my story chapter one

In the movies, people are always not saying the truth, not telling the thing that would illuminate the situation and save relationships or lives or the day. This infuriated me as a child. I think maybe many of us start out so simply and honestly.

   In my case, I have withheld truth, parts of truth for the same reasons we all do; to protect myself from judgements of actions I know were stupid, because the moment to tell my story never seemed right, later, because lies had already been told and my story would contradict them, at first, because I didn't know the lies had been told and I even had a contradictory story to tell.  Because I still loved him, somehow, maddeningly. The same fantasy believing mind that had allowed me to fall in love in the first place also made me believe the truth would out and save the day all on her own. 

     

     One day, still trying to steady my ship in another new country after my own little devastating divorce, I heard of a shaman. A healer from Peru. "I have to meet him." 

   And the worlds made room for this after I made the statement. It was if all I had to do was speak those words and the Universe bent itself to my wish. 

     A couple weeks later, I found myself in a swanky harborside apartment filled with wealthy mysterious spiritual seekers. 

    I didn't know anyone, I felt out of place and vulnerable and that predator saw me like that and stalked me like an expert. I used to tell the story differently, how he came and spoke to me and I didn't realize he was the speaker and how I felt so excited that I was going to be able to trade treatments with him. 

  Later that week, we met again and he treated me and then I treated him. At the end of the hour and a half I worked on him, he looked at me and said  "is that it?" 

     I told him yes. And I remember it made me feel weird, but I let it go, because that's what I do : I let things go. 

   I agreed to meet him again in a few months the following year to travel somewhere. I never thought that would happen. I didn't really hold it in my mind as a real possibility.

   But the following June, I was on a plane to Tasmania with this short South American man with a big belly and childlike qualities.

     Our first night together, I tried to make it clear I was not going to be sleeping with him. He disregarded my signals and I can see now it is because he disregards everything that doesn't serve his own needs or agenda and also he has almost no respect whatsoever for women. Infuriatingly, this disrespect somehow fuels his ability to fake another reality for the many women he deals with in his life and career, which of course serves his purpose. And I'm sure that cycle further reinforces his disrespect. 

  On the third night, he was getting more forceful about sleeping with me, although when I pushed him and verbally told him I couldn't, he did back off. He then got out of bed and made a big show of doing some kind of kung fu to "dissipate" his energy. 

   Here's where the story reflects my own stupidity. 

I shouldn't have been in the same room with him. The fact that I couldn't afford my own room at that point in my struggling immigrant story was probably reason enough not to go on the trip. But that's just not my personality to be so prudent and reasonable. I'm an idiot for impulsive adventure and much of my life's pain stems from that tendency. But, so do the adventurous experiences come from it, so, I don't know. It is what it is. 

    He bit me on the shoulder when I responded to him that it was fine that he was tired as it was night and time to sleep. 

   He also said he didn't know why "he was being so shy with me."  That statement confused me for a long time as it was obviously the opposite of the truth. 

   I learned years later in my therapist's office that it was a method of mind control he was employing. I still don't know if this part of him is deliberate or unconscious like a horrid coping mechanism he developed from his bizarre childhood. 

     

    We started a relationship a few weeks after the trip, as he is really fucking amazing at manipulation and I was extraordinarily vulnerable at that moment in my life and I thought I was experiencing a redemption and a new life, which I desperately wanted. 

    I was in love like I have never been before. I was overwhelmed with it. I was an addict with a new drug and I easily glossed over all of the secrecy, the abruptly changing plans, my guts telling me I was being lied to and cheated on because I needed to believe this was the real deal and all the dreams I had ever had were actually coming true. I would study healing plants in the Amazon, I would have a farm and raise kids in a healthy environment away from the evils of the society I grew up in. I would be part of saving the rainforest, I would learn a couple languages and deeply experience cultures I had always wanted to know. I would uncover the secrets linking martial arts and yoga and practice them and heal myself and others profoundly. I would return to innocence, the Garden of Eden. 

   He saw into me and spun my deepest held wishes into a garment he wore. He is indeed a wizard. 

  

Within a few months, around Christmas 2013, the first chaos began and I would never again return to that bliss. 

    He began the gaslighting then. He was enjoying it so much sometimes he would almost laugh when he was breaking my mental certainty and my heart. 

     He made it somewhat obvious that he was having at least one affair, but would also make me feel like I was crazy to think so. 

   My new pass time was mentally torturing myself warring between my own intuitions and his words. He would act in ways that I saw as red flags, but then he would use his words like magic. 

    The break down of my mental heath had begun. I had been hooked and the real games could begin. 

    We would spend hours talking about something and the issue would never get close to resolving. He can spin verbal chaos like no one I have ever seen. In public, his words are humble and clear and apparently make people feel good, but privately, he was showing me a different side completely. There was a moment in the last months we were together when I had been going with him to many of his public appearances and one woman spoke up in order to vouch for him to a group deciding whether or not to take a spiritual trip with him to Peru. She described him as a caring, almost maternal man. She said he was so gentle and so safe and knowledgable, that he could be trusted to do the right thing in any circumstance. 

     She went on, and as she did, I found myself incredulous, thinking that the man she was describing was a completely different person than the one I was in a relationship with, that I wished he was that man and that I had never met that person she described.