Almost Divorce Part 16- PJ Part 4

This series is  published once a week on Thursday’s.  Or you can start at the beginning here

A timeline can be found here

The soundtrack for this portion of the story will come exclusively from Jimmy Eat World Bleed American Deluxe Edition.   I am keeping it simple and early. I always imagined this was how PJ felt about himself.

So let’s see, PJ was still home because he didn’t go to the bach party, angry, sullen, looked awful and was drunk.  It was roughly mid-morning to early afternoon.  Let’s get a few things straight and out of the way.  In the chat rooms drinking was a regular occurrence, as was getting drunk and any other manner of recreational drugs, mostly weed.   This place was a coffee shop at calm and a huge rave at full throttle.   I’ve been on cam with my grape Kool-aid and Vodka in my  colored local pizza place cup with the heart straw sticking out.   I’ve been on cam with a beer, or a glass of wine.   I’ve been on cam with an entire bottle of wine on the first full day I had to live in my house knowing my kids weren’t coming back in it for another week and PJ wasn’t going to be filling my bed in the mean time.    I’ve enjoyed chat on any given night with PJ there and we are both drinking.  PJ was usually a very lovey drunk.  His  current operating level of loviness toward me always ratcheted up a few notches whenever he got buzzed.   The times I mentioned last week were times he got drunk to deal with things that made him sad.  And seriously, who hasn’t at some point in their life gotten a little drunk to deal with some things that made them sad. The kid was 25 when I met him, he’d triumphed over a pretty crappy childhood, been dumped by the woman he loved,  and had reality interfere with the nice safe amazing place we built together as a couple.  We clung to that pond dream, longed for that safe place alone with just each other and our thoughts, even until the very end.

So I’d seen him both happy and sad drunk. He’d divulged the majority of his issues openly and discussed them all maturely and  deeply  with me.  It’s only in hind sight, other than the mommy issue, that any of this seemed overly dramatic or fishy. Oh his Grandma also died very early in our relationship and he didn’t tell me until later. Right  about the time he was piling on with the fake dead baby.  I don’t know which lie started what and where that led to which next lie. But I’m pretty certain shit was quite convoluted by the time the piling on came, which is right in this period we are discussing. But first I have to get back the drunk PJ story.

This was not happy drunk. This was not I am drinking because I am sad but I’m dealing,  drunk.    At the time I saw it as..you really hurt me on purpose you fucking bitch, and now I’m going to really sulk about it to the world…drunk.   This was our first fight.  I know I apologized profusely as he continued to fall deeper into his dark sullen mood.  He was literally shutting down before my eyes, there is only one other time I’ve seen him look worse.   If any of this shit was real, this is where it all started shift and turn with us.   At the time we somehow managed to make up and everybody owned some things. We got through our first real fight and we seemed to handle it ok. I promise never to wound him aggressively like that again.  It was the first hint of, not really going to be the same. It was subtle, but it lingered there.   He was emotionally shutting himself down from me, removing me from the inner circle of trust in the darkest parts of his mind.  I’d taken his information and used it to wound him. I was correct in my rant, as it turned out it was quite fortelling.   In the end he chose to be a child who ran.  We go on in our journey to have many other emotionally baring conversations. We go on in our journey to have a few more fights. But never during any of this does PJ choose to aggressively wound me.   He uses the information he gathers about my soft spots and uses them all at the end.  He goes in silence and robs me of any PJ participatory closure.

If I operate on the assumption that ANY of what the boy did was genuine.  While living this moment of our story I feel he is nothing less than genuine.   And if I apply even the smallest probability of that assumption ever turning out to be fact, then I must take a moment here and own some things.    Never mind he made the “Maybe I’ll just go off to ASU” comment.  Never mind I was considering leaving my husband for him after about 5 weeks and  I  DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HIS LAST NAME.  I’ll get that when he comes to fuck me right?  If I can stand him after that we’ll talk about making all that bullshit we have been slinging around a reality, but mostly there will be PJ sexing me both savagely and intimately.  When he pulled the I’ll run card it hurt my feelings and introduced my doubt for  him.  We have long established I am at the height of my r/gonewild pic posting and gone wild chat room hanging out addiction.  I have basically added a PJ addiction to this list.  And I have tied up all my emotional coping mechanisms in him, smoking a half a pack of camels a day while talking to The Husband about some detail or other of this divorce, the divorce diet, weekly visits to a therapist,  and a lot of crying.

I get back to my  house and I lay out my weekend during my  Tuesday therapy session.  Tab, my therapist, suggests the need to move things out of online and into real world with PJ. She suggests I ask  him to start calling  me on the phone and we stop all the online stuff. Or at the very least add phone calling in.  I don’t think The Husband is ever going to agree to this but it appeals to me.  So I discuss it with him in the garage later than night and he agrees. I have permission for PJ  to call me on the phone! Yeah!!!!!! A phone number is another piece of his identity I’d like to use to verify  who he is.   This is about a  week after we were supposed to be staying away from each other and it opens up a legitimate line of communication and it’s in the direction I want to go.   I can remember sitting in the therapists office thinking, “he’s never going to  actually call me”.  Whatever  subtle changes had started with our first fight were starting to settle into our relationship.   Sure enough, after I got The Husbands agreement I told PJ.  His response.. No.. Yep, he said NO! Should of run bitches, I should of run.

PJ and phones: This is the point in time where he still claims to own a phone.  He destroys phones ( 3 of them at least in his adult life) in  response to anger and frustration, because bad news always comes via phone. He  has a cheapy pay as you go phone , looked like a black berry to me when he was actually letting me see he owned one,  and it has something like 50 texts a month on it and a limited number of minutes. Because he never talks on it.   Sometime soon after this he claims to throw his phone out the window of his car on the highway while having a fight with a girl he claims he was never into but she she is delusional and is into him and he has to finally set her straight, which isn’t going to go well.  I think it was a ruse to remove the phone from the equation.  If he doesn’t have one, then he can’t very well call can he?  Never mind he has a HOUSE phone at his Dad’s house. These logical details to solving a problem are not relevant right now.  I will just point you back to my previously made point that men and women with a singular focused purpose rarely let obstacles get in the way.   He claims to not a have a cell phone for the rest of our time together.  Yet he manages to have dinner plans almost every night with his at home friends, somehow his lawn cutting clients have no issues communication with him, he manages to make many of his own therapy appointments that are an hour away in a town closer to me and to be able to meet his best school friends D and S for dinners and talking afterwards. Managed to go the whole summer going away one weekend after the other with different people for different weddings, or by himself. All without the benefit of a cell phone, and later also supposedly without the benefit of a “real” email address.  

He said no to taking it to the phone level with me.  “Having the ability to call or text me whenever he wanted at any time day or night would just be too much for him.  Having me right there is his back pocket to get a piece of me whenever he wants is just too much.  It would just be too painful for him and make him want me more.”  He  is basically being given the option of starting that relationship we keep discussing and he is taking a pass.   And claiming that he is taking the pass, not because he  doesn’t want me, but because he is still fucked up over the ex who he was supposed to marry in the coming July and is scared of being hurt again.  I bought his line of crap.  I was disappointed, but resolute that if he wanted me it would all work itself out in time if I was just patient and worked on myself and my end of the figure out what to do bargain.  I know one thing though, it was at this point that  the ” I am a real woman and can’t play make believe with you forever on the promise you want to make it real someday”  emotional rape dance started.   I have to stop here and make  a few notes, not about the physicality of the relationship and its lust driven nakedness. About the emotional side of things.

1- He’d already given me at the very least a Grad School, a first name, an undergrad school, a home town, and hours upon hours of  past and present life stories involving great amounts of details. We already discussed our days in details complete with follow up stories.

2- We were already firmly entrenched in the I more than adore you stage.

3- He had claimed to both cry and lose sleep over me. He also claimed to dream of me.

4- He never spoke or typed to me in an abusive or mean way, never called me a bad name, never openly disrespected me.

5- He championed me in chat and had my back when I wasn’t there.  He  appeared to let me handle my own business as needed in chat.  He only criticized the way I did it once.

6- PJ didn’t like any girls mad at him. He preferred to be quiet and let them think what they wanted without ever confirming or denying their advances. See delusional girl above as one example, they get delusional partly because of the way he handles things this way .  I discuss delusional girl with him and he is moved to have the “I’m never going to want to be with you so knock it off”, conversation with her. You know, the one where he throws his phone in the weeds on the side of the highway.   I once made the comment, ” Gee PJ you seem to be surrounded my delusional woman who think they should be or are with you. Am I just another one of those delusional women?”  “No, you are not”, I was told.  “You and I have discussed being together at length, she and I never even had the discussion.” At the time it was good enough for me.

Another example: He didn’t like that the way I’d handled an incident with a chat girl talking about emore when I was there and he wasn’t. I  openly and directly asserted that I no longer wanted any chat fantasy  involving him screwing anyone.  I didn’t say it that way, but I  proverbially peed on him to mark him as mine. Which really didn’t need to be done.  I’d stated a simple truth of  ‘He would decline sex with you, because he is  with me.”  He didn’t correct my assertion  when they complained to him, he told me he agreed that was true, he was all mine. They complained I made it awkward.   He was uncomfortable because it shattered the “say nothing and let them think what they want while a shamelessly flirt and declare my adoration of Lola as my safety net” facade.   I’d inserted the reality of our drama into the open fantasy of chat.  At the time  ( this was probably July or even August) he was slipping quickly and continuously  away from me and I probably wanted to  try to over control the situation and steer it back my way.   And they were right, I had made it awkward.  Shrugs, at that point I was very much in love.

More to come next Thursday.