Lost and Confused…

 
The more time I spend with the The Neighbor Guy and his family, the more I realize that these people are fucking crazy. There is just something in their heads that is not wired right. They don’t realize the repercussions of their actions, they don’t see the image that they project to people, and they are blind to the usual social customs and interactions.
Neighbor Guy, for example, projects an attitude of disgust, contempt and general annoyance for everyone that comes into his vicinity. When he speaks to people, he does so with contempt, as if he can’t believe you should be this stupid that he should have to tell you. He lectures, as if he knows everything and there could be no better advice than his to listen to. But he does not realize that he acts this way. To him, this is the norm. This is how we are supposed to act. People are supposed to believe what he says, that he doesn’t dislike Fluffy and doesn’t mind him coming around, as opposed to what his body language and attitude says, which is that he can’t stand the sight of him and just wish that he would go away and stop staring at his ‘girlfriends’ boobs.
He tends to live in a very delusional world. It is full of fantasy to cover the things that he doesn’t like and doesn’t wish to acknowledge, such as the fact that I don’t want to touch him. He just ignores this fact and acts like it would be my greatest pleasure to be molested by him. He has this very carefully crafted delusionary life that is very fragile. If I speak of things that are not to be spoken of, the mirror becomes cracked and he begins to see all the things that he has covered over. His reaction to this is to throw a fit, to yell and scream and pace and in general, freak the fuck out. And any little thing may trigger this reaction, from something I say to something someone else says, to a look of disgust on my face or a misinterpreted action. But for the most part, he ignores these things so that he can comfortably continue to live out his fantasy life. He has little to no ability to read or interpret body language. He sees what he wants to see, not what is real. He hears what he wants to hear, not what is said. He prefers to live in his fantasy world as opposed to the real one.
Neighbor Guy is very egotistical. He feels that he has severe shortcomings, particularly in the area of anatomy, and so he makes up for these by creating a grandeur personality. He takes credit for things he didn’t do, he brags about things that he has done, he exaggerates his actions to make them seem more ‘heroic’, and he sincerely believes that without him, I would never survive. He has drilled this into my head over and over again. He tells me that if it were not for him, I would not have a job, not have a house, I would be living in my car with my dog, I would be addicted to crack and selling myself to black men to support my habit, I would be destitute and hopeless. He takes credit for everything good in my life. He takes credit for my improved relationship with my mother, he takes credit for the fact that I have managed to work for her for 4 years now, he takes credit for the fact that my father put me in charge of his will and his money.
Granted, he has done many things for me. I was beginning to become addicted to crack, but I saw this fact and had already begun the process of backing myself away from it, though I was still in the mental stages as opposed to the physical, but the process would have taken me a lot longer on my own and I probably would have lost the house, since I spent nearly all my rent on it for a couple months and could never quite make up the other money needed, it just never seemed to be there. It’s possible that I may have been evicted over the last two years after I kicked Michael out, and I acknowledge that he has helped me with my financial stability. He did help me clean up this trailer after Mike left, and he did put a lot of work into it. He has continued to do so. He takes care of all the domestic duties, vacuuming and dishes and laundry and the yard and car maintenance. He makes sure that I always have soda in my fridge, that I’m always fed, that I always have shampoo and toilet paper in the bathroom, he makes sure that I have weed and cigarettes to smoke, he puts gas in my truck. He is very careful to make sure that I am always well ‘taken care of’ and content.
He knows that I am not in love with him, he knows that I don’t want to be his ‘girlfriend’, he knows that I don’t want to sleep with him, that I don’t want to kiss him, that I don’t particularly want to snuggle with him. He knows that I do not want to be with him. He knows that all I want to be is his friend. He knows that I care greatly for him, but that I am not attracted to him. He knows that I do not want to marry him. He knows that I do not want to have his children. He knows that I think there is no future with him. He knows that I do not want him.
But he denies this fact to himself, and tells me that one day I will learn, that I will see the light and figure out that he was right one for me all along. One day, when I can no longer handle life without him, I will come crawling desperately back and beg for his forgiveness, and I can only hope that he has the goodness of heart to grant me mercy and accept me back under his loving, tender and caring wing. One day, I will grow to love him the way that I should. He is the only man possible for me, and the best man I will ever find. I cannot do any better than him.
And so what do I do with this man? So far, I have managed to swallow my disgust and my resentment and continued to participate in his delusional fantasy. Whenever I try to leave, he cracks completely and breaks down in all forms. He can’t sleep, he can’t eat, he can’t think, he can’t function. All he can think about is what I’m doing, who I’m fucking and how he can stop it and get me back into his life. He is obsessed, and tormented. He has become dependent on me and this illusionary world to survive. He is completely reliant on my attention and my time. Whenever I am not with him, all he can do is think about me, and what I’m doing, and who I’m fucking, or who is trying to fuck me, and when I’m going to come back, if I’m going to come back, what if this one time I don’t come back and he never sees me again, what happens if he steals her away and she leaves me forever, I can’t let her leave, I can’t let her be with him, I can’t let her see him! She’ll leave me if she sees him!!
And so he suffocates me, and tries to put me in this neat, comfy little box that he can hide in the corner where no one will ever see it and it will be safe, sound and well cared for and loved forever. The only problem with this theory of his is that I am not a knick-knack. I am a human being, a person, with responsibilities and desires and the need to socialize and experience. I cannot survive being locked away in a box, no matter how well taken care of the box is. And that doesn’t even begin to cover my own particular peculiarities. I can’t spend 24 undivided hours with anyone, nor do I think that I should have to. I have never experienced this much obsession over my time and how I spend it. Every single moment must be accounted for, and I had better spend all of those moments with him. Because his number of moments left is limited, therefore I must dedicate all of mine to him because he’s only got so many left that he needs to acquire as many as possible to make up for the shortness.
Again though, what am I to do with him? Yes, I can continue this charade and hide my revulsion and my misery in order for him to be happy and able to function. What choice do I have, really? If I leave, he will break. I know it. He will not be able to exist without me, at least not with me still living here. How would that work anyways? He’s my neighbor, he’s 30 feet away from my front door, my kitchen window looks into his bedroom and he can see me from his living room. We can’t exactly completely ignore each other. There will be constant reminders, and he would have to watch everyone else coming over to my house and visiting me, all the penises coming over here, and he wouldn’t be able to stand it. He would, literally, go crazy. There’s no two ways about it, if I leave him, he will go insane.
And he cannot accept just a friendship relationship. It HAS to be a physical one, there is no other option in his mind. If we’re not having sex, then there is no relationship at all and it is the same as if I have left him for someone else, which he of course cannot handle or accept. I have managed to cut our sex life back to once every two or three or four weeks or however long I can extend it… I refuse to give him blow jobs, I don’t want to go anywhere near that thing, it makes me nauseous… when we do have sex, it is emotionless on my side, and I try to take myself to another place and just pretend that it never happened and hope it gets over as soon as possible… (thank god for meditation…). He is usually shocked if I actually do respond to him in any way, and then he doesn’t know what to do with it. This lack of interest and participation on my part, of course, has its own repercussions. Even with his limited ability to interpret body language, he knows that I don’t want to be doing this, I don’t want to have anything to do with this entire action, and that I am disgusted by him. This makes it very difficult for him to get an erection or ejaculate, which of course frustrates the situation more. Lately, every time we attempt to, and even on the rare occasions that we actually manage to have sex, we always get in a fight about it either that night or sometime the next day. It either wasn’t long enough or it wasn’t good enough or I didn’t put enough effort into it or I hurt him because I rejected him or we got interrupted because the phone rang or someone came over, or I feel like all he really ever wants from me is my vagina and that’s the only thing that matters to him, and it’s the only reason he does anything for me is so that he can put his penis into my vagina on the rare occasion, because that’s all he lives for and it’s the most important thing in his life.
He also cannot accept the idea, thought or reality of someone else’s penis entering my vagina. The thought is strictly not allowed inside his head, or mine, or anyone else’s. And any male that comes within 30 feet of the house wants to do nothing but have sex with me. The only reason anyone comes around is because I have boobs and they think (or know) that I am an easy fuck, because I’ve been around the trailer park so much. Besides, if the great Neighbor Guy can get it, it really must be worth having, because he certainly wouldn’t fuck anyone that wasn’t worthy of him or his superior status, and the status that his object of choice will gain simply by association. What he doesn’t realize is that instead of an increased status, what I actually get is a stigma. I become repulsive in the eyes of everyone, I become an idiot, a slut, a whore, someone who just uses him and fucks him for drugs and money and whatever else he is willing to give me. I disgust people. I have been tainted by his touch, like the mark of Caine, and it will be forever indelible.
I have lost my best friend because of his disgust for me because of the Neighbor Guy, and that truly breaks my heart. I dearly love that boy and would go to the ends of the earth for him just to bring back something that brought a smile to his face, but he refuses to even talk to me anymore because I’m revolting to him. Not that he ever really wanted me in the first place, and my love for him is my own problem to deal with and get over, but that’s a whole different issue…
The people that I’ve slept with since I broke up with Mike… there’s quite a list, isn’t there? Any why? Why have I gone through this long list of men to sleep with, when before that I only slept with people that I was in a committed relationship with, usually not until 2 or three months into the relationship at least, giving myself time to get to know the person a bit more intimately before jumping into the sack and spreading my legs… so why have my habits completely changed? Why have I developed the reputation for welcoming any penis that comes along? Why did I allow myself to get pregnant by a 19 year old child with no prospects who couldn’t help me at all, and whom I was entirely supporting? Why?
Was it all a desperate attempt to escape this obsessed man across the street? Was that why I ‘cheated on him’ all those times and he’s now completely obsessed with me doing it again? Would I really go to those lengths? I asked every one of them to save me from him, and yet I could never completely leave him… I never completely trusted any of them, like I knew that they would fail me, that they wouldn’t be there for me when I needed them and that they didn’t really love me at all, but were just using me for what they could get out of me… I knew that all of them, in the end, would abandon me and I would be left with nothing but a raw aching wound and hopefully, a house and a car and a job… I’ve come close to losing all three before, and it’s a scary position to be in… (And, I suppose it helped that every time I interacted with the Neighbor Guy during those times, he would desperately try to reinforce these ideas, to get me to come back to him… his words reflected the words in my head and served to further confuse me).
I wanted them so desperately to save me… I wanted them to take me away from here and away from him, and I wanted them to love me and I wanted a relationship again, a real relationship, being with someone that you love, someone who’s touch you don’t cringe inside from, someone’s who’s smell doesn’t threaten to bring bile into your throat, someone who’s love doesn’t make your skin crawl… someone that I really love and WANT and need… a REAL relationship… I wanted one so badly, and I wanted away from him that I was willing to listen to anyone who was willing to lie well enough to me… and lie they did, and leave, they did…
But I know that the Neighbor Guy will be there for me, he has proven that time and time again… I know that I can rely on him and I know that he will be there for me and that he will help me and that he will ‘save me’, whatever the cost to him… I know that I can trust him, to a certain extent, and I know that he will do everything possible in his power to take care of me and make sure that I am happy and that I have everything that I need… and all I need to exchange for all of that is occasional access to my body and unlimited time and attention, and no interaction with anyone else… and even though I don’t want him, he helps me and he keeps me sane and stable and out of trouble and away from doing anything stupid that will get me in trouble, raped, robbed or killed… and so in a way I have also become dependent on the Neighbor Guy. I have been able to lean on him for so long, whether I wanted to or not, whether I wanted him around doing these things or not, he was there, helping me and fixing things and making it better… He has always been there, waiting to pick me up when I inevitably fall and break myself into a million pieces, like I always seem to do… He has always been there to glue me back together and make it alright again, even though he knows that I can’t stand the sight of him… he still picks me up and fixes me… he’s always loved me, devotedly and unconditionally. (sort of…)
I have had a fair share of abusive relationships and mind fucking and ‘training’ and ‘conditioning’… I have a warped and twisted perspective on relationships in the first place and am confused about what my role in them is supposed to be… obedient sex slave, independent and strong, loving and gentle companion, sarcastic bitch? My first few boyfriends used me for nothing but their own sexual gratification, and so that became the norm… you weren’t supposed to enjoy sex, it wasn’t for you, it was for them.. you didn’t matter, your pleasure didn’t matter, your enjoyment didn’t matter, and your opinion didn’t matter… it happened whether you wanted it to or not, and you could raise a big fuss and get in a big fight and it would end up happening anyone, but more violently and a lot more painfully, or you could accept it and let it be over and done with with minimal pain, subjugation and humiliation… little dignity, and hardly any feeling of self worth, granted… but it hurt less.. and it made them happy, and that’s just what you were supposed to do.. that’s a female’s role, to please her male, so that’s what I tried to do… it’s what I’ve been trained to do, willingly or otherwise and it’s extremely hard for me to break those patterns of behavior, though I have been trying to work on it, which is why the Neighbor Guy and I fight so much, is because I keep saying no… not necessarily to sex, but to his entire attitude and what he wants… He is, in part, my past abusive relationships, and I’m saying no to those as well, yet I cannot completely leave them, they are too deeply ingrained into my subconscious. But my other side wants to have my friends, I want to go out and hang with people my own age, I want to play video games with the boys until three in the morning on a Friday night, I want to get high, I want to have fun, I want to play around a bit, I want to experience different things and different people and different philosophies.. I want to expand my horizons… I want my friends… I miss my friends…
But the Neighbor Guy can’t handle that… he keeps me so locked up and tied down that I’m drowning.. and my training and conditioning says that I owe it to him, because he’s done all these things for me and now I have to give him the only thing that I have that’s worth anything, which is of course my vagina. I owe him his sexual pleasure… he took care of me, I need to take care of him, that’s how it works. I am obligated to be with him and do what he wants and give in to him because that’s just how it is, that’s how it’s always been and that’s how it always will be. Love is a joke, it’s just lust, ownership, dominance and territory.
On the other hand, my logical side knows better… my logical side knows that this guy is fucking crazy and WAY too jealous and possessive and he has all the classic signs of a homicidal maniac and a serial killer and an abusive, manipulative relationship. I’ve read enough books about this shit, I know all the signs, I know all the symptoms, I know that I have a mild (or not so mild) case of Stockholm’s Syndrome, I know that I have a lot of mental problems and issues stemming back from my childhood years, I know that I have an abnormal view of sex and relationships and interactions between men and women and, god forbid, love… I know that psychologically, mentally and emotionally, this guy is really not good for me. I know that he is manipulating me and brainwashing me, if you will, and I know that he has a very unhealthy obsession with me and I know that I need to get away from him…
And so the two sides of me are constantly battling, and I go back and forth from wanting nothing to do with him to letting him back in because I owe him and it’s just what I have to do… it may not be what I want, but that has never really matter, why should it count now?
And so again, we come to the question of what do I do with this crazy, schizophrenic man that lives across the street and has become utterly obsessed and dependent on me? What can I do? I really don’t know what to do anymore… I’ve given up on love, I’ve given up on trust, I’ve given up on normal, healthy relationships, I’ve given up on the idea of me having a boyfriend that I enjoy being with, I’ve given up on the thought of having sex that I enjoy, sex that is good, sex that doesn’t make me hate myself, sex that doesn’t make me cry…sex that doesn’t shatter my soul… (for the most part… there were the occasional good sessions… but those are over now…), I’ve given up on hope, on improvement, on escape, on anything ever getting better… And so I wait… I can’t kill myself, it would destroy my parents, and I have too many responsibilities now and I just can’t do that… it would hurt too many people… and it’s not fair… and so I wait for the world to end… I wait for an earthquake to swallow me, a semi to jackknife into me on the highway, my brakes to fail and me to go careening wildly into a tree, some sort of natural disaster or accident that will take me out of this world and end all this stupid bullshit…
Yes, I know that when Daddy dies I’ll have no problem getting out of here, I’ll be able to move into a nice little house and live pretty comfortably for the rest of my life without really having to do too much at all… Dad made sure that all of his children would be well taken care of, forever. And so, I wait again, (though not very happily, I love my father dearly and would much rather suffer here and have him alive than to have him die just so I can get out of this hell hole that I’ve managed to create for myself…) and we wait, and we wait… we wait to die, we wait live. See which one happens first, I guess..I go to work every day and I spend my time with the Neighbor Guy, and I spend what time I can away from him, and I hide my misery and I don’t let the tears fall, and I don’t let the anger come out, we don’t scream and yell, we don’t hit him or shake him like we want to, we don’t pull away in revulsion like we want to (at least when we can control it… it gets difficult at times… he’s fucking disgusting, simply because he doesn’t take care of himself..)…
Instead, we lie, and we hide our aversion and our loathing and our anger and our resentment… we ignore the abuse and the manipulation, we make excuses for it, we allow it… I just don’t know what else to do anymore… I don’t know how to get away from him while I live here without completely destroying him… Once I don’t live here anymore, well, no problem, I never have to see him again… but here, it’s just too close, he’s too close… there is no escape from him, no matter what I do… he’s always there, always watching, always judging, always freaking out, always panicking…
I just don’t know what to do… and eventually I will crack, and something bad is going to happen… I can only hold this up for so long… I can only pretend for so much more time… Even now I can feel it crinkling around the edges, and we’re becoming more and more abrasive with each other… this whole thing is going to end badly, and I just can’t see any good way out of it anymore… I’m in so much pain, so much mental and physiological pain and it never stops hurting… and my heart, my poor heart… it’s been torn completely apart and I’m afraid that it will never be able to repair itself again… I’m afraid that I’ll never be able to have a regular relationship again… I’m afraid that it will be like this forever… and it’s just not worth it… I don’t want this anymore… I can’t do it…
But there’s no way out… and there never will be… and I’m slowly losing my grip on things… and I’m terrified… and it just never stops hurting…