The Drive By: Part III

I wept the entire way home. My mom didn't utter a word. She didn't have to, I knew that she was incredibly disappointed in me. That hurt almost as much as his betrayal. She drove me to my apartment and escorted me up the stairs to my bedroom. I had returned to infant mode. I sobbed as my mom undressed me and put on my night clothes as if I were a 3 year old child. She gave me some water and two little pills (Tylenol PM) to assist me in calming down. She brushed my hair back into a pony-tail and rubbed my head as I cried in her chest. I fell asleep that night in her arms...I cried my self to sleep.

I woke up at about 4am, puffy-eyed and hurting. I couldn't shake the overwhelming sulking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I HAD to know how we had gotten here. I thought our relationship was so strong. This was the only man I ever loved. I thought we would marry, have 2.5 children and live happily ever after. He was my FRIEND! How could he do this to me? I grabbed my cell phone and went into the bathroom. I saw that I had 6 missed calls. One was from my dad, but the other 5 were from Mr. 36. The text message that he left said "I love you, I'm sorry." The tears began to fall. I dialed his number. When he answered, I began to cry harder. "Come over, I want to hold you," he said. Without responding, I hung up. Went back into my bedroom, through on some sweats and snuck out of my own apartment like a teenager as my mother slept in the other room.

When I got to the house I used my key to enter. Just a few hours prior, I was raging with anger as I walked down the very same hallway that I now tip-toed down. The bedroom door was open and I stood at the side of the bed looking down on him as he slept. So many things were going through my mind at the moment. The strongest thing was to just slap the shit out of him a few times while he was defenseless. But my love for him wouldn't allow me to touch him in a violent. I threw myself on top of him as the tears started streaming again. For a few minutes we said nothing. He just held me and rubbed my back. "Why???" He ignored the question... "What have I done to make you want someone else?" No response..."Who is she, don't you know that she is the chick that hit me???" Dead Silence. He spoke not a single word. I fell asleep in a familiar place...one that I had fallen asleep in so many times before, but this time, I felt like I didn't belong.

My mom called the house bright and early that morning. I'm sure she knew where I had gone when realized that I was no longer in the house. I couldn't imagine the look on her face when she went in my room to check on me, only to see that I wasn't there. But I was soooo messed up mentally, I really didn't care what she thought. I NEEDED to find out what was going on with Mr. 36 and our relationship. I HAD to be in his bed...assured that no one else was.

We didn't speak of that night at all. I didn't ask anymore questions, after all, he wasn't answering them anyway. So I got on my Inspector Gadget duties and started snooping. I searched and searched and searched but yet I found nothing. I was so obsessed with snooping it was a shame. It was almost as if I WANTED to find out something bad. Coming up empty handed was NOT pacifying me. Even though things had been pretty much back to normal between the two of us, I was still convinced that he was cheating on me. I would dig through drawers, intercept emails, check phone messages, browse through the caller id....EVERYTHING. But no dice. It started to irritate him and it was irritating me as well! Hell. I couldn't fall asleep without sneaking to read his emails for the day.

That mentality lasted for weeks...hell months. I could not sleep anywhere BUT at his house, even those nights when he was out of town. I had become the overly needy/clingy girlfriend. I had to know his whereabouts at all times, I insisted on meeting up with him and his friends occasionally when they went out...my mission was to be omnipresent. I had become a slave to my own thoughts, and it was ridiculous.

Things were never the same after the drive by. Though we tried our best to establish a relationship of normalcy, our attempts were unsuccessful. I didn't trust him, he thought I was going crazy, and I even felt as if I was going crazy. No relationship can sustain such dysfunction.

The dynamics of our relationship changed on that fall night when I took it upon myself to drive-by my man's house. As I pulled into the complex that day, I had no idea how much that singular action would impact the rest of my life and the relationships to come. My lack of trust in men, my zero tolerance for b.s., my own emotional unavailability directly stems from that day many, many years ago and my decision to show up unexpectedly at his house. In that instant, I did not know the impact that my actions would have on my life of love. Had I known, I might have stayed at home. There is some peace in the unknown.

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The Drive By: Part II

I sat in the car for a few minutes in complete shock. Was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing? I tried to wrap my psyche around everything that was going on, but it was too much. I began to replay the accident back in my head...she was irate, I was apprehensive, she was cold and mean toward me and she ran into the back of me...intentionally?? The accident took place as I was leaving Mr. 36's crib...now her car is in his driveway? He didn't even come to the scene. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE??!! I had to know.

After sitting idle in the car for about a minute or two, I jumped out of the drivers seat and darted for his front door. The car was still running and my mom was left behind firmly saying my name, but I ignored her. I started banging on the door. My blood was BOILING. A light flicked on in the foyer leading up to the door. I heard footsteps, but was met with silence. He was looking through the peep hole.

"Open the damn door!", I yelled like a maniac. I banged harder, as if he would note my sense of urgency. It was unfounded; he still didn't answer. Then it hit me, I had a key! I ran back to the car, turned off the engine and yanked the keys. My mom was mumbling something, I guess she was trying to talk some sense into me, but it wasn't working.

I stomped back to the front door and started fiddling with the keys looking for the right one. My vision was hazy, my mind was cloudy, I was STEAMING! I couldn't think straight. Finding the key to his house would have normally been an easy job, especially given the fact that his key had a distinctive ring around it. But my mind was not thinking rationally. I finally found the key that fit perfectly and turned the lock...but the chain was on the door. I was so angry! I started cussing.

In the meantime, unknown to me, he was on the phone talking to my other as she sat in my car outside of the house. (That's another story in and of itself). She was basically telling him that I was outside, upset (as if he couldn't tell) and that it would be best if he came to speak to me as a man, instead of ignoring me. I didn't find out this little tidbit of information until lonnnnnnng after the incident.

Her speech to him must have worked, because he appeared moments later and unchained the door. "WTF is going on here!?" I asked. "Calm down baby, calm down," he said in a pacifying tone. "Don't you tell me to calm down, WTF is going on!!!!!!!!??????!!!!" Anyone who knows me well, knows that when I'm enraged, the storm follows tears....and the tears were streaming. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was trying to play peacemaker before the eye of the storm touched down.

He said some things to me along the lines of us having a lot to discuss, but not being able to get through to me in the condition I was in. He suggested that I go back home, get some rest, and we would meet for coffee in the am. I was peeping the scene. The lights in the living room and kitchen were off, which meant, he was upstairs in his bedroom or the game room. So, whomever the car belonged to was up there as well. SHE WAS IN HIS BEDROOM!?! "Uh Uh MFer, I ain't going NO DAMN WHERE!" With that said, I headed for the steps. He tried to stop me, but I was too fast. Taking two steps at a time, I ran up to his bedroom.

I flung open the bedroom door and began to assess the scene. The Play Station game was on pause at the far end of the room providing most of the light along with a candle that was burning on the nightstand. A Heineken bottle sat on the floor next to the bed alongside his cell phone and house phone, and a woman was at the foot of the bed putting on her pants. I was speechless. She looked up at me with an embarrassed look on her face and quickly looked back down at her pant leg. She picked up her purse whichT was sitting on his dresser and brushed pass me at the door. Headed for the front door, she rushed down the stairs, as if to escape the madness. I followed behind her calling her full government name. She peered back at me with agitated eyes. Yes, it was indeed her, the woman that caused the accident only days earlier. "Why are you here?", I screamed at her.(What a dumb question.) She didn't respond. I calmed my tone and re-asked the question. After all,no one wants to talk to a person when they are yelling at you. So I pretended to be calm and re-asked. "I asked you a question, please don't ignore me." She turned around, looked me dead in the face and said "Ask HIM why I'm here," and headed out of the door.

I generally don't deal with confrontation well, but it wasn't the normal me in this situation. I had been taken over by an outside force. Beyonce would call her Sasha Fierce...I didn't have the desire to name her. She was a stranger. Her strength was so strong, she caused me to do things that I would have normally never even thought of doing. Ignoring my mothers advice and for-warnings, embarrassing myself,causing a scene in public. Those are all things that I would normally cringe at! I was not in control of myself. The normal me would have NEVER confronted him nor her. The normal me wouldn't have had buns of steel and drove past his house. What had come over me?

I followed behind her. "No, I'm asking YOU." By this time, my mom was out of the car standing in front of the house. Mr. 36 was nowhere in sight. I don't know where the hell he disappeared to. My mom pulled me back, wiped my face and sternly said "ENOUGH! It's time to go." As my mom dragged me to the car in a way only a mother can, Mr. 36 emerged from the bushes. Yep, his ass had hid out in the bushes. Well, he said he wasn't "hiding" but he had taken up position AWAY from the drama. "CC, I'll call you in the morning." I couldn't muster up a response, but my mom picked up for me where I needed her to "don't you dare! You had more than enough time to talk tonight, but you didn't."

I sat in the passenger seat and sobbed the whole way home. I still couldn't make sense of what had just happened. I was crying for several reasons, the loss of my relationship, the betrayal, the embarrassment, the disappointment I knew I had become to my strong mother and the confusion of the whole situation. I was broken. But that wasn't the end of it.

To Be Continued....

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