I’m Going To Give All My Secrets Away

Foreword:  Trigger Warning!  The following topics include very sensitive subjects.  If you suspect that you may have a trigger contained within, please refrain from reading.  Reader discretion advised.

Blink.  Blink.  Blinking away.  The cursor sits at a standstill while I stare ahead, poised, awaiting the words to flow out of my mind, through my arms, and out of my fingertips.  Nifty title for some heavy stuff.  And though there is plenty of content, I have no clue how to provide an introduction.  A part of me flinches, and I find my fingers stiffening in hesitation.

No, you’re going to do this today.

Awhile ago, The Voice emerged from the jumbled noise in my head and spoke to me again.  The Voice was back at feeding my paranoia and preying on my fears.  I cannot understand how this conflicting persona came to be, though I tried to make sense of it in a theoretical psychology essay entitled, “Conscious, Subconscious, and Extraconscious”.  I can only recall the emergence in my early teens, probably nearly coinciding with the onset of symptoms.

The Voice had never become external to myself.  Until late April, mentioned in Lulu-Lunacy.  Moments in time started happening where The Voice had taken on a complete audio hallucination.  It had gone beyond paranoid delusion into a complete distortion of my reality.  I would have believed that The Voice was a real external entity.  It sounded as real as someone sitting next to me on the bus, whispering in my ear.  The words were loud, crisp, and clear.  But, there was no body to go with it.

I knew it wasn’t real, because I had been hearing it for as long as I could remember.  However, I’ve always been able to identify it as a part of my conscious mind.  This was detached.  The words coming out were not words that came out of a deep, dark place.  I had never considered going off of my medication.  I had always regarded them as something that made me better.  Instead, The Voice was telling me that the medication made me dumb, like cattle, so I could be led around by the neck.

That was my first experience with solid psychosis.

I started to believe that some kind of external source was putting The Voice in my head, and had been doing so for years.  I just couldn’t hear it, because I was purposefully not listening.  This reason The Voice was always one step ahead of me was because that external source had been monitoring me for years.  I was chosen.  And it was at this point that they wanted me to finally step up to take back my life from others who were trying to steal it for their own gain.

Yes, it was that real.  Do I still think that?  I have no idea.

Here’s the truth.  I am not one solid person, as I began to mention in Conscious, Subconscious, and Extraconscious.  I have a post drafted about my various personas and how some differ greatly from others.  Really, it’s more of a spectrum.  It’s almost dissociative, but not quite.  A part of me is still present as a spectator while other personas take the wheel.  But, I am almost in a disembodied kind of state.  Sometimes, it feels like I am in a third person kind of state completely outside of myself.  Other times, I don’t feel like I am present at all, and clearly I wasn’t.  Chunks of time go missing and events get hazy.

Sometimes I feel like I am struggling for control of my own consciousness.

Then, there are the pararealities.  I describe them in many of my more lucid, vague sounding posts.  Most of the time, I feel like I am a time traveler.  Except, I am not really akin to Doctor Who or Marty McFly or other time travelers.  I don’t really go from this time period to other time periods.  I live in pararealities.  These pararealities run alongside and often overlap the linear continuum most people reside in.  Here’s a visual representation of reality and pararealities:

To put it in words, I do not experience life and time in a linear way, though I do experience it in the same direction as others.  Time speeds up and slows down.  Some moments last forever, and sometimes days go by with a blink.

The parareality is a reality that is similar to our own, but doesn’t quite operate in the same way.  It’s like living life a millisecond off of everyone else, either faster or slower.  Sometimes, the parareality is a little more detached, like in the farther regions of the red and blue zones.  But, they are adjacent realities overlapping in areas.  More than two pararealities cannot be experienced at once, and although a spectrum may exist, it’s not like a theory of parallel dimensions where there could be dozens totally different from one another.  They are much the same, but it’s often like putting a different lens on a pair of goggles.

I realize that what I am saying is complete insanity.  It’s the realization alone that prompted me to stop writing and start dodging.  Silence fell over me, because nothing I was thinking or feeling really made any sense when propped up against facts.  And then The Voice says, “Or maybe it does.”

It’s a rabbit hole situation.  I am Neo, and I’m opting for the red pill, though I am not entirely sure whether it is going to lead me to the real reality, or deeper into the delusions and hallucinations.  It just feels like I’ve been taking the blue pills too long.  Everything feels so forced.  Life shouldn’t be forced, right?

Now, we get to the sick parts.

I have been keeping secrets.  Apparently, it is what I do the best of all.  I am so skilled at illusion that I can deceive myself without even knowing it to begin with.

Enough with the pomp and circumstance.  Get on with it.

I am still taking my medication, though I do not want to.  I don’t want to drink alcohol anymore, not because alcohol is bad for me and it makes me feel bad.  (It is and it does).  Alcohol is distorting a reality that my mind is already challenging as being real.  That’s all good right?

No, I have ulterior motives.

I am continuing to take my medication and to stop drinking alcohol for a very disturbing reason.  These are all efforts to continue to sustain an obvious mania that has been going on for – since at least late March, but it was a component of a mixed episode at that point.  It didn’t become clear mania until late May.

I am also doing these things to keep my weight down.  Did you know that Wellbutrin has been known to exacerbate symptoms of eating disorders?

Wait, Lulu.  You don’t have an eating disorder.

It’s probably pretty clear to those that have ED.  The restrictive diet, the compulsive exercise, talk of negative body image.  It’s never been something I wanted to admit.  First, I didn’t think that it was a problem.  It’s not, not physically anyway.  Second, even if it was a problem, I didn’t want anyone to catch on to the behavior.  First, because I so fear obesity.  I didn’t want anyone to stop me.  And second, because I didn’t want anyone to look down on me anymore than they already do.  It’s bad enough that I hate me most of the time.  (Unless, I’m manic when I love me).

I binge sometimes when I’m sad.  I purge it when I’m disgusted.  I purge when I’m nervous.  I purge when I feel self-destructive.  I purge when the scale is giving me an unacceptable number.  I restrict when I’m very sad and self-loathing.  I run to run away from all of this, to run away from myself.  I run to see that number plunge.  I restrict to spite myself.  I restrict to self-destruct.

I have an eating disorder(s).

Finally, I am still in the grips of self-injury.

Serious trigger warning ahead.  Pictures.

This one is old. An example of how some wounds just never really heal.

The newest in the collection.

This is the result of what I described in Notes, Vicodin, and Wounds

And I’ve found new ways that don’t involve scarring. I don’t recommend it. It didn’t achieve it’s purpose anyway.

I didn’t leave out the other side either.

I am not proud. I am not showing off. I am not crying out for help, because at this point, I don’t even think I really want help. I am being honest, because my dishonesty was killing me. I’m supposed to be discussing mental health topics. And here we are. The very start of everything. Honesty in the face of the monster.

Control, or Lack Thereof : 30 Days of Truth

Day 12 : Something you never get compliments on.

One of my more recent posts eluded to a crisis in my life.  I haven’t revealed it yet, because in all truth, I am rather ashamed of some of the realities of my life.  In personal writing lately, a rambling piece entitled “Write it Out, Right it Out“, I went on say:

I’ve always been caught in my own world of the mindf***, you know? And when I’m drunk, I am more susceptible to mindf***ery. I don’t like it. I start to lose grasp on my reality, and sometimes it disappears completely – my grasp, that is.

I have made references to my alcoholism in the past, but never with much detail or emphasis.  I neglected to mention that alcoholism is a real part of my present, mainly because I didn’t consider recreational drinking to fall under that category.  I was sorely mistaken.  I wrote to a friend:

Somewhere along the way, I stopped taking substance abuse seriously, like it wasn’t a fact in my life. I’m going to guess that mania had a little to do with it. Like I was above it all because I had gotten away with it.

And another in the same piece, “Write it Out, Right it Out”:

I don’t think I actually believed myself when I have described the seriousness of my alcoholism in my past. Or maybe I thought that it was somehow different, because this is a different situation. Or maybe I thought I was just too young and immature to handle myself.

The fact of the matter is this.  I have been suffering from terrible alcoholism from the age of 19.  At the age of 17, I took up drinking as a recreational activity.  When life events sent me into a tailspin, I spent the last six months of my 18th year in a state of perpetual intoxication.  By the time I was 19, alcohol was a regular fixture in my life, and was a part of every recreational activity.  Finally, it progressed the point of functional alcoholism by the time I was 21.  I described it to a friend as:

Except, I know that there was two years that I spent drunk every single night. I made excuses, like friends and parties, but I would drink by myself. I remember there were nights I’d drink until 4am, and have my boss call me at 6:30am to ask where the hell I was.

During the two years, I had a solid schedule. Wake up at 2pm, leave for work at 2:30pm, work three to nine, drink and eat nine thirty to four or six in the morning, and do it again. I had even devised strategies to avoid vicious hangovers and physical withdrawal. Occasionally, I would venture out with a bottle in my purse, just in case there wasn’t any alcohol where I was going.

Since my son was born, there have only been a handful of what I consider to be benders, which were periods of time where I would invent a reason to have friends over for drinks.  I never intended on getting wasted, and I usually didn’t.  But, there were occasions.  Some relatively benign, ending with me waking up with a vicious hangover and swearing off alcohol entirely for awhile.  Others, they ended disastrously with an altercation, and I would find myself resolving the situation by dumping all of the booze down the drain, with a certain satisfaction at my self-restraint and determination.

Here’s the truth.  I never get complimented on my resolve.  Because, everyone knows that I will always go back to the same old, same old.  No matter how much I appear to change.

I am not always forthcoming about my weaknesses, especially the ones that spark shame.  I am embarrassed by my lack of self-control, especially in matters that are extremely frowned upon.  There are a lot of bad character traits that I can identify, and openly and honestly admit to.  However, lack of self-control is not one of them.  I’ve never considered myself as impulsive, and people often view it as immature and juvenile.  I have always considered myself to be mature and responsible, with certain exceptions, like during college, because impulsive actions and lack of restraint were commonplace, and socially accepted.

Many can argue that impulsivity is not necessarily a character trait of mine, rather, a feature of Bipolar Disorder.  Maybe that is true, because there really was a brief period in my childhood that I recall being very responsible, consistent, and mindful.  And yet, there are still incidents that I recall as being not well thought out before execution.  A condition of childhood?  Maybe.  Facet of personality or symptom of psychological disorder, it stands as probably the weakest trait I have.

Related articles

• FAQs on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (education.com)
• Alcohol overload, Increased risk of sex assault (snspost.com)
• If Addictions Can Be Treated, Why Aren’t They? (dana.org)

Decent into Hell : 30 Days of Truth

Day 08 : Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.

Avi.

Staring out the bus window into the grey oblivion, the words slid right down the slate of my mind, and were carried away by the light breeze. It’s not an uncommon occurrence. Many other times I will myself to think of him, it is as if he’s become a ghost, who haunts at the most unfortunate moments.

That’s why there are journal entries for these moments.  This was the first in the trinity, the one prior to Possibility and Ascension.  It was started and completed in the same week, nearly a year after the relationship ended.

---

The last days of that relationship are blurry; my memories are obscured by the drugs and alcohol intoxicating my mind.  The days blended together in a ritualistic, self-medicated loop, work.drink.sleep.work.drink.sleep.sleep.drink.sleep… suspended in agonizing slow motion.  The silence was deafening in the deep, dark hours of night, still, cold, indifferent.  We were two strangers, caged together with a thick glass section between us.  I glanced across the DMZ, through ripples space and time itself, eager and desperate to eradicate the great divide.  But even if I could manage to successfully navigate the minefield, a feat I had attempted in vain when feeling particularly masochistic despite the optimistic spin I put on it, I would be greeted by a stranger.  Or rather an animal, for he had regressed into a rather primitive state.  This animal was vicious and feral, seemingly ripped from the wild and unsuccessfully domesticated.

My realizations were like awaking from a coma.  How much time had passed?  Who are you?  Where am I?  Is this real? – each more dizzying than the coma itself.  Awakening is clarity, but the clearer things became, the more confusing the reality.    The chambers of my mind grew to accommodate my expanding thoughts but created a warehouse echo.  I spoke, my voice reverberated off the crumbling walls and returned with a different sound altogether.  Perhaps, instead it was an accurate reflection but one can never recognize oneself in a room of distortion.

So perhaps my lover had been a stranger all along, reflected through hopes and dreams to create a lovely distortion.  They certainly aren’t all hideous, like mirrors that make one look tall and slender.  Had that been entirely truth, how long had he been a projection of my mind’s eye onto the screen that set the stage for our drama?  I looked into the rabbit hole and tumbled down, spiraling out of control.  How can one count time based on a relative measure?

I searched farther, grasping for answers as if they were my life raft in the black waters of time.  Our relationship started with sparks and flares… – Were they real like fourth of July fireworks?  Or instead were they the result of strong hallucinogenics resulting from intense desire to feel something?  More dialogue and script flowed through the undertow, sucking me into the dark abyss.

You know how when someone says ‘I love you’, you feel obligated to reciprocate?

… Yes

I’ve always meant it with you.

My heart swelled with infection while it festered away every inch that loved him with each tides push and pull.  It was abundantly clear that his performance was increasingly scripted, as I deviated with my improvisation.  Obsessively, I went farther, feverishly searching, scanning, hoping that there would be salvage, or better even, treasure.

Heaven knows that I love you, I love you today.

Today, that day, the only day that might as well had even existed in three years.  I felt it in my soul, the answers becoming closer sending off the flares and sparks I had been trying to rekindle, leading me in my personal night.  Yet on closer inspection, they certainly differentiated from the ones in my memory.  Instead, they appeared to be a blazing inferno on the shoreline.  I clawed the beach, pulling myself in for survival, for myself, for my sanity and found the treasure I’d been seeking.

Fool’s gold.  The beautiful scenery warped into something more sinister.  Twisted, charred, black… a glorious fire to commemorate something that never was.

It reminded me of the last string I pulled in the tapestry of our relationship.  My hair was ruby colored in the dull late autumn sun, surrounded by the grey scenery of the city.  We were bound for better.  He was up but I was coming down.  A lovely romance played out in my head, on panes of fragile glass.  We were vines twisting together up a lattice in vivid green, in a dream.  He deviated, but my vision was obstructed.  I felt the support let loose, my vine withered and my fruit shriveled.  He vaguely explained and my vision returned to expose his transgression occurring.  Struck with immobilizing poison, I watched like an invalid.  And when I came to, I was convinced it was a dream.

Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors, I fell in love with the demon trickster himself.  A year and a half passed since the incident and all was voluntarily revealed.  The force pushed me outside myself, forced once again to watch this great tragedy unfold repeatedly.  Play.stop.rewind.play.

Just say yes, you little masochist.  

Addictions leave you little choice.

Help me tighten these chains.  Is that my voice?  My mind screamed to be released, for me to take the free ticket to ride and go.  But my heart without it’s limbs could not be freed from it’s vice.

The pleasant memories melted into the form of nightmares.  There was a double edged sword, turning the pleasurable jabs into horrific stabs.  My monologue’s narrator was raspy and exhausted.  Playful smiles turned to sinister grins just as loving chuckles morphed into maniacal laughter.  The blaze pushed forward, engulfing everything in sight.  It seared my flesh, leaving nothing but brittle bone.

Release me, for the love of god!!

It was morning following the apocalypse.  The war had been lost and I stood amongst it’s remains.  To my surprise, I was intact despite everything.  A wave of sorrow welled up inside me but nothing came.  I had finally been released but not by my captor.  He stood beside me, my caretaker, strong and silent like an angel.

I have always been beside you.  That wasn’t quite the truth, I was sure.  He had misspoke and instead meant, I have always been inside you… I felt those words resonating inside my soul which echoed it in perfect clarity.  This could only be made possible if they had the same dimensions… making them identical.  Twin souls!  It made perfect sense as the pieces seamlessly clicked together.  Only could twins never truly lose one another.  They were the only two that see each other through the deepest pits of hell and come out seemingly unscathed.

We were whole.  From the moment we met one another, five long years ago, we were whole.  And now we had the opportunity to experience it in our own realities..

The Real Demons

We just passed Halloween, the day where we essentially celebrate ghosts and demons by pretending to be someone else. I love Halloween. But, I have experienced real demons. It’s not something I care to revisit at any time, not even annually.

The subject of Judge William Adams shook me like an earthquake. The tremor was so intense that a number of bottles on my shelf plunged to the floor. This has conjured up very old, very dangerous demons.

Repression is a defense mechanism I had to cultivate. Prior to that, I carried the burden of the emotions that those memories conjured up from their brimming cauldrons. Then, a cycle is perpetuated from those. The circular motion of violence is born, doling out vicious events with dire consequences. Repression is amazing in it’s function. Get over it.

I do not attempt to invoke pity. In fact, I’d rather be despised than pitied.

Get over it has to be emblazoned on my family crest in centuries past along with Suck it up. I learned my lesson by developing pneumonia and somatopsychic symptoms over the summer. It should have inspired me to do some “fall cleaning”. I failed to check under my bed for the boogeyman. Funny, I didn’t see him – I spent most of my summer under there attempting to locate my black leggings.

I need a sounding board. But, I have to divulge some more sordid details of my past before I can get to that.

Yeah, we’ve covered the child abuse in my life. Unfortunately, that paved the way.

I’ve covered my tumultuous relationship with my high school sweetheart. What I didn’t mention was how he violated me. Ugh. I can’t even bear to use the appropriate word: rape.

I trusted him. I consented and then changed my mind. It was physically painful. He pinned me, and smothered my screams in a pillow. “Why didn’t you stop?!”

He lit a cigarette and smiled. “Oh, shut up. You liked it.”

It’s haunting.

I was determined never to be a victim again. That inspired my mutually abusive relationship following. “Love The Way You Lie” on Youtube can give a visual representation. It was the first and last time I ever intentionally harmed someone. I just wanted to hurt him as badly as he hurt me on the inside. I wanted him to wear those battle wounds and carry them with him for the rest of his life. Because I knew I would.

I’m ashamed as much as I’m hurt.

I accidentally opened this Pandora’s box. These memories flooded in with all of the emotions that have infected my brain and stirred my disease. It has colored my world. I am angry, bitter, paranoid, and sullen all at once. Now that the box is opened, what do I do now?

What can ward off demons? Because I know holy water in a super-soaker won’t do it.

Leep-Into-Cin II – Part I

Warning: The following content can be considered graphical in nature.  It may contain material that may not be appropriate for certain audiences.  Children under the age of 18, those of the male gender, and others faint of heart may want to take extra care while viewing this.  Use your own discretion.

One Bad Apple . . .
Twelve years ago, almost to the day, the relationship with my first love started.  We had gone circles for over six months.  He eyed me, and I fancied him.  We spoke almost daily and we had become great friends.  There were many late night conversations, spilling out our hopes, dreams, fears…  But, he was forbidden fruit, the tastiest of them all.  He was my best friend’s boyfriend.  After over a month of clandestine meetings, secret phone conversations, secrets, and lies, I came clean.  And within six months after that, we were no longer friends at all.

That is not to say that my relationship with this boy (because that’s what he was at the time), didn’t continue.  It did.  And it thrived.  We were a blissful couple, filled with promise and hope for our future.  We planned to attend college together and marry young.  We’d start our lives together the minute we were adults in the eyes of the law.  It was he and I against the world, against our parents, against everything.  And the only thing that mattered was that we loved each other and love was enough to keep us together forever.

If you call three months shy of four years together forever, then sure, we were together forever.  But, we didn’t love each other and love was not enough.  Not to him, especially.  He was cunning with a tongue of silver and a touch of gold.  And when I took off those rose colored glasses many, many years later, I saw everything for what it was.  Us, huddled together for warmth the February afternoon – him laying me down on a dirty mattress, in an abandoned house to fuck me for thirty awkward and unsatisfactory seconds.  Two lovers kept at a great distance across the city – a conveniently placed “long distance” relationship so he could screw around with any girl who looked at him sideways.  Tender words to a broken soul – patronizing speeches for manipulation of the body attached to the desperate ear.  Long, painful separations due to family obligations and travel – paid time off from the relationship.

Everything looks better at a distance.
His final, parting words to me after we made love only twelve hours earlier were, “I will always be you friend.”  It wasn’t until I discovered the Manslator (every woman has one, some women call it their bullshit radar), many years later, that I realized this heartfelt and endearing sentence had a word missing.  I will always be your fuck friend.  And he meant it.

Plus Another Bad Apple. . .

Off an on for a year after that, “Beck” had me on a string.  I was young and naive.  I can actually thank him for emotionally abusing the nativity out of me.  And that he did.  He would build me up to be the one he almost let get away, and then condemn me for being his greatest mistake.  It was a painful game of cat and mouse, only with emotions.  This all went with the waxing and waning of women and genitals that came in and out of his bedroom – and life.  Of course, I didn’t know this.  I still had the antiquated idea that relationships were exclusive and monogamous!  I was his only girl . . . that night.

Eventually, I wised up a little and walked away from that madness.  I was an adult now, and I didn’t have to take shit from anyone.  After that relationship, I wasn’t about to.  I dated around, and discovered what I considered to be a diamond in the rough while I was in college.

“Avi” was not a sensitive soul with a delicate touch and soothing words.  Avi was a man.  A real man, by any standard I’d ever seen.  He was tough, muscular and stoic.  It seemed as if he were all but impenetrable.  With the exception that he had a soft spot for me.  He reeled with laughter and curiosity about me.  “I’ve never met a girl like you, ever before.  You’re so different.’  I was different.  I was a tomboy by male standards.  I spat, drank, swore, and cut-up with the rest of the men-folk.  I was tough and gave it right back to them.  I didn’t let anyone step on me and I didn’t let anyone stand in my way.  I had to be.  No one nurtured me into adulthood.   I used my nails to dig into the earth and crawl on my belly out into the world.  And I got a lot of hard-knocks on my way in and through.

Avi and I were on our own plane of existence for about six months.  We never fought, and always found each other fascinating.  I had never encountered a man like him, nor had he encountered a woman like me.  In the quiet, behind closed doors, in the dead of night, he would whisper beautiful things to me in my sleep.  He stroked my back and hair when no one was looking.  He was a gentleman who held doors, offered coats, and paid for everything, despite my pitiful attempts at declining.  I was a wild woman to him.  I could care less what anyone thought of my physical being.  I had thoughts and opinions that would not be silenced.  I feared nothing.  Both farces disintegrated quickly.  A year into our relationship, despite the fact that things were clearly falling apart, Avi and I were ready to start a life together and signed a lease on an apartment.

You never really know someone until you have lived with them.

Avi was charming to my friends.  He held a good job and kept up on his classwork.  We held the most outrageous, hilarious, and fun parties.  But behind those closed doors now, he was a madman, and I was a child.  Any mistakes were venomously criticized.  I was berated for the smallest things.  Our disagreements would blow up into full on screaming matches.  He would leave without saying a word, especially when he knew he was losing.  And I, being the child that I was, would chase him down.  And apologize.  And beg.  Then he would alienate me, keeping me at an arms length and blaming me for being over dramatic and harmful to our peaceful existence, and forcing me to comply.  He’d intentionally stay late at work.  He would pick up extra hours and be gone more than he was around.  He would stop answering the phone or texts.

Our friends stopped coming around.  One by one, he picked them off, made them the source of our domestic problems, and alienated them.  He couldn’t hold a job for longer than three weeks.  We were drinking, a lot.  And the more we drank, the less I remembered.  He would encourage it too!  Then there was a push, that led to a shove, that led to a slap, that led to punch, that led to him forcing himself on me . . .

I went to the only person left.  The only person who knew me better than anyone else.  I went to Beck.  I called for help, and he came.  He came with the only help he knew how to give – a stiff drink and a limp dick.  It seemed that several years of alcoholism didn’t do Beck very well.  I chugged a bottle of Jack and had three seconds of sex.  The other twenty-six seconds were Beck viciously fucking the carpet on the stairwell to my apartment.  And he was down by a second in his old age, too.  Not only could I be mortified that I had cheated, but I could be dually ashamed that it wasn’t remotely satisfying.  I stood at the top of the stairwell looking down on Beck as he departed.  And I asked him, “Would you at least call?  So I don’t feel like a whore.”  He agreed.  And the only word I received was a Myspace blog post declaring his love for another girl, three days later.

Another year had passed.  I was about to leave Avi.  I really was.  I had thought about it on my long walks through the ice and snow to work.  There was a lot of silence in my head and in that house to fill.  I had planned that we would go to our respective family places for Christmas that year.  And while he was gone, I was going to change the locks, change my phone number, change my address, and leave all of his stuff on the front porch with my father standing by with a shotgun.  I had decided this at Thanksgiving when he was gone.

He always knew.  Every time I had packed a bag in the past, he knew when I was serious.  That’s why most of the time he just sat idly by, calling me a stupid bitch, or a dirty whore while I threw everything I could into some kind of luggage.  But it was by the things that I wasn’t doing that he knew.  When I wasn’t coming home until I thought he would be asleep.  When I wasn’t talking about our relationship and instead about a new friend, especially male ones.  When I wasn’t talking at all.  He knew.

He came home from his family a new man.  There were smiles, hugs, communication, and quality time.  We watched movies together again.  We were sober.  We went on dates and made new friends.  It was like a new lease on our relationship!

Until, he came clean.  All of the time that I thought he held a good job was time he was using to cheat on me.  He held a relationship with another girl we both went to school with.  They had clandestine meetings in places that school that I held sacred to us.  That was the only in discretion that he ever admitted, although I could pin several more on him.  Three of my best friends and my sister all came to me when our relationship was finished to tell their tales.  And the rest ,a server at the restaurant, his boss’ girlfriend, another co-worker, a few more girls from his home town, and a half-a-dozen women from the internet, were all speculation.

It was through C.S.’s love that he gave me the courage of conviction to rid myself of Avi and Beck forever.  He gave me the courage to see the doctor again and get my life straightened out.

Ruins the Whole Bunch.  And Barrel.

It was only when I got those first test results back in July 2007 that I had only begun to know the damage that Beck and Avi had brought to my life.

Pap result – ASCUS.  Probable cause – HPV.

To be continued . . .