Ending a Desperate and Shabby Womanhood
Laying back on the couch his arm encircling my hips. His mouth pressed into the skin of my lower back and upper butt. He kissed and bit it with unusual tenderness. Then laid his head against my ass and slid into unconsciousness. At this moment, it clicked. The reality of loving someone who didn’t love themselves. Not loving yourself enough to accept you’re carving yourself up loving this person.
I’d known him since my late teens. I met Alain* through mutual friends on a summer night in his attic apartment, when he was dating a friend of mine. We’d gone to high school together but didn’t meet until afterward, large school and all. I’d formed a crush on him then, fast and hard. When we met there was an instantaneous attraction, raw and biological. He stared at me as if I were prey. I was a naïve and messed-up girl who confused sex with love. Believing a fairytale would unfold if I opened my legs. I handed him sex, desiring love in return. A tale too old and familiar. A saga I am too old to be relearning the moral of it again.
Yet here I am again, picking up the slivers of my heart while at work. Wondering what even lead me to sit on his couch the final day.
Years went by after we met. A stint in prison and three children on his end, several failed relationships between the two of us. In the spring of 2018, he popped up on my phone. I was always the one to break contact, and usually the first to reestablish it. When he returned from prison, skinny and preserved like all men seem to when they do time. He was ecstatic to be home, his happiness was infectious, his laugh and his jokes made him ooze charisma. The deep baritone of his voice gave my hormones a command to be attentive and involved. It was raw wiring that I let burst into a house fire.
We spent the night together. It felt wholesome and sweet. I ignored his appetite for a drink. He asked me to take him to the liquor store and I obliged. Reasoning it was a weekend night together. Relaxing and getting to know one another again. We indulged our separate vices, though mine is legal in this state and doesn’t cause cirrhosis. I fell asleep in his arms in my new bed, in the first apartment that was my own at 30 years old. Things felt like they were coming together, albeit in a messier way than I had fantasized for myself. I entered into thinking that this was the way things were, but not how they would be.
The cracks began to show shortly. The baggage of having three children who seldom know you. The stress a mother who may have good reason to be resentful. I hated that there was a nagging fear that he would choose her over me. Digging deep, I can’t admit to you why I stayed or even accommodated him into my life. There was a fictitious hope that he would blossom into the man I saw and once knew, against all the odds. That somehow we would form that duo, us against the world. That formation never materialized. Instead, he pushed me further away. He wouldn’t touch me in the presence of his friends. He’d offer reasons and excuses about why. Justifications that left me feeling undesirable as if I was a stand-in for when he found better.
We were together for almost a year before a trivial argument was the tipping point for his anger. It was always bubbling below the surface. For a long time, I considered it like mine. Accusations of rage or anger have peppered my life since I was twelve years old. I admit I am swayed to anger because of a low tolerance for people’s incessant bullshit. This belief we share a mutual rage lets me put on rose-colored glasses to destructive behavior for a year. When a middling argument fueled the inevitable break up vI was heartbroken. Though not in ways I had felt before. This didn’t feel like an inescapable sadness. This felt more like a slow-opening pit of disappointment.
Taking a moment to wonder if this would be tantamount to an emotional gauntlet thrown down. In the eyes of a man, likely yes. That’s an unfortunate reality of the world we live in and the men who inhabit it. “A man fears being laughed at by a woman”… or looked down upon in any way. Yet they cut themselves off at the knee with minimal effort. Though it’s on me for accepting such shabby offerings. I had to see what was being offered, then decide if that’s what I wanted to accept. In the end, the onus of accepting below-acceptable offerings in any relationship is on the recipient. This didn’t hit me until something he said broke the spell.
“Why do you want to be with me, I’m an alcoholic with health problems…” He laughed as if anything he said was funny. But it was true, both he and I knew it. In that instant, the rose-colored glasses shattered and I saw the truth behind my mental image. He was everything he was saying and less. He was less than what I deserved. He was more trouble than he was worth. He was aware of all of his issues. They were so prevalent. So why was I being so pathetic to accept his issues, his baggage, without even a hint of proactivity to remedy any of the situations.
Why? Because it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that sustained a disgusting need to prove what my father’s abuse and absence taught me. I am unworthy of a man’s love. I am unworthy. A spotlight illuminated the coping skills of elevating a man onto a pedestal when they had done nothing to earn such admiration. The big moon-eyes I had for him shriveled like dying birthday balloons. A few more days went by, but the allure he had over me was gone. I knew it, and he knew it. He began begging for my attention, my affection, coaxing me to sit closer to him, wrap myself around him like I used to. At times I would oblige because I enjoyed the intimacy. The rumble of his voice through his back and chest as I pressed my ear against his skin.
The peace forever bordered by a looming outburst hanging over our relationship like a storm. A sickly sweet smell of whiskey oozing off of him. His eyes were blurry with alcohol and meanness. I wanted to feel sorry for myself, but all I felt was anger edged in disgust. That pit of disappointment slit me open like a knife in my belly. When I realized this was the best he would ever be, for me. With resounding clarity I understood that what I had in front of me was less than I deserved, because I wasn’t demanding more. More from my environment and the inhabitants in it, including myself. Even things I’d said to friends during this period struck me as out of character for the amount of growth and transformation I had put myself through in my early thirties. I took to heart that I needed to change my life so I could live the life I wanted. I attempted to do my very best but the loneliness and desperation brought on by covid lowered my senses.
I could go on and on about what was wrong, but that would grow tiresome. When in the end what matters is that I did grow tired and realized I deserved more, needed more, than the affection he was capable of delivering. I went through his apartment, collecting things I’d brought over at his behest. I collected a little asshole tax. Then I stood at the door for a minute and considered if this move was the correct move to make. I teetered on the precipice of change and regret. Should I suck it up, put my things down, take a nap until he’s up and wants to do something? Should I waste my day off bumming around his house when my own needs cleaning, and my cat deserves attention. I didn’t know how to walk away from him this way. I knew he would be furious. I knew he would lash out or even worse he would go quiet. None of that mattered in that moment. Nothing mattered because the truth was snoring on the couch next to his cats in a house filled with debris from drunken outbursts. I was not happy. Not where I wanted to be.
This wasn’t where I wanted my life to be after 18 months in lockdown that forced self-exploration. That turned into candlelit yoga at midnight, summer night garden reading with classical music, doing all the things I’d thought I couldn’t or didn’t have time to do. I didn’t want to waste any more time with someone who scoffed at places I wanted to visit. Oozing contempt at every effort I made that didn’t benefit him.
I gathered my shit and walked out that door into the snow. Loading the things into my car I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel anything except that damned disappointment. Disappointment, that bitch, the sister of intuition. My voice cracked when I left a voicemail but it was done. I deleted his contact information and sped down the Kennedy expressway back home.
