Oh, the faces of innocence, righteousness, fairness, and love. NOT.

Let me tell you about this guy. If that's what you want to call him.

I won't reveal his real name, but I have referred to him in previous posts as PWF--panty wearing faggot. LOL. I'll call him Ray today.

What a complicated and stupid story it is. I met him through Lynn, when I first moved down to Kentucky with her. I immediately began chasing him around, absolutely sure that he was "the one" for me. I loved the fact that he was so tall (6'7 1/2") and had long hair. What happened was, I built him up as a person in my mind that he wasn't, which of course, left me bitterly disappointed. He wasn't abusive, but he changed me in a lot of ways, some good and some bad.

He completely destroyed my sense of self by making me feel inadequate. He did this by criticizing my weight constantly. He placed a high value on physical beauty and did not really pay much attention to the inside. Amazing, since he is not the most gorgeous creature to walk the planet himself. Anyway, he made me very aware of my weight and I remain obsessive about it to this day. I had low self esteem when I met him, otherwise I would have never clung to my ideal of him to begin with, but he crushed it even more. What I did not know when we first met was that he had fallen for Lynn in a big way. She didn't know it either, until he began to actively pursue her...in front of me. We were on again, off again for three and a half years. Three and a half long, hard years. Whenever we were off, he would call Lynn and attempt to pursue her, no matter how much she tried to convey to him that she wasn't interested. Then when he tired of her rejection, he would come back to me. And I always took him back, without question. Even though he was trying to be with my best friend.

Of course, the story is more complicated than this, but I do not have the energy to write it all down. It's embarassing to me. I have to ask myself why I let him be a part of my life at all. He didn't deserve me, that's for sure. I tried so hard to be a person that I wasn't, just to please him. He insisted that women should always look their best when they went out, and he hated seeing me wear sweats..even around the house. When he was around, I cooked, cleaned, and primped more than when he wasn't. Thank God we didn't live together at any point in our relationship (he felt he couldn't commit to cohabitation with me, even after three years..but I'll get to that in a minute.) We had a long distance relationship through the last part of our relationship that actually worked out well. (I was in Michigan, he was in Kentucky.)

In the first few days of August 2002, we had made plans for me to go to Kentucky to see him. He had just inherited his grandfather's house and was working on it. We spent hours on the phone discussing the house; the ultimate plan was for me and my daughter to finally move back to Kentucky and move in with him. This, I thought, would be the cement to our relationship. I could not wait. We decided it would be sometime in the summer of 2003. I didn't want to pull my daughter out of school to move, so it seemed like a sensible decision. In the meantime, he consulted me on every little thing, such as drapes and tiles. I was so happy to be included in the decision making process, but yet, I don't really care about things like drapes and tiles. I put on a good front and showed some enthusiasm, which is what he would have wanted me to do. What he didn't realize was, at the time, I would have happily lived in a cardboard box if it meant being with him.

Anyway, come the first weekend of August 2002, he was expecting me to be down there sometime in the early evening. I ended up being able to leave earlier and I called him to tell him that I would be early. This is what happened, verbatim:

Me: Hey, it's me. I just want to let you know that I am going to be able to leave early. I should be there after 1 if I hurry. Will you be home? Or will Kenny (his cousin) have to let me in?

Ray: Uh, well. I meant to call you.

Me: (Used to feeling disappointed...but feeling a good bit of being pissed off coming on.) Oh?

Ray: Yeah. I don't think you should come down here.

Me: What? Why? (I laughed, but I was starting to feel that all too familiar rise of panic that I associated with this relationship.) I'm already packed. What's the deal?

Ray: I just don't think you should.

Me: (no doubt yelling by now) What the fuck is going on? Why don't you want me to come down there?

Ray: Because I don't think it's a good idea.

Me: (surely screaming now) WHY NOT???

Ray: Because I'm sleeping with someone else.

Without hesitation, I slammed the phone down in his ear. I was too shocked to even contemplate what he had said. I just know that the words he used pierced my heart through and through. I sat and stared at the phone for a moment and then picked it up and called him right back. As soon as I heard his voice, I demanded to know what the fuck he was talking about. Did we not have a commitment? Did we not have plans? Three years down the drain, gone?

He explained that he had simply met someone else. And that he had been pretty much staying with her since he met her. Since he met her? We had been together for three and a half years and he wouldn't commit to living with me, but he was willing to be with her within moments of meeting her, practically?

I lost my mind and drove down there anyway. During the four hour drive, I felt desperate and heartsick. TWO DAYS LATER, he finally sat down with me and told me, to my face, that he was through with me. While I cried hysterically, he just sat there looking at his watch...because his "girlfriend" was expecting him. Something inside me snapped, and I suddenly thought to myself, what the fuck am I doing? He doesn't even care about me enough to pretend like he cares. Why am I humiliating myself like this?

On the way home to Michigan, I formulated a plan. I decided that I would move to Florida. Number one, it would put some distance between us, distance that I so desperately needed if I was to ever move on. Two, because I needed a change. And two weeks later, that's exactly what I did. Me, my daughter, my cat, my 1993 Oldsmobile Achieva, and a U-Haul trailer. We made it down there on our own, and moved into our new house in Pensacola. I had friends that lived there, so I wasn't completely alone, and I was also dealing with the death of a very close friend, which I haven't written about yet. At first living in Pensacola seemed so strange. But now, when I look back on it, it was the best decision I had ever made.

Ray called me every now and again. He found out I had landed an awesome job with an awesome company and kept making comments about "being proud" of me. While his praise used to be so important to me, after I moved to Pensacola it only annoyed me. We continued the sporadic phone contact for a few months until I met my husband. When Shawn and I decided to get married, we settled on a date and began making announcements. I must have called Ray to tell him, because he called me up on my birthday, which is, coincidentally, six days before my anniversary, and said, laughingly, "What's this about you getting married on my birthday?" This pissed me off more than words could say. It happened to be a major coincidence, nothing more, yet I was sure he was stroking his ego over it. (His birthday, and my wedding anniversary, is on May 24th. My birthday is May 18th.) So I replied, "You know, Ray, I wasn't even thinking of you, if you believe that. We coordinated our wedding around our work schedules and this is the most convenient time. It has nothing to do with you. And you know what? I don't think you should call me anymore. I really don't want you to." Stunned, he asked, "Is that what you want?" Looking at Shawn sitting next to me, I said, "Yes. That's exactly what I want."

I have not spoken to him since.

I wrote about this because I just wanted it to be in print how stupid I can be. How I will never be that stupid again. "Nobody's Fool" by Cinderella is not one of my favorite songs for nothing. I can't believe I spent all those years with Ray, vying for his attention, when I could have been with someone that appreciated me for me. Ray hated it that I was such a tomboy and tried to change me into some ultrafeminine goddess that I wasn't. The reason for this is clear to people who know him: he's a crossdresser. Yes, he really is. I am not speculating. I know. I knew within the first year of our relationship. He told me to my face and it was the weirdest, most fucked up conversation I ever had. I was only 22 and had very limited knowledge of myself so I thought I could easily handle it. I could not. It was more difficult than you could imagine. The shame and embarassment is only half the story. Since I have to be politically correct here, I will state that his crossdressing was a personal issue for me but I don't think all crossdressers are like him. Also, doesn't it seem pretty obvious? He wanted me to be what he himself could not be--- a feminine girl who uses tons of makeup, perfume, and whose outfit always always included a pair of black pantyhose. And I wanted him to be what he could not be, ever---a real man, in love with me.

I'm going to end this post with a couple of quotes, or sayings, that apply to it. First, as Garth Brooks said, "Thank God for unanswered prayers." Second of all, Semisonic hit the nail right on the head when they said, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

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