If he were reasonable and a grown up about it maybe he could stay on my couch for a few weeks while he found a place. If I thought it’d work, I’d say that I wanted to be friends (a lie) but that I thought we’d grown apart and that now that he had these great new opportunities, I feel it’s time to go our separate ways. Amicably.
I’ve also thought about doing it in public and that would mean a chance he’d stay calmer. If it didn’t work, if he went crazy, maybe I’d have to let him think he talked me into giving him one more chance. Then we’d go home and the next day, I’d take the $400 and rent a room for a couple days while I figured out what to do.
And now I’m second-guessing all of it, thinking no. No! I need reinforcements. I can’t do this alone. He’s gonna go crazy if I try to kick him out. He’s going to bully me or go psycho like he did just before he left.
I pace half the evening mulling over my options.
Bottom line, I know I have no choice but to find someone to take my back. Because he isn’t going to be reasonable. He’s going to be Ray. And I’m stupid if I expect him to be anyone but the Ray I know. The Ray that’s been making my life hell.
Actions speak volumes. I need to judge him based on that and plan for the worst.
The week to myself, the vote of confidence from work? It’s bolstered my inner strength enough to make me believe I can now do something I wish I could’ve done a long time ago.
The clock is ticking louder. He’s coming back tomorrow. I finally conclude that of all the people in my life I can use as reinforcements, there’s one that might be willing to forgive and forget. I won’t know unless I try.
I feel sick about what I have to do. Calling her. Nearly as sick as the idea of seeing Ray tomorrow. Because I fucked up. I fucked up badly with her. My stomach is cramping, my neck is out in hives, and I’ve gone to the bathroom three times in the past half an hour. I need to just pull the trigger - just make the call.
***
It’s 9:50 when I finally call Susanna, my best friend. She is still the best friend I’d ever had, but calling her, I don’t know if I’ve been replaced as her bestie. We had a fight two years ago that was about Ray and how he was overbearing and changing me, and how I’d started to withdraw. That fight made me withdraw even more. In hindsight, a few months later, I realized he’d sabotaged the whole friendship by acting a certain way around her and telling me that she was going to try to break us up because she’s jealous that she doesn’t have me all to herself.
Of course when she came to me with her concerns about him I defended him. Because he set it up that way by circumventing her and telling me in advance that she didn’t like him, asking me things like, “Doesn’t she want you to be happy?”
He’d drop comments suggesting she’s jealous because I was in a serious relationship and she wasn’t.
He didn’t outright insinuate that she’d flirted with him when they first met, but he planted seeds as if she wanted what Ray and I have, and acted a certain way out of jealousy.
“Does she always flirt with everyone?” he’d asked.
“She dresses like she wants attention, doesn’t she?” he also said early on.
“You look beautiful, babe. Susanna is going to be green with envy. Or greener than she usually is.”
Stuff like that. A gaslighting, manipulating personality.
He did something similar with my own mother, not including the flirting thing, acting like she didn’t want me to grow up and be self-sufficient.
And I allowed it all. I got tired of defending him to people when they started to notice things about him. And angry when he’d tell me he didn’t think people liked him or that they didn’t want us together, so I went from defensive to where I stopped telling them things. I got tired of his reactions whenever they wanted to see me or do things with me, so I stopped accepting invites. Invites eventually stopped coming.
As for Susanna, I haven’t missed a birthday voicemail or Christmas text message, but the responses were one-liners, and I knew she’d long since given up on me. That she didn’t call back after the birthday voicemails but instead texted with a ‘thanks for the birthday message” was my own doing.
Until six months ago, I even made a point of making sure I gave a reaction of a like or loved every single Facebook or Instagram picture too.