Obsess much?
My ex boyfriend won't leave me alone.
It was quite a complicated relationship. I was with someone else originally, and I was staying with him in Oregon. Alex kept pestering me to let him pick me up, and take me to Missouri. Looking back, I don't know if I had feelings for him, but at the time, I believed I did. No one ever cared about me so much, although I use the phrase 'cared about' with reticence. I was the centre of his universe.
Thing is, being the centre of his universe didn't make him behave well towards me. He'd give me all the attention I wanted, true - I can be very clingy - and he'd let me talk about whatever I wanted. He'd stalk the posts I made on an online forum every single day, and would reply to a lot of them, or at least the threads they were in. I'd never experienced that before, and I was flattered, of course. My boyfriend at the time, Kevin, was a lot older, and he worked all day. I'd spend my days all alone, and sometimes it seemed like Kevin didn't care. We never saw each other; I'd try to stay awake in the evenings, so we could be together, but he'd be so tired that he'd fall asleep, and I'd stay up watching films or reading. I'd go in the other room, and watch TV all night. Sometimes, he'd come to find me in the middle of the night, and he'd be blinking his eyes from the sudden light, and he was six foot tall - a lot taller than me - but he just looked so lonely, and needy, like a puppy who had been taken from it's mother. I'd always hug him, and take him back to bed. I think I normally stayed with him until he fell asleep when he did that. I don't remember.
I was online more and more, and Alex kept asking me to go away with him. We agreed on a date, February tenth or so I think; just before Valentines day. Sometime in the week before then, I asked for a few more days. I'm English, and I was only staying in America for three months. I wanted Valentines day with Kevin; I owed him that much. Alex said no, so I decided to stay. Of course he hated that. He called me a bitch all over the internet, and said all sorts of other things. Around this time, Kevin became really jealous, although, of course, one can't blame him. He cut off my internet access entirely, and of course, with him gone all day, I had nothing to do. I was very lonely. Silverton was a very small town, and I felt uncomfortable. I don't like exploring new places alone, not without some destination, and he'd never taken the time to show me around or introduce me to anyone. I used my mobile to call Alex a few times, and eventually, I asked if he could come pick me up. I did care about Kevin, but he wasn't the love of my life. We'd been together for eight months or so, and I just felt trapped. We couldn't have recovered from the Alex thing, either.
Maybe I'm making excuses; I can't tell.
Alex did come and pick me up, and we drove from Oregon to Missouri. That trip is something I'll always remember; it's one of the coolest things I've ever done.
Staying with Alex was fun, but looking back now, there were a lot of things wrong. He used to force me to kiss him, and it would hurt sometimes. He'd tug on my head, and it would hurt my neck. He was impotent, too, so we had problems there. One thing Kevin and I always had was a very active sex life; two or three times a day, even towards the end, was fairly common.
Another thing is that Alex isn't very attractive. It didn't bother me at first, the way you don't care about the appearance of people you love. But over time, it started to bug me. He was really overweight. He was strong with it - he had no problems picking me up - but he was just plain fat, and that's something that's always gotten to me. It's so unhealthy, and shows such disregard for your health. He had a layer of fat under his skin, and on places like his forehead, it felt disgusting and unnatural. I could barely wrap my legs around his waist, and my legs are disproportionately long. I'm 5"6, which is above average. His mother still controlled his bedtime, and sometimes talked about him "going potty", something I couldn't help quietly sniggering at. And his father liked looking at photos of young girls on porn sites, which made the time I woke up to find him in my room oddly disturbing.
Although he was obsessed with me, Alex was oddly selfish. His worst habit was procrastination; even the simplest things took hours of nagging from his mother, something that made me look bad, too. Sometimes, he wouldn't tell me when he was meant to do something, which meant I couldn't even remind him, and he certainly wouldn't do it of his own accord. It was always the important little things too, like taking care of his car.
I had to come back to England shortly afterwards. We'd talk on the phone a lot; we both ran up huge phone bills. I write, and I love talking about my stories. He'd always act like he was really interested, and I liked that a lot. But then, later, I'd try and talk about the story again, and despite pretending he did, he wouldn't remember anything. He agreed with everything I said to the point at which it didn't even matter what I'd said. If I was posting in a thread, he'd agree with me there too, always in an argumentative manner. Some people assumed I was being told what to say by him, something that made my blood boil, especially since I'm far more intelligent than he is.
People would wonder what I'd done to him; apparently, I'd changed him somehow. I couldn't know that - the second we started talking, he changed. I never really knew him any other way. He didn't change because of anything I did, but simply because of who I am. Does that make it my fault?
I became more and more bored and irritated by him. I'd avoid his IMs, and, since I had a computer by this time, I avoided his voice conversations, too. I hoped that it was just a phase, that maybe things would be okay. I was afraid to break up with him in some ways, because I knew he'd go insane again, and begin insulting me in any way he knew how. I didn't want to prove people right, all those who'd said it wouldn't work. I wanted it to work I really did. But it turned out that I didn't like him, and I wasn't attracted to him. I didn't respect him; his mother bullied him, he was stuck in a dead end job, he had no ambition, and he agreed with anything I said. It's ungrateful, but I wanted a partner, not a pet. I wanted somebody I could be proud of, someone I'd want standing next to me, not someone who irritated and embarassed me, who made me look bad simply through being connected to them. Because he was seen as a troublemaker, and because he always agreed with me, people saw us as being in cahoots, and my opinions counted for nothing at all. People ignored them.
I talked to other people more and more, and one day I realised that I couldn't be with Alex any more, that it wouldn't work out. I had feelings for someone else, and it meant so much more than he ever had. I'd thought that I loved him, but now I know that it wasn't even comparable to how I feel now. I broke up with Alex the second I realised that. Of course it wasn't ideal, and I didn't want to hurt him. No matter what I did, I'd have been in the wrong. If I'd never gone away with him, I'd have been in the wrong for leading him on, simply because I didn't ignore him from the first second. I didn't make him love me. I didn't encourage him to. I didn't plan it, and I didn't want it. I'm not saying I didn't like the attention, but it was my existence that caused it, not anything I did.
Before we broke up, when we'd been discussing how he acted when I didn't want to leave with him at first, I made him promise not to do anything like that again. Of course, he broke that promise. I didn't get together with my new boyfriend for a few weeks, but the second I did, Alex went crazy. Screamed all the swear words he knew, and threatened to post naked pictures of me online. I blocked him, of course. Then he began pestering me through mutual friends and through personal messages, either begging me to be friends or throwing more insults and threats at me. I'm not sure how he expected friendship to come from that.
I admit, a few weeks is a short gap between relationships. Maybe it's because I didn't break up with Alex until my feelings were pretty strong. I cried over leaving Kevy sometimes, but I've never once cried over leaving Alex. That's quite sad really, because he was nice to me, and I know he cared for me, but the way he acted means that there was no way I'd ever regret leaving him.
He claims to be over me, and to be getting on with his life, but then he does something else. The latest thing is turning a pm I sent him into a banner, and getting people to wear it. Some people I know hated me, some people I've actually respected from afar before now. Two people were those I considered friends, and that stung. No one ever asked me what had happened, and I didn't make a point of telling people, although I guess I kind of am now. I'm not perfect. I'm quite a weak person. I tend to fall in love quickly, and cling to people. When that happens, I become fascinated by them, something which is probably quite flattering. I'm interested in different types of people, too, I think maybe because I like writing so much. I love people who differ from me; I like getting close to them, getting inside their heads almost, and learning how they work. Every single time, I think that maybe this is it, which is why I now avoid saying "I love you", even when I really feel it. I never know how I'll feel in a few months time, even if at that moment it's laughable to think I'll ever feel any different. Nineteen is too young for forever to mean much. I don't know what love is.
Anyway, I'm not perfect. Maybe I could have made better decisions, although for the life of me, I can't see how, or where, or when. I never claimed to be a nice person, or even a good one. I have a lot of faults. But, I didn't do all the things he accuses me of. I didn't do most of the things he tells people I did, but they never doubt it. They're all quite happy to call me a whore, despite how illogical it is to call someone a whore or a slut because they stop sleeping with someone. People find it so easy to believe the worst of me. I'm not perfect, but nor is he. I have enough pride not to whinge to everyone about how people have wronged me, which means I'm not seen as needing or deserving sympathy. It's like when siblings fight; their parents will cuddle the crying one, and blame the other, no matter what happened.
It's been almost two months now since we broke up, maybe longer. I'm getting more and more comfortable complaining about him. Maybe one day I'll be able to create a witch hunt, too.