Chapter 3: Volume 2

The next guy wasn't much better. He was more my age. Actually, he was older, but he didn't have a job, he didn't have his own car, and he lived with his mom. However, if it meant going out on a date to a nice restaurant with a man who seemed to think the world of me, he was it. He wined and dinned me at the finest places that his unemployment check could afford.

We couldn't have a decent conversation though. I found that we argued about everything. He wasn't my type, but he wanted me. He seemed to be fascinated with the idea of being with me. Sometimes, I think I may have controlled him a little. I began to become something I had never been....controlling and manipulative. I wanted my power back. I had been going through that feeling my entire life.

I lived my life in tug-of-war before I met you. I was that six-year-old girl who saw the best in everyone and that teenager who wanted to murder...the same one who would pick-pocket someone and swear she didn't know what happened. Yet, there was that woman inside of me who wanted to submit to a man...to give myself to him and trust that he wouldn't harm me. My heart was ripe and vulnerable and I intended to protected, but in the midst of my dysfunctional existence, I had never learned how to do that. I thought I was learning how when I was with you. I always figured that, if a good man ever stuck with me and cultivated me, eventually I would find my way and be the woman I wanted to become...the mommy that my children so desperately needed me to be.

I stayed in the thing...it wasn't a relationship. He proclaimed that he wasn't stable enough to be in one of those, so I just held on to him. Don't get me wrong, I don't think and never thought he was a bad man, he just wasn't the man for me and I realize that now.

After a while, I made the foolish mistake of giving myself to him. It wasn't good. He was a selfish lover who had a dark secret that would change the course of my philandering and cause me to think about my body in a new reverential way.

One day I was falling apart over you and he called me. I needed to feel pretty, wanted and appreciated, so I welcomed his invitation. I went out to a club and had quite a bit to drink...I had started doing that to numb myself of the pain and the barrage of thoughts that overcame my brain,

He left you because you're just not good enough. 
You were never good enough. 
You are stained and everybody knows it. 
You can never remove that stain...

These were the thoughts that accompanied that ever present mantra in my head; the one I had heard more than my euphonious name...

"You ain't nothin;
You ain't gon never be nothin'!"

They were the words that I never wanted to believe, but seemed to be proven every time my husband beat me, every time a man left me, every time a friend walked away from me, every time I was raped and a man spewed semen all over me, every time I was urinated on or made to commit some heinous sexual act that left my little body mangled and bruised...nearly barren. The words that revoked everything I had ever done right, everything I knew I was or had become or overcome...those words had undone years of therapy and reminded me of moments when I was confined, physically tied up, gagged, held against my will at gunpoint...they became the medicine that blinded my eyes, clouded my judgement and caused me to drown:

"You ain't nothin';
You ain't never gon be nothin'!"

You left me because they were right...no good man would ever want me and I didn't want me. So I drank. A cosmo here and a scooby-doo there, a rum and coke, a martini, an appletini...drink, drink, drink...drunk...numb and crying inside...muffling screams one drink after another.

He asked me to meet him at yet another spot and I obliged because I knew that, if anyone would find me drop-dead gorgeous, it would be him.

He fed me more poison to watch my head spin as I became my own violent muse...howling in pain. It was time for him to get me to bed...literally.

I had a friend drive us somewhere so I could further deaden the sting of lost love and rejection. I just kept on dying inside with every drink as I spun like a top...hypnotized...

We went into the room. It was cold and dreary not because of the temperature but because I knew it wasn't where I belonged. I knew I had taken a deep plummet into nothingness...an abyss of sickness...He mounted me and had his way. His smell was sickening...I think only because it wasn't your smell. Maybe I would have enjoyed it if you weren't on my mind...had I not been thinking of the fact that we actually talked. You talked to me, and it didn't feel like it was just a sexual thing...not to me.

His sweat dripped on me as he panted and moaned. I caught myself midstream in the midst of a heavy heave; the vomit burned my throat raw...he never even knew.


I don't remember how long it too...several positions and smells...I could smell him...like I could smell them. I pretended to enjoy it like I did when I was bound, so they wouldn't think I was afraid. I was always afraid.

Once he had his moment and got off of me, I was relieved. It was over. He reached out to me and I relented as I realized where I was and what I had done; this was only the beginning of my revelation. The next morning, my friend and her sweetheart were in the room with us when her friend asked me:

"So, how long have you guys been dating?"

I replied with an embarrassing snap,

"Oh, we're NOT dating...Oh noooo!"

I didn't even look at him to see if he was embarrassed because I had decided I would care less and I meant it. Besides, I knew he didn't care because he had already decided he only wanted sex from me anyway and I was just fine with that.

Then it happened...

I was looking at some silly pictures he and I had took the previous night as I was listlessly stumbling in the club. I thought they were comical as I peered at photo after photo of my pretty face, eyes barely open dawning a half-baked smile. Then. I stumbled upon something that disturbed me. I nearly cried...had a huge lump in my throat and felt somewhere between floored and stupefied...It was a folder:

Phuckin' Friendz

And I was in it...photo after photo he had captured of me while we were in the middle of sex...degrading photos of me...embarrassing photos. I maintained a stoic demeanor and began deleting feverishly...I stumbled upon a video and then another...Oh my Lord! How did I not know he was doing this? I kept my poker face and continued deleting until I ran out of footage of me. I released a sigh of relief until I saw something that caused my heart to stop momentarily...it was another shocker...I wasn't the only one.

There were dozens of women in the album and I was the only one he had a condom on with.

The only one.

My heart froze with fear and I fought back tears.

I could barely think or swallow. I immediately became ashen...that's when it dawned on me that you were gone and that putting myself at risk for a sexual transmitted disease wouldn't bring you back.

What we had was dead and not worth dying for. I had to bury it. I didn't know how I would, but I knew I had to have the funeral immediately because my children deserved more that a fragment of a mother.

I had to realize, for what value I had placed it you, you hadn't placed enough in me to stay with me so I needed to let go of the pain of losing you, stop torturing myself and realize that...I am still here.