He used to call me a time traveler. For the very first time I can say without hesitation I wish I’d never met him.

Ive had to endure far too much this year.

I feel most days that I had to endure more than a mere mortal could.

On the pages of my autobiography in a laptop in the trunk of my best friends car are stories of pain and suffering. My very first memory is of an accident I had in my crib.  I had to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t get out of the crib. I went instead on my sheets. My mother walked in saw what I did and beat me.

My first memory.

Today I added a new memory.

I have to add May 28, 2016 to a list of days on my calendar that I dread upcoming.

That will be the fourth Saturday of the month. It is the day that The Man set for his wedding date to someone who is not me.

While I don’t know how I should feel, I know what I do feel.

I feel like this was the last spring holding the lid of my coffin up and that it snapped.

If you’ve been here since the beginning, you recall my love for him. Love doesn’t end in my world.  At some point it gets abused to the point I remove myself from it for self preservation, but love never ends.

I still love Lewis the man I called father.  I just can’t fuck with him ever again, and will keep my promise to myself that I will never speak to him again as long as we are both living.

I still love my Bonnie.

I have love for all of the people in my history, except for a.  For her I pity her retribution when it arrives.

The Man was different though.  He was different because he made me different. I’ve spent the last 16 plus years of my life becoming……something.

That genesis was because box 6600 existed and I had the misfortune to listen to the message inside. That box led to our first meeting in the parking lot of a 7-11 that no longer exists.

That box contained the voice of a man who loved me the most, hurt me the most, and killed the woman I could’ve once become.

Clyde saved my life, but there would be no Clyde if there never was Kahlil. The self destructive spiral our first separation sent me on stopped with my pregnancy. I’ve heard couples in love who’ve been that way for years say they always knew.

With him…….I always knew.

To my bone marrow I was positive that he was the “one”. Even as my life evolved and I understood there would be more than “one” he was my foundation.

Those months after the first time he disappeared I was trying to kill myself daily without using the traditional methods. I chose instead to drink, smoke, snort and do things that had me waking up at the corner of 22nd & Ridge without knowing how I got there. Then Clyde took up residence in my uterus and I had a reason to live again.

Our reconciliation years later only proved to me that what I knew from the moment he first kissed me was true. We were meant to be.  I dove right back in adjusting my life for Kahil when the “ex”? shattered my reality.

I wasn’t prepared to face a life of non monogamy, and the idea that he had this whole other “life” killed another part of me. I can hear myself crying to him on the phone begging him to let me go of he couldn’t be in a relationship with me, and that he did.

That separation cost me two jobs. It cost me two homes. It almost cost me custody of my child. I humbled myself and returned home to Bonnie.  Prior to that I got arrested and had to fight for over 2 years to get to that not guilty verdict. It could’ve cost me my best friend who sat in a jail cell with me for 14 hours. I thought I was at my lowest then.

Years later – yet again – when our paths crossed I still didn’t hesitate to grab onto the idea of the life with the man who I never stopped loving. Suddenly he was there again. We seemed older and wiser. We seemed to be getting it “right”.

We planned to move to the West Coast in 2007. It was that spring when disappearing act number 3 happened. I still have every email from then. I read them from time to time usually when I need a trigger for something I need to write. My best work has always been sitting down to write to him. What I created for him are flat out masterpieces and maybe one day I can share them. I locked them today though because I know just how precarious my sanity is and that opening any more than I already have will take me to the point of no return.

Imagine my shock and disappointment to find that over a year later, the dream he sold me was not real.  He was in the same place I’d left him, except I never left him I never did ever. I spent weeks trying to just get him to talk to me. I wasn’t actively trying to go “home” I just wanted to understand the unexplainable – why.

He ignored every request.

Every one.

every  one.

By the time I got a summons to appear in court from the West Whiteland Police Department I didn’t realize my behavior was that of which I never believed existed – one of his stalkers. In the three weeks leading up to my court appearance I began to wonder if those other women were once like me. Driven to something else after years of exposure to what he did.

He lied under oath, on the stand, and the judge threw out the case. Sometimes judges get things right.

I drove back into the city with that segment of my life closed.

In my head of never my heart.

On October 18, 2010 a message from the now defunct CollarMe.com brought him back into my awareness.  I still have all those emails as well.

The signs were there early in but I ignored them with vicious denial. On November 8 when he picked me up, the same day I signed my “slave contract” about 90% of my doubt was gone. Beyond the blindfold there was a transparency and honesty unmatched in our history.

We were finally giving it an honest try or so I thought.

Even when things almost imploded at the end of the month with that skirmish with Waffles, I still felt he was present. Perhaps he was. I knew I was, and I demonstrated it in every possible way known to humanity.

For months things went well. We were learning one another all over again. The blindfold came off and progress happened.

Like always though the shift was felt even when he denied it.  Like each time before there was a tangible something else between us that he told me was delusional.

May 2011.

That is when they met.

The shift is evident in our correspondence as I look back into my emails.  By October I was living in a permanent state of denial.  October was when he took his trip to “Haiti”.

By November the illness arrived.

I sent him a message today on Facebook. I told him what I felt. That this would’ve been simpler had he just said, I met someone else.

That I could accept.

I would’ve hated it, like I do now, but it would be better than what he did.

He invented a catostrophic illness.

I spent a year researching treatments. Finding supports. Begging the man that I loved to let me help him heal.

The things I did in that year I can’t type. A part of it is shame. Shame that here, where I’ve been the most honest and forthright I still lied to you and myself in the process.

The truth is after being denied again and again my offers of help I knew.

We’d somehow gone from building our new foundation to a disappearing act again.

None of what he was doing made sense unless there was someone else.  I couldn’t prove it. I’d also allowed myself to be marginalized so much that I could never prove to who ever HER was that I existed. Truth – finally – is I don’t know that I wanted to prove anything to her, I just didn’t want to feel that I’d wasted my time yet again on the closest thing to a real live sociopath I will meet outside of treatment.

I wanted validation that even if there was someone else that the year we did have was real. I desperately needed it to be real.

By the time I allowed the public in to my reality and not the fiction I’d spun to save face, I no longer cared except to understand what why he kept coming back when he knew I was never enough.

never good enough

never worthy enough

never woman enough for him to just

LOVE ME

That’s all I ever wanted after that first time. The honest chance to love and be loved.

I simply wanted a fair shot, and once more it didn’t seem as if I was “granted” that wish.

I haven’t ever tried to reconcile.  I know I don’t want that.  I can never trust that his history won’t repeat because he’s demonstrated that he has gotten good at breaking me and leaving.

I miss things, I always will. Despite the horrors the highs were unequaled.

There are things, and places and connections I had with him I will never have again. I accepted that 2 years ago when I accepted the love of B.

I didn’t close myself off to happiness but I did choose someone who I knew could never do to me what Kahlil did.  I may not ever duplicate the near perfect moments that existed no matter how fleeting, but I could have a measure of happiness on my own terms.

B is wonderful.

In the wake of the disaster the past calendar year of my life has been, he is still wonderful.

He will always have my love and be my best friend.

I’ve been forced to make decisions though as I battle my way back that showed me he won’t always be my boyfriend even though he will remain my best friend.

As I give the tiny support I can manage in my current state during his crisis I started closing doors and bricking them up. Timing can be everything. This is a terrible time for all of us.

This morning I hit the Google again and saw a notification I’d seen before but didn’t dig in to investigate.  I didn’t ask a question because I didn’t think I was ready for the answer. I was right.

I wasn’t ready for proof of his moving on without me.

In typical Nicole fashion though when I have a bone I don’t let it go.  Not letting go today meant I found her Instagram. The whole process took maybe? 20 minutes.

When I saw the photos from Valentines Day 2013 I knew.  You don’t spend 16 plus years reading the words of someone and not know their style. You also don’t spend 16 plus years of being abandoned to not see the same signs and signals once given to you to not alert the stalkers to your presence.

There is no such thing as coincidence.

What I witnessed today was too coincidental to not be proof.

I hope for her sake that he is being genuine.  The pain of all my losses isn’t something I wish on anyone – not even a who I wish many hrribke things on daily.

They moved in together 2 years ago.

Ive seen those cases and bins so many times to not know they are his.

I’ve read about nature being jealous of my radiance too many times in my mailboxes to not know they are his words.

Ive been there far too many times.

While I won’t be there ever again it doesn’t stop the meltdown.

The fantasy in my head was the one last thing left for me.

With all doubts removed I truly have nothing now.

i lost my mother my home my history

i lost my child

Now I’ve lost the miracle that was never – ever – going to happen.

All I have left is my ability to inhale and exhale.

Truthfully I am unsure I even want to do that.

Even my memories are now tarnished in ways I cannot repair.

This mere mortal might have fought her last battle.

As I prepare to sign off with one of the names he gave me, I wonder if I am truly beyond repair.

 

Aphrodite Brown