In a great deal of things which have deeply saddened me to the point of feeling disturbed about them, the greatest one which hit me recently was the basic fact that after everything, the good the bad, the love, the fights, the holding on, letting go, the letters spilling my heart out on everything from my past to my job, he does not know me.
I was totally myself from the start and I mutated into something else by habit and circumstance. I understand that probably creates some confusion. However, in all the events and time prior and after, which is the majority of our time t this point, still, he truly has no idea what I look like on the inside.
His memories are fascinating, the way they are distorted from fact and bent to a certain angle which fits best into the theory he has grasped and insisted was truth. And I see this as a character of him I never allowed myself to accept before. I always minimized it or just closed my eyes to it. Yet, it is very much a part of his perspective; a stubborn and unrelenting aspect, which on point of pride he will not loosen or even entertain other possibilities. Rather like an 80 year old man worn down by experience.
Example: Six years ago I loaned a cellular phone to a friend with children whose phone had been disconnected. I worried they were not safe with no telephone in the home. I was not working at the time, but my credit was good to add an additional phone to my plan for her. She was working and agreed to pay her portion of the phone, which I minimized to the additional monthly charges it cost to have the line. We didn’t “split” the bill. She was responsible for the $10 extra line charge plus any amount she went over the minutes. I even allowed her ¾ of the whole allotted minutes, since that was her primary phone. So, if she stayed under 1200 or so minutes , she only had to pay $10, while I took responsibility for around $100, although she had the majority of usage, I paid the major part of the bill. I felt I was doing something kind to help out while she got her finances in better order and couldn’t afford the full cost of a phone. I used my phone on the plan for emergencies only, safely allowing her plenty of minutes on said phone. From the first month, she went over around $800, which I struggled to pay. Then she went over around $1,000, which I told her she’d have to help me pay because I didn’t have it due to the previous bill of hers I’d paid. At the point when the bill was around $3,000 and I was fighting to keep my own phone even turned on from the excess charges, she ended up getting married to someone who got her a cell phone. She then gave my cell phone to a friend of hers, who like her, didn’t pay the $10 or any of the $100’s of additional charges her phone use stacked up. I still wasn’t working and was really struggling to pay these charges down enough each month to keep my phone on, which the company shut off monthly and then added re-connect charges, upping the bill significantly and regularly.
Shortly before this, I’d been in a similar situation due to allowing a friend and her 3 children move in with me, to which I’d been screwed out of about $1,000.
Well, I was angry about this happening again, angry that she had taken advantage, and angry that she’d given the phone to a person who was a stranger to me. I couldn’t just turn the phone off because there was a huge disconnect charge for that and I was just stuck for over a year with this situation growing bigger and bigger. I was angry at myself for trusting someone to appreciate the help I offered and angry that I had allowed this to happen so often in my life. I was determined not to just let it go and say “that’s okay, I’ll take care of it.”
I took her to small claims court for a portion of the bill (a small portion all things considered at this point) and the price of the actual phone her other friend refused to return to me. (For the last 6 months of this nightmare, I only begged for the phone back and stopped begging them to pay their portion of the bill. I saw no other way out of it with the contracts, etc. in place) They wouldn’t even agree to return the phone itself.
In small claims court, although she didn’t show up, I still was made to argue my case to the judge to prove the validity of this. Although everyone I spoke to said usually if the defendant doesn’t show up, you are automatically granted the claim. Not me. I had to prove it. And cell bills are very confusing to me, It was difficult, but I did finally win and was granted the small portion of what she owed that I was suing for.
He came with me to the hearing. He saw all the stress this bill had been putting me under for months and months trying to pay their phone bill just to keep my phone on.
A few weeks ago at his house, I was talking to him about what mattered most in life to me. I told him that money had never been a driving force for me; that as long as I could feed my children and pay my rent, I didn’t care about money otherwise.
He was definitely in one of his grumpy critical moods at the time and he just argued that wasn’t the “really the case” with me. I thought about the fact that I had struggled to let him pay for anything while we were together and always returned the favor in kind when I did let him pay, never asked him for help with anything financial in spite of my great challenges with this phone issue, and rarely accepted gifts when he wanted to buy me something. Although he often tried to do more, I maintained 50 % of the financial cost of our relationship – throughout the entire relationship and in spite of the fact that he made far more money than I and has no children.
So, my guess is that he was referring to this small claims court where I made someone who took advantage of me to the extreme make a small retribution to me. This being a BIG deal to me mostly out of a sense of standing up for myself. It was my way of saying “NO more will I let people take advantage and just quietly move on!” Yes, I did in fact desperately need help getting the bill paid, so the money I won in the case did help out some, but truly it was more a turning point for me in learning how to stand up for myself against this type of person who unfortunately, is often prevalent in my life and I attract like bees to honey. I walked away from this with a huge bill that wasn’t mine and a very small percentage of money toward it (because that’s all I sued for), but walked away proud of myself that I didn’t just walk away without standing up for how I’d been done wrong by this person. THAT was the biggest thing I got out of the whole nightmare.
Knowing that he must have been alluding to this incident, since I never let him take more responsibility financially for our relationship than I also placed on myself, I was disgusted at what he took away from the whole thing. He kept saying, “Well, when I’m dumb enough to loan someone $100 and they don’t pay me back, I don’t take them to court, I just never loan them money again.” That’s how I deduce he was referring my entire money character on this one incident, which had been literal hell and massive stress for me for 2 years of struggling to “just pay the damn bill”, while they kept the phone and continued to use it excessively without paying anything and while I had no way out of the mess due to my contract with the phone company.
It made me sick that as well as he knows me (or should if he actually opened his eyes at all), he literally has NO clue as to what the principle behind this horrible ordeal was for me. Learning that it’s okay to stand up for myself when people take advantage. For me, doing that was HUGE and should have been a “winning” moment; a turning pint for me in not staying the “victim” in these situations, fighting for what’s right.
No. To him , it meant only that I was dumb enough to get myself in that situation and then “money oriented” enough to then force someone to pay a portion of their responsibility. And that’s all it meant. Nothing could be further from the truth, As my payments in this situation for one cell phone I couldn’t use because I didn’t have it and another I did have but was too scared to use for fear of how much the other was being used, I paid over and above $5,000. I was reimbursed approximately $1000 at the end of the situation. I didn’t even fight to get what was rightfully owed on the bill. I fought for the principle of getting the message to this person that I wasn’t going to just let it go that they took complete advantage of me (even if it was just my stupidity they took advantage of!).
Marks on my character according to Dave: “Stupidly innocent, money oriented girl”.
WOW!!!
Even this girls husband years later said to me, “You did the right thing. I don’t blame you at all. (even though he admitted to me that he of course had ended up paying that small part of her portion on her behalf. He, who was not at ALL responsible. And yet still, he agreed with me and supported my cause to take such a stand. Also, he who barely knows me at all, unlike Dave.
WOW……WOW….WOW…. It’s very sad that this world has become a place where if a victim allows him/herself to be victimized, then she is responsible for her own stupidity because she allowed it. And if she tries to stand up for herself, she’s “crazy” or a “materialistically driven” person. As with every other situation which involves Dave or that he just knows of as an outsider looking in, I am always at fault. I am chronically in the no-win “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” position. Every move, every choice, every thing I do is going to have the extreme negative connotation to it. If I donate food to the hungry, I probably just want a tax write-off. If I volunteer for the homeless, I probably just want attention. If I do kind things no one knows about, I’m probably just a crazy stupid stalker-girl for being so “sneaky”. If I don’t do any of those things, then I’m a selfish, self centered, money-driven bitch.
Gosh, I love being the bad guy no matter what…. It feels so great to know there’s nothing right or kind I can do in this world.
F%$* him. That twisted jerk doesn’t even know me at all, yet is ignorant enough to believe he knows me inside and out. He is such a clueless jerk when it comes to me. He’s so hell-bent on making me the bad guy at ALL cost! Ooooohhhhhh big bad me…
Ahhhh….feels good to vent and release. Don’t know why this has been weighing on my mind so much lately. It’s no different than every other situation regarding him for the past 2 years, but it was just eating at me ever since we had that discussion. Feels so good to get it out of my head and in black and white.
An Impetuous Buffet of Loving Indulgence 