You better sit down for this one

June 13, 2006 - 11:20 p.m.

I’ve got big news and I’m afraid a few of you are going to be disappointed. I feel bad tellin’ ya’ll, especially Kelly, Olaf, Andrea, Liza and all the rest of you who were so cool and supportive and excited about my relationship with the pilot. Your enthusiasm was always uplifting, especially in a world where a lot of people just want to shit on your parade.

Ya see…the pilot and I aren’t together anymore. I broke up with him a few days ago.

I’ll go into a more detailed version at a later time…but to summarize: I was just miserable. He turned out not to be the person he pretended to be when we first met.

He played a role for the first 6 months or so that we were together, pretending to be all that I want in a man, kind, considerate, attentive. And then it just went away. And most surprising of all, he became mean. Just plain ol’ mean, like a bully in a schoolyard. Critical, insulting, judgmental, rude, uncouth….He has to rule the roost in everything that he does, or he’ll tear everyone down to get to the top. It’s “my way or the highway” in everything he does. Razor sharp tongue, and he will pick you apart and shred you into a thousand pieces before you even know what hit you.

When we were first dating, he sent me an email in which he stated: “you will not find a person with more integrity or honesty than I.” I remember thinking at the time, “Wow. That’s quite a heavy statement. If you’re going to say that, you better have the evidence to back it up.” For awhile, there wasn’t any evidence to the contrary.

But integrity…its definition would imply that it cannot come and go, that it must remain a constant. Yeah…I just looked it up in the dictionary and it says “steadfast adherence” so I’m pretty sure that means you can’t just go and rip out your girlfriend’s asshole, stab her in the heart, laugh in her face as she cries, and then get back to your integrity the next day.

He sacrificed any last morsel of integrity that he may have had, the night of our breakup. Instead of being civil, instead of being the “bigger man” and just walking away with a handful of polite words, any reverence at all for the relationship we once had, he took that as an opportunity to tell me every tiny thing he dislikes about me, and then some. He thought the best course of action would be to say the most hurtful possible things to me, breaking all the rules of adult relationships, of civil human behavior. And he just hit below the belt, rapid-fire, with more hate than I’ve seen in a long time. And most of what he said is untrue, not a shred of evidence to support his accusations. They contradict everything that I know about myself, and what the world tells me it knows about me.

This “conversation” went on for a really long time. And for the most part I could only respond incredulously, “what?” and then cry.

“…You’re just not a giving person. Not at all. You just never GIVE to anyone. It’s just not a part of your personality.”

“…The only reason why your friends and family like you is because they have LOW STANDARDS…I have high standards and that’s why I can see what a flawed person you are.”

“…even at your very best, on your best day, you were never as good as my ex-girlfriends.”

“…all of my other girlfriends took care of me, catered to me…but you, you’re so selfish, it’s just all about you, all the time.”

“…maybe I was cold and aloof towards you because you are ANNOYING. You talk about the same things over and over. Race, it’s all you talk about, you’re obsessed with it.”

“…You are a one-dimensional person.”

“…you are rotten to the core.”

“…You’re not a nurturer, you don’t nurture, you’re not domestic….you’re so self-centered I doubt you could ever take care of anyone.”

“….[since we’ve been together] I haven’t grown at all as a person, I haven’t done anything new, have had no new experiences at all….I took you snowboarding…. showed you the world…took you to other countries…. and what did you ever give me? Nothing.”

“…if I ever came into a bad situation, and I needed you for support, I doubt that you would be there to support me.”

“…everyone you’ve ever dated has been gay because they celebrated anniversaries and real men don’t celebrate anniversaries. Only gay men are that sensitive and emotional and straight men don’t give birthday cards or Valentine’s Day cards…”

And this is just a sampling.

But oh, how funny life can be.

Hell if I did not walk directly onto the set of the Hallmark channel when this happened a few days later:

I was at my parent’s house last weekend, where we had a family reunion. I took a shower in their bathroom and used my mom’s mirror to put on my makeup. She has a bunch of pictures of babies taped to the mirror, and some other decorative shit, and then I noticed right at eye level there was an index card, and on it she had hand written:

“If anyone speaks badly of you, live so that none will believe it.
A good name is more desirable than great riches.”

Whoa.

Is that index card talking to me?

Why, yes it is!

My mother has weird psychic/intuitive abilities when it comes to her children and she came through for me once again, even though she doesn’t even know it. That quote is precisely what I needed to hear. live so that none will believe it…a good name…

And it didn’t occur to me until much later: Hey…wait a minute. Nobody speaks badly of my mom…why would she write out that verse and paste it to her mirror as a daily reminder? Everyone likes her, some people think she’s a saint. Nobody can say a bad word about her, except….Uh-oh.

The only person who ever has anything bad to say about her…is her own husband. My father. He constantly talks shit to her, criticizing, nagging. Negating everything that she does. Ignoring the positive.

*ding-ding-ding*

Do you see where this is going?

Makes me want to hurl, realizing that my boyfriend talked to me the way that dad talks to mom….meaning I picked up my dad, despite the fact that I went to the ends of the Earth looking for a man who is OPPOSITE of my father….fucking bulls eye. Fate would be a funny, funny thing…if I believed in it. But I do believe in irony and the ha-ha and the omg and the wtf. Slap my knee honey cuz I’ve once again entered the world of the utterly fukkin ridiculous. I need to go slam my head in a door a few times.

Mom put that note up there as a reminder to herself: It doesn’t matter what unwarranted criticism my dad might throw at her…nobody else believes it, and that’s all that matters. It was like right there my mom showed me my future. She showed me what it would be like if I married the pilot…it would be like marrying my dad, and spending the rest of my life hollow inside, filled with nothing but grief. It would be a life of sticking notes to mirrors to remind myself of my self worth. It couldn’t have been more obvious, literally a sign, right in front of my face! Thanks mom! WOW – how’s that for some serious mothering? Talk about a nurturing person, you can’t tell me a woman like that would give birth to someone as cold and selfish as described above.

The only person who talks badly about me is the pilot, the man I loved and devoted my whole life to. I guess I passed up doors number one, two and three and managed to find the invisible door number 4, the one that opens up straight into the devil’s asshole.

Anyway, do I live so that none will believe it? I sure try to.

A good name is worth a lot more than riches…you sure can’t buy a good name.

I told my family what happened with him, what he said about me. What do you suppose his name is worth to them now?

Their first reply was, “You’re WHAT? Has he ever MET you?”

Hell, YOU’VE never even met me, and I think you know me better than that.

Now that I have more time on my hands, and my heart and my mind isn’t locked in a cage, I’ll be back here with a vengeance, my old self. I’m a little rusty, need to get back in the swing of things, tape a note to my monitor or something. See you soon.

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The Fast, Days 1-6
January 28, 2007