The Tech Support iPhone Guy and the Music Students

On the night of January 15, 2015, around 2 am, I awoke in bed, writhing in pain, consumed by an unearthly darkness that was attacking me from the inside. I couldn't breathe, and therefore I couldn't scream. My attempts to do so emanated in deep growls.

Before I continue to explain what happened that night, let me go back to August 1, 2014, when I had posted part 9 describing the end of the relationship with Jason. I went back him a week later, so, I stopped posting. This addiction is cunning, baffling, powerful...and embarrassing.

Then, in September, I was granted full custody of my son because his father relapsed on heroin, and Child Welfare Services got involved. That did finally spell the end of the relationship with Jason. I told him I could only handle raising one child, and hardly that. He ended it, because he couldn't have all of my attention any more.  I thank God, Who did for me what I couldn't do for myself.

But of course, along came #32, the Tech Support iPhone Guy, who offered to trade me his iPhone 5S for a kiss, took me out on a date, and then got me into a lot of incomprehensible demoralization. Any time my son was at school or with his grandma was fair game for him to demand I see him. Our activities ultimately left me in so much physical pain that I couldn't even have sex for a week...and the emotional pain had been mounting....so, I was able to end our little three-week stint. It's a good thing, because if we'd gotten caught having sex in his office, we'd have both been fired (we work at the same place, by the way!).

Then came #33, the Christian Latino Music Student ("Carlito") who had started poking me on facebook once my relationship status changed on October 1 (#32 had come after me on facebook, too). I think we got to something like 344 facebook pokes before I decided I wanted to try to be a grown-up and actually meet him for lunches and dinners. So we did that, and I also started going to his church on Saturday nights where he played bass in the band, and I started getting close to Jesus again, even though I was really there for Carlito.

#34 came about a month later (the Atheist Latino Music Student, "Rodrigo"). He was a mutual friend of Carlito's, and also a friend of mine on facebook. He offered to help me move into my new apartment the second week of November when I posted that I was packing, and moving, and lonely. I accepted. My son was having a supervised visit with his drunk dad (I had breathalyzed him, and he was at .08, but the court had mandated that he get six hours per week supervised by his mom, regardless), and I was depressed.

The sexual tension with Rodrigo that night was palpable. Nothing "happened" other than the move, a dinner at Robertito's, candid conversation, and a game of Headbanz riddled with sexual innuendo. But after a few days of texting-turned-sexting, he said that friends with benefits can be fun, and we should do it. And in response to my concern about "seeing" him and Carlito at the same time, he proposed, "¿Por qué no los dos?"

I was out at dinner with Carlito the next Saturday after church. I had had sex with Rodrigo earlier in the day, (I began allowing longer supervised visits for my son and his dad to allow myself to see these men). I was showing Carlito a video of something on my phone when a text came in from Rodrigo: "You drained me good."

It was a terribly awkward moment for me and Carlito, and my heart sank. I had been trying to give Carlito the impression that I was a sinner, yes, but repentant, and of course I hadn't told him about me and Rodrigo. I'm pretty sure his heart sank, too. We were both silent as I drew my phone back into my lap. We both looked down at our food and took a few more bites before he suggested we go.

There was some meaningless conversation in his car on other subjects as he drove us back to the church parking lot. He parked, and that's where he said, "So, Rodrigo, huh?"

I broke down crying. I explained how Rodrigo helped me move and suggested we become friends with benefits, and I didn't want to say yes, but that he was really pushy, so yeah, that's what was going on.

Carlito wiped away my tears and in our closeness, we kissed. It accelerated quickly, and his tone changed from the soothing, calm one of a man who cared to the prompting one of a man turned on, and he asked me if I wanted him. I said I did. He ended up fingering me for an hour, taking me to total ecstasy (and getting my entire long skirt wet), and then we drove back to my place in separate cars and had the most passionate, amazing sex I've ever had, for another three. He stayed with me for awhile after but left early in the morning; both he and Rodrigo lived at home with single mom and parents, respectively, and both had a thing about being back before mom woke up, apparently.

Being a Christian, Carlito repented. When we saw each other after that, he denied me, each time. I would try to hug or kiss him, and he would pull away. I told him I wanted us to date, but he said there's only one reason Christians date, and that's to lead to marriage. He said he was considering me for marriage before he found out about Rodrigo, but that, since he had been cheated on by every other girl he's been with (two), with what happened with me, he just didn't think he could date me.

No words can tell of the bitter morass of self pity in which I came to wallow.

When I told Rodrigo about my having sex with Carlito, he said he didn't want to share me after all, and that he was going to make me his. But I decided I needed to end it with both of them. I tried to end it with Rodrigo via text, and he told me to not text him again or he'd punish me worse than he all ready was going to, that I was his and he takes what's his, and to expect him the next night at my apartment because he was going to be there at 9 pm. I didn't text him for fear of what he had planned, and I went and hid at my neighbor Melissa's house that night, watching for his car to go by. At 9:30, there was no sign of him, so I walked down my street to my apartment, thinking I had dodged a bullet. 15 minutes later, he showed up.

Rodrigo blindfolded me, tied me up, and pierced both of my nipples (his own penis was pierced, by the way -  a Prince Albert). He said I was lucky that I did as he said and didn't text him, because otherwise it was going to be a lot worse. As it turned out, Rodrigo was a stigmatophiliac and even more into BDSM than #32.

I drove 600 miles to visit my sister for Thanksgiving a few days later, by myself, leaving my son with his grandma because he was sick. While there, I ended up texting Carlito and Rodrigo the whole time, even though every day I "tried not to".

On my way home, I had a "God moment" while driving through Monitor Pass in the Sierra Nevada on the 89. I pulled over to watch the sun rise for two hours. It was stunningly beautiful up there alone. I decided I just wanted to be with Him and didn't want to return to the "life" I was living back home. I begged Him to please just take me, as I drove the hundreds of miles back. But, to my dismay, He didn't. For a solid week therafter I still wanted to die. The world became gray, and I was numb to the ugly lot of it.

I checked all the "wrong" boxes when I went to a pulmonologist (I had also been sick, physically, for two months; I couldn't stop coughing, and enough was enough). I was honest when filling out the new patient questionnaires, and the secretary handed me an extra form to fill out about suicidal depression. Once I turned it over to her, she made a call, said something about an APB, and they rushed me into the back room where they said to wait for the doctor, who'd "be right in, so don't go any where". Uh oh.

I called my AA sponsor and confessed to her that I admitted to being suicidal on the intake questionnaire at the doctor's office. She told me that if I better get honest, because if I really was suicidal she was going to come right down and take me to lock-up herself (I had chosen her to sponsor me because her daughter had committed suicide a couple years prior, and she maintained her two decades of sobriety through it - I had needed someone whom I could talk to about Margo, my friend who took her life on November 12, 2013, who I now envied).

I told her that even though I couldn't stand being alive, I would never kill myself. Then I cried, and assured her I'd do everything I could to get better.

The doctor came in, and I reassured him that I wasn't going to kill myself, that I was just going through some things and it's normal for us recovering alcoholics to feel this way every once in awhile. He conceded to the proposition that it was simply a situational depression due to the goings on in my life - the relationship ending, the ex-husband relapsing and me getting full custody of my son who cried for his dad daily and said he hated me, the not getting to go back to school and losing that validation, the being evicted due to the upcoming remodeling of the 1949 family estate and having to move to an apartment I could hardly afford, and the involvement with men in ways that made me hate myself - and so he decided not to prescribe me anything other than an inhaler for my cough, and he put in an order for a pulmonary exam and chest x-ray.

I started going to more AA meetings, and after a couple weeks I didn't want to die any more. But I was still depressed. On December 13, 2014 I was going to go out on a date with a guy who would have been #35, but Rodrigo whined about it, so we got into an exclusive relationship.

I now was deep in the throes of my sex/"love" addiction with Rodrigo, and yet still obsessed with Carlito (I couldn't get over him). I felt like a colossal failure.

The week between Christmas and the New Year, Rodrigo was in Chicago visiting a friend of his, and on New Year's Eve he texted me he loved me. I was shocked, and didn't really believe him, but decided to go with it, and eventually responded that I loved him, too, even though I didn't really believe that, either. I told him I wanted to pick him up from the airport when he returned in a few days. He said he would love that.

But, the day before his return, when I reminded him of the above, he said he hadn't talked to his dad yet, who was planning on picking him up. Rodrigo didn't want his family to know about me, and so he didn't want me to pick him up, after all.

I still ended up going to the airport, hiding from anyone who resembled the picture of Rodrigo's dad that I had gotten off of facebook, and I surprised Rodrigo with a quick kiss when he got to baggage claim before I took off.

When I was walking to the parking lot from the airport, I realized I was, in fact, completely insane.

But, it wasn't until a week later, when Rodrigo blindfolded me and tied me up and pierced my vagina (the pain of which made me faint, throw up, and shit all over the couch all at the same time) that I really began to come to my senses. Of course, however, Rodrigo pierced me in the wrong place. A few days later he wanted to take me to get it professionally done. He kept needing to mark me his, but he conceded that he ought to leave my vagina to the professionals, perhaps.

The professional guy did two piercings - a "VCH" and a "Triangle" - and he re-did my belly button, which used to be pierced before I had a kid.

Finally, I was in too much pain to have sex again (like after #32)...but Rodrigo and I still had sex right when we got back to my apartment, despite my vagina having just been pierced three times in the past week, and bleeding - and not in the way vaginas are supposed to bleed.

I was glad that he decided, afterwards, that we should wait until it healed. He couldn't quite slam into me the way he normally liked to.

The one-year anniversary of my baptism was on January 12, 2015, and January 13 was the day of church's baptism renewal ceremony (the Methodist church recognizes Jesus' baptism each year with a baptism renewal for its members, and the year prior I had picked the celebration of Jesus' baptism as my baptism date, so it's especially special for me).

I wept uncontrollably as I dipped my fingers in the bowl and touched them to my forehead under the cross. I found myself saying, "Get behind me, Satan - you are a liar, and the father of lies!" I'm sure people looked at me as if I were crazy. And in fact, I was.

For the rest of the day, any time I wanted to text Rodrigo, the voice came again, "Get behind me, Satan!" And I would have the strength to not text him. I began to hit my knees in prayer at various times throughout the day. Then the next day, January 14, I began with prayer in the morning, then the urge to text him would come but so would a voice, "Lord, cast him out of me!" I went throughout my day with supplication and prayer, asking God to please remove this evil that I sensed was pulling me towards Rodrigo. I hit my knees before bed, and the early morning of January 15, around 2 am, I awoke, possessed.

After my writihing in pain and being choked by utter evil, with all the strength I could muster, something finally came out of my mouth in a loud, low, demonic-sounding growl, with my back arched: "CAAAASSSSSTTT HIIIMMMMM OOOUUUUTTT!!!"

Suddenly, a clean wind blew through me, and I breathed in a deep breath that I instantly recognized as the Holy Spirit.

The demon was gone.

I fell out of bed onto my knees and crawled to my window, weeping and kneeling under the open curtains between me and the stars in utter humility, unable to even express my gratitude to God. Once I had spent myself in my prayer of thanksgiving, I went back to bed.

When I woke up in the morning, I saw that my curtains were closed, and only then did I know it had been a dream.

I hit my knees and wept.

I wept for Margo. I wept because, for over a year since her death, I had been trying to cover up the pain of her death, with men.

And I wept for my son's father, who has just had his second heart surgery and could very well die - he had a drink in his hand days after his first heart surgery. I wept because, ever since I left him three years ago because he couldn't stop drinking, I had been trying to cover up the pain of the divorce, with men.

And I wept for my son. I wept because I had been trying to cover up the pain of being a terrible mom, with men.

And I wept for myself. I wept because I had been lost, since the age of nine, trying to cover up the pain of losing my faither to my parents' divorce/drugs/his girlfriend and my mother to alcoholism/drugs/men....with boys...and then, with men.

But I also wept because I knew that I had now been found. It was nothing short of a miracle, in which I fervently believe.

Today, it's day 24 of no men. I've returned to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. I am praying on my knees morning and night (or more), am reading the Bible every day, have joined a new Bible study, and am listening to at least two sermons each day.  I'm going to between 1 and 3 AA meetings a day, working the 12 steps like never before, and calling my sponsor and other women daily; I have a new AA sponsee, and I was asked to be a speaker at a meeting next week.

And I'm present for my son. I'm helping him with his homework and spending time with him instead of texting or being with men. He's seeing a counselor at school. I'm not pawning him off on his grandma so I can engage in demoralizing activities that make me want to die. I don't want to die.

But yes, although it lessens each day, I'm in pain. But it's a different kind of pain than the pain I felt from within the throes of this nearly 21-year addiction. It's a pain that I welcome.

I've waited to write about all this, because every day I fear that I'll fall again. I hate being the girl who cries wolf, over, and over, and over. Rodrigo watched the movie Thanks for Sharing with me before our relationship ended, and it was actually he who suggested I go back to SLAA. I had told him about my addiction from the very beginning, and before he "fell in love" with me, he said that my sex/"love" addiction sounded "fun". But then, in the end, he did say that all he wants is for me to get better, and he does support me having my SLAA-prescribed 90 days without him.

90 days of no men. I'm thinking more like 6 months...9 months...a year...

...or more.

Romans 8:6 New International Version (NIV)

6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

Amen.

The Berklee School of Music Singer/Songwriter, part 7

*Breathe*

You know you aren't in a good relationship when, the second you get home and away from it, you do a little dance, make a little love to yourself, get down, jump up, heel click, sigh relieved and wax poetic to your room ("Oh, my sweet, sweet room"). Then, you pet your sweet little kitties and say, "I'm free you guys! Freeeee aaaat laaaast!" before singing a montage of Queen's I Want to Break Free, Tom Petty's Free Fallin' and George Michael's Freedom (the choruses, at least). Finally, you sit down at your beloved old desk in your favorite comfy chair with a cup of iced coffee that you thank God isn't expired (because you've been away so long that everthing else in your fridge is) and you do that thing that has never failed you: write.



Watching Californication, writing, watching Breaking Bad, and getting a bit of reinforcement from a couple of concerned third parties have all helped me with my latest monumental turnaround. After swearing off men and starting this blog last November to help me stay on track, I strayed - far - off course...and became engaged. And I completely believed, at the time, that I was doing myself a favor. Not that there's anything wrong with being engaged - if you're mentally/emotionally healthy and find a mentally/emotionally healthy mate, with whom patience, soundness of mind and mutual understanding/love grant you a relationship that enhances both of your individual, stable lives - by all means, unite! But, if you're a total sicko in need of a lot of help, and you latch onto another total sicko in need of even more help and who latches back onto you even harder resulting in the exponential waning of your individuality, self-respect, stability, and sanity, holy shit - peel off before you leeches reduce eachother to unrecognizable, unconscious fragments of your former selves, and get some fucking help, mutha fucka.

Check.

Now, back to the giving of "props":

"Californication" is the bizzomb. I simply can't stop raving about it, as you know. It shows, for me, an all-too-relatable character fucking up his life: Hank Moody (David Duchovny). Hank gets involved with every woman who'll have him instead of spending quality time with his dauther, Becca. But, he is an accomplished writer, making bank off these sexcapades (oh, I wish!). And yet, despite his sexual meanderings and over-indulgence with various mind-altering substances, I clearly see him as a better father than I mother, and, certainly, a better (or at least financially-compensated and well-read) writer. It's enough to bring tears to my eyes and make me question everything in my life (as I'm wont to do anyway, but I appreciate the extra nudge).

I don't know if God really exists - I choose affirmatively, but, I don't know who God really is. But, if "Writing" were God, somehow, I'd thank the hell out of It, because It just saved my little ass once again. Writing has helped me to see everything in black and white - literally (tom-tom high-hat). It's much more difficult to delude myself or play pretend when I can actually see the insanity on the page.

My former situation with my (very soon to be ex-) fiancé is in fact just as bad, if not worse, as anything I've gotten myself into since my (first) marriage. It's a downright dirty mess. I'm finally starting the "outline" for my memoir because I think there's at least one woman out there who's doing the same shit I have and needs to read my story as a reflection, and hopefully it'll give her the motivation to turn her life around (girl power!). But even more importantly, right now, I need it to help me, too; I need to rub my face right deep down into all of that nasty ass laundry of mine (literally, again - tom-tom high hat). I don't want to forget what it smells like, and at the same time, I want to stop living in it. So, memoir, come to my (and others') rescue! (It is exciting - I all ready have outlined up through chapter 9! And this is just the beginning...tee hee.)

Speaking of rescue...Californication isn't the only show that has given me a tinge of leave-his-ass inspiration. It's ironic - I stopped watching TV shows when I left my husband in 2011 except for any time I've had a boyfriend since (because whoever it is gets me to watch them, too...and one of said shows, in turn, inspires me to leave his ass). So far, Jason's had me watch the whole series of The Big Bang Theory, a few seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Californication, and we're all caught up on Hannibal. All enjoyable to me, I can't lie (The Big Bang Theory is what inspired me to propose and accept Jason for his Sheldon-like self, interestingly). But Jason had also been wanting me to see Breaking Bad for the longest time. Yesterday I used the excuse of being too busy to watch it, and I was - I was creating a photobook on Blurb.com for a photography client. But more accurately, the "punk" in me didn't want to see Breaking Bad, at all, because everyone in the whole damn world raves about it.

But I guess if "everybody" agrees on something, maybe that something kinda-sorta has a chance of being true. Jason put on the first episode of Breaking Bad on Netflix, just to spite me, and...shit, I couldn't look away for even a moment! Whatever I was doing completely ceased to exist. I then insisted we watch the next episode, and the next, and the next, until finally I had to ask him to turn it off so I could finish my project and get it to my client at 3 am, and he did. But I had to watch more today. And the first thing I'm going to do when I'm done posting here is, I'm gonna watch it some more. That's right, baby...2 am? Psh - I had iced coffee.

But, so how did Breaking Bad change my life, you might ask? Well, it prompted me to ask of myself, what would I do if I was told I only had a few months to live? Would I be living my life the way I am now? The answer to the first question is a hell of a lot more complicated than the answer to the second, which is an easy Hell No!!!

Watching Breaking Bad, and, reading real people's experiences with cancer, makes one, naturally, consider her own mortality. I also thought about death a lot when my friend Margo killed herself last year. And who do you think the first person who comes to my mind when I think of death is?

One of the last things my son said to me this past weekend was, "Mom, Daddy loves me more than you do, because he takes more responsibility for me." Yikes. I have to admit, I've been so caught up in my latest addictive relationship that I hardly noticed the impact it was having on my son as usual. It sucks - I was the one who had it all together when his dad and I were still together, but now, I'm the fuck-up. The truth hurts when it looks you in the eyes with tears in its and says you don't love it. You're too busy looking away.

Well, along with my son's truth, here's some more truth from which I couldn't look away:

And that's not even half of it. Not even a quarter. When I had said that Jason was "cleaning his room" obsessively, in one of my last posts, it's because he was throwing piles of crap onto his bed and floor, bringing crap in from outside of his room to add to the piles. His internal chaos was externalized. Ceasing to see his psychiatrist and going off his 8+ medications for his bipolar, OCD, anxiety, and sleep disorders and just smoking weed as a replacement made for a horrible thing to witness.

I knew from the beginning that he was "crazy". He told me so. But did I really believe him, or understand what he meant? Not really. I thought, "Well hey, I'm crazy - great, two peas in a pod." No - he's a different kind of crazy. Diagnosed. My therapist thought I might have a general anxiety disorder, but other than that, I (at the time, at least seemed to) have a pretty sane head on my shoulders. Jason, though...I saw many signs of instability - 25, living with his parents, everything in his room had to be in its own little place (and I mean everything - until the psychotic break), only part-time temp jobs, and a giant drawer full of prescription bottles, some that he no longer even needed but kept around "just in case". Then he decided, "You know what? My psychiatrist is expensive. I'm not going to see him any more. And I'm not gonna take my meds any more either. Yeah, I'm just gonna smoke weed. That makes me feel pretty good." But his version of feeling good included staying up for a week with only short naps; snapping at his parents, brother, sister, and me and saying such horrible things that made everyone either cry, scream or run out of the house; speaking so erratically and quickly that at times nobody could understand him; stretching for two days straight (that was weird); and prompting his mother and I to want to call 9-1-1 and be taken by ambulance to Aurora, a mental hospital where she put him a few years ago (but he appeared to stabilize the other day, so, we didn't have to...but I fled, and his mom is still on edge).

Despite knowing his history, I still decided to go into a relationship with him. And not just any relationship - 5 months in, I asked him to marry me. Why? I don't know. I guess, once again, I got caught up in my most averse addiction: Jason "loves" me.  "Love" = my Achilles' heel. At least, it was my Achilles' heel, until I cut my heel on the sharp razor blade of reality (yes, there were a couple razor blades in those piles...but no, I only stuck myself with a thumbtack...there were like 70 of those). Part of me still feels like I should stay with him, that I do love him. But, his insanity drove me insane, and I'm all ready insane enough as it is without him making it worse. And I've done the research on love (thank you don Miguel Ruiz), and I know what it's supposed to look and feel like. So I told him today before I left: "If you really do love me, you'll let me go." It sounds cliché on the radio, but I meant it. And...finally...he did.

Okay, I just gotta do this again:

*Breathe*

Ah, better. Never before this very moment have I so appreciated solitude. God, don't ever let me forget it this time.

This morning, again inspired by my favorite writing prof, I sketched a rough draft of my memoir cover. (And Rocco, don't worry, if they ever make my memoir into a movie starring Elisha Cuthbert, I won't let them put her on the cover, no matter how much they want to pay me...or wait...shit...let me sit on that.) Ugh, I'm a horrendous artist. But, I woke up with this morning with this image in my head, and I just had to get it on paper, however poorly rendered. In case you can't tell what it is, it's a bride falling away from her husband and child off a precipice into a throng of men (I only drew 16, but there should be 30):

I'll do much better on it next time, lol. And I don't know why all the guys are wearing Heisenberg hats. But that reminds me - time for more Breaking Bad.