Two and a Half Weeks

I dropped Peter off at the train station. Odds were, that would be the last time I would see him, but maybe I was being over dramatic. I was not feeling well, not at all, but I headed to work to get orders in and be there so we could open the doors for business.

I managed to last until the afternoon when the other shift arrived and decided to go home. I was so sick, I couldn’t honestly remember how I even managed to get there. I was disoriented and exhausted, but I managed to get home safely. I sent Peter a text letting him know that I left work and that I was told this was a type of flu going around. I apologized if I made him ill as well.

I felt like I was always apologizing to Peter. I apologized for not being able to keep all the information and stories of his tortured existence straight in my head. How women have always treated him badly, everyone questioning his sexuality. His rants asking me to answer for all the women in the world as to why they don’t choose to be with him, to stay with him, after all he does for them. I would just look at him and say, “I’m here. I choose to be with you.”, but it didn’t seem to register.

I began to realize that Peter, in many ways, was me with a penis. All my self-doubts, all my rants about why even though I have purposefully groomed myself to be what I thought a man would consider to be a perfect mate, why do they leave me? I went to cooking school, I learned massage therapy, I kept a nice house and I was whatever a man wanted me to be in the bedroom, still I’m the one they leave. Even John had commented, although it was probably a lie, that he had told the guys at work about me and they responded by saying that, “If her daddy owned a gas station that sold beer, she’d be perfect!”

I used to think it was because I was not a thin cookie cutter image of a woman, but then I would see women much larger than myself with a mate, so that can’t be it. I’ve been told that maybe it’s because I’m too strong and independent and a man needs to feel needed. Could that be it? If so, I suppose I will be alone the rest of my life because I simply cannot play the damsel in distress for longer than the 15 minutes it may take to please a man sexually. What is it about me, that in the real world, men do not approach me which led me to look for a mate on the internet. The internet allowed me to be found by men looking for a release of one sort or another, but not for a true relationship. Am I the tattered window shade? Maybe.

It took a couple of hours, but Peter finally responded to my text message telling me to rest up and to feel better. His words felt empty and insincere. I decided to try and mend things between us and wrote that I missed him, even when he pushes me out of my comfort zone. I added that there are not many that are brave enough to do that with me and yet he did it over and over again, for which I was grateful. He wrote back that it is not a contest between us. He said that everyone says they want someone different and unique. Few women really mean it. Oh, he was different alright, maybe too different for me to accept.

“Still like me?” I think I vomit a little bit in my mouth as I sent the text. What was I doing? I felt like the two and a half weeks that I spent with him had been an endurance test and that he was slowly dragging me down into an abyss of depression and insanity with him and I was trying to “fix things” between us? Was my self-esteem that low? Why do I need everyone to like me no matter how much I don’t like them? This was getting rather twisted, but I continued to apologize.

It took him 20 minutes to respond and he said that of course he still liked me and asked that I really mean that I liked him. Maybe this is what it would have been like if I had ever experienced a relationship in high school. “Do you like me? You really, really like me?” I was becoming the Sally Fields’ Oscar acceptance speech. I let him know that it had been a painful pause before he responded to me. He said that he had told me about his life with abusive partners and if you lay down with me (there’s that odd term again) and tell me “fuck you” two weeks later, I get shy.

Again, I apologized and wrote about how most of my life I’ve been afraid to speak up for myself, afraid to ask questions, afraid of a lot of things, but with him, I wasn’t so afraid and how that was a good thing. I added that I felt like the beast that’s been dwelling inside of me, silently screaming at the top of her lungs, had found her voice. He didn’t like that, not at all. He responded by saying “Well here is my voice: Fuck you too. How does it feel?” I deserved that, but he kept on insisting that I wasn’t really apologizing and said that I suffered from a bloated female ego like most women do.

I said that it didn’t feel good and that I was completely out of line and apologized again. However, I did add that even though I didn’t recall the details of the conversation because I was ill, I did recall feeling like my well-being wasn’t a priority at that moment and I felt disappointed about that. Now, I’ve always considered myself to be a drama queen, but his response put me to shame. “Once again, I’m the invisible man. My feelings don’t exist. You can yell fuck you at me, but you recall no specific details. Crush my soul, it’s just an afterthought.” Oh bother.

I sat there rereading his message, shaking my head and wondering how does one respond to that? Is this what it’s like to be a man? This was a total role reversal situation and I was dumbfounded. Suddenly, I received a phone call from Marcus. A week earlier, I had received a text message from him apologizing for how he had treated me, explaining his behavior and asked if we could be friends. A male friend was what I needed at that exact moment and his advice would lead me to a resolution. I asked Marcus how to respond to Peter’s message and this is what I wrote, “I will be available Sunday afternoon if you would like to get together and have a face to face conversation with me.” Brilliant! The thread of uncomfortable text messages stopped, at least for the moment.

I wasn’t proud of myself for hurting another human being, but I did not do it intentionally. Peter was so intense all the time, I felt like I was gnawing off my own leg to escape the trap I was in. I had described him to a friend as being unemployed, using medicinal marijuana for degenerative disc disease and was medicated for being bi-polar. When I said that to her, she just looked at me with that “Really?” kind of face to which I responded, “I know, I know. What was I thinking? How did I think I was going to make that work? Am I that desperate?” I guess I am.

The two and a half weeks I spent with Peter felt more like a two and a half year relationship or a better word to use may be, marathon. I was exhausted, but I did enjoy the attention and the runner’s high. I loved feeling so close to man almost instantaneously. I missed the intimacy a relationship allows one to experience. I crave it, but at what cost? Once again, I had compromised myself and became an apologizing drone and I wasn’t done apologizing yet.

The next evening, the text messages resumed. “2.5 years of this type of shit treatment has left me unable to make love.” Shit treatment? Aside from me having loss my temper once, I had been nothing but generous, kind and patient with him. If I listed all the things I had done for him, I might again, vomit in my mouth a little bit.

He said that it was doubtful that it would ever happen with me now and that he was really sorry about that. He continued that it was too embarrassing for him and still no apology from me and that it was too late now. What!? I scrolled through my thread of text messages and counted how many times I had apologized and I was fairly certain that I had apologized right after I had said the detrimental words. I was now certain, I was dealing with a challenged individual. I simply responded that I did apologize, thank you for the moment. Be well.

“Apology my ass. You said nothing. An apology acknowledges that you did something wrong. You didn’t do that. Don’t walk away in dreamland.” I wrote that at the very least I said it in a text to him yesterday. I told him that I had left work ill again and that I honestly did not remember what I may or may not have said to him in my home and if I did not apologize then, I regretted not doing so. “I am sorry.” I wrote one last time.

“That says it all. The words that break my heart? You honestly don’t remember them. Thank you for being sorry.” Oh bother.