I met this great guy golfing at the venue of my friend’s wedding. Spoiler alert: IT DOESN’T END WELL. He had a great job in Silicon Valley and showed my entry-level ass the high life. He made 4X the amount I make, which is pretty standard for someone in their mid 20’s. At first it was thrilling, fast rides in his BMW, expensive dinners, exclusive clubs, fancy hotels, networking with his coworkers during happy hour, luxurious presents, trips to the spa–you get it. Then a year in to our relationship he gets laid off. Now I’m paying for his rent, his car payments, credit card bills, groceries, etc. To top it off, he doesn’t scale back on the ritzy life…he’s still having sushi delivered to his apartment, getting massages, going golfing, all on my dime. He promises to pay me back when he gets a job, which I begrudgingly agree to. One day when we were arguing about his spending habits, I made him lay out his finances for me. He had nothing in his bank accounts, and that’s when he told me he has been snorting Oxycontin for years now, with his habit totaling $800 a week. I agreed to stay if he would go into rehab. We looked at places and I said we’ll deal with it after my sister’s wedding, in 2 months. A few weeks later, while on my sister’s bachelorette trip, my credit card gets declined. So does the other one. And the other one. It turns out a few days back, in the middle of the night, he took my credit cards and took out cash advances totaling $12K. I literally had no feelings to feel, I was so shocked. Keep in mind, I came from humble beginnings, with a truck driver dad and stay-at-home mom. I graduated from college without debt working multiple jobs since i was 16, and bought and paid off my first brand new car at age 25. I always thought I was pretty successful for my age, and I always hoped to follow my dad’s footsteps of buying a house at 28. I scrimped and saved at my first job by living at home. That $18K in savings was all I had. Plus this is the Bay Area so you know how expensive it is to live here. Anyways back to the douchebaggery of 2013–we broke up and he was good on his word of paying me back. At first. By this time he got hired at another Fortune-500 company so he was back on his feet, so to speak. We worked out a plan to pay me $1K every paycheck. Then he said he moved and said his rent went up so he’s going to pay me back $500 a week. Of course I had to pull teeth just to get him to pay me back, sometimes I would go months without hearing from him. Then one day, his cell phone was no longer working. He blocked me on facebook, moved, changed his number. He paid me back a total of $4000. I know I can sue, but a lot of times he asked me to get cash from the ATM for groceries or gas etc, so it would be a little difficult to prove. And the biggest factor of not pursuing it–I was tired. I was tired of covering for him, tired of lying to my parents, tired of walking on eggshells when he was sobering up, tired of him threatening to tie cylinder blocks around my dog and drown her, tired of coming home and seeing he sold the bed for cash, tired of him calling me a whore when he couldn’t perform sexually (the painkillers will do that to you), tired of him making fun of me for making such “little” money, tired of him telling me which girls he thought were pretty. I was tired. I just wanted a safe place to lay my head. I moved back in with my parents but still kept my debt a secret. To this day, they don’t know–it would kill them. I would cry every day and drink a bottle of wine at night. I ate a lot of cheese and stopped working out. I stopped getting my hair cuts or my nails done. I stopped seeing friends. I just stopped living. Then one day, I said to myself, “Stop it. Just stop it. 2014 will be the best year of your life.” I stopped drinking and started living healthy again. I only allowed myself to cry on my way to and from work and in the shower. I took up hiking with my teeny tiny dog. It’s something we didn’t know we were both good at! Just this past month, we both climbed up a mountain here in California. I started to bake and cook for my coworkers to bring fulfillment back in my life. I took in holistic healing, like massage and aromatherapy. I started to collect crystals and minerals, like Hank did on Breaking Bad. I went to get pedi’s with my mom, really truly got to know my sister, who has always been my enemy until recently. Now she is my best friend. I decided to purge all the things I was holding on to that no longer served me, that included people, places, things and memories. I took off all the anger and embarrassment, I took off the friends who called me desperate and pathetic and a coward for not suing, I took off the terrifying life I lived with him, I took off the idea that I did not need to have my shit together in my 20’s, I took off my need for male approval, I took off the ideology that I had to be a wife and mother, I took off all these burdens. I took it off simply because I did not want to carry it with me anymore. I was waiting for him to right his wrongs, but I can’t even begin to tell you how much easier life gets when you learn to accept the apology you never got. This was the moment that marked my life–a moment when I realized nothing will ever be the same again, and time is divided into two parts: before this and after this. The good news is the beginning of whatever the fuck I want. It took a long time, but I’ve learned you can only lose something that you have, but you can never lose something that you are. If you are brave enough to say goodbye, the universe will reward you with a new hello. If I had $30K, I’d put my money on it. -F
