a bit and we talked for a long time, standing there on the sidewalk. They gave Mickey a treat and we all went on our way.

I went home and cried for awhile for Wiley while I was trying to make coffee. I picked up Mickey and gave him a squeeze and breathed in his doggy smell and kissed him on the side of the face. He kissed me on the nose.

I really hope I made Wiley's mom feel better. I hope she doesn't end up feeling embarrassed because she broke down in front of me like that. I want to thank her, instead, for trusting me -- a virtual stranger -- enough to cry on my shoulder in the middle of the street. For giving me the opportunity to comfort someone the way I've never in my life been comforted (but have always wanted to be.) And for saying that her dog loved me.
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Monday, July 25, 2005

The Rules, part Deux

I work for marketing. Which is not the same as Public Relations. Please do not come to me for the sixteenth time asking for a clip that ran in some newspaper when I have repeatedly told you that you need to ask someone in PR for that. (In other words, not me, because I DON'T WORK FOR PR.) It is, frankly, insulting to me that you can't seem to tell the difference between those two very distinct professions -- or, worse yet, don't care to. "Marketing, PR, what's the difference?" Well, considering that I spent a lot of time and money learning how to do my job, and, in fact, I'm kinda proud of what I do and how well I do it, it makes a BIG difference to me.

Repay your favors. If you would like me to do you a personal favor, such as scanning what is obviously a personal photograph, please do not continue to come back to me week after week, repeatedly asking for the same type of time-consuming personal favor and expecting me to drop whatever I'm doing to help you. Furthermore, if the ONLY time you speak to me is when you are asking me to do these personal favors for you, you will likely find that my scanner is broken the next time you need something. I don't care if you outrank me. If you need my help, be nice. Bring me a cup of coffee to say thanks. Or even just acknowledge me the next time you see me in the hall when you don't need something, that would be good too. Look for a way to repay those favors.
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Thursday, July 21, 2005

The Rules

No, this isn't about that stupid book from a few years back that advocates treating men like shit to win their eternal devotion. This is about My Rules. Everybody's got 'em...that little mental list of rules that they have about the right way to do things. Here's mine.

Please do not talk to me while I am peeing. Women love to do this, for some reason, I have no idea why, but I'll be in the bathroom, in a stall, peeing and they'll decide to strike up a conversation with me. (Not strangers, of course, but someone I know.) This is even freakier when I am already in the stall and someone comes in and RECOGNIZES ME FROM MY SHOES and decides that right then would be a good time to chat. The time during which I am peeing is my own private time. Please wait until a more convenient, less intimate, time.

Please don't touch my pens. The pens on my desk are a carefully chosen mix of red ballpoints (for editing) blue ballpoints (for writing,) one black ballpoint, several Sharpies of varying thickness and color, several blue felt-tips, a black Parker ballpoint, a handful of sharp pencils, all the same length, and one highlighter. (The cross rollerball, the Waterman fountain pen I bought in Paris, and the Parker fountain pen that my brother bought me are safely in the drawer.) I like them all, they all work the way I like them. When they stop working, I throw them out. They are arranged by group in separate pen holders according to a specific system -- the pencils are all in one container by themselves (all sharpened on Friday afternoons, whether they need it or not), my absolute favorite pens are in one pen holder and all the others are in another pen holder. There is also a pencil on the return behind me that sits on top of my datebook, which is where it belongs.

Please do not come into my office and take a pen out of one of the many containers and use it when you're talking to me, and if you do, don't bother putting it back into one of the pen containers because you will inevitably violate my system by putting it in with the pencils or something where it doesn't belong. The fact that you used my pen will scheeve me so much that I will immediately throw out the pen you used.

More rules to come as they occur to me. Stay tuned.
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Monday, July 11, 2005

Miss/Don't Miss (a partial list)

Things I miss:

The smell of percolating coffee in the morning
Taylor ham
Pop Tarts
Cheap plastic tablecloths
The screened porch
Grapefruit spoons
Vacation Bible School
Hot vinyl car seats
Soda in glass bottles
Shoelaces with rainbows on them
Baths
Pajamas
Swimming all day until your lungs hurt and your ears were full of water
Sunburns that peel
Those small triangular windows in cars that didn't roll down but swiveled open instead
Bomb Pops
Overalls
My co-workers at my last job
My long commute to my last job (oddly enough)
Classic rock
Ski trips
My dog Vern and another dog named Anna Mo
Eating whatever I want
Monty Python

Things I do not miss:

High school (or anybody in it)
Driving lessons
Gym
"Recreation" (That town-sponsored thing they used to make you go to in the summer which was basically one long, all-day phys-ed class...or you could braid key chains and bracelets out of some kind of rubber string...or play nok hockey. Torture. Despair.)
The town pool (more torture)
Report cards (especially the part that went "...not working up to her potential")
Parent-teacher conferences
Dial-up
Phones with cords
Leggings or stirrup pants
Big hair
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Jobs that require you to "punch in"
Seaside Heights, New Jersey
Family vacations
Drinking in bars and pretending to enjoy it
Dating (and pretending to enjoy it)
Having no athletic ability (apparently I had it all along and never knew it)

Things I wish would go away:

Telephones of all kinds
Bugs, especially biting and stinging ones
Cell phones
Dunkin Donuts coffee
Greeting cards
Those little subscription cards that fall out of magazines
Ticks
Leaf blowers
Dog hair (unless, of course, it's on the dog)
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Thursday, July 07, 2005

Peapod windfall

Last week when Peapod brought my groceries, they forgot the bread and the entenmann's cookies (those are for my husband.) No problem. They credited me. Life goes on.

This week they brought me TONS of extra stuff I totally didn't order. Unpacking the bags was like Christmas!

A box of Honey Bunches of Oats (with Strawberries!)
A bottle of tartar sauce
A bottle of dijon mustard
A huge loaf of wheat bread
TWO boxes of Iams dog biscuits
TWO DOZEN eggs

I don't know what I'm going to do with the tartar sauce. But I'm definitely going to order from Peapod again!
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Givers and takers

There are two types of people in this world. One is the type of person who heads straight to the handicapped stall in the bathroom -- you know, the one that's bigger than my first apartment -- even if the other stalls are empty. This is also the same type of person who goes into the kitchen and takes all the Splenda out of the coffee service area for herself and keeps it in her desk, rather than springing for the three bucks it would cost to buy a box of 100 packets at the grocery store.

The other type of person would never think of using the handicapped stall unless the other two are already in use, and would be ashamed to be so selfish as to hoard artificial sweetener.

The difference to me is that one type of person puts themselves first, and doesn't even seem to be embarrassed about it. The other thinks about other people first.

The question here is: which type is happier?

(Bonus question: who is the person who keeps leaving notes on the office microwave admonishing people to clean up after themselves? Who cares that much about the state of the appliances?)
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