For whatever reason, I’ve been thinking about one of my ex-boyfriends. To the outside world he was kind of perfect. And even to me, at first, he was kind of perfect. Honestly, kind of like a fantasy, if you cut out the fact that he could never be on time to anything, not even dinner, a couple of other, tiny, little things… Whenever he would be out and about, he’d sometimes bring home a jar of olives or brownies, because he knew how much I liked them. But do not be fooled by this gesture of kindness. Because sometimes, all he’d bring home were jars of accusations or distrust wrapped in plastic.

And the guilt gifts, as I know them now to be. The wine, the inexpensive jewelry, the books, all things he bought to make up for the fact that he could not love me properly, to tenderize my heart to make it a little easier to break. For if he could love properly, why the distrust?

There is a special feeling that you get when you sit at home waiting for your Lover’s return, waiting to be in his arms again, to feel his lips and his kiss again, only to feel the warm slap of fresh accusations and the resounding guilt from an indiscretion that was apparently, impossible for him to let go of.

Let me put the truth on the table. I used to make decisions to date people within a 2 month span. If we’ve been dating for a whole two months, and I’ve been having sex with you 12 times a week, and going to dinner and generally just spending time with you for that amount of time, then I have had PLENTY of time to decide that whether I like you enough (or not) to commit to a closed relationship. If that amount of time passes and a man has not given me any signs of commitment, aka, said, to my face, like an adult, that he desires monogamy, I’m not about to offer up something that hasn’t been asked for. So, now that you’ve stepped into the Sexual Free-Space that is my mind, I tell you that I did, indeed, sleep with someone else close to the end of that 2 month test period. Did I enjoy myself? Yes, the hell I did. What’s the point of having sex if no one is enjoying it? Did I feel guilty about it? Yes, a bit, for a few days. But again, as there had not been an implication that my relationship with this Two-Faced Bastard was heading in the direction of “closed, I was a free woman and had every right to exercise that freedom by sleeping with any and everyone from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back to Queens. Yet, I didn’t.

And as all dirty laundry does, it attracted the nose of the bloodhound. He got upset about it. I asked him why he was upset. He said he thought we were in a monogamous relationship. I asked why would we be since he never asked me about monogamy. He considered my position. I cried some (probably a lot, I was very upset that I’d hurt his fragile feelings, because that’s the kind of girl I am.) And then, the next day comes, and we’re in the middle of having some bomb ass sex and…he pops the question. “Will you be my girlfriend?” And, just like that, I was trapped.

For he never had to say the word slut to let me know that that was exactly what he thought of me. And when there is a conflict between your heart and head only war and trauma can manifest.

And there was a war. I went to battle for him everyday. Everyday I justified his behavior, repeating to myself that I should’ve just kept my legs closed and not slept with that other guy and I wouldn’t have been going through this. And the day that he walked away, spit on everything that I had been fighting for, I knew he was a coward, and yet, my heart still tried to defend him. For does any man assume that a woman will marry him unless he asks her to become his wife? Why should it be any different if your intentions are to make someone your girlfriend? My head has surrendered to this logic, but my heart was still attacking it, siding with a man who deserted me. But you cannot reason with feelings. And my heart cries for him and for what I thought I’d lost. For the man that we believed he was, he was not. The devil can don many masks and wear many faces, but beneath them all, the naked face lies.

But how I missed the lies, missed the masks, for they would hold me many hours a day and make everything feel okay when I had nothing and no one. Those masks were my sun, moon, my stars, and my sky. They became everything when I was nothing and no one. I was led by those stars, sacrificed to that sun, given light by that moon when there was little more than darkness.

Yet what was I to him? Endless orgasms? A soft, warm hole to stroke his massive and fragile ego? A safe haven? For he only treated me like a woman and never like a person. For it is impossible to believe that he could abuse any one else with his tongue and then honey the wounds with wine and gift-giving to soothe the sting of an oral betrayal, and delude himself into believing that his shallow actions would make everything okay. But when had reparations ever altered the memories of the war-worn?

But my lover would never talk to me like that. So my heart said. “He is not himself today.” My heart said that too. And for the longest time, I held onto the delusional belief that I would get back the loving and trusting man I had started that relationship with, not wanting to accept that “trusting” was one of the masks he wore to draw me in, and “kindness” was another he put on to hide the true face of his insecurity. For, with the clarity of hindsight, I don’t feel that someone needs a whole night to think about whether they want to be in a relationship with another person, especially after saying that they had already considered the two of you to be in a monogamous relationship. One of the many hypocrisies that good dick and frequent orgasms drove from my mind.

A man is not a man who must stand upon the shoulders of a woman to feel tall.

And I had always been proud to be me, before him. Proud of my sexuality, until he enslaved me with his orgasms and then took those orgasms away. And I itched for them. Every week I’d go without his sex was a week of the horny hell only a person with a high sex drive can burn in. The thing about having a high sex drive is, that having it stomped on enough times will either kill your sex drive or kill your relationship. And it did both. But the new reality that I was not begging to get laid anymore only proved his theory that I had been cheating on him (which I wasn’t). But the thing about drugs is that once you get through the withdrawal, you realize that it is not the drugs you craved, but the high. And how high must I have been to keep feeding myself a man who did not respect me or my libido?

A man can wear many masks, but only have of them are real. So which one should I have trusted? I, who believes in only being exactly who I am. I, who finds it tiring to meet new people often because my personality is so naturally profane as to be offensive to the uninitiated? Should I accept that people are basically evil, naturally base, manipulative, and untrustworthy? Me? Someone who, no matter the darkness, looks for the light in everyone?

But I deserve more than darkness, more than being a booster seat for a man and his ego, and much more than lust that wears the face of love.

And so now, I wait, legs closed, heart timidly open, battle-scarred, distrusting, suffering from PTSD because war, rape, and violence are not the only things that can traumatize you.

Love is a war, and I am barely a survivor.

Tweetables!

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Love is a war, and I am still a survivor.

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Tenderize my heart to make it a little easier to break.

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And when there is a conflict between your heart and head only war and trauma can manifest.

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War, rape, and violence are not the only things that can traumatize you.

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The devil can don many masks and wear many faces, but beneath them all, the naked face lies.

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A man is not a man who must stand upon the shoulders of a woman to feel tall.

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But when have reparations ever altered the memories of the war-worn?

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Hugs, Bugs, and Slugs,

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Who goes to get a hammy ham sandwich in the middle of the night and ends up getting her face bitten by an unhandsome stranger? This girl over here. I guess the lesson in that is: If you are a single woman, don't go buy anymore sandwiches in Brooklyn after 10 p.m. ✓ If you are a single woman, don’t go buy sandwiches in Brooklyn by yourself. ✓ Don’t go buy anything by your single woman self. That's obviously asking for trouble. ✓ Stay in the house for the rest of eternity to properly avoid men with teeth as all single women should do. ✓✓✓ Check out Tragically Hilarious Tales About Love on Amazon & Kindle for more.