This Time I Know It’s For Real

Today I have gone to a very dark place. Yesterday I was so tired from only getting a few hours sleep before my flight that I didn’t really have the ability to process what had happened.

I’m trying not to get caught in an infinite loop of self-destructive and self-hating thoughts, but it’s really hard. You would think that, as a sex worker, I would have some understanding and actually expect my clients to lie to me, wouldn’t you? I am, after all, selling a fantasy, not the truth. I must be the world’s most fucking gullible sex worker. I broke Rule Number One in the sex worker handbook:

Don’t Get Romantically Involved With A Client

And even though I knew it was fucked-up from the get-go to be interested in this guy because he’s a fucking client and because it was so unhealthily intense, I told myself that this time it would be different. This time it would be for real. This was it. This guy would love and understand me. We’d walk off into the sunset together. Even though I knew some things didn’t add up, even though I even found myself wondering “Is he just telling me what I want to hear?”, I refused to listen.

In a way, I feel violated, and exposed. I opened up to this guy because he read me so well, and told me exactly what I needed to hear to open up. I told him far too much about myself. He knew I was really vulnerable, and exploited that. I don’t know why it should still surprise me that there are people out there like this, but it does. I can’t imagine actively exploiting somebody’s else’s obvious weaknesses for my own selfish gain. This is just completely unbelievable, unimaginable behaviour.

I’ve been trying to make myself feel better by telling myself that he is, at the end of the day, the real loser in this situation. He’s a sociopath, and sociopaths have no conscience, and no ability to empathize with anybody. What an impoverished existence he must lead. How must it be to never be able to truly connect with people, or love? But thinking this doesn’t really help me because he can’t miss what he has never known, or never will know. I want him to suffer for what he did to me, and what he’s no doubt done to countless other women.

I hate myself for being so stupid, and it’s this gullibility which has left me feeling the most desperate today. I fucking know I’m a sex and love addict, and that I have horrible boundaries, but I still make the same mistakes over and over again. What good is it to attend Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings, and the local zen centre, if I fall at the first hurdle? I feel that I will never get better because I can’t trust myself to fucking remember (just fucking remember!) that I have a serious problem, and that I need help.

I am so alone, and I can’t stand being this way anymore. How can I stop myself from feeling this gut-wrenching void and emptiness inside? I’m scared I’ll never be able to.

This episode has also shown me that I need to get the hell out of the sex industry. The friend I’m visiting is scared for my physical safety, but, honestly, it’s my emotional safety that’s more in danger. Most of the men who use my services are broken in some way, and I just don’t want to be around that. I don’t want to be anywhere near their sickness. I want to meet happy, healthy people or at least people who are working on themselves so they can be that way.

I have painted myself into a corner, though. With so many pets, it would be impossible for me to find a cheaper place to stay, so most of my money goes on rent. My landlady is also cool with my having so many pets, and I would never find somebody like that again. I literally have to do erotic massage to survive and to find a way to save money so I have a little more financial stability. The only solution here would be to get rid of some of my pets, but I can’t do that. They’re like family. But I can’t keep on living the way I’m doing.

I took a train today for the first time in ages since there is not really a rail service where I live currently. I had the passing thought that I could throw myself on the tracks when the train arrived Anna Karenina-style. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live like this this either.

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Married Sociopath

I’m feeling a little shell-shocked right now – by my own stupidity and naïveté, and by the sheer mind-blowing badness of other human beings. I’m thousands of miles away from home, visiting a friend, and I’m trying not to let what happened ruin the trip.

I told my friend about the client, and she was not terribly happy given that she knows I met him through sex work. She’s right of course: hardly the best way to meet a decent man. I showed her a YouTube video of the dude I had managed to unearth during one of my googling frenzies, and she pointed out that he was wearing a wedding ring. I looked a little closer, and she was right!

The YouTube video had been posted a few years ago, so she said “Well, maybe he was married back then, but isn’t now.” Well, true, but this guy had never mentioned being married as recently as 2008. He said he was married once before, but got divorced in his early thirties – a long time ago given that he’s now forty-seven. No other wife was ever mentioned.

A few more quick google searches unearthed the Facebook profile of somebody who is very probably his wife. Also, some things he said just didn’t add up at all. Yup, the dude is married. No doubt about it.

I almost feel like he was fucking “grooming” me for an affair. For example, he made a point of talking about the long, long hours he works. Of course he did! That way when we finally ended up shagging, he would have the perfect excuse for not being available all the time. I made myself vulnerable by telling him a lot of stuff about my personal life, and I think he pegged me as an easy victim. His strategy was to pretend that he, too, had had a crappy childhood and felt lonely, and disconnected from people. He seemed so kind, understanding and empathic. That stuff I wrote about us having a “trauma bond“….man, there wasn’t any fucking trauma bond between us. But he sussed that I wanted there to be, so he sucked me in by creating one. I’ve got to hand it to him, the dude is good.

I’m flabbergasted. I just don’t understand some people. Why would you deliberately lie to your wife, and then lie to some obviously very vulnerable other woman to get into her knickers?  It’s fucking sick. I can’t imagine ever being such a manipulative liar. People like this scare me. They’re sociopaths.

Worse than that, though, I scare myself. My terrible loneliness and desperate need for love and affection are making me very vulnerable and putting me in lots of potentially dangerous situations. It’s happening all the fucking time now.  I can’t trust myself anymore. If I’m not romantically interested in a person, I usually have very good instincts, but as soon as I get interested in somebody emotionally and sexually my instincts go completely out of the window. I only see and hear what I want to hear; if I don’t like what I see or hear, I manage to rationalize my doubt away, and if I don’t hear or see anything I want, I just make up some little romantic fantasy to fill in the blanks.

In the shower this morning, I asked my Higher Power to not let me obsess over this guy. Well, I guess my Higher Power answered my prayers – just not quite in the way I had expected.

Oh well. Back to the SLAA drawing board for me. It’s pretty clear that I cannot be trusted to be within a hundred-mile radius of any man.

I am grateful, though. Grateful for the fucking internet which allowed me to get the better of this dude before he got the better of me.

I’m also grateful for my observant friend here who saved me a whole lot of grief – and for my friend back home who pointed out sardonically how much erotic massage money I lost by developing a romantic interest in this guy. They have both helped stopped me from going to a really dark place.

When The Spell Is Broken

Caveat: I’m tired, suffering from terrible allergies, have swallowed a couple of antihistamines, and am also a wee bit tipsy. In other words, this might not be the world’s greatest blog post.

So, a wee update on the situation with the Arab. Yesterday I spent the whole day at work chatting with him. I had told myself when I arrived at work at 8:00 a.m. that I would not contact him until 4:00 p.m. because I knew I’d get no work done if I contacted him before that. I lasted until 9:30 a.m., and then I just couldn’t stop myself from responding to the chats he’d sent me while I was gone from work for a couple of days. I can’t believe that there are some psychiatrists out there who argue that Sex and Love Addiction is not a real addiction. Sometimes nothing -absolutely nothing – can stop me from getting my next “love hit”.

I hung on his every word, and could not wait until I received a reply to every chat. I always leave work at 5:00 p.m., and by 4:50 p.m. there was still no mention of the date we were supposed to be having this weekend. I flirtily asked him when we would be getting together (“It’s rude to keep a lady waiting, you know!”) and he told me that he couldn’t see me this weekend since he was going to a music festival. I was furious because we had – so I thought anyway – agreed to see each other this weekend. It turns out that we’d never actually chosen a specific day/time for the date (I looked back over the chat history to confirm this), so I assume I had just fantasized about him so much that a daydream about a Saturday night date became a reality in my head.

Nonetheless, he had told me that the date would be this week – and yet there was not a peep out of him about when this would be. I was off work on Monday and Tuesday, so he couldn’t contact me to arrange a date on those nights, so he has an excuse. But what about all the other nights this week? Apparently he was already busy.

What kind of guy agrees to go on a date with a woman one week, and then doesn’t mention it at all when that week finally comes around? Now, I know that a lot of people are oh so casual and flakey when it comes to keeping engagements these days. I’m guilty of that myself with casual acquaintances – I’ll say “Oh, yeah, let’s get a drink next Thursday maybe” and then next Thursday comes around and nobody mentions it again. But I have never told somebody that we will go on a date, and then never broached the topic again. That is just plain obnoxious.

I don’t know what this guy’s deal is. I assume he’s a bit of a player; that’s he’s probably dating a couple of women casually already and that I’m maybe just an interesting back-up option. His casual attitude betrays the fact that I mean nothing to him. Absolutely nothing.

This is, I hasten to mention, the second time he has blown me off. The first time, a couple of months ago, I told him I wasn’t really ready to date anybody but at some point we decided to grab a drink. This was supposed to be just a “friendly” drink, not a date, but it was pretty obvious that it was more than that, and that we’d be scoping each other out. On this occasion, I actually did suggest a specific night the following week, and he agreed. That Tuesday I asked him “So, are you still up for a drink on Thursday”. He told me “Oh, let me get back to you”. Did he ever get back to me? What do you think?

Right now, the spell has well and truly been broken. I can see clearly that this guy is no good. I deserve to be asked on a date by somebody who is genuinely interested in me – somebody who’s excited about spending time with me, and getting to know me more.

It doesn’t hurt me that the spell has been broken. No major harm has been done. Hell, I haven’t even met the Arab yet. He’s not really a real person – he’s an interesting OKCupid profile with some cute pictures; he’s the guy I iMessage at work; he’s the one I caught a glimpse of when I was out running and said hi to. We never spent hours together in person; we never fucked; he never promised me anything. Sure, I fantasized about him, but over so short a period that there was never a chance for his image to be carved into every one of my thoughts for months on end.

Despite all this, though, I wanted to scream when it became apparent yesterday just how unimportant I am to him.  I can’t begin to describe the feeling of despair and sheer desolation I felt. It’s all a memory now, but it was very real yesterday.  I wasn’t suicidal, but life just felt so fucking empty and pointless.

And that, dear readers, is why I am an addict, and why I need help. A momentary iMessage dalliance with a stupid immature player makes me spiral down into despair and self-loathing.

It’s clear from this little escapade that I still can’t be trusted to stay away from people who are no good for me. So, when I tell you that I won’t be contacting the Arab again, you probably won’t believe me. Send out a little prayer for me, eh? Pray that I’ll finally be able to love myself and only surround myself with people who care for me and want the best for me.

Black & White

The more I learn about addiction, the more I learn that behaviours I thought were unique to me are quintessential addict behaviours. “Black or white” thinking or “all or nothing” thinking would be a perfect example here.

Between the ages of maybe fourteen and twenty-one, I suffered intermittently from bulimia. It started, I think, as a way to deal with living with my extremely controlling and verbally abusive mother. She knew I had a problem, by the way, but did absolutely nothing to help. I would binge in secret when she went to bed, but she soon noticed that the snack cupboard was running low. One of the few times she ever really acknowledged my bulimia was to announce in a disgusted tone one evening that “I’m off to bed now, and you’d better not be stuffing your fucking face”.

My bulimia was particularly bad when I was twenty/twenty-one and was having a “year out” from university in France. I can still remember the utter torture and self-hatred I experienced during that time because I was so obsessed with food. I wasn’t overweight at all, but I wanted to lose ten pounds for some reason, and with typical bulimic logic I decided that a normal diet was not for me. I thought I was too fat to wait to lose weight by dieting normally. My bright spark idea was to starve myself completely for one whole week and then – only then! – would I allow myself to diet normally. Of course the one-week starvation never happened. What happened instead is that every night I would promise myself that tomorrow (oh, tomorrow!) would be the first day of The Big Starvation, but I would be lucky if I made it to noon the next day before I broke my vow. My poor body was so undernourished and my poor brain so obsessed with food that I would gorge myself on whatever I could find – usually high-calorie, simple carb foods because my body badly needed the energy. And then, of course, I would make myself puke and utterly hate myself.

This pattern went on for God knows how long. I never cease to be amazed by just how fucking long I am able to cling to a terrible, terrible idea that is clearly not working. You’d have thought I might have cottoned on earlier that the Big Starvation wasn’t really the way to go, but oh no – I kept on trying to starve myself, and feeling like a pathetic failure when I couldn’t.

I never sought any medical help for what I was going through. In fact, I didn’t really realize that I was bulimic until years later. I thought that my problem was just a lack of willpower. One day, however, I’d finally had enough. I’ve always been a feminist, and I began to realize just how much of my beautiful woman’s brain and energy were being consumed by thoughts of food, weight and body image issues. I would be returning to the “Motherland” soon, and going in to my third year of university, and I knew that I’d never be able to study and achieve all my goals if my life revolved around food.

It was incredibly hard at first, but I made myself sit down every day and have three healthy, filling meals. My body and brain were soon properly nourished again, and all my cravings for simple carbs disappeared. I hesitate to say that I was “cured” of bulimia, as I believe that I probably now suffer from body dysmorphic disorder, but I now never diet; I just listen to what my body needs and I never deprive it of anything. If I want chocolate, hell, I’m going to have some. Everything in moderation! As long as I exercise regularly, I can keep all food obsessions away.

Since I have such a chequered history with setting rules for myself that I can never live up to, I must admit that I am a little nervous about my SLAA “bottom lines“. When I broke some of my bottom lines last week when I flirted with The Arab, there was a part of me that said: “Ha! See, SLAA: you can’t tell me what to do!”. I have an urge to rebel against any goals I set for myself no matter how good for me they might be.

Many of the women in SLAA have taken up to two years off from dating, and it is definitely recommended that you have a period of abstinence when you first start the program. I do agree that I shouldn’t be in a relationship right now, but, really, no dating at all this year? I’m scared that by telling myself that I can’t date that I’ll just go ahead and do it anyway. Maybe that’s what this thing with the Arab is all about? Would it really be so wrong of me to go on an occasional date with somebody to learn how to have good boundaries and not rush into a relationship all guns a blazin’?

It’s hard to know. It’s also possible that my desire to “socialize” myself with healthy dating is really just the addict in me using a lot of clever reasoning to justify still being around men.

Handing It Over

The good thing about getting older is that I’ve learned what my bad patterns and habits are. Unfortunately, there is a huge difference between knowing what they are, and knowing how to stay the fuck away from people/situations that trigger my patterns and habits.

This is just a fancier way of saying that I will still be going on a date with the Arab (which is not good) but I’ve more or less stopped obsessing about him constantly (which is good). When I start to obsess about him, I know I’m doing it, and I’m able to get outside my head a little and observe the obsession, and ask myself what it means.

The only downside to this is that I then start to obsess about the fact that I’m obsessing, if that makes sense. I’ll catch myself obsessing, and then I’ll try to think and analyze my way out of it. For most situations in life, I would say that intelligence and intellect come in handy, but I’ve learned the hard way that both these attributes are utterly fucking useless when it comes to addiction and obsession. You absolutely cannot think yourself better.

A few days ago I found myself on my meditation cushion obsessing about the Arab; and then I found myself obsessing about the obsession, beating myself up for not being able to control my thoughts better. I was disconsolate, but then I decided to ask God/My Higher Power/the Universe – whatever the hell you want to call it – to take this obsession away. I actually spoke the words out loud. There wasn’t a huge flash of lightening, and the obsessive thoughts in my head didn’t – poof! – disappear to be replaced for evermore by serene, happy ones. But my thoughts did quieten down considerably.

This is what people mean by “letting go”, I guess, and by “handing it over to your Higher Power”. Before I truly understood what “handing it over” meant, I always thought it was a bit of a cop-out really. It seemed to me to be just an excuse for bad behaviour, a way not to take responsibility for yourself. I still think that sometimes but, honestly, I’ve reached a point where I don’t really fucking care about the million and one intellectual arguments I could come up with against the concept of “handing it over”. I’ve reached rock bottom, and I have no option but to try it.

The interesting thing about the situation with the Arab is that I’ve spiralled in and out of obsession with him for about three months now. There was a time when I’d come into work, and I’d be literally holding my breath as I logged into my computer to see whether he’d chatted me yet. If I did receive a chat message from him, I would then spend ages agonizing over what would be an appropriate amount of time to wait before chatting back. At a certain point, however, I lost interest in him, and the obsession disappeared. The fact that it has ebbed and waned has taught me that it is not fucking real. I am not genuinely interested in him as a person.

What is it then that I get out of these obsessions? It’s hard to say exactly but I guess I use certain men the way alcoholics use booze – to forget about the present moment. Most of the strongest obsessions I’ve had have been with men who have something about them that hints at adventure and excitement  – something that allows me to escape from the humdrum drudgery of my daily life.  I wasn’t obsessed with MM because, well, it’s hard to get lost in a fantasy about somebody where you are whisked off to the…..Midwest. But, well, the Arab….I see myself flying myself flying across the Sahara with him on horseback, his dark eyes flashing in the sunlight.

Keep in mind that the dude, like me, works in a fucking cubicle, but that little inconvenient fact doesn’t get in the way of my obsessive thoughts. Poor guy. When I think about how much I’ve built him up and how much he’s going to disappoint me when we finally meet, I actually feel sorry for him.

It makes me sad that I am not able to connect with men (or at least those men who are potential love interests) as real human beings. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have a committed, honest, open relationship?

I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is that right now I am going to meditate for thirty minutes and put all such thoughts out of my head.

Arabian Nights

In the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous “big book”, it states that “many of us suspected or realized that we would need an indefinite period alone in which to learn to understand and deal with our disease” (Step 1 – p73). Most of the women who attend the SLAA meeting I go to are doing exactly that or, if they have a bit of recovery behind them, and have started to date again, they’re taking it really, really slowly.

My intention for 2013 was/is not to date at all, and I certainly was not attempting to meet men, or to put myself in situations that could lead to that. I was/am fine just being by myself. After the break-up with MM, I did have an OKCupid account briefly, and went on maybe three dates, but I decided I’d rather put my energy and time in more valuable places. I can’t say I even missed men, dating or sex. Cross my heart, and hope to die, I was totally fine with this.

That was until I met the Arab.

The Arab messaged me on OKCupid in early December just as I had realized it was stupid to be on that site. It turns out that we actually work at the same company (it’s a big place – thousands of employees), and that he had seen me in the café (I had never seen him) and recognized me when he saw my OKCupid profile. Despite the fact that he seemed interesting and extremely good-looking in his profile, I just wasn’t into the idea of dating anybody. I decided that I would reply to his message since it would be awkward if we bumped into each other at work, but I went on vacation for my birthday and never got around to it. When I got back, he had deleted his profile.

I should also point out that I had googled his name before going on vacation, and found pictures of him playing in his band in which he was nowhere near as hot as he appeared in his OKCupid Profile. In fact, he looked kinda chubby, and his hair was awful. As much as I would like to pretend that my lack of interest in him was because I’d embarked on a spiritual journey, it was more because I wasn’t sexually attracted to him from those pictures.

The fact that he’d deleted his profile should have warned me that the Universe did not want me to contact him. But did it? Nope. Still worried that I’d bump into him at work, and that he’d feel I’d snubbed him, I reached out via the office Chat system to say hi. I know you’re probably thinking that l’il addict me was using the fact that we worked together as an excuse to contact him, but I assure you this is not the case. He just seemed like a nice guy, and I didn’t want him to feel rejected.

We chatted back and forth, and I was my typical flirty self. In fact, I am so flirty via Chats that I’ve had to make this one of my bottom lines. I guess I got a little bit addicted to the flirtation, and I had hooked him, too. By this point, I had also googled him a little more and discovered more recent pictures of him where he was every bit as fucking hot in them as he was in his OKCupid Profile. I guess he’s lost weight and got a way better hair cut in recent years.

I was now seriously considering dating him, but I couldn’t help but feel that he was bad news. American chicks in this town go crazy over foreign guys, even if they’re fugly, and here he was – 6’1″ of yummy Algerian goodness. I’m sure he’s used to getting a lot of female attention and being able to pick off the cream of the crop. And, well, Arab men don’t exactly have the best reputation. Yeah, hell, sue me for having racist preconceptions, but, well, from my own personal observations, I would say that most Arab men really like the ladies. I got the vibe he was a player.

He added fuel to the fire when he asked me one time via Chat if I had a porch. “Um, yeah”, I said, wondering where the hell this was going. He then suggested he could come round and drink wine on my porch! Helloooooo?! Keep in mind that I have actually never met this guy. I’m sure as hell not going to be asking a strange man to my house to drink wine on my porch. Even with my incredibly poor boundaries, I could tell he’d overstepped the mark there. Also, “let me come round and drink wine on your porch” seemed like guy speak for “Let me come round and fuck you”. Whatever happened to taking a woman out on a proper date, huh?

I lost interest in him after this, although I was a teeny bit obsessed with him, and looked forward to our flirty chats. I quickly stopped contacting him, however, because one of my goals in SLAA is not to get involved in romantic intrigue. Weeks would go by without him contacting me, but he would pop up from time to time, asking me out most times. I demurred, telling him that I wasn’t ready to date anybody yet. I should have said “I’m not going to date anybody this year at all”, but instead I told him that I wanted to wait until after my divorce was finalized to start dating again. I suppose I didn’t want to burn my bridges with him completely.

I don’t know what happened (was I ovulating?) but when he contacted me again this week, I was ripe for the picking. I couldn’t stop myself from flirting with him via Chat but, even then, I wasn’t planning on taking it any further. But then (horror of horrors!) I actually bumped into him while I was running outside work. I didn’t stop to talk, as I was all sweaty and in a hurry to get back to work, but, oh, I got a good look at him alright – and I liked what I saw! Goddamn the boy is hot. There was no holding me back after that, and I agreed to go out on a date with him next week.

Since then I’ve completely fallen off the SLAA wagon. I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. googling the shit out of him, and trying to find out as much as I can. He has been the centre of all my romantic and sexual fantasies. In them, there’s lot of hot fucking, and we’re already married, and our kids all speak Arabic, French and English fluently. Oh, yeah, did I mention he’s North African and therefore fluent in Arabic and French? Since I speak French, he’ll tell me things like “J’adore tes super grands yeux bleus, ta sourire, tes cheveux courts…(I love your super big blue eyes, your smile, your short hair”; “tu es très attirante” (you are very attractive). Ugh! How to resist sweet-nothings in French?! How?!

Why did this have to happen? I was sooooo not fucking looking to date anybody. I was fine with living a quiet life. But, well, I guess deep-down that I wasn’t because I fell at the very first hurdle. I’m sure that my sponsor and all of you will tell me not to go on that date next week but, oh, I’m going.

And just in case you think it might be alright to date him, let me give you two more reasons why it’s an awful idea.

(1) Bizarrely, in 2006 or 2007, it turns out that I went on a date with his old roommate/friend. He is from the same country, and has the exact same name. It was only one date (he was too young for me, I felt) but we did make out passionately in his car. What guy wants to think that the girl he’s dating has already had a dalliance with a friend of his? Maybe American/European guys would be OK with this, but (again with my preconceived notions of Arab men) I can’t help but feel that this guy might not be cool with it. Maybe he thinks that I’m a complete slut.

(2) He befriended me on Facebook, and when I looked at his pictures, there was one of him standing with a friend of his who, a few years ago, was one of my sensual massage clients. I have no idea how good of a friend this guy is, but how fucking awkward is that? What if I meet this guy and his wife? What if the Arab knows all about my nice little sideline in handjobs and again thinks that I’m just an easy lay.

What the fuck am I doing? Why did this have to happen? Why can’t I just stay away from this guy? What happened to being all spiritual and zen?

Broken

I’m probably not going to have much time to write in here for the next five weeks. Tomorrow I start an intensive outpatient Dialectical Behavior Therapy course. It’s every Monday through Thursday, from 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. Given that I start work at 8:00 a.m. and only finish at 5:00 pm., it’s going to be pretty exhausting. I have self-diagnosed as suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder, and DBT is supposed to be really effective for treating that. Even if I don’t have BPD, it would still be good to learn not to, um, smash shit, hit my loved ones and verbally abuse them when I’m stressed or angry. Both my therapist and my psychiatrist think it would be a good idea to do this course. I’m wondering if I’ve made a huge mistake, though, because I have a hard enough time as it is getting through the week without adding twelve-hours of intensive therapy into the mix. Also, I am feeling pretty fine at the moment. But that is always my pattern – I have one huge crisis, where my world feels like it’s ending, and then I coast along just fine until the next crisis. When I’m coasting I never feel like there’s anything wrong with me.

Intensive therapy aside what else have I been up to? Well, I had fun this week with my friends, seeing lots of music. I went out more times this week than I would do in a whole six month period while I was still living with MM. I’m completely sleep-deprived, but it was worth it. I also went out on a date with a cute Chilean-American journalist I met on OKCupid who is very interesting –  tall; handsome; creative; funny; educated; a runner; well-traveled; bi-cultural; bilingual etc etc. He is, in other words, the opposite of RG in most ways and yet…I still long for RG.

Speaking of RG, we have started shagging again. But don’t worry – it’s all good. I’m much calmer this time around. It turns out there actually was something he wanted to invite me to after all. We went to a barbecue last night together, and I was supposed to attend a fashion show he was doing the make-up for today but couldn’t because I had to work. I don’t know what these invitations mean. Honestly, I think I’m done analyzing the shit out of everything. I just don’t have the energy.

I started to look at our “relationship” in a whole new light earlier this week when he responded to one of my booty-call texts by saying “Im a mess dont know if i want you to see me this way”. It wasn’t like I didn’t know he was a raging alcoholic before this text. I knew rationally that he couldn’t be present for me because of his alcoholism but somehow that text brought it all home. I felt quite guilty, to be honest…like I’d been trying to take advantage of a sick person. Because, well, he is a sick person. We stayed up talking all night on Friday (didn’t even shag until much later!) and we didn’t start to go to bed until 8:00 a.m. He actually went off then to buy some cheap and nasty gas station wine so he could get to sleep. At 8:00 a.m! Jesus. What a way to start your day.

I don’t know how it is possible to care for somebody I have only known for a couple of months, but, well, care I do. Of course, there is still a huge part of me that wants him to want me/love me, but I can genuinely say now that I just want him to get better. Not for me, not because I have this fantasy that we’ll fall hopelessly in love if he gets better (although there is a wee bit of that) , but for himself. He’s talking about moving back to Colorado to live with a friend he can start a (legit, non-druggy) business with who’s also a teetotaller. I think this would be a great idea because I don’t know how on earth he can possibly hope to get sober while he sells weed and lives right around the corner from the local bar. When he talks about moving away, there is this little voice inside me that says “No! Don’t leave! No! Not yet!” but I know it’s what he needs to do, and I will encourage him. I just can’t stand to see another human being suffer in front of my eyes. He says he’s hardly ever had sober sex in his life! Wow! I can’t imagine being that cut off from my emotions. He is so broken. He needs to heal.

I feel that something changed in me this week as regards RG. I will continue to long for his attention, his affection, his love, but somehow my lust has changed into something sweeter and more tender…friendship, I guess. I’m not saying that I won’t ever shag him again (hell, I ain’t Jesus) but I just want to treat him well, and not make him the brunt of my love addicted obsession.

This might be weird given how much I’ve bitched about RG in this blog, but send a wee prayer out for him tonight, will you? He’s not an angel, but I hate to see him in this much pain.