“You’re such a secret, misty-eyed and shady
Lady how you hold the key.
Oh, you’re like a candle, your flame is slowly fadin’
Burnin’ out and burnin’ me.”
~ “Bringin’ On The Heartbreak” Def Leppard
And just like that, after talking to her nearly every single day for the last two years, the woman who told me I broke her heart because I chose not to date her because she was married disappeared from my life—as if I didn’t even exist. Even in her absence, I blamed myself for the mess I created with my emotions. The woman who abandoned me, in my sick heart and mind, wasn’t the reason for vanishing—it was mine. Reluctantly embracing a world without her, I continued to write in my journal while submerged in hopelessness. Torn between the truth and fault, I still refused to give up on us while enlisting an opiate to keep my dream alive—she had to be finding a way to right this wrong.
Hoping that she still believed in our love, I kept my Blackberry near me at all times. There was just no way she wouldn’t eventually come to see what she did and then contact me. With a mind ravaged from the emotional toll our relationship took on me, I gave up on my job search—mentally unable to work during the greatest recession in United States history. When I decided to trust Anya, I came in knowing our relationship would be more about her than it would be about me. In the end, I failed her, and being a competitively spirited man, I refused to accept that. I hated to let people down, especially when I only came into someone’s life to make it better. Then there was the part of me who felt like she played me for a fool. Without any real plans to be with me, how could I feel anything different? Then there was the part of me that felt like I let her down.
As long as I believed love existed between us, I would judge myself the same way I judged her. I was upset with her because it seemed like she never protected me. That she led her friends to believe she was just unhappy in her marriage and that Jackson was a faithful loving husband. After all the heartbreak before Anya came into my life. the Universe had me in mind to show her love never cheated on anyone. I never expected to see this side of Anya, a side that was extremely inconsistent with what she communicated to me when we first met.
I thought back to some of the things she said to me, especially when she asked me over the phone why would I tell Jackson about us if she planned to stay? Well, I loved her, that’s why. If she made the decision to work on her marriage, after I walked away from her, and after two years being told “I love you forever”, there was no way I’d accept that. She can have her marriage, but it will be under the umbrella of truth and not a dark cloud of deception. Her decision to stay made me feel used, another reason I wanted to confront him. The five months before we reconnected, should’ve been the time to consider working on her marriage. Instead, she told me “You broke my heart”. So I go all in to unbreak it forever, and the thanks I got was “I feel I betrayed my kids” or “Don’t classify me with the general public”. Did she realize how rotten that was of her? All she could see is her kids, and that’s fine—I always considered myself second to them, but she even put me behind her kickboxing classes even comparing me to some man who believed in love who had his heart cut out of his chest and stomped on. If I didn’t care about her, or the kids, I just would’ve gotten her pregnant—something I could’ve easily done especially in the beginning when she was most vulnerable. Instead, I treated her like a lady, never punishing her for trying to run when the going got tough. My reward was to be accused of stalking and harassment by the woman I gave the last two years of my life to...and likely more than that. If mothers made sacrifices for her kids, why didn’t she just do that and leave me the fuck alone? I didn’t need to date a married person to find out love didn’t exist for me. Her indecision turned me into a homewrecker and the reason for the turmoil in her life. She looked upon me as the disease instead of the cure after giving nothing but everything I had, even my career. A career I spent six years in school and passing an extremely difficult exam building? What did she lose? Her husband’s trust? Something that she never had in the first place?
With my Vicodin dosage increasing by the hour—I hoped to just drop dead. I couldn’t make sense of all the emotions I felt—they consumed me every second of the day. I knew there would be no getting past this. Two years of seeing and talking to someone every single day and now suddenly cutoff and I had no right to defend myself? I had no right to make this right so I can seek some kind of closure if I had to? Would the only closure I’m worthy of is death just for loving someone? Why was I being eternally fined for falling in love? Telling Anya the way I felt in a relationship, if she did use me, was considered harassing behavior? Why the hell did she tell me about her husband’s infidelities? She was there for the sake of the kids? Why couldn’t she just tell me the truth instead of encouraging and allowing me to fight for her? I couldn’t believe all that I was feeling.
I never reached out to Jackson, yet she treated me as if I did. If I had any real plans to tell Jackson, why would I share them with her? I wouldn’t have told her about it—I just would’ve done it. I told her what I was feeling because I didn’t want to hide it from her, hoping she would do something consistent with her love for me to kill the thought. Instead, she conspired with him to call “our” lawyer and their neighborhood police official. After I had lost my career, because she refused to share who her husband was with me when we met, like everyone else who dated her knew, that was what I deserved. I knew her daughter more than any other man, yet she didn’t think twice about getting her “people” involved to harm me? None of her “people” knew the story. Did they know she loved me or did she tell them something else to get them to come after me?
After popping my tenth Vicodin that day, I concentrated on when I told her “What makes you think I’d want to be with you now”? She responded with “Well, I know you don’t want to be with me anymore. I had so much to say to you but I would like you to reconsider us being friends one day.” As evil as conspiring with her husband against me was, her words gave me pause about my role in this—I was no angel either. The sadness in her voice will always haunt my ears because my pride lied to her—I would always want to be with her. Now, she falsely believed that I wanted nothing to do with her. The truth was I wanted her to fight for our love, not just a friendship. After all I’ve shared with her and all I’ve lost, she couldn’t see how merely being friends was too hard for me? Maybe she fought for the friendship because she believed it was the only way a real relationship could still have a chance at existing. Anya became a need while I remained a luxury in her life and that need turned me into a man that scared her away. She wasn’t scared in the sense I’d hurt her, but that I might do something to destroy us. My pride led to my fall in a lot of ways—it caused my own self destruction. I wish I had given her the time to tell me all the things she wanted to tell me—maybe they held the key to my survival. Instead, I erected the largest of barriers between us—fear. There’s no way I could ever fall out of love with her and only sorrow consumed me when I imagined all these things, she wanted to tell me, things I’ll never know, because I denied her the chance to. I wanted to be her husband, not just her friend and that was tough for me to swallow or accept.
I asked myself what would make this right? If she came to my door, all my pride would be out the window. I could easily apologize for what I did and do whatever it took to make things right for her—but she would have to take that step after weaponizing the man whose unfaithfulness led her to me. I still believed in us. I still believed in our love and I still loved her but was she truly in love with me? I wasn’t even close to believing she wasn’t in love with me, or maybe it was just the euphoria the pills gave me—I didn’t know. Even though she never stood up for me after giving her a hundred percent of myself, if the situation was removed from the equation, we could get back on track for good—I would then know her love was genuine.
The third day without Anya in my life, for some reason, I carried positive thoughts and it carried on into the day, or then again, it could’ve been the Vicodin. That morning I worked out and even searched for jobs before deciding to visit my parents. On the drive over, I listened to some of the music she burned for me—tunes I also burned on the Ipod she gave to me. When David Grey’s “Babylon” and “Baby, You’re the World to Me.” played, a smile broke upon my face, but when “This Year’s Love” came on, I had a hard time seeing the road.
I stayed in my car for about ten minutes, trying to rid the redness from my eyes before entering my parent’s house. I didn’t want my mom to worry about me and crying was just something I never did.
“Hi.” She dryly greeted upon entering her room.
“Don’t be too excited to see me now.” I sarcastically replied.
“What are you doin’ here?”
“Just wanted to say hello.”
“Oh, I thought it was because you’re lookin’ for drugs.”
“Drugs?” I responded, pretending to be annoyed. “What makes you think that?”
“Because I had a full bottle a few days ago and now I have half a pill bottle left.”
“You better have a talk with Dad then.” I joked. “We might need to have an intervention.”
“Yeah, for you.” She answered with distress in her voice.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d care. I’m not addicted—I’ll bring them back if you want.” I replied knowing I had already taken most of them.
“No. That should hold you over for a long time.” She countered. “I just don’t want you takin’ anymore. I need them too, you know.”
“Really? I didn’t think you needed them.”
“Well, I do.”
Although I knew she only told me she needed the pills to stop me from stealing them, my fate was already sealed. Not only had I become addicted to them, but abused them as well. Luckily, and unfortunately, she received two hundred pills a month, enabling me to take up to about seven pills a day. I knew I’d probably have to look outside her room to get my hands on more. I just didn’t care about living anymore. Perching on her old pink recliner chair, “You’ve Got Mail” was playing on her flat screen television—bringing me back to a conversation we had about the chemistry Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had together, and how much it mirrored mine and Anya’s at the time. Naturally starting to miss her, I grasped onto hope for dear life once again.
“Have you heard from Anya?” My mother blurted.
“Nope.”
“Oh.”
“As crazy as this sounds. I still have hope for us.”
“What makes you think that?”
“What makes me think that? Are you serious?” I said turning my eyes away from the movie.
“Well, it’s just that she broke up with you, honey.”
“She’s broken up with me before.” I reminded her.
“She wouldn’t have broken up with you if she wanted to be with you.”
To hear these words come from my mother’s mouth, a supporter who always defended Anya’s love for me, left me in shock. Her words added a cement block to a soul that treaded for water, sinking me into deep despair. I then tried to defend her.
“Should I have expected her to just leave her kids behind to be with me?” I hit back. “Should I have expected her to be with me with a husband who looked to sell her out to their kids and who’s watchin’ her like a hawk? Her husband is looking to make his wife out to be the scapegoat—as if he is the victim in all of this after he wrecked another man’s marriage because of his libido. After his infidelities caused her such great emotional distress that she had her son prematurely. Are you just going to attack her now? You know, maybe I was wrong for forcing her to defend me?”
My mother stared at me then hit me with a haymaker called common sense.
“What kind of say would her husband have if she loved you and wanted to be with you?”
I could feel the need for a Vicodin grow, as brain shivers hit me from out of nowhere like they often did after I quit taking Zoloft.
“Maybe it was me who did her wrong?” I answered. “She’s faced with a lot of things over there most people aren’t faced with. Maybe the way I took the bull by the horns was wrong.”
“Like what kind of things is she faced with?”
“Like a business and properties—lots of properties.” I said. “What happens to all the employees? What happens to all the property they own? This isn’t your typical situation--there’s a lot involved that doesn’t meet the eye.”
“She put you in the position to grab the bulls by the horn and maybe it was wrong in her point of view.” She retorted. “But if she truly loved you it wouldn’t matter—she would be with you.”
“You really think it’s that simple? You don’t think she loves me at all?”
“Not anymore…if she ever really did” she shot. “People who love others would never ask them not to contact them or text them…let alone be willing to report them to the police if they did. You’re in denial.”
“Do you see why I need Vicodin?” I snapped, her words unsettling me. “If my self-esteem didn’t take enough of a beating from Dad, you’re now there to pick up the slack. My entire life I’ve been dealing with this bullshit—I have to go.”
“I’m sorry, Honey. I..I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” She said trying to smooth things over. “Please stay. It’s the medicine I’m taking. It’s making me loopy.”
“I really have to go, Mom—I have to get send some resumes out.” I lied. “I’m super sensitive to everything right now—I really shouldn’t have come by at all. I’m not right in the head over this, and I’ll only bring you down with me. This is the last thing you need right now.”
I didn’t want to leave my mother with bad feelings, but I couldn’t hide how what she told me left me extremely unsettled. Sure, Anya’s form of love for me was different than mine, but to say she didn’t love me at all anymore? I wasn’t ready to hear that, and I never would. If I had to accept that, jumping off the bridge would become reality as well. Could my mother understand how hearing something like that after all I’ve lost and endured would greatly affect me? Did she think this breakup would be easy for me? Did she think me taking over a hundred Vicodin pills from her was normal? Didn’t she realize how my low self-opinion was a major obstacle for me in life? I felt bad for my mother when she claimed her medication was what led her to tell me what she did, but the damage was done.
I left her house feeling lonelier than ever, and out of desperation I reached out to my psychiatrist’s office to set up an appointment as soon as possible. Thankfully, she had an open slot on Monday morning, a few days away. With the onslaught of brain shivers, I needed to let her know about these symptoms after ceasing my use of Zoloft three weeks earlier.
I went back and forth between liberation and remorsefulness. I had my pride, and learned it truly did go before the fall—while I fell apart at the seams. She told me women changed their minds all the time, but she also taught me the same lesson other women did—when it came to leaving me, they never changed their minds after they did. I trusted that Anya was disgusted by Jackson so much, that all she needed was someone to be there for her when she left him. I trusted she would only be happy by leaving him. That not having someone to be there for her was the only thing holding her down—and I gave her far more than adequate time to follow through. To look at me the way she did, with all the love in the world within her eyes—I felt misled by her love. That she only looked at me in such a way because she knew all along this would happen—that she would never leave and force me to leave her. All she did was take me in, not out of a deep love for me, but she hid from me knowing those moments were fleeting.
When I attempted to change the terms of the relationship, so it would be fair to me too, her true colors shone through—she needed to be in control or else. For a woman who dreamt, wished and hoped to be with me, she had it all planned out if the secret was ever threatened. It made me feel this was all discussed with the girls a long time ago, and likely even with Jackson. These emotions were bigger than me—impossible to make sense of. Would she have wanted to fall deeply in love with someone who slept in the same bed as someone else? How could she allow me to feel so much for her when even her sleeping arrangements never changed? If Jackson had dominion over her, then why the fuck did she lead me to believe she had control of her own destiny? It just made me sick to speculate. To me, it’s basic common courtesy to not allow another human being to fall deeply in love with you if you are not the decision maker in that person’s future. She only loved me because of my innocent naïve qualities—I was dumb enough to fall for it. When I reflected upon this romantic side of her, it occurred to me that no one has ever loved me adoringly like she did. I had never met a woman who couldn’t take her eyes off me and I still failed to heed the warning Anya blatantly gave me each time she got lost in my eyes.
A week passed before meeting up with my psychiatrist. After confessing I discontinued taking Zoloft cold turkey, she explained why my brain shivers were severe. It didn’t happen often but it jolted me with a constant stream of electric shockwaves when it did. After catching her up with everything that happened, she felt disheartened for me. I was too proudful to break down in front of her, but had to catch myself when my voice started to shift. Instead of reprimanding me for the texts I sent Anya, and as long as I didn’t cross any lines, she told me I was entitled to an emotional response.
“It’s hard to have an electronic communication relationship.” She told me “It often left things to misinterpretation. All you see are words and not the person’s demeanor.”
I was upset with Anya, no doubt, but never acted out violently like punching a hole in my wall or breaking things—just a great deal of mental anguish. My frustration only mounted each time I couldn’t talk to her face to face because of her situation. The situation needed to change in order for us to make it—and I believed she never planned to change it if she looked down upon those who divorced. Leaving the decision to be with me in the hands of others proved she had no real intent of ever leaving—she thought eventually she’d wear me down with her planned indecision and I’d just disappear from her life after becoming tired of her staying. To me, that felt like a game and why I acted out the way I did. Over time, I had to keep my hurt inside while it built up until ultimately getting lost in translation when it all came out. My psychiatrist agreed with me that her husband probably forced her to do what she did, however she explained that if she threatened me with harassment and stalking, she had no intentions of leaving her husband. To hear that from someone outside the voice in my head put me in a darker place. She finished the session by telling me that she might contact me again, giving me some hope, but overall, she really brought forth my greatest fear—that the stories and conclusions Anya said I formed in my head were always true.
Before leaving her office, she handed me a note in which she drew an iceberg then ran a line in the top third of it to denote water. She then wrote the word “hurt” on the part of the ice berg that protruded above the water then asked me what lied underneath the surface of the water—the part of the iceberg no one could see. In essence, explaining that if hurt was just the tip of the iceberg, what lied beneath it? I then told her, the hurt created after sharing the lives of her kids with me, allowing me to believe I was special. When she did that, I trusted she would never hurt me, it only encouraged me to fall deeper in love with her. Having kids of my own were really important to me before I met my soulmate—after that, I only wanted kids with her. Anya didn’t just deny me love, she denied me my hopes to have a family one day too. After all we shared together, it hurt me to know she chose to stay with Jackson, even using him to conspire against me after she shared how much he dishonored her—the only reason I got involved with her. Now, it hurt because I didn’t get to see her anymore. It hurt because I felt she abandoned me with a lot of feelings for her. It hurt because I endured and sacrificed a large part of my life for her—even losing a career job. It hurt because I opened up myself to her like never before—she knew me better than anyone ever has. It hurt because I felt like a fool after trusting in her love so much. Even when I felt otherwise, I still believed her love for me was true. Lastly, it hurt because my perception of love, family and marriages are forever changed—her love for me corrupted my belief in the beauty and joy of life.
As I shared these things with my therapist, I saw how my mom felt that Anya didn’t truly want to be with me, hurting me even more to see the reality in that—these were no longer just thoughts inside my head now. After I left the session, all the positive thoughts I had when I arrived were all washed away. How could Anya, the woman I loved more than anything else in this world, do this to me? How could she have allowed me into her life for a single day, the most courageous of acts by a married woman with kids, to only cave into fear in the end? I took every precaution with her in the beginning, even walked away from her, and she still managed to rip my heart out of my chest—like all the other before her I wasn’t cautious with. Now, anyone who knew of my situation, every single one of them believed, no matter how much Anya got angered when I questioned her love, that she didn’t love me, and likely never did.
When I came home, I took inventory of Anya around me. Her shrine of perfume, candles and cards still graced my dresser. The CD’s she burned for me, songs that always touched my heart, sat next to the Ipod she also bought for me, on the nightstand next to my bed. The Ipod charger/alarm clock I used every day was next to the Ipod. The pen she got me for my birthday, my favorite writing tool I used to jots thoughts down on paper in the middle of the night was on the same nightstand too. The bookmark she had laminated that read “I love you forever” was in the book I was reading on my bed. Anya even surrounded me whenever I had a meal at the mall—most of the popular songs she burned for me would be heard from the restaurant’s speakers. When my mother told me Anya did not want to be with me and my therapist drove the point further by telling me she had no plans to leave her husband, it threatened to destroy everything I ever believed in about our love. A woman who ever considered me her soulmate would’ve never dreamt of doing the things Anya did that day. I wasn’t convinced I did anything out of line of a soulmate—fighting for her to live an honest life. I truly loved her and she wasn’t going to get anything sugarcoated from me—she got plenty of that from the person who cheated on her several times. If I couldn’t tell her when she was acting like an entitled shit, then she never believed I was her soulmate—it was only said to disarm me. Of course, there was still a chance she could prove them all wrong, but there was one hard truth in life that never strayed off course—when a woman made up her mind about me, she never changed it. I know my mother and therapist didn’t say these things to hurt me, but to help me, I wasn’t close to being ready to accept it—still well into the denial stage of the grieving process. A process I didn’t believe I was truly engaged in. In fact, they should add another stage to it—the hopeful stage, if I was truly engaged in the grieving process. The fact I still hoped, even beyond hope, wouldn’t allow me to believe I was grieving her loss—just on another hiatus until we figure things out again. Even as the fact of the day and all the evidence edged towards the darkest of despair, my heart refused to believe what my mind already knew.
Without Anya in my life to make me feel safe, I printed all of my daily journals since November 30th 2007, the night we reconnected almost two years ago. Well over two thousand pages, I ran them through a three hole punch and put them all in a huge black folder. Tucking this monstrosity of a binder under my arm, I jumped in my car to stay connected with my soulmate. Upon arriving at the Good Morning Café, I’d throw down a Vicodin and plop myself down into a black leather chair. Instead of looking for work, I succumbed to the darkest depression I ever had. For days on end, I’d find myself at the Good Morning Café, hoping to run into her, while poring through a binder searching for proof they were wrong about Anya’s love for me. I read those daily journals with my entire heart, while my mind gave me an eye roll, but I didn’t care—the Vicodin wouldn’t allow me to.
Fourteen days passed without Anya in my life while I worked tirelessly to prove I knew more about Anya’s feelings for me than anyone else did. I found solace in the good times and feelings we shared through her own words in my binder of hope, still believing she still had so much she wanted to tell me. By putting myself in the café, if she walked in alone, I could give her the chance to after my emotions stole that from her. When I’d get home hours later, several more Vicodin would be taken before relaxing in my recliner reading through the binder. Focusing on the good times we shared, it hit me out of the blue giving me hope my mother and therapist were both wrong—if she didn’t want to be with me, how come she still held on to my thingie? The necklace I bought for her? Wouldn’t she have returned it by now if she wanted nothing to do with me? My mother and my therapist both never considered this fact—evidence in favor of hope. With this infusion of light, I started to write a letter to her, not to send but to act out if I had another opportunity to talk to her.
Read all the words you have ever written me. How can you expect someone, who loves you as much as I do, to not see your pain? I just think it shouldn’t have been a matter of “if” but “when”. I trusted you to never turn me into a bad person. We had a pure love. There were no agendas. I loved just walking with you, holding your hand and talking to you just as much as being intimate with you. It was sweet. It was special. It was respectful. It was not about lust. There was a lot of love and respect—I couldn’t even go there because it hurt too much to see you leave not because I didn’t want to. How could it have been so easy for you? Was this a lustful relationship in your eyes? I could understand you fighting it the way you did and you thinking you betrayed your kids if you believed it was such. You led me to believe our love was real--that it was true. That it was everything love should be. If I was using you or taking advantage of you in some way. I could see him not allowing it or people being against it. How could you not stand up for our love if you believed it to be good? When you said you felt like you betrayed your kids, you tore me apart with that. Why would I ever put you in that position especially with the way I loved you? It just hurt so badly because of how much of them you shared with me. Listen, I can handle a broken heart better than anyone—I’m used to it, but this one cut right through my heart without warning. I worked really hard to make our love special.
After I typed this up, I saved it in a file folder called “thoughts”—that’s all they were. To try to capture and pull in the right emotions in case she ever showed up at my door. Everything happening around me, even in the news, brought out the feels. Steve Phillips, the ex-general manager of the New York Mets turned ESPN analyst was fired for having an extra marital relationship with a young assistant. After their affair ended, his mistress called Phillips wife repeatedly and also left her a descriptive letter that even detailed where his birthmarks where to prove she had a relationship with him. She also allegedly stalked his son, asking him about their parent’s love life. Although these kinds of things never entered in my mind to do, it was good to know it wasn’t entirely off course in this kind of deep emotional relationship to want to talk to Jackson. The way I played it out in my head, I would leave out the tawdry details, only wanting to tell him the reasons I chose to be in her life. He should hear it from me because I brought with me the one thing no one else would represent, the truth. He obviously wanted to know the truth if he stalked me on Facebook. Why not give it to him so he knew what he faced? When he went into my account, that forever changed the game for me. I expected her protection and defense, not her running away and not wanting to face anything anymore. Ironically at the same time, the McCourt’s, who owned the Los Angeles Dodgers were going through a contentious divorce which prompted her to be fired as CEO. There were even pictures of his wife with a bodyguard, yet she never ran and met it head on regardless of her being in the public eye. Anya faced a lot less than she did, and I’m sure his wife was just having fun with the bodyguard.
As I struggled more each hour to cope with my grief, I was curious to see if Anya had set up a Facebook account for herself. While searching for it, her daughter’s Facebook profile came up in my window—it seemed like Anya hadn’t set up one for herself yet. Her profile picture was one of her and Andrew together—brother and sister. I found it to be the sweetest thing that she’d make that her profile picture—it was nice to see they had a close sibling relationship and appeared to be really happy. It made me wonder if Katie knew of me and maybe it was posted to send me a message? As if to tell me this is what you’re taking away from me by wanting to be with my mother. I didn’t think I was delusional, but I could very well have been. The pain I felt inside made me fear the worst was yet to come and how easily the worst-case scenarios came to mind. Although I did glanced at Katie’s Facebook profile picture, there was no intention, nor even the slightest thought to ever contact her or Andrew like the jaded assistant in the Phillips affair did. I felt jaded as well, especially after she shared so much of their lives with me, but the thought never entered my mind. I may have been somewhat delusional but I’d suffer from delusions of grandeur believing they would choose me over their father no matter how much better I treated her than he did. I knew telling the kids anything was completely out of line and futile. This was between three adults and no one else. The duty to talk to their kids was theirs and theirs alone. After I saw Katie’s Facebook profile picture, I told myself if she ever displayed a profile picture of her father and mother together, it would confirm Katie was aware of an issue in her parent’s marriage. After all the times she claimed to break down in front of her kids, wouldn’t Katie and Andrew be curious about what caused their mother’s tears?
I contemplated writing a letter to Anya at this time, but wanted to get through some therapy first before making a decision to send it—needing to distill the raw mixed emotions I still had about everything. Part of me wanted to ask for my thingie back—not because I wanted it back. What would I do with it? But if she thought I was an harasser, a stalker, the guy who led her to betray her kids, the guy who encouraged her to be a part of the general public she despised and the guy who wanted to hurt her kids, then why would she hold onto it? At the very minimum, I gave that to her believing she thought the very opposite of those things about me. If our love never inspired her to leave her marriage, how could I have meant anything to her?
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
As I mourned her death, I started receiving calls from a number containing only zeroes. Unfortunately, since I began muting my ring tones, I missed each call and they never left a message. Could it have been coming from a pay phone? Did they even have pay phones anymore? Or maybe it came from the neighborhood police official or their lawyer’s phone? When I started to hope it was Anya who called, to tell me all the things she never got a chance to say, I chalked it up to being delusional.
During my therapist appointment that day, Tobey asked me what I wanted. The question left me in a state of shock—a question Anya never asked me. I became so conditioned to no one caring about what I wanted, I didn’t know what to say.
“As you can tell I’m having a difficult time. People are telling me that she never wanted to be with me and it’s killing me inside—I don’t want to believe it. Of course, I’ve had my doubts too, but I’ve never been willing to fully believe that. Even when I know better, I still didn’t believe it.” I explained, feeling a sense of defeat. “What I want is for her to prove them wrong. In my hearts of hearts, I believe she’s still holdin’ onto my necklace for a reason—she still hopes we’ll be together one day. I can’t give up on her yet.”
Tobey looked at me with sincerity and deep concern in her eyes, the same way Anya used to look at me.
“But Landyn, you need to choose healthy relationships.” She opposed. “She loved you, but only because you were her confidant. When that ended, she ended her relationship with you. You have to beware of these types of unhealthy relationships. And Landyn…”
My suddenly reddened eyes awaited her response.
“Hope is only the postponement of disappointment” she stated.
Tobey had given me hope and always saw my side of things. When she objectively broke this down for me, I took it to heart but was unwilling to accept it, regardless of the writing on the wall. That night I couldn’t fall asleep. The night I first met Anya, I should’ve just talked to her wearing a multi-colored wig with a white painted face, a round red rubber nose and oversized shoes—she basically thought of me as a clown anyway. After Tobey pointed out my role as Anya’s confidant, something I never considered, it wrecked me. Anya knew exactly what I represented to her, her confidant and nothing more. It’s why she predicted my therapist would recommend cutting off all contact—even she knew she was using me and the only reason she loved me was because I believed there was something greater behind it. What I didn’t realize is the woman who claimed to love me had judged me—she wrote me off sooner than I could have ever recognized. My therapist session broke my heart as much as Anya did.
It seemed I always chose unhealthy relationships—ones in which the women needed saving in. For starters, I always went into my relationships focusing on others instead of myself—the surest way to someone’s heart. The problem was I didn’t love myself each time I did. In order to be able to put myself on the backburner for people, it had to be intentionally done and not by nature. Basically, I had to love myself before I could love someone else. Anya didn’t create the inequity in our relationship, I created it by accepting my role as confidant with no complaints. Unless I found a way to love myself, I would only continue to be mired in relationships with no return on my invested time. It was hard to acknowledge that I was there for Anya at all times and defended her at every turn, yet received nor was worthy of the same in return. Instead, the man who abused Anya is now playing the role of hero—likely telling the entire neighborhood how a psycho who thought he had a chance with his wife was harassing and stalking her. The hardest thing to accept was how Anya knew what she was doing, likely why she felt guilt all around. How she likely told Jackson “I told him we were just friends and he wanted more” even though she claimed to love me more than ever. I knew she loved her kids, but she also knew I was a good man. Did she just think that lowly of me as a man because I respected her?
She told me the girls were forced to produce a copy of the Facebook email I sent them, but were they really forced? Or were they more than willing to hand it over? Anya had to have lied to them about our relationship. If they willingly handed those over to him then they encouraged her all along to work on her marriage. If they were forced, I just didn’t see a scenario how they could be, then Anya didn’t want me to think badly of them. All I wanted was for them to know the truth as to why Anya and I believed in our love—why we both went in circles. I would’ve never been in her life for a single minute if Jackson had never chipped her heart away from him with his infidelities. I was not the kind of man who dated people who were friends with benefits—especially in an extramarital relationship. These thoughts suddenly brought me back to the time she broke away from me claiming, there were “expectations” and she wanted those removed after over a year of being together. Of course, there were expectations after all we shared. There had to be.
I went back and forth between anger and compassion, hoping to remain on the kinder more understanding side of my emotions. As much as the outside world believed she didn’t want to be with me, and no matter how accurate and decisive their assessment seemed to be, I chose to deny them—she still held onto my necklace for a reason. I went back and forth with my mother and Tobey on the issue, hitting me hard by taking my current status with Anya at face value. Although I knew they wanted me to get well. they just could never know how much I loved Anya. How much she still meant to me, while I learned how little I meant to her. I had no doubt Anya loved me, but only as long as a condition was attached to it—it being a secret. While I saw how the marriage hurt her kids, Anya only saw how it provided her and them with the best things in life—why she was never ambivalent to her marriage and why she had no problem sucking it up no matter what anyone else did for her. What made is so excruciating for me was that she knew this from day one—that she let the clown turned confidant give it his best shot knowing he would eventually fail her after she proved she never planned to change a thing regardless of how much she claimed a woman changed her mind. It likely surprised her that the fool in love lasted as long as he did before breaking. Driving me crazy just had to be by design.
Tobey advised that it would be a bad idea for me to contact Anya, but I continued to work on the letter with the intention to send it. I believed my right to an emotional response—you don’t just cut off things completely after two years with someone. If I had threatened anyone, I could understand how I would be out of line, but I had a legitimate purpose after nearly two years of trusting her love for me—my time, energy and heart was not for free. Anyone who knew the nature of our relationship knew I was more her husband than her actual husband was. She gave me a landslide of emotions and she shouldn’t be allowed the right to shoot me without me telling her how badly it hurt. I don’t know what Anya told Jackson, or the neighborhood police official, but it couldn’t be anything close to the truth.
A month passed without a trace of the woman I heard from several times nearly every day for twenty-two months. Yet, still believing she would reach out and prove everyone wrong, I wanted her to be more than the illusion everyone else believed she was. After getting a call from a private number in the morning that never left a message, it got me through the day imagining it may have been her. When the same number called again and left a message for me the following day, I couldn’t wait to listen to my voice message. When I learned the identity of the caller was my cable company, it brought to life Tobey’s prophetic words “hope is the postponement of disappointment”. After the reality of the private caller’s identity revealed itself, I immediately popped two Vicodin to escape the pain. What made it even harder was coming to the realization that Anya was likely not having a hard time with this like I was. Then again, I wouldn’t have wanted that for her because of her kids—this heartache was entirely debilitating. Once the opiate kicked in, I mercifully entered a realm where compassion overruled the reality of the everyday world. I refused to return to my Pre-Anya existence because I wasn’t the same person anymore.
While searching the internet, I found and read through many “missing you” quotes, choosing one in particular that I posted as my Facebook status that read “People that are meant to be together always find their way in the end”. I then found myself looking at Katie’s posted picture of her and Andrew once again. As I got caught up in the picture again, it killed me inside to know they had no idea who I was. If they were my kids, I would’ve been so proud to have created them—it killed me even more to know they weren’t mine at all. To know the only reason, she shared their lives with me was because she planned to break my heart one day, made it that much harder. If Anya had told me she wanted them to know me one day, I could look at things differently, but she never did. She thought if she shared the lives of her kids with me, I’d be more than understanding when it was time to rip my heart out—the kind of move a politician would make. It just really burned me to know that and there was no getting around that truth—she never wanted her kids to know me. That fighting for her to choose love and happiness was asking her to hurt her children. I couldn’t have imagined a more hurtful position to put someone in who you asked to fight for you. I just couldn’t believe she’d do that to anyone one she loved, let alone ever planned to be with. Sure, I thought it was unfair how she pit her children against me, but never for a second did I believe loving me betrayed her kids. There were times I struggled, but I was under the impression she would leave her marriage, not stay after sharing all we did especially for nearly two years. The only time she betrayed her kids, was when Katie blamed herself for her mother threatening her father with divorce, and Anya let her go to bed with that guilt on her mind rather than being honest about it all. If the decision was made to protect Dad’s history of disrespect from them, then she had no business allowing me to feel so much for her—Anya knew why I chose to be in her life.
Sure, I had a ton of opinions on this, but it made me equally upset that people would judge Anya unfavorably as a mother if they knew of our relationship. There was never a doubt in my mind that Anya was a good mother. If you’re going to fairly judge her, you have to understand the emotional abuse levied upon her by Jackson and the inequities he created in their marriage leading her to me. Although I questioned Anya’s love and intentions, I truly loved her and how could you accuse a mother for betraying her kids when she wanted to feel appreciated, respected and loved? Her husband broke his vows to her and that’s what betrayed the kids—it was nothing Anya did. Her husband chipped away at her heart for years after he cheated on her, basically never atoning for a single thing—even when Yom Kippur reminded him of it each year. I never felt sorry for Anya, I understood how she felt because I’ve been there too and under much less excruciating circumstances. No one had a right, without knowledge of all the facts, to ever say she betrayed her kids by loving me. Anya did her children a disservice by being dishonest with them about the marriage only because Katie overheard her threatening to divorce Jackson—a moment in time that she would give Jackson no choice but to allow it.
The fact she still held onto her necklace gave me hope that she still believed in us, even after all the craziness. How could I doubt her love and intentions after Katie overheard her threatening Jackson with divorce? Would she have ever threatened her husband with divorce if she didn’t love me and wanted to be with me? My therapist and mother didn’t know about that so how could they believe she never wanted to be with me? Without Anya holding onto the necklace I got her, I would’ve taken my life by now—the only thing keeping me away from the bridge. I wasn’t willing to accept what everyone else wanted me to—holding out hope I’d get the chance to hear all the things she wanted to tell me but never got a chance to. To keep the hope alive that she wouldn’t have to “suffer forever”, effectively ruining her life. When I recalled the time she told me “my anger will never be resolved”, maybe this will backfire on Jackson turning her even more against him? If she no longer held the cards in her marriage because they were now even steven in his eyes and considering her anger will never be resolved, how could this not make her ambivalent towards her marriage? How would she handle the transformation from being the victim to Jackson to now being the culprit? Wouldn’t that just make her angrier than ever before? Especially if he hounds and piles more work on her to ensure she’s too busy to stray again? Was she really willing to hand the cards over to her abuser to help her marriage?
On a drive to visit my parents, I got stuck in a rare traffic jam. While at a standstill, I noticed the driver in the car next to me, a black BMW, throwing half of his body outside his car window to peer ahead at the traffic. I was no fan of traffic even spending two years in it every single morning, but not once did I ever think to lunge half of my body outside my window to see what the holdup was. While witnessing this driver’s ‘A’ personality shine through, I noticed another trait impossible to ignore—I knew this driver. It was Jackson Caiaphas, seemingly driving home from work on a Friday evening. Presenting me with an opportunity to catch my accuser off guard, I fought off the urge to approach him in the middle of traffic instead. When the traffic began to move normally, I watched him drive off taking the chance to confront him away from me.
With Anya fresh on my mind after seeing Jackson, I couldn’t stop thinking about why he was in such a hurry to get home. Why it was so important to throw half his body outside his driver’s side window. When I started to think of another social gathering, it put me in a bad state of mind. It spurred me to revisit the time we argued and she told me “yea keep it up” then warning me she was about to do something “irrational” because her anger was “escalating”. She further elaborated on this emotion by telling me she never knew she could be capable of such anger. My crime that day? I hit her with something called the truth—the things she denied herself on a daily basis. This led me to believe she was holding on to the ‘harassment and stalking” card for some time—long before she used it against me. Upon this sudden revelation. a part of me wanted to refocus the intent of my letter, even daring to ask for my necklace back. Why hold onto something a harasser or stalker would give to you?
Then I thought of San Francisco—when she hoped I would go to see her, even planning a date for dinner. The wonderful feelings we both shared when she opened the door to her room when I arrived at her hotel. The perfect morning walking in downtown San Francisco, hand in hand until she left my room. Then my thoughts carried over to when we accidentally ran into each other at the convenience store—when she claimed I startled her. Just a few hours later, we finally fulfill a hope, wish and dream of having dinner together. After knowing full well how badly I struggled with my emotions, she hit me with “I could never be with you even if you were better” leaving me about as broken as the guy in “500 Days of Summer”. It resembled the part in “500 Days of Summer” when Summer invited Tom to a party she was throwing without telling him that she was engaged, and how his expectations were crushed by reality. Anya did the same thing to me and the worst part was that she loved me. It seemed like the only reason she told me not to question her love was because she believed she betrayed her kids. Well, she did if she knew it wasn’t love she felt. It’s almost as if she used “love” to make herself feel better. The problem was the person she loved had to feel loved. Instead of feeling loved, I felt used. Love never would’ve dared to call a police official or a lawyer on me and if she considered that an irrational response, she was right if she loved me. Sure, Anya apologized to me from the “bottom of my heart”, but that was the kind of apology a five-year-old made, not a forty-year-old adult. I deserved a real apology—an acknowledgement that what she did was nothing short of wrong and beyond being irrational. She gave me a lot of feelings, then didn’t allow me to feel them.
Her apology came after she riddled my body with bullets. She played a game with me if she believed at any time being with me would hurt the kids. Then she goes out and shares their entire lives with me, allowing me for the first time in my fucking pathetic life to feel great about who I was, then hits me with “I feel I’ve betrayed my kids”. And how was she betraying them? By being honest with them about her unhappiness? By not wanting to place the burden of her unhappiness upon them? By trying just to be happy because of their father’s gross betrayals? By wanting to be honored, loved and respected? Tell me again Anya, why you felt like you betrayed your kids? The truth was these kids of hers were spoiled. They got things, even horses and boats, allowing them to see mom as the villain if she left, and adoring their dad who was the source of the things. And that’s fine—if the most important to thing to Anya was permitting her marriage to keep building stable and marina spaces for her kids, I’m good with it. Just let me know in the beginning so I don’t set my heart on anything, especially after walking away. Don’t allow me to feel anything that would only end up destroying me—that’s not loving someone. Because she couldn’t help herself from doing that, now we have a problem. No, you didn’t betray your kids—you betrayed me.
I could only imagine what Anya thought of me now. Did she tell the people around her, including Jackson, “oh he’s crazy and delusional” and “he knew from the beginning we would only be friends and he wouldn’t leave me alone”. It made me so sick to think she could be that dishonest; I took seven Vicodin in a five-hour span just to deal with it. My thoughts then drifted to all the times she asked me why I held back. Was there any question why now? I refused to let her cheapen our love—to love her with everything I had while she climbed back in bed with the man who led her to me. She even had the audacity to tell me “you’re exhibiting behaviors I couldn’t trust”. Did she ever consider what created those exhibited behaviors? Did she include her role in their exhibition? Did she ever consider the behaviors she exhibited that I couldn’t trust? If she could never see the things she was doing that brought forth my negative emotions, it was never about me, not for a single day. And when the day came to make it about me, she felt betrayed and accused me of harassing and stalking her.
When you love someone, you stand by them and you never leave them. I stood up for her in every way shape and form. When she wanted to run, even when I wanted her to, I talked her out of it instead—she chose to be with me the right way or not at all. All I wanted was for her to tell Jackson she was in love with me. Not the juicy details even though he deserved them. All I wanted was for her to say to him “I am in love with Landyn. He respects me. He honors me. He loves me. He’s thoughtful and caring. He is always there for me. I want to be with him.” If she truly loved me, I believed this would be an easy thing to promise me one day.
After seeing Jackson, it destroyed any hope of seeing my mother that day—my emotions were too raw to be around her if she said the wrong thing. I then turned my car around and twenty minutes later found myself in the comfort of my own bed. I didn’t want to hear the same old thing from others who didn’t know the entire story. The last thing I wanted was to argue with my mother over it. Reeling from untamed thoughts, curiosity got the best of me and decided to jump on the computer. I visited Katie’s Facebook to see a new profile picture up—one of Anya and Jackson together. They both were sitting next to each other on a boat. Anya was sitting Indian style; her hands were near her mouth suggesting excitement about something. Jackson was seated with his legs out in front of him and looking at her with a grin on his face. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I could feel my stomach turning over itself inside of me. I convinced myself that if Katie ever changed her Facebook profile picture to one featuring her parents, then she had to be aware there was trouble at home. I didn’t know any kids who posted a picture of their parents as their profile pic on Facebook—they were too consumed with acting cool at that age. I know at her age, unless my parents were both tragically killed or it was their anniversary, I would’ve never made my profile picture on Facebook on of my parents. But it was Sunday, November 9th—not even close to their anniversary date and they were both alive and well. This was either an attempt to get her parents together or to let her friends know the rumors around the neighborhood, if rumors existed, were not true.
The picture appeared to capture Jackson’s marriage proposal to Anya. I then recalled the time Anya told me “I can’t remember if I was ever happy on my wedding day”. Well, if she wasn’t happy on her wedding day, she seemed to be purely euphoric when she excitedly accepted his marriage proposal—likely just after she had just broken off an engagement to another man. I could understand better why the guy left the state, but he could’ve mistreated Anya too and deserved to be cast away. When I noticed Jackson proposed while on seated ass, it should’ve given Anya insight into what she could expect in their marriage. The narcissism and disrespect were clearly evident in the pic.
After seeing her new profile pic, it made me wonder where Katie got the picture from. Did one of her parents give it to her or did she grab it from a photo album or wall? If things were truly going great there, why not grab a more recent picture of them together? The fact she put up an old picture of her parents told me Katie sensed something was not right at home proving my point—kids had a sense about those things. It also made me feel bad as well. It was never my intent or goal to sell them out to their kids. Even if my heart was not involved, knowing all I knew, staying for the sake of the kids was not the right thing for Anya to do. Although seeing that picture filled me with both hope and fear, it was bittersweet because it was her daughter who posted it. It made me sad to think she may have blamed herself for the problems in her parents’ marriage. I’d be willing to take all the blame for that if she felt that way. She had no idea how much her mother loved her—not a clue. It made me mad and sad that Katie believed her mother was an unloving person—she couldn’t have been more wrong about anything in her life. Sure, Anya only loved me on the condition the façade of her marriage remained a secret, but I felt the true nature of their mother’s heart and not the one she disguised from them because of their father’s transgressions.
The picture also made me wonder if it was possible that Katie found out about me—that the picture was a message meant for the man who harassed and stalked their mother. The more I thought about the picture, the more galaxies collided against each other within me. After an emotionally exhausting day, I took another Vicodin hoping to fall asleep with better feelings about it.
The next day I visited my mother and couldn’t help myself.
“Anya’s daughter has a Facebook account now.” I informed her.
“What’s Facebook?” she asked, her face looking up at me sideways.
“It’s a website where you can post pictures and socialize with your friends.” I explained. “They can comment on your photos and you can even let them know what’s on your mind.”
“Do you have a Bookface account?”
“It’s called Facebook.” I replied. “And yes--I do.”
“How did you know her daughter had an account?”
“I googled her name and it came up.”
“Did you get inside her account to see if her parents are still together?”
“I’m sure I could if I tried but I can’t do that—it would be an invasion of her privacy.” I stated. “All I did was look at the pic she posted on her profile.”
“How were you able to see her profile picture without getting in her Bookface account?”
“It’s Face first, then Book.” I restated, patting the side of my face for emphasis. “You don’t have to get into someone’s account to see their profile pic.”
"Oh."
“Do you think it’s normal for a fourteen-year-old kid to have a pic of their parents up as their profile pic?”
“That seems normal.” she said. “It’s a picture of her parents—she’s proud of them.”
“Don’t you think kids her age are too embarrassed of their parents to post a profile pic of them?” I asked. “At fourteen, I thought it was more important to be cool and parents were a drag.”
“What’s your point?” She retorted, a hint of anger in her tone.
“The pic suggests something is wrong at home. I think they might be separated or divorcing.”
“Don’t read into things—it probably doesn’t mean anything.” she jabbed. “Wake up, Landy—she doesn’t want to be with you. She’s not in love with you.”
Hearing her words exacerbated all the turmoil inside, leaving me deflated. I understood why she told me that—she wanted me to move on, but my idea of moving on entailed climbing to the top of the bridge just outside her window. Her recklessness had good intentions but also threatened my continued existence. Each time I felt Anya didn’t love me, we kept it between us, but this was out in the open now and up to interpretation from the outside. Captain Obvious would say she didn’t love me, not my own mother. It didn’t take a genius to come to that conclusion based on what happened, but I felt that way more out of fear than belief. To fully embrace and believe she didn’t want to be with me would be the day I took my first step onto the bridge. I still held out hope, beyond all hope, that she would prove my mother and therapist wrong, finding her way back to me—like she always seemed to do. How could either of us live the rest of our lives without each other after we found each other? There was no doubt in my mind that if Anya was willing to remove the situation from the equation, we’d experience an even greater love than we had. As I tried to keep hope on life support, my mother ripped the cord out from the wall.
“I don’t know why a teenager would choose to put a picture of their parents up as their profile pic on Facebook.” I said. “It makes no sense unless there was trouble in the marriage.”
“She probably put it up because her parents are getting along better now and she’s happy about it and wants everyone to know.” She replied, her eyes focused on “The Golden Girls” rather than me.
If I could’ve swallowed the remaining Vicodin pills in her dresser drawer I would have. Hearing this from the woman who always defended Anya and supported me just left me unsettled inside. I didn’t want my mother to be mad at Anya or to hate her. As much as I felt she was to blame, I was at fault too. I wasn’t ducking my responsibility for this mess—it just seemed she didn’t accept her role in it at all. I left my mother’s house that day more depressed and hopeless than I’ve ever been. I didn’t know what to hold onto anymore—the truth everyone else saw or the truth I manufactured from our love. I knew Katie had over three hundred friends on her Facebook account. That figure doubled the number of my friends and I had twenty-five more years on this planet than her. I guess my heart wanted to believe she had to put on a show for her friends. She had to give them the impression, amid the rumors, that things between her parents were peachy keen jolly green. Even venturing to say not one of her three hundred plus friends had a picture of their parents up as their profile pic on their Facebook accounts.
Another possibility is Katie knew who I was, and this was her way of speaking to me. With no uncertain doubt, horrible things were said about me if she did know who I was. She probably thought of me as no less than a monster—the man who wanted to take her father and mother away from her, her brother and each other. This would always be the thing that hurt me the most—that if Anya believed she betrayed her kids, then she would protect Jackson before protecting me. She would never vouch for me or to even defend me, opting instead to destroy me. That she would rather her children fear me, just like King Kong—why I found so much association with the movie being the same beast forever misunderstood in the eyes of others. If her parents were truly getting along and Katie was happy about it, how come she had a seventeen years old pic up and not a recent one? Likely because a recent one of them together didn’t exist.
I hated to think of things that would crush the feelings of an innocent fourteen-year-old kid, who like most kids, would want to see their mother and father happy and always together. She knew how her neighborhood was and my heart broke for Katie—there was no way I could ever tell her the truth. It would forever remain locked away in the vault of my mind. She would never know the real reason why and how I came into her mother’s life. Although I believed if her parents did get divorced that it would give both, her and Andrew, a better chance at having a real love in their life one day, those beliefs will never be known. I guess if my dad treated my mom, the way Jackson had treated Anya, I would be understanding. I also wouldn’t want my mom or my father though to be with someone who made them feel badly about themselves—that kept them from being the mother, or father, or human being they were meant to be. This wasn’t about me, but I would never want my mother or father to place the burden of their unhappiness upon me without my knowledge. I’d hope they would be honest with me and not allow me to go to bed at night blaming myself for the inequities they created in their marriage. No matter how much Anya and I shared, it wasn’t my place to make Katie aware of the reality surrounding her, but rather Anya and Jackson’s place to. As much as I disliked Jackson and as much as Anya had wronged me, I had no right to talk to her children—they were both off limits. Yes, I was devastated. Yes, I felt betrayed and wronged. Yes, I felt desperate and disrespected, but no matter how I felt, I could never justify reaching out to Katie or Andrew about this. Even if they reached out to me, I’d send them back to their parents. As much as I wanted to know them, Katie and Andrew were not my kids. I would just have to accept the role of monster they created for me. All I could do was hope they wouldn’t place the blame upon themselves for the problems they began to see in their parent’s marriage. My heart broke for both of them and not just for myself. I deserved this drama, they did not.
When November 10th arrived, a year to the day when Anya left home to spend the night alone, at least until I showed up, in the same Laguna Beach hotel we first stayed in, I knew I’d be in for a rough day—much like the day she left me. It felt like we were North and South Korea after a formal end to the war took place but no peace treaty was ever signed. That the end of our relationship was more like an armistice than a breakup. As I went through both extremes, I hoped to find an elusive middle ground between madness and sadness that could help me see through the darkness. It brought me back to when she told me that Jackson would never allow us to be together. In essence, never allowing his wife to be happy after cheating on her several times. If that was ever the case, which had to be since day one, how could she have asked me to fight for her? After doing that for nearly two years, she seemed to forget she ever asked me to do that for her. That my reward for doing so was to contact a lawyer and a neighborhood police official. How could any of this be for real? Did the last twenty-three months of my life really happen to me? Just a year ago, all signs pointed to us being together soon, yet here I was now closer to hell than heaven. I talked to her nearly every single day for two years, and now a month later she had vanished as if I never existed—like a bad dream.
That evening, I again found myself in front of a computer screen, looking at the picture yet again trying to wrap my mind and heart around its significance. Since I felt strange looking Katie up just to see it, I saved it to my desktop so I wouldn’t have to Google her anymore. It crushed me to know her mother would never be brave enough to tell her the truth about me—the noble reason I was in her life for. Katie would never know how much I cared about her mom and how I would’ve done anything for her. That I wasn’t the homewrecking monster her father tried to make me out to be, but everything her mother needed her father to be. There was no intention to invade Katie’s privacy by infiltrating her Facebook account like Jackson did to me; I was just trying to find the right direction to feel. I was lost in the deepest depths of the ocean, pressurized with less than zero sunlight and touched by things I’ve never seen or known—I needed to see something familiar.
Still searching for the significance of the picture, I found myself having imaginary conversations with her out loud—a symptom of heartache reserved for hardened soldiers.
“I don’t want you to blame him or me for your unhappiness.” She told me.
“Then who else am I going to blame? Myself?” I’d reply. “I never approached you. I never told you that I broke your heart. You’re blaming me for caring about your happiness more than my own, and you think you’re the one who gave me the unique gift? I trusted you to lead me in the right direction. Should I have not trusted you, Anya? Would that have been the key to my happiness?”
“I don’t want my kids to hate me. I don’t want to hurt my kids” she said to me.
“Why? Is it because they wouldn’t get the things they were used to getting?”
I reflected on the sentimental wedge she put between me and her kids. There was one time she was told me she was thinking about running away, but her kids came in with Valentine’s Day cards they made for her. Then there was the time she asked Andrew what he wanted for his birthday, and with his “big brown eyes” in hers he asked her for “my family”. If Andrew asked for his “family” on his birthday, he had to have known something was wrong at home. Why did they continue to lie to them? Because they wouldn’t be successful in life without monetary rewards? A room with dollar bill wallpaper seemed to suggest that was what Anya and Jackson instilled in Andrew. Anya even told me one time “I don’t know why Andrew loves money so much”. Little did I know, I was up against that wallpaper as much as I was up against the façade of her marriage.
I then thought of another scenario—what if Anya had already left Jackson, or vice versa, and the profile picture was Katie’s way of trying to reach them to get back together? That when Jackson forced Anya to contact the neighborhood police official, that she finally made a stand for me and the goodness of our love. Of course when I thought of the schlub calling me, it made me angry to imagine Anya handing the phone to him—her hero after all I had sacrificed for just the promise to be with her that I deserved. I really wanted to believe this possibility more than any of the ones before it, but history taught me many times, once a woman made up her mind about me, she never changed her mind. I first learned it with Sara then with Denise, and now with the girl who would’ve rather died than lose me, Anya.
Like clockwork, I found myself back on the internet, but this time googling “Anya Caiaphas” to see what may come up. When I saw Anya had finally opened up a Facebook account, I couldn’t hold back my excitement. Now the scenario I hoped for had a real chance of becoming true. Jackson would’ve never allowed her to open up her own Facebook account, in light of our relationship—she had to have left him! Opening up a Facebook account was her way of reconnecting with me. Anya was right, women did change their minds, I knew she had to be different than all the rest—there was no way she could fake that love and there was definitely no way all we felt for one another would just fade away. When Anya said “I love you forever”, this is what she meant. That maybe she couldn’t be with me now, but she would somehow find a way to make it right in the end for both of us. Every single time she broke up with me, she always found a way back home and here she was again, showing me whenever hope seemed lost, she found a way to touch the sun. As I opened the link to her account and waited for it to load onto my screen, I looked up into the sky imagining my Vicodin days behind me. As her Facebook profile loaded, with the bigger picture Anya finally started to see with me more in focus than ever, a sudden great pall fell upon me when her profile picture revealed itself—her head near Jackson’s chest in a warm close embrace.
The picture was likely taken when she was in Spain on the beaches of Tenerife, and if Jackson had ever cheated on Anya, no one would’ve ever known, and would never believe it if he ever did. They both had mile long smiles suggesting nothing less than pure marital bliss—nothing even close to what I was led to believe. I always fought back the thought of images like the one before me existing in her home or even in a photo album somewhere. Knowing she slept with her husband, I opted to believe she slept on the far side of the bed—it would drive me mad thinking any other way. Now, I could no longer deny the evidence why Anya could and would never prove me wrong—I was right all along. The stories and conclusions Anya gaslighted me into believing were formed in my head now revealed itself to me as she opened up her marriage to the entire outside world. Not only was she never ambivalent to her marriage, but proud of it. While Anya claimed I harassed her for being right, for good measure she decided to harass me with a picture she had to know I’d eventually see. How could my soulmate, after only a month apart, be so malicious? I knew the answer to that now—Anya was never my soulmate, but my soul’s destroyer.
I knew one thing was absolutely certain after I grabbed five Vicodin and swallowed them all at once—I would never survive this heartbreak.