A Decade and a Half of Hell, Part the Second

Probably a couple days after my breakup with Mark* (see Part the First to get the scoop on him if you didn't read it), feeling terrible about myself and what I had done to him, I looked through my contacts on my phone, and sent a text message to one of my "Old Reliables." These were men whom I could count on to make me feel attractive and powerful again, if only for a little while. Some were men whom I knew liked me, had crushes on me, wished they could have something more with me than what I currently allowed. At times, I used that knowledge to my benefit to get what I needed from them whenever I needed it. These "Old Reliables," I should add, were sometimes men whom I did not find particularly attractive. In order for the spell to work most effectively, I had to feel like I was more attractive, more successful, more mature, more talented, etc. than them. Someone more attractive than me could never pile on enough praise for my body to raise me back up to a functioning level. I had to see myself as better than them in almost every way. Some were older men who had jobs I felt required no skill. Some still lived at home with their parents. Some had even been to jail. They had to be these kinds of people, you see? I had to feel superior to them in any way I could, it didn't matter which. It was their duty to show me that I wasn't as bad as I thought and felt I was. When you've just broken the heart of someone who did absolutely nothing to deserve it, it takes a pretty crappy person to make you feel better about yourself.

But no one knew about this part of my life, or at least not the full extent of it. (I'm sure my friend and roommate at the time knew what was basically going on, but to her eternal credit, she never said anything to me about it.) After all, "I preferred being a private neurotic to being an object of public scorn..." (Rauch 1015). And woe to anyone who had the gall to publicly scorn me. If anyone even hinted that I was doing something wrong or behaving badly, my wrath would be swiftly upon him. I recall getting an email from someone I had broken up with and gotten back together with several times. He basically accused me of using people for my own benefit, of not caring about anyone but myself, of being heartless and cruel. It was a very long email; he held nothing back. I swore at the computer screen the whole time I was reading it and shook my head with disdain. How dare he? He was just hurt and jealous that I had chosen someone else over him! I immediately wrote back and threw my verbal punches without relent.

Shockingly, I don't think I was ever conscious that guys who wrote me letters like this (because this guy was not the only one) were uncovering some deep, dark truth about me. I never thought, uh-oh, he sees what a monster I really am. I got angry at what I saw as presumptuousness. Emails like this actually served to perpetuate the cycle I was in: I would convince myself that a guy had mental problems while I was dating him, and then I would get a "crazy" email after I broke up with him that, in my sick way, confirmed that I was in the right. I had fully convinced myself that I was justified in the things I did and the decisions I made. I had pushed my true motives so far down that I was ignorant of their existence. But that didn't mean that they were unable to exert control.

Speaking of breaking up with guys, I think in my whole life, I have only been broken up with three or four times. All were terrible, awful matches for me, and two were my longest relationships to date. (I was also conveniently ignorant of the glaring fact that my most "successful" relationships were with guys who could offer me nothing in the long term.) Breaking up with people was part of the power I craved, and I used it whenever I felt low on power. (I feel like I need to emphasize that this was never what I was consciously thinking. I never said, "Boy, I sure do feel weak and vulnerable, so I guess I better find someone to dump." It is only looking back on my life that I can clearly see that I used breaking up with guys as a power move.) But even while I was breaking someone's heart, I did everything I could to lessen the blow, to make him see that it was for the best, that there was no other way, that this would be better for both of us; however, there was also so much going on in my head that I never said out loud. No one ever knew why I was really breaking up with him: "I only started dating you because you were nice to me and inflated my ego" or "The fact that you were so funny made you attractive to me at first, but I was never really attracted to you physically." I always tried to convince each one that we should remain friends, that there was no logical reason we should not be friends just because we could not be boyfriends. If they refused, it made me feel more superior because I had chosen the high road and they clearly lacked the maturity to handle that. This, like the email responses, also served to perpetuate my downward spiral.

Several times in my twenties, I took a "hiatus" from dating. I would tell myself that what I needed was some time alone, time to recoup, time to think and reflect, time to look deep inside myself and figure out what I really wanted. I took these times very seriously. It was during one of these periods that I had an epiphany: I was afraid of getting into a committed relationship because of my parents' divorce. It made perfect sense! Another time, I came to the epiphany that I was just a people pleaser: I cared about people so much that I let everyone have his way just so that I wouldn't make anyone feel bad. I'm really the good guy, I thought! I just care too much, that's all! There were other epiphanies, all equally as false and misleading and misguided. I only knew I was unhappy, and I was trying so hard to pin a reason on it. I knew that my life was not going the way I had planned it would when I fantasized about meeting the man of my dreams every night in junior high and high school. But I always missed the point, always looked over, through, or under the True Source. I was so busy convincing everyone else that I was confident and at ease with being gay, that I could never have begun to realize that self-hate and a desire to thwart and punish myself was what was really at the heart of everything I went through. I would come out of these "breaks" feeling refreshed and like I finally understood why things had been going badly. I was always optimistic for the future, sure that I was now, this time, finally this time, on a much better path with a much more secure footing.

But I continued to do the exact same things. Over and over, the cycle continued. The more I screwed up, the more I hated myself. And the more I hated myself, the more I screwed up. In a very real and literal sense, I became addicted to feeling bad; I sought out situations that I knew would result in deepening the hate and disgust I felt for myself. All too often, I would have conversations in my head that went something like this: "You're disgusting, Justin. It's no wonder that no one wants to be with you. You make me f***ing sick. You make me want to f***ing throw up, you're so f***ing ugly and disgusting. Does your selfishness know no bounds? It's a good thing your family doesn't know what you're really like. They would all hate you if they knew how f***ing disgusting you really are..." I had to throw lots of f-words in there to make me feel even worse. I could go on like this for hours sometimes, or all night if there happened to be someone sleeping in my bed with me. (There were many nights when I would lie on my bed all night long, not sleeping for even a moment.)

This is illuminated perfectly in the opening scene of a novel I wrote, a fictional account of my 20's:

       I’m pretty sure I lay there and stared at the ceiling for, oh, at least four or five hours. No joke. Every time he moved even a centimeter closer to me, I scooched nearer to the edge of the bed, doing everything in my power to avoid any (more) physical contact. My hands were folded, mummy-style, across my chest. My ankles were pressed together. My head was tilting to the right because his mouth was encroaching into my personal space. My neck ached like you can’t believe. But I was not about to actually do anything about it. I mean, what could I have done at that point? The damage had already been done.

       I swallowed hard. Too hard, it seems, because he felt the vibrations and groaned and rolled toward me and flopped his arm over my chest. My breathing stopped for several seconds. My right elbow was already hanging over the edge of the bed: I couldn’t scoot over any further without falling onto the floor. I actually considered attempting to slither out of the side of the covers and roll, like a soldier, onto the floor. It was a futon. I totally could have done it.

       I honestly don’t know why I was so obsessed, disgusted as I was, with disturbing him. Maybe I was worried about a repeat of the performance I’d had to endure several hours earlier. Maybe I was worried he’d think badly of me. Imagine! Him thinking badly of me. I can laugh about that now because I know myself better. But not then. Back then, I thought I was the scum of the earth.

       As I lay there awake all night long, miserable, one thought was on a loop in my head: You deserve this, Ben. You deserve this, Ben.

My journal from those years is filled to brim with entries that talk about meeting a guy "who is unlike anyone I've ever met." I would be so full of optimism and joy. We would date a while and I would "feel things I've never felt before." I would be "blissfully happy" and then I would start finding things wrong with him. I would inevitably dump him. I would then drown in the depths of despair. I would beat myself up and tell myself how ugly I am and how no good people would ever want an ugly loser like me. I would tell myself how disappointed my family must be in me that I can't make anything in my life work out. And then I would meet someone new. He would be "for real this time" totally unlike anyone I had ever met, I would "seriously" feel things I had never felt before, etc. etc.

It makes me so sad now to think about how many guys I hurt in my selfishness and ignorance. I wanted great things. I dreamt of having such beauty and love in my life. Each new relationship presented me with a bright new possibility. "Maybe THIS time will work out. Maybe THIS time I will be different." It also makes me sad to think about how many wonderful people I met only to toss them aside because I felt utterly unworthy of each one of them. It is hard for me at times now to avoid getting sucked into thinking about what-ifs. If my life had been different, I could be married right now. I could have a home. I could have children. It is hard sometimes to just let it be, to accept what has happened and look forward to what will one day be. But I digress...

I wish I could say that I learned something from this period. I was, after all, raised under the grand philosophy that it is through making mistakes that we learn and grow. But I never learned and I never grew. Because I kept placing the blame on the wrong things, I was unable to get out of jail and progress. This is why it is so easy for me to sum up ten years into just a couple stories: every other story is nothing more than a variation on the same theme.

When I was 29 I moved back to Milwaukee from Mesa. After convincing everyone that I was going to be an interior architect, I enrolled in a private art college. The real reason I left: I told myself that I just needed to get away from Mesa, from all the "Old Faithfuls" who were constantly sending me lewd text messages and only wanting one thing from me, from all the painful memories, from all the guilt, from the constant shame, from the constant reminders of failure after failure after failure. In Milwaukee, things would be different. I was starting over, wiping the slate clean (for the umpteenth time). I was almost 30! I certainly knew myself better than I ever had before...

*all names have been changed for privacy