Chapter XIX: Making Waves

By Sarah

I remember very intentionally searching for and finding Lindsay on Instagram. I remember seeing her blog, and starting to read the Chapters. I remember the eerie coincidences; laughing at some, disturbed by others. I felt creepy almost, but I kept going. I even subscribed and paid to continue reading the Chapters. I immediately unsubscribed.

“Do I want to open this door again? Am I willing to give something attention that was so negative at some point in my life? Could this potentially be something positive? She said she was an open book, and wanted to hear people share their stories. Was mine worth sharing, or would it be just another disappointment for her in a saga that had already broken so much?”

I told myself that I would give it a couple of days, and if it were still on my mind, I’d write. I waited. It was still pulling at my insides, nagging me almost. I couldn’t ignore it any longer. So late one night when I couldn’t sleep, just like Lindsay did, I opened my laptop and the words came pouring out of me.

I don’t think my situation is unique. I don’t find it special. In fact, if I were on the outside reading all of this, I may be rolling my eyes, assuming the women involved are idiots - that this is yet another story of a dude screwing over a girl and leaving her heartbroken. It’s okay that some of you readers may be thinking those things right now. As much as people like to assume that females are in a hurry to find their husband and make babies while withstanding heartbreak after heartbreak first, that has never been what I’m about. I don’t believe in those types of “fairy tales” – that is not the way it should go. But I understand how easy it is to go there and you’ll see what I’m getting at soon enough.

The bottom line is this: this blog wouldn’t be what it is right now if it weren’t being followed by people who can relate to where we have been. So, judge away. I bet you’ll still keep reading though. And I bet you’re thinking about your past, or maybe even your present situation while you do. My hope is that you too will feel less alone in it. That you too will feel safe here.

What is special and unique about it, is that Lindsay created a space where it felt okay to be vulnerable and tell my story. My story that has parts in it that might’ve caused her pain. My story that has plenty of information that I have never shared with anyone; that I am ashamed of, that I didn’t ever think I would rehash.

So, this goes out to all of you. The variety of readers out there. Whether you’re rolling your eyes, judging, or crying and laughing along with us. The human thing to do is commend the strength it takes to be as vulnerable as we have been. To be brave enough to share our stories that don’t necessarily shine our best colors, in hopes to heal hearts that have been through some of the same.

To the ones who have been following along the whole time, or have joined along the way:  We see you, we hear you. To our fellow females who have been used, abused, deceived and left heartbroken, we are with you.

To the former friends who I watched make similar mistakes over the years:  The abusive boyfriends you went back to over and over again, the engaged/married/with children exes you still interacted with in more inappropriate ways than not, I never walked away from you in those times. Yet, you felt entitled to pass judgement on me; to place yourself on some high horse and turn your backs on me while I went through this. That betrayal is something I have yet to forget. This is for you too. I hope that we have all learned some lessons. I hope that you have gotten off of your high horse. And I hope that you enjoy the truth.

I finished writing my story and reread it a couple of times. I felt lighter, yet exposed. Vulnerable, yet strong. I felt like this was either going to be another impulsive and wild decision I made…..or it was going to be the start of something really fucking beautiful.

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October 13, 2019

Lindsay,

I don’t know about you, but this week has been full of anxiety mixed with fatigue, and feeling a bit under the weather. I don’t know if you’re into astrology, or if it’s the seasons changing, but man this was a doozy.

It’s times like these when I feel I am struggling a bit, that I remind myself that this probably means I am shedding some things I need to; healing, if you will. So, although I subscribed to your chapters, then almost immediately unsubscribed, I feel that following through on this is appropriate and right. I believe there are many phases of healing. So while this does not hurt me anymore, I know that I and others carry these types of experiences with us. They are always there.

What matters to me now is he doesn’t affect me. He hasn’t in years. My biggest downfall is that human beings intrigue me, and I need to learn to accept that I won’t ever get answers as to why and how people do things like he has done, like my father did, like my ex boyfriends did. I don’t have the answers. I won’t ever comprehend those acts of deception, and for that, I am glad. Never once have I cheated, never once have I even thought about it. I will pride myself on those character traits always. I believe in honesty, and healing, and helping each other do the same. I’m transparent to a fault, and I bet the monster would vouch for that.

I met the monster in 2012. I know Savannah*, I know baby mama. We’re all from the same hometown. I’m pretty sure he dated them before he met me. I’m also fairly certain that I might be the one that nobody really knows about. We never actually dated. He just literally hasn’t gone away entirely since we met.

I’m not a petite, pretty, put together girl. I probably was more consumed with my appearance when we first met, but not anymore. I don’t care about money, or status, my nails are never painted, I swear constantly, and if I could wear workout clothes and no make-up every day for the rest of my life, I would. Those are not the boxes the monster checks off when seeking a partner. And frankly, he doesn’t check off many of my boxes either.

It went exactly as you described. We fell hard, and fast. Then he disappeared. I believe they’re calling it “gaslighting” nowadays? Maybe? I don’t know. He convinced me I was crazy. He confused me with all of the “facts” and details that never added up and I believed him. I thought I blew it. Blah, blah, blah. He’d come and he’d go, he’d find me when I was vulnerable like there was some fucking radar he had that was watching me. It was fucked up and creepy how accurate he was with that, honestly. Every time, I asked him about baby mama. I always knew in my gut she was there, and he still liked her and whatever. He always denied it. Then they’d be dating. Then they’d break up, and well, you get the picture.

In fact, when he was dating another poor victim in 2013, he reached out to me again – per his usual pattern. I told him I didn’t want to do this with him, especially since he was still in a committed relationship with someone else. About a month or so later, it was 2014 by now, he was dating baby mama. Clearly he had been working us both, and apparently she gave in. Ha, I forgot about that until just now. It feels nice to laugh about it.

When she moved in with him later that year, I was head over heels in love with someone else. I remember kind of knowing that eventually him and baby mama had broken up, and catching wind that there was a new girl in the picture. You! When I saw pictures, I thought to myself, “her – she is the girl the monster should be with, she is exactly who I would picture him with.”

It was the summer of 2015 when he reached out again. Shockingly (not) I was going through my most devastating heartbreak to date. I was a fucking disaster. The monster and I were not friends on social media, and I just literally have no fucking idea how he knows when I’m going through these things but per usual, there he was. We began chatting.

The problem with him is that by now he knows me. He knows too much. He knows everything about me and my past. He knows my college boyfriend is now married to my college best friend. He knows my dad had an affair when I was 20 and that my parents went through a pretty ugly divorce that took a toll on me that I perhaps still haven’t seen the depths of. He knows my stories, my pain, my triggers. He knows I trust next to no one, especially males. He’s a good listener when he wants to be.

But, whenever he reached out, because it was ALWAYS him that reached out, one of my first questions was always, “what do you want?” And he’d usually oblige to give me some vague, stupid answer. I always then brought up what relationship he was in at the time, and why he felt the need to reach back out to me when he appeared to be happily taken.

You see Lindsay, the only girl he never reached out to me while dating was baby mama. There was victim of 2013, and you, and maybe someone else I’m forgetting. But never baby mama. Probably because her and I were really just too close in proximity and know too many of the same people. I always wondered if she knew about me. It seemed he bounced like a ping pong ball back and forth with us. Funny enough, I remember liking baby mama. To be fair, she had never done anything to me directly. It was the unspoken link between us that made me uncomfortable.

Anyway, we just chatted, we met up once. I mostly used him to word vomit and seek attention through my break up. It stopped for awhile, until the winter. We met up again, and he kissed me.

Backstory: Since we met, he always tried to reenact the infamous Big and Carrie relationship from the show Sex and the City, a favorite of both of ours.

“You’re my Carrie, we end up together”, blah blah, barf.

It might’ve been cute in 2012, however it lost its touch on me after a year or so.

And just for some personal redemption here, let me just say this: Carrie, aka Sarah Jessica Parker, can easily be compared to me. Same curly hair, same name, same birthday.

The character “Big” was a wealthy and successful playboy that Carrie could never shake, and ultimately wound up with. “Big” was a nickname given to the male character for one obvious reason. A reason, that could not be applied to the monster. So, yeah.

Okay then, back to the story.

It was more around Christmas time when we met up again. I remember we randomly saw someone from our hometown at the bar. In the city of Chicago, on some weeknight. He came up to the table we were at and chatted with us. What were the odds? I felt like we were getting caught doing something bad that hadn’t even happened yet. That was the night we slept together.

The next day, he said he knew he wanted to move forward with you, and I was relieved. I felt that he was an itch I needed to scratch one more time, and then I wanted him to be gone for good.

As I type these words, I don’t recognize the person I am speaking of. I despise cheating, and I was an accomplice in it. I could try and justify to you and explain how shitty I felt about myself at that time, but there is no excuse. That isn’t me. Maybe old habits die hard, and ultimately, I wanted this saga to die. I am so, so sorry. I carry this guilt and disgust with me still. Any heaviness I feel surrounding it, is something I deserve the burden of. These are not my finest moments. I can only hope that you are able to look past my mistakes.

One mistake I never make, is with my birth control. Sorry not sorry.

I congratulated him when I figured out you were engaged. I was truly happy for you guys. I remember thinking to myself, “good, maybe this is it, and this girl rocked his world enough to make him change his ways.” I truly, genuinely, honestly, hoped for NOTHING more than that. Again, I was relieved; he was off the market for good.

It was June when I got another Facebook message from him. As always I asked him what he wanted right off the bat. It took a minute for him to finally say that the wedding was off. When I asked him why, he responded, “She cheated on me. I came clean to her about cheating on her. So we ended it.” I have the messages. I don’t care who sees them. I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. But, yet again, he found me in a totally vulnerable and shitty state. My company had lost the account I worked for, and I was laid off. Probably like, the day before this message. Seriously, it’s uncanny and I wish I was making it up. Also, I swear my life isn’t one huge sob story, despite what this story conveys right now (insert an LOL).

So, I slept with him. I am so fucking embarrassed and ashamed I did it again. I could blame it on whatever, and justify it with something, but the fact of the matter is; I did it again. So there we have it. This time, he really went off the radar after. I knew something was up.

It was a bit until I just happened to see a picture of baby mama on Facebook. We are not friends. I almost kept going, thinking it was nothing, but found myself scrolling back up, and clicking on the comments section.

As you already know, it wasn’t nothing. I started reading the comments and realized that she was very much so pregnant. There was no hiding it. I knew immediately that it was his. I knew this meant that not only had he cheated on his fiancée, but he knocked another girl up while doing it. I knew then that there was very little truth to you cheating on him. I knew that he never told you that before you two were engaged, he had slept with me. And I knew that he had probably been cheating with baby mama the whole time. I didn’t know whether to laugh or throw up.

I probably saved screenshots from the text conversation we had after that. It took him awhile to admit it. I had to back him in to a corner to do so. He slept with me, after I had pointedly ASKED him about baby mama, to which he claimed they had spoken but that was it. And he knew she was pregnant. And he slept with me anyway. I ASKED HIM POINT BLANK. “I know your patterns, monster. When is the last time you spoke to or saw baby mama?”

He told me she texted him about some savings account or something, and that’s how it all started again. I read that in your chapters. At least that part of his story matched up, right?

He blatantly lied, and then slept with me anyway that June, knowing his baby mama was months pregnant, and knowing that I was not yet aware she was. Fucker. I told him I hoped that that little boy had a man to look up to, because his father most certainly was NOTHING of the sort.

Then, I sent baby mama a Facebook message telling her. This was a new one for me, but I don’t regret it. Before, I didn’t really care honestly. It was always very unclear to me what their status was. This time, I felt that regardless of what state their relationship was in, I had yet again assisted him in going behind another female’s back, without my knowing, and it felt wrong in every way because now there was a baby involved.

Her response to me telling her that I was sorry that I slept with him, didn’t know she was pregnant, that she deserved better than that, and that I wished her and the baby well was…..“thanks.”

That’s all she said. Like, what?!

Lindsay, baby mama wanted to get knocked up. She wanted to have a baby. She wanted it to be the monster’s baby.

Birth control pills are 99.9% effective after 3 months of taking them. Before the 3 months, the doctor AND THE PACKAGE tells you to use other forms of contraception. If pills are taken daily and at the same time, pregnancy will not occur.

She. Wanted. To. Have. A. Baby.

Any other excuse is a level of stupidity that I refuse to acknowledge.

I understand that baby mama could potentially feel like a victim in this. And maybe she is in some ways. We’ll never know. All signs point to her getting everything she wanted out of this situation. Good for her. Own it, girl. And for the record, I genuinely meant it when I wished you well.

I don’t know what it says about me that I have gone on for so long. I don’t really care, I guess. This is my story. This is 7 years of bullshit. I have lost friends because of him. I have nearly lost my mind because of him. But I believe that the chapters in our lives, no matter how dark and ugly, deserve to be acknowledged. If they’re not, we are not learning, we are not growing. You and I, are brave enough to face life so we can learn and grow. Go, us.

Ultimately, I feel sorry for this human. People do not do the things he has done, unless they are deeply deranged themselves. The monster is seriously disturbed. I imagine he has pain buried so deep, he cannot even recognize it. It is so twisted by now, that he has no clue what is real and what isn’t anymore. He needs help. He is sick. I doubt that his huge ego will ever allow him to go there. But they say having a child changes people, and my hope is that that little boy will change the monster to his core.

The monster is a sad, sorry excuse for a man. He is a pussy in every way a boy can be. The only opportunity for redemption in his life, is for him to find the courage to face every single one of his many demons. I’m just sorry there is a child now involved in that disaster.

I’m not sorry, that it has nothing to do with me.

Lindsay, what you’re doing is incredible. I never would’ve reached out if it hadn’t been for social media and how moved I was to see a female not only turning her pain into power, but opening up a platform for others to do the same. Even when those others have wronged you the way I have. I know that this aspect of my life does not speak highly to my character. But I know who I am, and I hope you will let me be a strong advocate for you and your story.

I have met few women who have the balls to make waves the way I am willing to for something I believe in; I believe you are one of those women. And I believe in you.

Let me know how I can help.

Let’s make some waves.

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