i met him at the bar i worked at. he and his coworkers/friends would come in on a nearly nightly basis, and drink loads after a long day at the "office". the very first time i met him, he asked me for my number. we went for a smoke outside and he admitted to being fresh out of a marriage--not even divorced yet. this, coupled with my own knowledge that he consumed more cocaine than has ever been my tendency, turned me right off.
that night, his over-zealous attitude about our vague date concerned me. i decided to blow it off, gently. to my memory i told him straight out why i couldn't go there. for three months, he continued to pursue me. i was simultaneously dealing with the aforementioned rob, so i was distracted.
in september, on the night i was meant to be at rob's sister's wedding reception, my absence due to rob's insistence that i not be there, i caved. we ended up snorting and snogging and shagging til daybreak.
i fell hard, and fast. in retrospect, all of the rob stuff probably pushed me to latch onto the first man who showed me attention. ah, retrospect.
about a month in, chris went MIA on me. a couple days went by, the first of which we had plans for, and this time i wasn't going to take it. i confronted him, told him either you're in it or you're out.
he was in.
the first year was amazing. we partied too hard, and loved just as hard. amidst all the drinking and e and coke and 6 am confessional drug fueled confessions, we built a strong relationship the likes of which i had never had. we became best friends. our friends liked each other, and each other's friends liked each of us.
we moved in together, with none of the doubts i'd had with my previous live-in boyfriend. we started to talk about the future in a real way, rather than "when we grow up, we should ______".
following a massive fight with his boss/friend, it came to be that he was moving to victoria, bc, for work. did i want to come with him?
BOOM! despite my enthusiastic (ish) "yes!" and plans going ahead, i panicked. i had always said i would move anywhere for true love, and i have never had any problem picking up and taking off. no, there was something else.
we both began the excruciating process of sabotage. i started. on the night of a friend's restaurant opening, i drank too much cava and tequila (a winning combo, lemme tell ya), he left early, and i had sex with someone i actually always quite disliked in the washroom downstairs.
low. LOW LOW LOW. lowest of the lows. you get the point.
chris found out. i failed to delete the text messages i received after from the other guy and chris found them. doesn't even matter why he looked at my phone, i was the guilty one.
after 24 hours of hell, he forgave me. i guess. then i got pregnant. chris, realizing that this would throw a rather large kink into our plans to move, combined with his knowledge that, unbeknownst to me, he'd become a full blown addict, made him suggest that perhaps now wasn't the time for a kid. after that whole process, i started to push him away, spending any time i wasn't working on the couch, stoned and depressed, or drinking til dawn.
his turn. about three weeks after my procedure, he woke me up in tears. he'd been fired, needles had been found at work. what? you're a tattooer, there's needles everywhere...oh. somehow for weeks he'd managed to hide evidence of shooting up cocaine. brilliant. by the end of the day i'd rallied his two best friends, gotten him to his hometown, and a bed coming up in a detox centre. ok.
he got sober, i began to forgive him, and poof! it was time to move out west. smart, right?
yeah, no. the first month or so was great, discovering the beautiful town together, looking for apartments, beginning what seemed to be the rest of our lives. but i was lonely, and his band of tattooed/semi sober/alternarockabillymetalheadweirdos weren't gonna cut it. i tried to make friends at work, but i was also trying to avoid drinking etc for his sake.
my turn again! rob got in touch with me, missed me, loved me. i was thrown off. of course we all know rob didn't follow through, and instead disappeared again. apparently, i found later, on his own coke-addled journey. when chris found the emails, he somehow let it go. i guess.
it was inevitable, our separate lives. i began going out, he stayed home. and one drunken night, just a day after we had already discussed the very real possibility that this wasn't working, i slept with someone else. two days later, i repeated the offence. i had, i thought, learned my lesson and deleted any correspondence between this man and i from my phone. but drunkenly, stupidly, there was one i forgot about. and once again, chris found it.
that was it. the next morning, i was out of there, and began the two month process of couch surfing in the homes of friends i had just made, people who barely knew me. i was disjointed and finding solace where there was very little to be scrounged up. when i went home for christmas, i felt lost. i knew that he and i weren't meant to be, but i had also lost my best friend.
a few months later, i needed him. i was in a strange town, surrounded by people who didn't REALLY know me, and i was drugged and assaulted at a bar. and he couldn't be there, of course. i understood. but it was the double trauma of breaking this truly deep down wonderful man and being shown just how disgusting and horrible a man CAN be. that finally taught me: when you break other people's hearts, yours gets broken too.
HE has moved on to a new woman, with whom he has a new baby. and me?
i went home, and, well...
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