rob

this is when it all changed.

this is when everything i thought i knew, about men, and about myself, went flying out the window.

i had decided i didn't want to serve or bartend anymore. what else did i like? hair! i started at a salon as an assistant and befriended the only girl who wasn't being supported by a parent.

it turned out, we had so many mutual friends! and this discovery without the help of facebook!

one night, she took me to visit her boyfriend and brother at the bar they worked at. i had already been filled in a bit. rob had just returned from new york following a nasty break up with a girl i apparently resembled ever so slightly. okay.

he came to the table to introduce himself and i almost died. it was like the scene in "big fish", when he sees his future wife and time stops and the popcorn is still in the air... i didn't have a chance in hell. he was gorgeous. clean cut, but with tattoos...i still get dreamy when i think of how gorgeous he was. is. whatever.

he ate me alive for a month or so, saying things like "did you feel that?" when we touched, and ended it suddenly around christmas. when i saw him 6 months later, at one of those mutual friends' birthdays, we both stopped in our tracks. within minutes we were making out in the gross bathroom of our friend's bar. within hours we were tearing each other's clothes off. i was done for, worse than before. he had so many issues at this point---the ex was married, he was doing a ton of blow, his job sucked---but i was determined to elbow my way into his life, i suppose thinking what so many women make the mistake of thinking: i can change him, i can fix him, i'll be the exception.

i couldn't, i didn't, and i wasn't. and yet for FOUR MORE YEARS, despite other relationships and months without seeing him, he had me. he had me in a death grip that i saw no way out of. i fancied myself a tough girl, but with him i was a puddle, a shell of myself. i felt sick and elated simultaneously every time i saw him. he consumed my thoughts and coloured my interactions with other men. somehow despite his shoddy treatment of me, no one seemed to measure up. it was the connection we had, the time-stopping-pulse-racing...it made me believe that if i was patient, he'd wake up and realize we were meant to be.

patient. one night, at our friend's bar, he put "patience" by guns n' roses on, said it was "our song", and proceeded to slow dance with a girl in front of me. THAT'S the kind of "man" he was. is. whatever.

every so often, like clockwork, as soon as i started to heal from the last heartbreak he'd put me through, he'd appear again. "oh! she's not thinking about me enough! i should call her/email her/show up where i know she'll be!". his psychic abilities astounded me. and every time, i succumbed to him, completely addicted to him. every time, he swore it was different, that he loved me, that he was sorry for before. and i'd pretend to fight it, trying to salvage whatever dignity i was under the delusion of having until i crumbled under the weight of my obsessive love for him.

and he'd disappear again.

and again.

and again.

then i started dating leland, his friend of sorts. who i swear is the last of that group of guys who will ever be inside me, so help me god.

and leland had insider information. rob was gonna be a dad. i saw him a few times, thankfully sans baby mama. he told me how he thinks about me all the time, how much he misses me, and how maybe in 5 or 10 years, blah blah blah...and still the nauseous elation every goddamned time. the last time, i think was the last time.

i was at a bar with a girlfriend. he'd texted me the week before for my birthday. this time he asked where i was, and when i responded, assuring him that "no one knows him here", he showed up. i was just drunk and single enough to kiss him---oh the kissing.

(necessary tangent: no one in the history of anything has kissed like we kissed (just let me have it). the passion and craziness and desperation and oh my god everything between us, even the very first time---that's what did me in. our fucking kissing. i disappeared the moment right before his lips touched mine. the universe melted around me as we breathed each other in. when our tongues touched, my body was on fire. ridiculous. also, dangerous. pretty sure next time i'm kissed like that i will scream bloody murder and run in the other direction.)

but this time he stopped me. he told me he couldn't do it anymore, couldn't hurt me, couldn't drag me through his "shit" anymore. that it was different, now he'd really done it, there was a child on the way.

and as usual, i protested, insisting that i was fine, that i could handle it.

but this time he knew i was full of shit, and wouldn't hear it. and he left.

and after over 5 years of leaving me, he finally did it right.