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.