Cry, baby, cry (pain and toxicity)
Karen Osaghae@karenosaghae547304
2 months ago
It always starts with a ‘Hello, my name is….’ Why though? Why is that the start of every first meet? But what does it always end with? Ah, that one differs.
Immediately church closed that faithful day, I quickly walked to my car. Lurking around at the close of service wasn’t something I knew how to do. No. Introverted me will rather be shot in the head than be found staying behind for no reason. As I got to my car about climbing into it, a young boy stopped me.
“Excuse me.” He said. I turned around to look at him. I had no idea who he was. “Stanley asked me to call you.”
I looked at him confused. “Who is Stanley? I don’t know no Stanley.” I said to him.
“He told me to tell you if you cannot come, he will come to you.”
Oh. “He’s free to do that then.”
The little boy left, and I stood there contemplating if it was worth wasting my time or if I should get into my car and go home. A part of me wanted to know who it was. So I waited. In a short while, he came.
“Hello. My name is Stanley.” The soft spoken man said. I had to hide the smile that was appearing on my face. Unknown to me that he was the Stanley, he was the man I looked for every Sunday at church. I noticed when he was at service, and when he wasn’t. I never knew his name, I only knew he has caught my gaze a couple of time. I refused to accept to myself that I was having a huge crush on him. I mean, I didn’t even know his name.
“I’m Elle.” I said, placing my palm on his, my breath hitched in my throat. That was the beginning of an unfortunate toxic love story. If only I had known, I would have gotten into my car that day and driven straight to my house without waiting for anyone. Lessons are made to be learnt.
By the time I got home, Stanley and I were already exchanging text messages, and I was already blushing like a fool. He came to pick me up later in the evening to his previous place of work and showed me around. In this story, I know I played myself. From the first day we met, I was already thinking ahead of myself instead of going with the flow as he was doing. But don’t blame me, have you never been giving a signal and you took it wrongly? Yeah.
From then on, Stanley would call me almost every five minute. He reported every activity of the day as it was happening. After work, he’d come pick me up to take me anywhere he was going. We’d talk at night on face-time until he slept off. It was on a daily basis. I was falling hard, and I was falling fast. Stanley didn’t crawl up on me, no. The speed he used in entering my life and becoming a part of me was one I had never experienced. He came into my life at a time when I needed to forget a lot of things. I needed a distraction, and Stanley was my distraction.
But there was a problem. He still hadn’t asked me yet to be his girlfriend. I was becoming impatient because I wanted the relationship or whatever it was to be defined. He kept saying he wasn’t made to be a boyfriend, he didn’t do commitment, and he had been hurt too many times in life. I guess my problem was, I wanted to fix that aspect of him. I wanted to show him how beautiful love could be. I was a hopeless romantic. The first day he kissed me, it was magical. It was soft and at the same time, it took my breath away. It happened in his car. It wasn’t anything more than a few seconds, but it seemed like it was forever.
Then one blessed day, a month later, while we were just chilling, he finally popped the question. He asked me to be his girlfriend. While a part of me was excited and all blushy, the other part of me couldn’t help but feel I had forced him into asking the question. It kept bugging me, and it did till the end. He never reassured me. Not once. Well, after that blessed day, everything started to go downhill. The calls reduced, the messages reduced, at some point it became as though I was forcing him to text me. Every time I complained about it, he would tell me he had already informed me from the onset that he didn’t know how to be a boyfriend. And I am a very peaceful person, I do not know how to nag so I would always drop it. By the time all these were happening, I was already in love with him. Relationships never work when the girl likes the guy more. It is always going to fail….i know that now.
About two months later, I finally told him I loved him. He never said it back. After some time, he got a new job that required him to travel out of state often. I stopped seeing him for a while. Our communication was done strictly on calls and text messages. There were times he’d go a week or two without calling or texting me. He became harsh. You can say I was the fool for staying. I found out at some point, that in the course of our relationship, he had invited my friend over to his house so he could ‘cook for her.’ He didn’t know we knew each other. She showed me the chats between the both of them. The funny thing, while I was begging my boyfriend to text me, he was begging my friend to respond to his messages. Such an irony. When I confronted him about it, he gas-lighted me. Oh, guess what? I still stayed. Why? Because I loved him. Bullshit! I fell madly in love with him and I had no idea why. They say you like ‘because’ and you love ‘despite’ right? That is such a stupid logic made to trap people in toxicity.
As introverted as I am, I suffer from severe depression and as such, I do not really have friends. Any time I start feeling down and I tried talking to him, he was never available for me. He treated me harshly and was always hard on me. There were good days too. There were days he made me feel like a queen. I guess that was what I held onto that made me stay. I shouldn’t have stayed. Since I couldn’t talk to anybody, my diary was my best friend. I wrote everything in my diary. Not just about him, but also about family and my mental health.
What happened you ask? For over four months I had not seen him. I looked forward to seeing him like my life depended on it. I missed him so much. The excitement in me couldn’t be compared. The day he finally returned came and I was dying to see him. He wasn’t dying to see me. Notice how I never spoke of him declaring his feelings for me? That’s because he never did. Eight months into the relationship and he never told me he loved me. Or told me how he felt about me. Deep down, I knew I was playing myself in the toxic thing I called love, but I didn’t know what to do. I so desperately wanted him to love me that I would literally go out of my way to make sure I made him happy. Few days after he got back, I brought it to his notice that he hadn’t made any effort to see me, so he arranged a day to meet. You can imagine how I felt when the day finally arrived.
I happily got dressed, booked my cab and went to meet him. It was as though time couldn’t run any faster. I was anxious. We were communicating on text all through the drive until I got to him. The thing is, when I got there, his friends were there, and the atmosphere was cold. I felt like I wasn’t wanted there, and that dampened my mood. He didn’t do much to make me feel better at the time. Then something happened. Sitting beside me, he scrolled through his call log on his phone, and I realized he had saved my contact with my full name…… my first and surname. Was that all I was to him? Another thing that had me feeling down.
In need of privacy, we went into his room. Thinking back now, I don’t know if it was a blessing I went to see him that day or a curse. As usual we made out for a while, until he got distracted with a movie on his phone. I didn’t want to see a movie, I only wanted his attention. I wanted him to talk to me, tell me about his trip and tell me about his future plans. I wanted us to bond. So, I got mad. Picking up my phone, I started going through my messages, and then he needed my attention but I was still acting mad at him. Dragging my phone from my hand, he was about closing it when he found my diary application on it and wanted to go through it.
“Babe, no. Stop it. Don’t do that. That is my privacy.” I told him. But he was adamant.
“I’m not giving it to you until you tell me what’s in it.” Was his response.
If it was only about him, I would have given it to him without a second thought. But that wasn’t the case. It contained personal information about my family and my anxiety that I couldn’t let anyone see. Not even the man I loved the most. We started fighting about it, dragging the phone from each other’s hand. It started out as a playful thing, and then turned into a full on fight. He wasn’t letting go of the phone, and I couldn’t leave my phone with him. Stanley got mad, gave me my phone and left the room. There and then, I knew I had lost him. I knew it was all over. I never had a place in his heart in the first place. He never loved me.
Stanley came back into the room still mad at me. He made me feel like I was wrong for not wanting him to invade my privacy.
“You are acting crazy. I can’t believe the way you are behaving right now.” He said to me.
I started pleading and apologizing for the way I was behaving. I was really stupid. Even with all my apology, he wasn’t having it. He forced me into his car and drove me home, then drove off. It was goodbye. He couldn’t stand to look at me and that hurt me. When I got home, I cried my eyes out. I cried for a love that wasn’t there to begin with. I cried for my foolishness, I cried because I knew it was the end. I cried until I fell asleep. The following day, we didn’t talk to each other. The day after that, I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I had to send him a text telling him how much I missed him and how sorry I am, and how much I loved him.
What else could I do? I was in love and didn’t want to lose him. But what did he say to me? He told me he couldn’t have me behaving like an angel one minute and going crazy on him the next minute, and he needed to protect his peace of mind so it was goodbye. Goodbye? Because I refused to show you my diary? He was going to throw away eight-months over this? Yes, he did. As stupid as I was, I started pleading with him, professing my love for him, and begging him to not leave. I never thought the day would come when I would beg a man to stay with me. Guess what he did! He blocked me! He blocked me on all social media accounts and blocked me from calling him. That got to me. What did I do to deserve such harsh treatment? It broke me. Was that what I got for loving him for eight-months? At that point, the thought of ending my life crossed my mind. What if I kill myself so he wouldn’t survive the guilt? That was all I could think about as I pressed the hot iron against my naked thigh. I wasn’t thinking, I felt broken in a way I had never felt before.
To make matters more terrible, when I told his brother about the situation of things, he told me he had asked Stanley about our relationship previously and Stanley’s response was that he never wanted the relationship in the first place, he just went along with it. What?! Why did I even bother to feel hurt when I had always known? Like I said, I played myself. I was the clueless idiot who had planned out my life with him included in my future.
Everything that happened made me learn my lesson. Never ever will I fall in love with anyone until I am sure he is completely in love with me. Never will I let anyone hurt me as much as Stanley. I hate him. I hate him as much as I love him.
#hellonircle
#nirclestories
#nirclebookclub
#shortstories
#fiction
#painandtoxicity
