Chapter XV: You Should Be Sad

“She had the baby,” I said nonchalantly, swirling my Cabernet around the glass before taking a gulp suited for my own slot on the Real Housewives.

“I saw,” my cousin said gently from the other side of the table.

Kristy was going to be my matron of honor; the older sister I never had. Her dad and my mom were the youngest of seven and we were always close. I grew up idolizing her and her own older sister. As we sat at dinner at Ella Eli on Southport, I laughed to myself about how much I used to annoy her as a kid, five years her junior; stealing their toys and playing with their hair and makeup, tirelessly wishing I could be older like them. These days, I thought, I wish I could be that little girl again and do it all over. I didn’t want to be a grown up anymore.

I hadn’t seen her in a while. She, with her months old daughter, and me, with my own hectic work schedule, never seemed to be able to connect easily. I spent the majority of drinks and appetizers updating her on all that had happened. It felt good to purge all the anger, but I always caught myself droning on; hating how I hadn’t said anything positive other than the occasional joke at my own expense. I tried to stop myself, to make it not about me. I asked about her daughter, husband and how she was doing, yet somehow, we always came back to me and what I was going through.

“Do you think he was seeing her before all of this happened?” My cousin asked.

“I have no clue. Although miraculously getting pregnant from a one-night stand seems hardly feasible, especially if she was ‘on birth control.’” I said with overly sarcastic air quotes. “This isn’t the fucking immaculate conception,” I joked, taking another swig of wine.

“When did he say this happened again?” she asked. I could see her wheels turning.

“March 7th; he told me the exact day. He said it was because he thought I was cheating,” I rolled my eyes, though I knew she could sense the deep-rooted pain and anguish over his excuse.

“Lindsay, that just doesn’t make sense.”

There was a brief interlude; silence before she started to explain what she meant. You see, Kristy is a pediatric nurse and well-versed in the medical field. On top of that, she had just had a baby herself not even a year prior. I could feel my palms start to sweat. I wasn’t sure if I was hurt, mad or validated by what she told me next.

She explained how a full-term pregnancy is actually 40 weeks; 10 months. The gestational period is what we usually refer to as the standard 9 months; however, from the moment of intercourse to the due date of the baby would be 10 months.

“Holy shit,” I said looking down at my plate and doing the math quickly in my head.

“When was his due date?” she asked.

“It was right around the actual birth date,” I said. “So…around November 23rd.”

“So it would have had to have happened 10 months before that.” she said.

We both looked up at each other and mouthed, “January.”

I laughed out loud boisterously; partly because I was stupid for never thinking of this before and partly because even if it was nine months, that would have meant that they had sex in February; both dates quite far off from his bullshit claim of a one night stand on March 7th.

“And it’s not like he could even claim ‘oh, she was just early!’” I said. “We knew the due date was mid-November and a doctor wouldn’t just subtract an extra month or two on the off chance of a premature birth.”

“He sucks,” Kristy said angrily. She was always so polite, though I could sense her blood boiling.

I looked up at her again and caught myself in a momentary epiphany; a thought so simple yet so immensely profound. A thought that changed the tone of the conversation from the “got ‘em” rhetoric to something much deeper; a weight I had been carrying. I knew I wasn’t to blame for what he did, but now, for the first time, I actually accepted that it wasn’t my fault.

“Kristy, he blamed me for his cheating. He said it was because of jealousy; because of Ben.”

She sat upright in the booth across from me and realized exactly what I was thinking, “And you didn’t even know Ben in January.”

I nodded from across the table as my lips quivered slightly; the words replayed in my mind like a new mantra. I looked up at her and sighed, holding back all the tears that wanted to come, “It wasn’t my fault?”

“No,” she said.

It wasn’t my fault.

***

As we walked out of Ella Eli, stomach full of wine, Kristy offered to drive me home.

“Can you actually drop me at Ben’s place?” I asked. “He’s just around the corner.”

As we pulled up to his apartment on Clifton, I saw him standing curbside, waiting for us in the dead cold of winter. He hadn’t met Kristy yet and I knew he’d want to be introduced to my closest friend and confidante. As she pulled up in her Jeep, she opened the car door and, without hesitation, they hugged.

“Thank you for taking such good care of her,” she said to him.

His smile beamed from ear to ear. “Of course,” he replied.

***

As the weeks passed, Ben and my relationship progressed beautifully, organically. He truly was my best friend. We had a multitude of adventures; from skiing the grand mountains of Washington state to sipping fruity cocktails on a private beach in Naples, he always kept us smiling and laughing.

I had never seen or known a love so raw and honest. He held me as I fell apart time and time again and helped me put myself back together; not wavering once as I did it all over again and again. He never made me feel ashamed, and always helped me see the good, the beauty in it all; keeping my eyes on my future and not my past.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Ben said snuggling up to one of the cats as we got in bed at my apartment one night. I scooted closer to him and tried to keep casual conversation going, despite his visible fatigue and heavy eyelids.

“Why do you always do that?” Ben laughed in a slight whisper with his eyes closed.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Keep talking to me when I’m asleep,” he chuckled.

I laughed and poked him before rolling over myself. I didn’t want to tell him why.

I didn’t want to tell him that my demons come out at night, that I don’t ever sleep. I didn’t want to tell him that my anxiety at night forces conversations and events to replay in my mind over and over, constantly forcing me to analyze and reanalyze things outside of my control. In a way, I wanted to protect him from the dark space that nighttime had become for me. And as I watched him doze off into a peaceful slumber, the demons came…

***

While my life seemed to be heading in a positive direction, I was still bound financially to the monster through our shared condo. And, despite my efforts to bury any thoughts of the past, I grew more and more restless from Kristy’s discovery at our dinner. I was mad at myself for believing his lies, for not making the connection sooner. I still had this innate trust in everything he had ever said despite knowing he was a liar; a sociopath. It was as if his statements had been hardwired into my brain as fact and I found myself reliving every moment, every glance, ever conversation to try and figure out what, if anything, in our three-year relationship was real.

Like a hamster stuck on a never-ending wheel of grief, I relived all of the other statements he had made over the years; things that I believed because I trusted him.

I slowly got out of bed and walked out of my room and down the long hallway. I tip-toed delicately as to not disturb the uneven hardwood floorboards as Ben slept.

Without turning on any lights, I sat down at my computer at my grand dining room table and opened the screen. Its stark white light beamed eerily over my face as I pulled up Microsoft Word. Like a magnet to the keyboards my fingers began furiously typing.

I started documenting all the red flags.

***

“When we first met him, we hated him,” his best friend once told me. When I asked why, he explained how they thought he was a pathological liar; how he lied about dumb things: meeting celebrities, a modeling career, accomplishments, etc. I sat there thinking of this interaction, regretting not asking the obvious follow up question-Why did you stay friends with him then? Instead, I laughed it off. He must have been joking, I thought.

*

I remember my ex telling me he wrote a song on the piano; playing it to woo me before we dated at a hotel bar with friends. Years later, he tapped away the same tune on my piano and I reiterated how impressed I was by his composition.

“I didn’t write this; I never said that,” he said angrily.

Oh, but you did.

*

I remember seeing a text on his phone one morning while he was showering from a co-worker. I remember opening the phone and seeing flirtatious exchanges; exchanges about how they would be meeting up for a work event and he’d only go if she would be there. I remember confronting him about it and being called “stupid” and “insecure” as he laughed in my face as I cried. I remember him telling me that if I weren’t in the picture, he’d sleep with her.

*

I remember asking him if he’d go to a soup kitchen with me over the holidays in 2018. He looked at me with disgust and said, “Ew, no.”

*

I remember when his stepdad had a heart attack, he still went in to work and didn’t tell me. I remember arriving in the hospital room in McHenry and the first thing he said to his mom and stepdad was, “I told you to get life insurance and now you can’t!”

*

I remember him yelling at me for texting Ben back, my work partner at the time, when Ben texted to ask how my ex’s stepdad was doing post heart attack.

*

I remember asking my ex if he had any pictures from his youth; high school in McHenry or college in Las Vegas. They didn’t exist. Friends didn’t exist. I remembered him explaining that it was because his college girlfriend, Silhouette, burned all his things after he moved out of their shared apartment in Las Vegas. When I asked why, he said it was complicated.

I remember him telling me how he got Silhouette pregnant; how she had a miscarriage, and then got cancer. I remembered him telling me how hard it was on him; how he fell in love with another girl, Lyla, when he was back home in McHenry for a holiday. I remember him emotionally depicting his pain in knowing he couldn’t be with her because of his “devotion” to his sick girlfriend in Las Vegas. As I remembered all of this, disgust ran through my veins like a disease. I had never considered myself naive nor stupid. Looking back, how could I have been so blind?

Everyone has a story. I have many. I know pain and struggle, and, at the time, I truly felt for him as he explained his deep-seeded woes. He told his story with an air of sadness and regret, telling me how he knew he had made mistakes but that he believed in second chances for people and that he had spent his entire life since college rebuilding and re-branding himself. He said he wanted to become a better person and I believed him.

And as I sat there facing the brightness of my computer monitor, I thought of Lyla. I remembered something crucial he had mentioned during his emotional rant.

She had a no contact order against him.

A restraining order.

I did a quick google search. You can’t just go and request these orders, I thought to myself. He had made it seem so trivial of her; childish payback for staying in Las Vegas with his sick girlfriend. But no, I didn’t buy that now.

I pulled up multiple articles. A judge must approve of them. There must be cause, reasons, tangible evidence of a threat.

What did he really do?

I started wondering who else he may have hurt, who he would prey on next. I couldn’t contain this suffering and guilt any longer. How could he get away with this? Why did he constantly abuse and hurt women? What else had he done?

Without thinking I closed the window and pulled open a new tab, typing in a web address I hadn’t thought about in months.

The Blog.

I had written on The Chicago It Girl for years; a creative writing outlet to talk about fun things: my wedding, beauty tips, recipes, etc. Those days were over. Before I knew it, I had written multiple paragraphs starting from the beginning; an out of body experience I can’t quite explain. I didn’t know at the time why I had to do it; why I had to start writing out the story. It wasn’t revenge, but perhaps a purge; a release of all the toxic emotions I had been carrying with me for months. Toxic energy that had buried me alive, eaten away at my soul and personality, and affected my most precious relationships.

I went back to the title and sighed as I typed.

Chapter I: Party Planning

I hit publish and closed my laptop.

2:00 a.m.

Tears burst from my red shot eyes, covering every inch of my face and falling into my lap as I sat silently at the dining room table alone. I felt the soft stroke of Paisley’s fur rub against my leg; a gentle reminder of the present.

And as I picked her back up and walked back to the bedroom, I felt a weight finally lift off my back. For the first time, I was healing myself. And in that moment, I knew that each chapter I faced, would bring me pain but then subsequent peace.

And so began my healing, one Chapter at a time.

***