LIGHTBULB MOMENTS

The post I wrote yesterday titled My Secret Admirer was about a disastrous 5-year relationship I had with a man named Sal. One might wonder how an intelligent woman would get hoodwinked into such a relationship. I've asked myself that question many times. I think the best answer I can provide is that I was at a low point in my life when Sal came on the scene. I had just given up drugs and there was a huge void in my life where drugs had been. That void was where all my self-destructive tendencies seemed to play out. I replaced drugs with work and Sal. They became my new addictions. Plus Sal was a master manipulator. He knew how to get into people's heads and how to work them. He was very clever at it.

I know we all have had relationships with people that were not meant to last for one reason or another. So why do we get into those relationships in the first place? Why don't we think things through from the beginning and sidestep the ones that are only going to end in pain? Are the relationships that don't last meant to be learning experiences to take with us into the ones that do last so we'll know what not to do? Is there never any foresight in relationships and only hindsight?

My situation with Sal grew dangerous and involved the two of us owning things jointly even though we never married. I did have some wisdom to never do that even though he asked me to marry him almost every day we were together. When it had gotten to the point of no return and I had gotten arrested (a story for another time), I had no choice, but to do the rational thing and that was to pack my car with what I could, put my children in it, drive away and not look back. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses when you can before you lose your life.

On the flip side I've also been the recipient of unrequited love, the situation started as a casual one, but  realistically how many of those things ever stay that way the more two people see each other especially if great sex is involved? Okay! I know men and women look at sex differently most of the time. I do know men can have sex as just a physical act and it can be just that and only that without feelings ever being involved and that's okay if that's what the initial agreement between the two people is, but if no such "talk" was had to begin with and then it's a whole entire ballgame! In my case, no "talk" was ever had to keep things light and casual. As the two of us spent more time together, I developed feelings for him and he didn't for me. He monopolized my time because he liked the sex. 

All the situation it did was kept me hanging onto to something I never had any chance of calling mine and ultimately it made me feel used. The nicer thing would have been for him to have been honest with me than for him to be a "nice guy" and to keep coming around because he needed someone because he was lonely and at a lowspot in his life. All it did was kept me from moving on and finding someone who would and could love me the way I wanted to be loved. I wasted a great deal on time and effort on him for nothing. He just wanted how I made him feel whenever we were in bed together and that's it. This woman needed much more than to be someone's booty call. From start to finish the relationship if you can call it that lasted over two years. Looking back, I can't believe I let it drag on that long. I guess I did him a favor by ending it because when I did within a year after that he was married.

I learned a lot from those experiences, but also those things robbed me of much that I'll never get back. While the Anti-Christ (Sal) may have stolen a piece of my soul, the thief who stole a piece of my heart may very well be the reason I found Sal or he found me. The sting of being used and feeling unworthy stays with me still to this day. My ego was badly damaged in ways I never thought it could or would. I give myself all the pep talks, but nothing I say seems to help. Yes, Sal may have been the Anti-Christ, but Johnny was the real snake in the grass.  

MY SECRET ADMIRER

After moving away from Pensacola in 1985 to get a "clean" start someplace else, I took the summer to get my head together and to figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. One day while my children and I were at a secluded spot on St. Joe Beach, I spotted a man walking towards us in the shallow surf. He had long dark hair and dark, piercing eyes. Tanned and shirtless, he effortlessly navigated his way through the shallow surf. As he approached, I saw he was dragging something behind him on a line. My kids got excited when they saw all the fish he had caught. He stopped so they could investigate his catch.

As they frolicked in the water playing with his fish, he sat on the beach making smalltalk with me. As he eyed my lean, well-oiled body, I kept expecting him to make his move, but that never happened. When he left I watched him walk away until he was no longer in sight. It wasn't until that moment, I realized we hadn't even exchanged names. It was just a random meeting that meant nothing, but it remained stuck in my head for some reason. Who was that mystery man? Each day, we went back to the same spot, but I never saw him again. It really was just a brief meaningless encounter. By the end of summer, the trips to that secluded spot on the beach came to an end with the start of school. I also had taken a job at a local motel on Mexico Beach and worked my way very quickly from maid into the general manager's position. 

The owner, who was more than burnt out seemed eager to relinquish her duties to someone capable and willing to be manager so she could do other more important things like shop until she dropped and visit her daughter in Tallahassee a few hours away. As my life settled into the sterile reality of life without drugs, I seemed to work more and more until my life was filled with little else. One morning Robin (one of the maids) raced into the office to clock in before going to work. Before leaving, she turned and quickly told me I had a secret admirer almost as an afterthought. As she stood there waiting for me to respond, I noticed she had one of those "oh girl, you're gonna get it" smiles on her face. I looked up from the desk and coyly told her that I accept roses from all my secret admirers. What else could I say? 

The idea of having a secret admirer seemed ludicrous, but the very next day, a dozen long stem red roses were delivered to the motel with a card saying "I accept candlelit dinners!" I immediately looked around to see who was watching me. Was I on Candid Camera? I even wondered if one of the guests might have sent them. At first it felt creepy, but as I looked at the roses throughout the day I felt flattered and wondered what the man was like who had sent them to me. Curiosity got the better of me and by the end of the day being manager was at the bottom of my list of priorities. I had a new mission. I needed to meet my secret admirer. 

When Carol and Robin (mother and daughter) came to work the next day, I cornered them for details, but all they would tell me was that my secret admirer was a house guest of theirs from New York. He was family friend who was visiting and who had made some very typically male comments about me when he saw me a few times when he had dropped them off at work. I saw my interrogation wasn't going to net me any real information, so I was going to have to keep my eye out for this man, so I could discreetly check him out for myself. When I got home that evening, there was another dozen roses waiting for me with a card saying "Well?" 

I hardly slept that night wondering what thoughts were going through this man's head and what he wanted from me. I figured I knew what he wanted, but I guess what I really wondered was where all of this was heading. I had never played cat and mouse quite like this before and wondered if this was how it's done in New York. If so, maybe Florida wasn't where I needed to be! The next morning as I got ready for work, my thoughts were still on him...whoever he was. Should I meet him? If so, how should I meet him? Where should I meet him? When I went outside to leave, my car wouldn't start. Carol and Robin only lived a few blocks from me, so I called and asked if I could hitch a ride to work with them. 

Robin told me she'd be there in a few minutes to pick me up. A few minutes later, a car I had never seen before pulled into my driveway and sat idling by my backdoor, but no one got out! All of a sudden it hit me who was sitting in the car. My secret admirer had come to give me a ride to work! As calmly as I possible could, I walked towards the car and then hesitated before opening the door. As soon as I opened the door and slid into the front seat, this mystery man, my secret admirer wearing a huge smile on his face, asked me where I wanted to go. To my utter dismay, it was the fisherman I had met on the beach four months earlier. I asked him to drive me to the store before going to work if he didn't mind. 

He howled like a wolf in response. I laughed and thought I must be even crazier then he was to be in his car with him, a complete stranger. I made it to work eventually in one piece and without me asking, he was there to give me a ride home. He asked if he could look at my car, so I felt obligated to cook him dinner...no candles, but a meal that definitely started the ball rolling. For the next few days while my car was being repaired, he told me to use his car. Each day when I returned home, I fixed dinner and we seemed to fall into an easy way of doing things that felt right. He howled a lot and I laughed at him for doing it. And in those first few days, we had some of the most mind numbing sex I have ever had in my life. 

If nothing else, for me that definitely sealed the deal. Over and over again I asked myself, "Who is this mystery man?" And what did he really want from me? A few years later when the truth finally surfaced like it usually does if you wait long enough, I found out he had removed my distributor cap in the middle of the night to disable my car from starting. Our meeting from start to finish was just another one of his elaborate manipulations. When he let me borrow his car while he worked on mine, I discovered that he had a duffel bag full of laundry in his car that had somehow gotten wet. I asked him if he wanted me to wash and dry it before it mildewed and got ruined. He thanked me and said yes. 

When I had finished washing, drying and folding all his laundry, I asked him where he wanted me to put it. At that point, it seemed like a logical thing to ask since he hadn't left my house since the day I met him. He told me to put his stuff wherever I wanted to put it. I hesitated for only a second or two before walking into my bedroom and putting all his freshly laundered clothes away in the extra dresser I had in my bedroom. That decision started a 5 year relationship in which I learned that Italians and Irishmen are a fiery combination and one that would have been better suited by putting his clothes back in his duffel bag and sending him on his way. And as many times as I should have done exactly that, I rode it out for 5 years until I was just a broken shell of a person and all I had left was my very bruised survival instinct and shriveled ego. That bruised instinct was what finally saved me from my nemesis and secret admirer, the Anti-Christ as I affectionately called him. His real name was Sal and he was a very bad man.