Letting go ............continued

In late 1996 I began dating an old high school boyfriend. We had experienced a bumpy relationship when he first went off to college; mainly because I had cheated on him with my best friend and he had cheated on me with a couple of people but when I moved to Stephenville I thought we had put that all behind us. However, on New Year's Eve we had made plans between my shifts at the bar and when he was late and didn't answer I thought he might have fallen asleep and I went to his apartment. I knocked on the door and no answer so I opened the door to go in and discovered him on the couch having sex with a girl he swore that he was just friends with. This crushed me. I was devestated because I had opened my heart up again and tried to trust someone again and not surprisingly I had once again been let down.

I tried to move on. I tried not to let it bother me but I felt myself closing off. I felt my heart growing darker and colder with each passing day. The worst part of it all was I slowly saw myself reverting to old self destructive habits. I couldn't handle knowing I would have to see this person for the rest of my life and keep his ugly secrets to protect his family. The thing that no one realizes is that since the time I was 16 years old, his mother had "adopted" me so to speak. I had spent holidays with his family. His grandmother had become my grandmother, his great uncle had become my uncle. His family was the only "family" I had for years. What was I going to do? Tell them all that their son, brother, nephew, grandson was a no good lying cheat? Was I going to walk away from the only people that ever excepted me or treated me as one of their own. This tortured me. I didn't know what to do.

I began "partying" all the time. I drank more than I ever had. I quite going to therapy because I didn't want to deal with the issues. I had so much pain in my past, I had so much current pain, I did not know what to do. I started "dating" again. Isn't that what people say when they don't want the to tell the truth? The truth was I started using men to satisfy one need and one need only. When I was satisfied, I was done with them and I would move onto the next one when I felt the need. If I happen to come across a nice guy that wanted an actual relationship with me, I would use him, abuse him, chew him up and spit him out when I was thru with him. A friend's boyfriend once told one of the "nice guys" that he better be on his toes with me, because I was a man eater. I really never gave that any thought until a few years later.

A few years went by like this before I reached another place in which I wanted to make changes.