What is this Water Coming from My Eyes?

I finally broke down and cried the other day. It wasn’t a panic attack cry. Though, I do believe it was anxiety induced. It was more a culmination of a series of events that caused it and opened up my floodgates for a brief period. Really brief.  Like a flash flood and then it was gone. I was cleansed.

I used to date one of the guys I’m working with. He is the one that got me the job. I use the term “date” loosely. Very loosely. We used to fuck. And it was short lived because once he got what he wanted, he got lazy and thought he didn’t have to try any more. And with sex being within such easy reach, I decided I just wasn’t going to sleep with him anymore. But on occasion, when I was feeling like it, I’d still give him a BJ. Don’t ask me why. It really had more to do with me than with him, but I’m sure in his mind it was because he was manipulating our situation. He wasn’t. Sometimes I just want to do that and since the sex ended up being so one sided, I figured I could leave my clothes on and be just as satisfied, if I was going to be satisfied at all. So that became our pattern for a while, until that eventually slowed down, too, and we pretty much just became friends. Actual friends, like the kind of friends who can tell each other anything. He would tell me about some of his other sexploits and he would read about mine here with very little to no hard feelings.

Earlier this week, I went to his house on the way to work to pick him up because my boss asked me to. I walked in and he was still asleep so I went to his bedroom to wake him up and he was laying in the bed with someone else. It didn’t bother me at all. At first. And then as the day wore on it did for some reason, but, briefly,  just for a moment and then I was good. I just had to tell myself that he’s not what I want so why should I get upset if someone else wants to deal with his bullshit and selfish lovemaking? But after he found out I was upset, he started apologizing and offering to take me to dinner and THAT is when I just lost my shit and boohoo bawled. For about 20 seconds. My friends say that’s two hours in real people time, but it was more than enough for me because I don’t cry.

 Have you ever met one of those people who gets so mad they only have two outlets…..tears or physical violence? That was me. And I’m a pacifist. So I just cried. It was over before I even had a chance to think, “why the fuck are you crying over this narcissistic mother fucker?” I was still angry but, not because he was with someone else. That didn’t matter to me. How could it? Chances are I’ve been with more men since I’ve known him than he has been with women. Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m sure I’ve had more repeats because I’m a giver and he’s a taker and nobody wants repeats with a taker. Either way, I was angry because he thought inviting me to dinner would fix things. Or at least make him feel better about the situation that he really had no reason to feel bad about anyway.  The reason that it pissed me off so bad is because when we first met and “got together” I kept telling him I wanted to go out and go on a “real date” and he always had some excuse. But then he would tell me stories of how he was  at this restaurant or that restaurant or bars that I had suggested he and I go to, and he would take other people to those places. Or spend New Years with them. Or birthdays. Or any day. And it irritated me to no end. Again, I don’t know why, but he has a way of pushing me like nobody else can and not always in a good way.

 By the time our relationship had cooled, well, frozen, I didn’t even care about those things anymore because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we (he and I) would never be anything more than friends again and I was ok with that. But when he tried to console me, unnecessarily, for seeing him in the bed with another woman, by offering to take me out to the dinner that I wanted a year and a half ago, I literally saw myself walking through Home Depot looking for the perfect shovel and perusing Amazon for that pack of 25 plastic body bags I saw the other day. I don’t know why I even gave him the power to make me feel that way because I am a carefree, easygoing person most of the time and as I write this, that moment and all those feelings that I just described have passed and although we are not quite back to our version of “normal,” we are ok, but it was touch and go for a few hours and I was pretty certain I was going to have to find a new job or a good lawyer. Or both