It's becoming ever more clear to me that lust is Evil As Fuck.
I've decided to just call him "him" this time. All these relationships (see inventory) follow the same pattern. I'm tired of even making up names.
It all started when I was eight years old, when my mom took us three kids away and left my dad for her abuser. I was abandoned by my father, not by either of our choice. I watched my mother be abused by a drunk drug addict, as she retreated quietly into her own drugged up alcoholism behind a closed door - and I was abused by him, too, as was my brother. I tried to bond with my brother, to unite against the common enemy, but he avoided me when I desperately wanted his love; I was the annoying little sister. So, I teamed up with our younger sister instead, and we were nearly inseparable. But I made running away from home as frequent a habit as possible, without incurring too many beatings. I also withdrew into a fantasy world, of journals, and books, fabricating imaginary personas for people I had only met once, or only just read about - or even made up entirely - turning them into imaginary friends, and, not long after, imaginary lovers, upon whom I would fixate my entire existence.
Little did I know, this "life" template, forged at an early age, was to provide the very mold into which all of my subsequent "relationships" would be cast and dyed.
I developed my first real crush - on my brother's friend Noah - when I was nine. He was just some kid who was close to our camp site, one of the three or four camp sites from that summer of 1992, when we were homeless. My grandma (mom's mom) had had enough of Whatever-Name-I-Gave-Him's abuse, so she had kicked us out months prior. He couldn't hold down a job to keep the little house we were renting in Camino, CA, where I had attended my third school for 3rd grade. So, camping it was.
Camping was fun for me, actually. That's where my love of the wilderness and adventure irreparably fused itself to my soul. Then, after a few months, I really fell in "love". When I met Noah, he and my brother teased me, and Noah stole my hat, a black cap with different-colored plastic jewels all over it, from K-Mart. After I chased him through the woods to get it back, he tossed it to me with a conniving smile before going and catching back up to my brother. I kept that hat under my pillow for weeks, smelling it every so often, and thinking of him nearly every waking moment. I never saw Noah after that day, but he was the object of my first male fantasy obsession - with so many more to come.
When I finally got to see my dad again, a year-and-a-half after the separation, with no contact in between, I hardly recognized him. He was a stick figure, with a long beard and mustache - a little balding on the top of his head, but his hair was otherwise a bit long and shaggy - and he spoke fast with a lot of words; no one could really get anything in edgewise whenever he was talking about - whatever - at the Thanksgiving 1992 family reunion at grandma's (his mom's). Turns out, he was drugged-out on meth with his girlfriend - although, of course I didn't know that at the time. When I was twenty-five or so, I confronted my mother about her leaving my dad and inflicting such a gaping wound within me, and that's when she told me about his bankrupcy, his drug use, and the orgies.
Now my dad's girlfriend was a horrible, but very damaged person. She threw kittens at doors and plates at my dad's face - and she couldn't stand for me and my siblings to visit. She had lost her baby in a fire in Idaho, and was making up for that, I guess, with 12 dogs and 20 cats. She was angry, mean, sad, and usually high, from what I now reasonably deduce.
My brother was over the whole thing, from getting beaten by mom's boyfriend to getting verbally assaulted by dad's girlfriend, with neither parent protecting or really even present, so he just went and did heroin at his best friend's house before marrying his best friend's sister four years later after high school. I never saw much of him during those years, and even less after that. He now lives with her and their two kids in Ohio, where her dad bought them a house away from the drugs. He works at Ruby Tuesday's and drinks a lot of beer and smokes a lot of weed, and his wife thinks he's cheating on him. I read about it in her Facebook posts, but he and I still don't really talk. I can't remember the last time we did, or how many years it's been.
Back when we were 7 and 10, my sis and I would walk the two miles to the "city" bus stop (we were now living in an apartment with mom and her abuser in Bonsall, CA) to pay $1.10 to ride the bus the seven miles to Fallbrook where my sick dad lived with that sick woman, every two weeks or so. I fantasized about getting my dad's girlfriend and my mom's boyfriend together so they could (hopefully) kill each other.
Sometimes my dad would actually pick us up and let us ride in the flatbed of his toyota truck. He'd get us $.29 hamburgers if it was Tuesday, or $.39 cheeseburgers if it was Wednesday - at least during the summer. But he wasn't around much when we did visit, and there weren't any "I love you's" going around. Mostly my grandma would pick us up and take us to her and grandpa's 20 acres, and we enjoyed that immensely. My grandparents were extremely normal. He was a retired vet, chief civil engineer, and she was a dance instructor. They were beautiful together, and grew every plant and fruit tree from A to Z on the property, which had a lake perfect for summers, and a bomb shelter perfect for lighting spiders on fire. And they had a donkey, perfect for riding and getting bucked off; a male goat, perfect for running from for our lives; and chickens, perfect for chasing but never being able to catch. I wasn't the biggest fan of having to milk the female goat before sunrise and cleaning out the barn, shoveling shit into a wheelbarrow to go dump under the tangelo and sapote trees, but it was worth it.
We also enjoyed walking over to this Emmanuel Baptist Church when we could get out of going to dad's Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall. The Jehovah's Witnesses were so boring and old, and they made us wear dresses, which we didn't have since we were so poor, so some 16 year-old girl gave me some of hers that were way too big. Also, I had a grudge against the J.W.'s because they provided my dad the perfect excuse not to buy us Christmas or birthday presents.
During the J.W. service, my sister and I couldn't sit still, and we usually ended up sneaking out and running around outside, just so we wouldn't die of boredom or fall asleep. But the Baptists had Sunday school, and sang songs about this Jesus guy, whom the Jehovah's Witnesses didn't seem to care about too much. From what I could tell from the Baptists, though, he was a really nice shepherd dude who cared about all of his sheep. He would lead them through green pastures and next to streams and wouldn't let them go hungry or thirsty, or die. He just seemed like a really great guy. They said he loved us - something I didn't really know anything about. We loved the gummy bears, and Veggie Tales cartoons. And our Sunday school teacher, the pastor's wife, Mrs. Phipps, was just the sweetest old lady.
Back at the apartment in Bonsall, after months of this routine, I began to really struggle with the God idea. All these people had such different ideas about him, but they also claimed to be "right". I mean, both the J.W.'s and the Baptists really knew what they were talking about; they both said that what they were talking about was the Truth. Of course, I remembered reading about the dinosaurs, and the Earth being millions - billions - of years old. So, how could God have created it in 7 days? That was one of the few things they seemed to agree on - 7 days, and no dinosaurs. But the J.W.'s said that Jesus was God's son, who died on a stake, and was not to be worshipped. The Baptists, on the other hand, said that Jesus was God in the flesh, died on a cross, and they worshipped him, along with God. The J.W.'s said that after we died, we would all be resurrected and live in a paradise on Earth, as long as we believed that. The Baptists said we'd go to Heaven and be with Jesus, as long as we believed in him. It was all just too much. And besides - whoever God really was, if he actually loved me - then why the hell was my life so goddamn shitty?
So, I decided that God didn't exist when I was 10 years old. What became the most important thing to me were my intense, unavoidable, insatiable crushes on boys, plus an addiction to school where teachers loved me for getting straight A's - both of which I carried into adulthood, until I was finally married (to a man who died of a heart attack related to his alcohol and heroin addiction) and got through (most of) college. Then after the marriage was over and I dropped out of college for the last time, my obsession with men picked up with a vengeance - only, I was no longer a little girl in a fantasy realm (I had met my husband at age 18 - and now was age 28). I had grown legs and was venturing into a whole new (savage) world.
I'm 37 now - with nearly 10 years "out here" - and I only now deeply know, through individual and group therapy, on top of the AA and SLAA programs, and having finally and truly accepted Jesus Christ as my savior, getting to know Him more every day, thank God, that I have been, nearly all my life, trying - so powerlessly - to fill a God-shaped void created by the abandonment and neglect that I suffered from those who were supposed to love and protect me. For my entire adolescence, and adult life so far, I was trying to attach myself to a boy, a man, any male who would "love" me, even if it was only a fantasy. Along the way I was molested by various men - drug addicts at both my mom's apartment and my dad's house - and these acts of violence somehow wormed it's way into my psyche to manifest into rape fantasies, as I would wish these or other men would just come and take me away - until I was, finally, brutally bound, gagged and raped in 2014 at age 31.
When we fast-forward to my latest, albeit short, intimate relationship, it certainly fits the pattern to a T. It's especially fitting that he was 17 years my senior, and he was a Christian (he could "save" me); he appeared to want me, and he gave me attention (which I equate to "love"); and, we orchestrated a symphony of BDSM sexual encounters together, with him as the "top" and me as the "bottom" ("Yes - make me yours."). He was also insanely attractive (and attracted) to me, physically and spiritually, and we made each other laugh (he was the whole package).
But this time - and this has been happening since I accepted Jesus in 2013 - I was fighting the most intense of internal battles that I have ever experienced. This has been true spiritual warfare, in my opinion - but this time, the Devil didn't win.
When I read my 4th step relationship inventory to my sponsor, with the beginnings of my relationship with him on there, it was, clearly to her at least, a repeat of my pattern. She told me I needed to end it right away and not get into any more relationships.
Of course, I didn't listen. I was in love! And, then, after three months of getting to know each other - texting, sexting, talking, hanging out, fucking - I was so desperate for him to marry me (because of the sex and because of my abandonment / attachment issues), that I went completely insane and just totally blew up at him.
I tried to make amends, and thought everything would be okay, but when I told my A.A. sponsor about it, she told me that sponsoring me is like sponsoring someone who is still drinking - that I haven't changed any thing, and that I'm not doing any thing differently. So that's when I was finally willing to put an end to it - or at least, put on the brakes. I'm not seeing him now, and I’m going through some major withdrawal. It hurts like a motherfucker. But, I’m finally doing the work I need to do on myself, first.
They say, "It takes what it takes," and, "You're done when you're done," that "it's when you're sick and tired of being sick and tired." I can't stand the thought of never recovering from this insanity. This addiction. These issues. I can't stand the thought of, as my sponsor puts it, "never" being "the right person in any relationship," because I haven't done the work.
So, I'm giving it a shot - really, the best shot I've given it since accepting Jesus as my Man in 2013, when I went, I think, 63 days without sex. I'm staying single - and celibate - for an indeterminate amount of time, so I can heal my childhood wounds and finally enact some, hopefully, lasting change on this pattern of sex and love addiction that has affected my entire life and every relationship in it.
Amen!
Still I Rise
BY MAYA ANGELOU
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
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