ghost of the past
Jul. 27th, 2021 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howsmyenglishThis post is part of a ritual. The writing is the first and the least pleasant part. Actually, I don't really want to do it at all, but I need to chase away this ghost, otherwise he'll continue to haunt and disturb me.
I don't remember who of you it was, who wrote something about some unpleasant ex and the possibility of meeting them in the street - it was quite some months ago. I remember replying something that had to do with one of my exes - the only one I hate remembering. And one of you said, they hoped I'd never run into this ex of mine. And I said, well, that's just impossible, we not only live in different countries, but even on different continents. Well, guess who I saw yesterday on a completely deserted residential street in the next town?
We were together for two years. I barely remember when it started, I just remember these words - "two years" - they stayed with me like a mark after I finally got rid of him. I'm trying to understand how it happened. I knew he was a fake intellectual, I knew I was far superior (allow me this term, you will see why it's important later on), I knew he had strange and even bizarre ideas, but somehow, when he came closer, he managed to persuade me that he's right, right in everything, and I'm just stupid, inexperienced, have no clue as to how life should be lived.
How did we meet? I've no idea. I think, I used to hang out a bit on some dating site or other. I'm honestly not sure. All I know is that he managed to get hold of my email address and - for some reason I don't know till this day - he decided to be incredibly interested in me. He hadn't seen me! He had read something. Possibly, my profile? His emails were short and contained grammatical mistakes. I am a grammar nazi. So, I never took him seriously, made fun of him, didn't reply. But he kept on wanting to get to know me. Why???
Anyhow, then I went to India for the first time. To check your emails as a tourist in India back then, you had to go to a special "internet cafe": the computers were very old, the internet was very slow, I wanted to see all my mail, I wanted to write to friends and family. But when I saw an email from him - from a person I never took seriously and didn't want to meet - I couldn't resist the temptation to answer and say "hey, dude, sorry, I'm in India and have no time to reply to your nonsense". That was my mistake. I should have ignored his message. None of the following would have happened then.
He was so impressed. I think even his emails became longer and more articulate. And with all my feelings of insecurity and inferiority complex I never could resist the temptation of meeting with someone's admiration. So, when I came back from India, I agreed to meet him. I remember looking at his face, thinking it reminded me of my cousin's face - whom I didn't like, he was spineless and became a drunkard and a junky as a very young man, was nursed back to sobriety in his thirties by his mother and lost most of his brains on the way. But it didn't stop me.
I do not know how he managed to bewitch me, but at some point I stopped knowing that I was more intelligent, experienced and damn it worthy than he was, and started thinking all the opposite things. We started living together. I can't write down all that I've been through with him. He wanted his independence, but my complete self-sacrifice, he would get angry and stop talking to me for days on end or he would lecture me about how life should be lived. He read and misunderstood a lot of psychologists and applied his misunderstandings to me, and when I started reading psychologists to point out to him that he was suffocating me, he would explain to me how I was a leech and... earnestly, I don't remember, but it was bad, he nearly completely drove me crazy. It was during those two years with him that I became seriously depressed for the first (and so far last) time in my life, that I almost tried to kill myself, that I cried for two days and then went to my physician to ask for advice and he almost got me admitted in a psychiatric clinic, because he was afraid I actually would kill myself. It was the worst time of my life, and I couldn't realize that the only fucking thing I had to get rid of to feel good was this fucking guy. Once, he got so angry that he attacked me, physically, it was so ugly, so... I couldn't believe it was even happening to me, so impossible this was in my universe. And I thought that was that, I thought THIS only could mean the end. I always was angry at those women who stayed with abusive guys. But I stayed! Why the hell did I stay after THAT? I've no idea. But I stayed with him for half a year more.
Ah, and I forgot to mention: I was also not allowed to get sick, because people only get sick, when they want to, and also, when I'm sick, he's feeling bad for me, so my being sick means I'm egotistically letting him suffer.
And he would have all those ideas - that one had to sleep on the floor on (literally!) sheep's skins (how did I manage to refuse to do that? I don't know, but he did sleep like that for about a month); that we should have a simple life and get all our stuff from the flea market, that he should smoke a pipe, play the violin, have a microscope, a telescope, a guitar - I don't remember what else. And I got him all that! For the violin I went some 200 km on public transport in the middle of winter. And he wasn't happy about it, because he didn't want to have AAL his wishes come true, just some of them. He never did anything with any of those things. He looked at them once. That was that. He failed all his exams, had no idea about how and what he would do with his life, managed to get transferred to another university, but never went to any classes.
Oh, by the way, during all that time I was the one who earned money. Oh, he tried a few times. We were both students (and I was in the process of finishing and actually wrote my MA _during that last half a year_), but, of course, it was he who was so terribly busy and couldn't spare the time, and also - he was too unqualified to do anything, so all he could find were menial jobs, for which he felt himself to be too intellectually gifted. He used to come home and explain to me how misunderstood he was, how he tried to educate his backward colleagues, but just ended up casting pearls before swine. And this, obviously, made him very angry. And were else would one unload one's anger if not at home, right? And I could do jobs like language teaching, translating and transcribing, which were, of course, much easier to do. So, I was finishing my MA and working, while he was reading psychological and philosophical tractates and being angry at me, because I dared to enjoy myself outside home. At work, that is.
And then I got lucky. At one of those jobs I worked at, I met G. She was so positive, so full of life, she, too, was very impressed by me from the first minute, and we've already established that I never could resist that, but she was gooooooooood. I tried to write "good" there, not "god", just couldn't stop, so gooooooood was she. Still is. She was in a similar situation - an active and clever young woman in the process of leaving a good-for-nothing husband, but the difference between us was that she already knew she was leaving him. We started meeting from time to time, and talking. I remember how he hated the idea of me having her as a friend. I bet he could sense me slipping away from his influence. One afternoon I found myself sitting opposite her and telling her all that I've written above. Or, maybe, not. But the gist was that I was terribly unhappy with him. And then came the next morning. I will never forget that feeling. I woke up lying next to him, lying on my back, hands above the head, the chest spread wide, breathing - I never found myself in such a position before, but a lot after - and I knew that I was free.
I told him to get the hell out on that same day. He had no job, no money, nothing, so he tried to manipulate me into letting him stay - "where would I go? How can I? I have nothing!" We lived by then in a kitchen+1 room 32 square meters apartment, so I tried to at least live in the other room, but it was impossible, and he just didn't do anything to move out. My MA was finished by then, I had to study for the final exams, and it was impossible for me to do that at home. So, I moved in with G - we shared one room and one bed, and we had a great time. And every day I would call that fucking asshole and say "get the hell out of my apartment!" - I was the one paying for it, after all. It took him another month, at least, to finally move out.
The last two weeks - the exam weeks - of my MA I had the use of the flat of a private student of mine, which was just a dream. Everything I did back then was just a dream: I was free, I was my own, I had money that I used to spend on him! I still remember all the clothes I bought for myself then. Seriously, I remember each piece. Incidentally, that was the same time I met the one who later became my husband, and if it hadn't been for the fucking asshole I wouldn't have had all those trust issues with him during the first years. For at least a year, I had this recurring dream, in which the fucking asshole was lying on the ground on his side, and I was kicking his stomach as hard as I could. He lost his name and became the fucking asshole. He wrote to me twice more, and I think I covered him with abuses in response. I'm not sure. He appeared in two or three of my dreams since, I remember the last one. It was a dream about something else, and then suddenly there was the fucking asshole, and I screamed: "get out of my dream you fucking asshole!" and he left.
And then came yesterday. I went to the nearby town, because I wanted to get out of the house for some time, and just to get a few things. And the parking lot I went to is in such a place that I had to drive through this tiny residential street covered with cobblestones. It was around 3 pm, no one around. But for the fucking asshole. He was walking towards me, eating some sandwich. He looked _exactly the same_. It's been fourteen years, people. I was so shocked, I never expected to see him again in my life. And there he was. So I just stopped the car. My mouth open. My eyes round. My window was open as well but I didn't know what I could say. There was this fraction of a second, when I thought he would stop, too, and turn to look at me. But it passed and he continued walking. And I saw his back - he was wearing a black uniform with the name of the shop or whatever it is he's apparently working as a menial worker for.
There was a second when I thought, it must have been someone else, because a person _has to change_ in fourteen years. But then I remembered that his mother lived in that town. I never really realized it before, because when I knew where she lived, my brother did not live here, so the whole area was a completely new territory for me. And by the time my brother moved here, I had repressed all memories about the fucking asshole.
So. It was him. He lives in the same town as his mom and works as some sort of a warehouse worker. The peer-review writing me* is happy to know that. Schadenfreude can be a nice thing. And the next time I want to get out of the house and get some things, I'll drive to the other neighboring town, thank you very much.
As to how this could happen - I always was and still am so very insecure, so prepared to doubt myself, so ready to accept that other people are right and I am wrong that... yeah. I will remember this. This was not the only time I got too impressed with someone else's personality that I completely lost sense. Another such situation I had with my former PhD adviser. But I am growing. Every day a little more.
*and yeah, that review - I sent it last week, and the editor (who is great and who will hopefully be one of the people on my PhD commission, though he doesn't know it yet) wrote back saying his impression was exactly the same and that he really appreciated the way my critique was clear and at the same time constructive. Fuck fucking assholes! I'm gifted and intelligent and worthy, jawohl.
Whether you read what's under the cut or not - thank you for being witnesses to my cleansing ritual. I will re-read this now, post it and go wash myself, put on a face mask, dress prettily, turn on some nice music, burn some incense, clean my room and probably come back with another post - the one I wanted to write yesterday before I drove out to meet my ghost of the past.
I don't remember who of you it was, who wrote something about some unpleasant ex and the possibility of meeting them in the street - it was quite some months ago. I remember replying something that had to do with one of my exes - the only one I hate remembering. And one of you said, they hoped I'd never run into this ex of mine. And I said, well, that's just impossible, we not only live in different countries, but even on different continents. Well, guess who I saw yesterday on a completely deserted residential street in the next town?
We were together for two years. I barely remember when it started, I just remember these words - "two years" - they stayed with me like a mark after I finally got rid of him. I'm trying to understand how it happened. I knew he was a fake intellectual, I knew I was far superior (allow me this term, you will see why it's important later on), I knew he had strange and even bizarre ideas, but somehow, when he came closer, he managed to persuade me that he's right, right in everything, and I'm just stupid, inexperienced, have no clue as to how life should be lived.
How did we meet? I've no idea. I think, I used to hang out a bit on some dating site or other. I'm honestly not sure. All I know is that he managed to get hold of my email address and - for some reason I don't know till this day - he decided to be incredibly interested in me. He hadn't seen me! He had read something. Possibly, my profile? His emails were short and contained grammatical mistakes. I am a grammar nazi. So, I never took him seriously, made fun of him, didn't reply. But he kept on wanting to get to know me. Why???
Anyhow, then I went to India for the first time. To check your emails as a tourist in India back then, you had to go to a special "internet cafe": the computers were very old, the internet was very slow, I wanted to see all my mail, I wanted to write to friends and family. But when I saw an email from him - from a person I never took seriously and didn't want to meet - I couldn't resist the temptation to answer and say "hey, dude, sorry, I'm in India and have no time to reply to your nonsense". That was my mistake. I should have ignored his message. None of the following would have happened then.
He was so impressed. I think even his emails became longer and more articulate. And with all my feelings of insecurity and inferiority complex I never could resist the temptation of meeting with someone's admiration. So, when I came back from India, I agreed to meet him. I remember looking at his face, thinking it reminded me of my cousin's face - whom I didn't like, he was spineless and became a drunkard and a junky as a very young man, was nursed back to sobriety in his thirties by his mother and lost most of his brains on the way. But it didn't stop me.
I do not know how he managed to bewitch me, but at some point I stopped knowing that I was more intelligent, experienced and damn it worthy than he was, and started thinking all the opposite things. We started living together. I can't write down all that I've been through with him. He wanted his independence, but my complete self-sacrifice, he would get angry and stop talking to me for days on end or he would lecture me about how life should be lived. He read and misunderstood a lot of psychologists and applied his misunderstandings to me, and when I started reading psychologists to point out to him that he was suffocating me, he would explain to me how I was a leech and... earnestly, I don't remember, but it was bad, he nearly completely drove me crazy. It was during those two years with him that I became seriously depressed for the first (and so far last) time in my life, that I almost tried to kill myself, that I cried for two days and then went to my physician to ask for advice and he almost got me admitted in a psychiatric clinic, because he was afraid I actually would kill myself. It was the worst time of my life, and I couldn't realize that the only fucking thing I had to get rid of to feel good was this fucking guy. Once, he got so angry that he attacked me, physically, it was so ugly, so... I couldn't believe it was even happening to me, so impossible this was in my universe. And I thought that was that, I thought THIS only could mean the end. I always was angry at those women who stayed with abusive guys. But I stayed! Why the hell did I stay after THAT? I've no idea. But I stayed with him for half a year more.
Ah, and I forgot to mention: I was also not allowed to get sick, because people only get sick, when they want to, and also, when I'm sick, he's feeling bad for me, so my being sick means I'm egotistically letting him suffer.
And he would have all those ideas - that one had to sleep on the floor on (literally!) sheep's skins (how did I manage to refuse to do that? I don't know, but he did sleep like that for about a month); that we should have a simple life and get all our stuff from the flea market, that he should smoke a pipe, play the violin, have a microscope, a telescope, a guitar - I don't remember what else. And I got him all that! For the violin I went some 200 km on public transport in the middle of winter. And he wasn't happy about it, because he didn't want to have AAL his wishes come true, just some of them. He never did anything with any of those things. He looked at them once. That was that. He failed all his exams, had no idea about how and what he would do with his life, managed to get transferred to another university, but never went to any classes.
Oh, by the way, during all that time I was the one who earned money. Oh, he tried a few times. We were both students (and I was in the process of finishing and actually wrote my MA _during that last half a year_), but, of course, it was he who was so terribly busy and couldn't spare the time, and also - he was too unqualified to do anything, so all he could find were menial jobs, for which he felt himself to be too intellectually gifted. He used to come home and explain to me how misunderstood he was, how he tried to educate his backward colleagues, but just ended up casting pearls before swine. And this, obviously, made him very angry. And were else would one unload one's anger if not at home, right? And I could do jobs like language teaching, translating and transcribing, which were, of course, much easier to do. So, I was finishing my MA and working, while he was reading psychological and philosophical tractates and being angry at me, because I dared to enjoy myself outside home. At work, that is.
And then I got lucky. At one of those jobs I worked at, I met G. She was so positive, so full of life, she, too, was very impressed by me from the first minute, and we've already established that I never could resist that, but she was gooooooooood. I tried to write "good" there, not "god", just couldn't stop, so gooooooood was she. Still is. She was in a similar situation - an active and clever young woman in the process of leaving a good-for-nothing husband, but the difference between us was that she already knew she was leaving him. We started meeting from time to time, and talking. I remember how he hated the idea of me having her as a friend. I bet he could sense me slipping away from his influence. One afternoon I found myself sitting opposite her and telling her all that I've written above. Or, maybe, not. But the gist was that I was terribly unhappy with him. And then came the next morning. I will never forget that feeling. I woke up lying next to him, lying on my back, hands above the head, the chest spread wide, breathing - I never found myself in such a position before, but a lot after - and I knew that I was free.
I told him to get the hell out on that same day. He had no job, no money, nothing, so he tried to manipulate me into letting him stay - "where would I go? How can I? I have nothing!" We lived by then in a kitchen+1 room 32 square meters apartment, so I tried to at least live in the other room, but it was impossible, and he just didn't do anything to move out. My MA was finished by then, I had to study for the final exams, and it was impossible for me to do that at home. So, I moved in with G - we shared one room and one bed, and we had a great time. And every day I would call that fucking asshole and say "get the hell out of my apartment!" - I was the one paying for it, after all. It took him another month, at least, to finally move out.
The last two weeks - the exam weeks - of my MA I had the use of the flat of a private student of mine, which was just a dream. Everything I did back then was just a dream: I was free, I was my own, I had money that I used to spend on him! I still remember all the clothes I bought for myself then. Seriously, I remember each piece. Incidentally, that was the same time I met the one who later became my husband, and if it hadn't been for the fucking asshole I wouldn't have had all those trust issues with him during the first years. For at least a year, I had this recurring dream, in which the fucking asshole was lying on the ground on his side, and I was kicking his stomach as hard as I could. He lost his name and became the fucking asshole. He wrote to me twice more, and I think I covered him with abuses in response. I'm not sure. He appeared in two or three of my dreams since, I remember the last one. It was a dream about something else, and then suddenly there was the fucking asshole, and I screamed: "get out of my dream you fucking asshole!" and he left.
And then came yesterday. I went to the nearby town, because I wanted to get out of the house for some time, and just to get a few things. And the parking lot I went to is in such a place that I had to drive through this tiny residential street covered with cobblestones. It was around 3 pm, no one around. But for the fucking asshole. He was walking towards me, eating some sandwich. He looked _exactly the same_. It's been fourteen years, people. I was so shocked, I never expected to see him again in my life. And there he was. So I just stopped the car. My mouth open. My eyes round. My window was open as well but I didn't know what I could say. There was this fraction of a second, when I thought he would stop, too, and turn to look at me. But it passed and he continued walking. And I saw his back - he was wearing a black uniform with the name of the shop or whatever it is he's apparently working as a menial worker for.
There was a second when I thought, it must have been someone else, because a person _has to change_ in fourteen years. But then I remembered that his mother lived in that town. I never really realized it before, because when I knew where she lived, my brother did not live here, so the whole area was a completely new territory for me. And by the time my brother moved here, I had repressed all memories about the fucking asshole.
So. It was him. He lives in the same town as his mom and works as some sort of a warehouse worker. The peer-review writing me* is happy to know that. Schadenfreude can be a nice thing. And the next time I want to get out of the house and get some things, I'll drive to the other neighboring town, thank you very much.
As to how this could happen - I always was and still am so very insecure, so prepared to doubt myself, so ready to accept that other people are right and I am wrong that... yeah. I will remember this. This was not the only time I got too impressed with someone else's personality that I completely lost sense. Another such situation I had with my former PhD adviser. But I am growing. Every day a little more.
*and yeah, that review - I sent it last week, and the editor (who is great and who will hopefully be one of the people on my PhD commission, though he doesn't know it yet) wrote back saying his impression was exactly the same and that he really appreciated the way my critique was clear and at the same time constructive. Fuck fucking assholes! I'm gifted and intelligent and worthy, jawohl.
Whether you read what's under the cut or not - thank you for being witnesses to my cleansing ritual. I will re-read this now, post it and go wash myself, put on a face mask, dress prettily, turn on some nice music, burn some incense, clean my room and probably come back with another post - the one I wanted to write yesterday before I drove out to meet my ghost of the past.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-27 01:07 pm (UTC)But I'm probably still recognizable as physically largely the same person that I was fourteen years ago.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-27 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-27 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-27 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-28 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-28 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-29 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-29 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-29 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-12 04:09 pm (UTC)I think you're right about the "freeze" response. Physical violence was so far outside of something I thought could ever happen to me that I refused to believe it happened. Wow. Thanks for your response, it helped!