Erica Van Driel and I met on PoF – she messaged me – and her username was “PopcornForDinner”. She had no profile photo and no information, so I was leery of her, and was very cautious. We chatted a bit, and then agreed to exchange phone numbers.
[2019-07-19 7:38 PM] Me: Erica? ‘Tis Rob. 🙂
[2019-07-19 8:15 PM] Erica (PoF): Hello!!
We chatted for about an hour before she finally sent me a photo of herself. When she did, I nearly fell out of my chair. She was absolutely stunning. So stunning in fact that I was convinced I was being catfished. There was simply no way that anyone who looked like that would be interested in a guy like me. Absolutely not.
However, as things progressed and we got to know each other over the next three weeks, and it became evident that I was not, in fact, being catfished and she was very real, I was completely smitten. I couldn’t get enough of her, and getting to know her. We had text conversations for hours, and not one day went by between that first message and meeting in person three weeks later that we didn’t have multiple text exchanges that went on all day.
When we finally did meet, I took the ferry across to Horseshoe Bay on foot. I walked off the ferry and as I walked down the concourse, I spotted her waiting for me. She didn’t see me, and I didn’t come out the way she expected me to. So, I came up from beside her and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and looked at me, and I looked at her face and saw those green eyes and…. I swear to a God I don’t believe in, that time stopped and I struggled to breathe for a few seconds.
That date got off to a bit of a rough start, but as always seemed to be our pattern, we worked through the rough part, and things evened out. We ended up sitting on a secluded bench together, talking until it was dark. She made it pretty clear that her shoulders and neck were killing her, so I ended up giving her a shoulder massage until my hands felt like they’d fall off. And I would have let them.
We walked along the waterfront for a bit, and I asked her if I could kiss her. She said yes, and that was the second most memorable kiss I’d ever shared with anyone in all my time on this planet. My entire body responded to her and I was completely powerless to stop it. And there is absolutely no part of me whatsoever that can believe that she didn’t know it. I think that was part of the problem. She knew she had me at her mercy, and she LOVED the attention. And she loved the power.
At the beginning of this post, I opened with texts being one of the more difficult components of this process.
I’m a very sentimental person. I still have a collection of movie stubs to almost every movie I’ve ever been to. I hold on to mementos. Things that connect me to pleasant memories, or moments I don’t want to forget. There are some memories I just don’t want to let go of. I always have my phone out, taking pictures and recording moments that make the memories that I cherish.
Going through the old photos of texts between Erica and I, from our first one to our last one, has been bittersweet. I see a lot of photos and texts that are still so fresh and meaningful that the tears just start flowing and are difficult to stop. I fight them as hard as I can, telling myself that she doesn’t deserve my tears. Fuck her. She pretended to be a safe space for my tears, but more often than not, was the cause of them. I miss the things we did together – the bike rides especially.
I will forever miss these bike rides. The moment above is bittersweet; in THAT moment, on THAT beach, under THAT sun, beneath THAT sky, and with THAT version of Erica that was present in THAT moment… I was truly happy. This is how I WANT to remember her. This is how I WANT to see her. This is who I want to believe she is. This is who I always HOPED she’d be. She can be. She has been. But to me, those moments are truly fleeting.
But I’m also very cognizant of the fact that all the way TO that moment and all the way FROM that moment, we fought. On the way there, because I offended her with a story about tea, and on the way back because.. Well, who knows. I am acutely aware that virtually every (but not all) memory I have that I cherish and that makes me happy is also clouded with the memory of a fight, a disagreement or some degree of rupture that was instigated over something stupid and completely unimportant in the bigger picture. Whether it was because I asked a question about the route we were taking on our bike ride, or because I made a bad pun while reading a poorly written sign at a flea market. Or because that time I asked when we could hang out next at the end of our time together, or perhaps it was because I told her I missed her when she was away on a trip and texted me to ask how I was, because saying “I miss you” is a direct accusation that I think she is not enough.
Or maybe because I told her I’d really like to be included when she got together with friends down at the river. Or because I asked a question in the wrong way. Asking a question based on an assumption (IE, “you said you had a long day at work, so I’m guessing you’ll be going to bed early tonight?” is a guaranteed fight, every time, because I didn’t expressly ask “you said you had a long day at work today, so will you be going to bed early tonight?”. It’s never the spirit of my words, and she never considers who is asking the question or what the intent is. She just gets mad and gives you hell because you didn’t structure the question in a way that validates and meets her educated therapist standards. A question premised on assumption is somehow dismissive of her need to be considered somehow. It’s ALWAYS about conforming to her expectations. She’s a therapist, so she demands everyone speaks to her in therapy affirming vernacular, regardless of their training, understanding or knowledge of therapy principles.
Very early this morning, I was watching the final episode of “Picard”, and near the end, there’ a scene where Worf tells Deanna “tears are the body’s weapon against pain”. That resonated with me, and shifted my perspective. I’m allowing myself to sit with tears and use them as a weapon against the hurt that she has inflicted. Paradoxically, the tears come quickest when I think about how I’ll never make another memory with her again.
But, why does that hurt so much?
It makes no sense to me that it hurts so fucking much to know I’ll never see her again, because the further I zoom out from this, the more clearly I see I was just narcissistic supply the her, and she was my toxic addiction. Just like Ross, just like Wil, just like the new supply she latched onto a month ago. I was a dopamine dispenser, and nothing more. That’s all I would ever be. But I always clung to hope that I would be more. And she was happy to dangle a carrot and keep me coming back for that hit. When the dispenser stopped dispensing appropriately potent doses, she went off in search of new ones. And I suppose that to a degree, she became a dopamine dispenser for me, too. Only, for me, the dopamine came from being needed, feeling wanted, and feeling like I was useful. Like I was good enough. She recognized that need in me, and used it to her full advantage. I got those fixes from doing things for her, solving problems, building stuff, and taking care of her. I felt like a Paternal protector, a guardian who could guide, advise and provide care.
(More on that paternal component later.)
Erica had no patience or tolerance for the very things that made me ME, and that part of me that my friends and loved ones loved about me, I had been slowly and imperceptibly trained by a covert narcissist and professional head-fucker to be a pleaser that was available to meet HER needs, but MINE were second to everything else. Like a rat addicted to heroin, I kept hammering away on that dopamine dispenser, pleading for crumbs. And by “crumbs”, I don’t mean “time”. I don’t mean dropping off a key on her way to yoga, and I don’t mean picking up a coffee machine. I mean the important parts, like care, keeping your promises, not being an asshole when you’re having a bad day, and not making people feel unsafe to be themselves.
There’s that old saying about a frog in boiling water… If you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it’ll jump right out. But if you put it in a pot of nice comfortable water and then slowly turn up the heat, the frog will let himself be complacently boiled.
While the saying is completely inaccurate, the premise is painfully accurate; Over the past 3 years, 8 months and 8 days that Erica has been in my life, the productive, motivated, happy person I was prior to knowing her has slowly been fading away. The ME that I was – the guy who loved to laugh, make others laugh, be silly, tell dad jokes, drop groan inducing puns, who was quick with a smile and being his authentic-fucking self has slowly become the ME that she trained me to become – meek, quiet, apologetic, afraid to contradict, conflict avoidant, afraid to advocate for myself, a yes-man who came running when serving a purpose for her, and who fucked off when not.
~ R
Next: Sex, lies, coke, chronic cheating, infidelity kinks, and Daddies. Oh, and a very, very pissed off wife.
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