5. You’re Never Too Old to Get Help from Your Parents

The parenting thing never stops. I could see that from the way his mother made not one but three store runs over the course of the day for various liquids and tinctures to soothe the beast that is influenza. His dad got him a change of clothes (PJ pants are much more comfortable to be sick in). His grandmother even gave up her bed so that he’d rest easier during the unexpected there’s-no-way-I-can-drive-home sleepover. That kind of support reflects a basic and most precious thing about humanity: our compassion. A skeleton called Maba Man, dated to 200,000 years ago has a skull that shows signs of a potentially fatal wound that had healed over, evidence that he must have been cared for while his skull was caved in. Here we are, still caring for each other. It’s what families are for, what parents are for, why humanity has endured so long. Times like these, we band together, creating a stronger bond because…

4. You Learn What (Real) Love Feels Like

It’s easy to be in love when everything’s good, life is grand and a moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie. That’s amore. But how about when they’re puking their brains (and guts and organs) out and there’s nothing you can do about it? When they’re not at their best, when they’re the sickest, palest, gauntest you’ve ever seen them? No glamour, no glitter, no glory, just lying on the bathroom tiles at the foot of the porcelain god. Take everything you love about that person and hand it to the illness, because there is no more them, only Zhoul. That’s when you know how you feel about someone. I thought to myself, doing my best Flo Nightingale impression, that I love this man. That, even if he were this sick for a very long time, I’d be right there, doing anything I could to make it suck less. Which made me think…

3. People Who Care for Loved Ones through Serious Illnesses are Heroes

Let’s be real, this was just the flu. A cold dose of reality on an otherwise lovely day. He’s better now, he’ll recover soon. But those hours were stressful. There wasn’t much I could do but be there and tend to him. I didn’t make him better, love didn’t conquer all; he got it out of his system. So people who have cared for husbands, wives, children, who have chronic, serious, or debilitating illnesses or injuries — I commend you. That sh*t is real. I’ve never seen an adult go from perfectly OK to severely ill. It’s terrifying. I felt helpless and determined all at once. There’s no time to wallow or wilt, caretakers have to be made of steel. Thresholds of happiness change; getting him off the floor became a victory. It’s those victories I cheer caretakers on for. You guys rock. For me, the whole thing will just turn out to be an interesting anecdote, a reminder that…

2. Making Memories Doesn’t Always Mean Having a Good Time

His family does this thing where they sit around and tell funny, embarrassing stories about themselves and each other. (I tend to be a little more butt-hurt about the past, but I’m working on it.) This Thanksgiving will most certainly be ushered into that hall of tales, and I’m happy for that. I will now never be sure to forget the first major holiday spent with his family. He said, “I’ll be telling our grandkids about the Thanksgiving your Grandma gave me cholera. Thought they’d had it wiped out. Turns out, nope.” This he told me while on the bathroom floor, eyes bloodshot and ribs sore from reversing his (entire) Thanksgiving dinner. We laughed a bit, which hurt his ribs but I was glad to see he hadn’t lost his sense of humor along with the tukey and apple pie, which brings me to the thought that…

1. A Little Laughter Goes a Long Way

I haven’t seen The Perfect Storm. Or maybe I have, but only bits and pieces. Anyway, after the antenna is ripped from the fishing boat already braving not one but two storms, (with a broken freezer, to boot) the Coast Guard puts out an alert that a third storm is coming in. The poor fishermen never heard and never had a chance — and that, he explained, was what his stomach was: that boat thrashed by the waves. In between his misery he made a point to laugh with me, to keep his spirits as high as he could. It was our connection. Instead of him fading away under his pain, we could smile even just a bit. It made me feel less helpless and seemed to make him feel less miserable although it took effort to crack jokes. Sure, we missed out on after-dinner talk. We didn’t get to enjoy the game. But who cares? The game was shown again later. We’ll have other evenings to talk, plot and plan. But that evening, all through the night, and from now on, we were a real family. One day we’ll all be able to look back on it and laugh together.

And that’s what Thanksgiving is all about.

7 Lessons Learned When Dealing With a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Encountering a crazy ex-girlfriend is a lot like contracting a virus. No one wants one, they’re a b*tch to get rid of and although many people have had similar experiences, your own will still catch you unprepared. I know I wasn’t expecting to cross paths with a bronzer-over-brains, five-foot-nothing Pretty In Pink lunatic when I befriended a guy at work. But overall, I’m glad I did. I learned a few invaluable lessons, such as:

7. Being Stalked is No Fun

You know how in the movies when someone’s being followed, you think they’d sense someone watching them? Nope. My Spidey Senses never tingled but any night that he and I closed together, she was out in the parking lot, waiting. She knew when we got out of work, and how long we’d stayed after, talking. She was just driving by, she’d say. Someone gave her a heads up, she swore. She just happened to see us. Every time. I was once followed through about twenty-five minutes of nighttime traffic to a Half-Priced Books (scintillating, I know) where he and I had gone to look at vinyl. There she arrived, red-faced and bleary-eyed, asking if he and I were dating. I clarified that no, we were hanging out, had spent time together before in various places and that because we have similar interests, we would be hanging out again. She apologized and left. That’s the end of that, I thought.

However;

6. That is Not the End of That

When you’re dealing with someone whose ex believes in their heart that they will someday be together again, you have to realize that all the doors weren’t shut hard enough. I understand that it’s difficult to leave someone cold-turkey (as I’ve written about before), but giving the person you’re breaking up with scraps of your attention is enough for them to live on. For her, it was enough. She could have gone her own way, could have called it, but that would have given her some responsibility, some power, and the most manipulative of people play the martyr game, wherein they have no power and therefore no responsibility for how a relationship goes. It wasn’t working because he didn’t want it to. It wasn’t working because I was in the picture.

She couldn’t see it any other way because,

5. Denial is Not Just a River in Egypt

You cannot deal with an irrational person rationally. The crazy-ex girlfriend has a vision, you see. And in that vision, she is riding off into the sunset, the man she wants on the saddle behind her even if he has to be tied there or drug behind. Any problem can be overcome if he just does what she wants and stops complaining. Love means working on a relationship, grinding on it every day until your fingers bleed and your soul is worn away — after all, if that’s not love, then what is? In her fantastical parody of true love, all of the issues that have plagued them for years comes down to his choice of whether or not to continue to work on them. After all, she has no power. If he decides to leave, he’s abandoning her. Poor girl. And if he dare befriends another woman, then it’s her fault.

And that’s how I inherited the responsibility of all of the relationship issues I had nothing to do with. This tremendous transfer of power was to set me up as the villain, because she’s the victim here, you see. And what every victim really needs is a shoulder to cry on, so -

4. Birds of a Feather Flock Together

A crazy ex-girlfriend isn’t created in a vacuum. A martyr is nothing without people saying ‘poor you’. When I was stalked over to Half-Priced, she didn’t roll alone. She had a friend riding shotgun. I recognized the girl; she’d been parked right beside me before I left work. That’s some creepy-crazy sh*t. A real friend would have said, “Girl, stalking is a crime. Faking a pregnancy is pathetic. You know your relationship is over, let’s get some drinks and talk about how bullshit men are” Or, “you need to stand up to your family for once, since we all know that’s the source of your biggest issues.” But no. Instead, they bend their heads together over texts messages, loving the thrill of it all. Those birds of a feather are just vultures, after all. And then you look at the family.

The history of stalking, of car-keying, it’s there. That fantasy of a man coming along to take all the power and responsibility of a relationship, that’s there, too. You realize that her problems are rooted deeply and that she’s surrounding herself, insulating herself, with a support group that shields her from the truth. She made herself powerless to fight her own demons and directed that frustration at me. She’s set up mirrors on all sides to assure herself that we aren’t the crazy one. In short, she’s trapped by bad advice and stunted by her fears. I almost felt sorry for her — until my clothes were cut up.

That’s when I learned that:

3. Spite is a Loyal Mistress, and Pettiness Her Constant Companion

You have to be spiteful to key someone’s car. You’ve got to be spiteful to cut up a woman’s clothes. But you have to be downright petty to steal someone’s underwear. My underwear? The f*ck? Leaving the water hose running after you’d broken in — the f*ck? What kind of Wet Bandits sideshow..? Anyway. This guy and I had belted down the chemistry between us before all this because we’d both in complicated relationships. While he was doing breakup acrobatics, I was dealing with my own breakup in slow motion. Yeah, I had my own stuff going on, too, like a sevenish year relationship ending. Like moving myself out of my apartment in two days when my now-ex felt that if I were going to spend so much time with another guy, I could find my own place to live. Like my ex telling the crazy ex-girlfriend (after she’d FB stalked his phone number out of the ether) that the only reason I was interested in this new guy was because I was from a poor, single-parent family and that I wanted security.

You know, fun stuff.

So there I was, burdened with the responsibility of two failed relationships when cars came up keyed, clothes were destroyed and things went missing. I imagine that knowing I’d moved my things into his place hurt, but damn. Trouble is, spite isn’t a bicycle built for one. I struggle with stale angers, with deep currents of rage, and I was downright murderous over the trespassing. Like, violators will be shot and survivors will be shot again murderous. But because I have good counsel — a mother with sage advice, friends who don’t want me to commit felonies and a man who would like to spend his life with me outside of just conjugal visits, I’ve been able to talk my spite down. I’ve even found forgiveness; she was misguided and angry and didn’t know what else to do. But the law is the law, and that’s when I figured out that,

2. The Legal Process Takes a Long Time

I was hoping that the girl would be in the clink in a matter of days. Weeks, even. The neighbors had seen her black Mustang the days of the break-ins, could describe what she looks like, and the crime itself has crazy ex-girlfriend written all over it (thanks, TV). But in reality, paperwork has to be filed, toll road cameras have to be checked, fingerprints have to be matched, addresses have to be looked up, and all of this sits on the desk of one small-county detective who has a stack of other cases on her desk. It’s not that she’s not getting to it, she says when I call. It’s that it’s going to be a while. It’s no less a conviction if it happens months from now, but I really wanted it to happen while I was still angry. Because the truth is, I’m a lot less angry now than I was then, which is a good thing because,

1. Jokes are Made to be Laughed At

The funny thing about a crazy ex-girlfriend is that she brings to the table, along with all her crazy, a level of rawness, of instinct, of ­do-or-die. You really get to know a man when you see how he reacts to a stressful situation. Throughout the whole strange ordeal that she was, he and I laughed about things. I laughed over the fact that we were thrown into such intimate situations that he and I got to know each other very quickly. (Thanks!) We laughed at the bookstore because boy was that awkward. We laughed even after our things had been destroyed because they were just material; my soul would have ached if she’d gone after what I truly love — the photos of my mother, my hand-painted boxes, my seemingly valueless trinkets. I laughed at her sense of worth, at her denial, at her overall handling of the situation. (3/10, would not do again.) I work to keep laughing, to keep writing, to keep loving, because the best revenge is not one rooted in spite, but in happiness. And regardless of her, and a little thanks to her, I’m happy now.

All in all, it’s worth the clothes.

People have asked me for relationship advice (or maybe I just dole it out) but to tell the truth, I’ve only had two boyfriends my entire life: the man I’m dating (and living with) now, and the one I dated (and lived with) for seven-ish years. Never married, yet to be engaged, but I’ve been in the shit for longer than most young women I know. Here are 15 rudimentary lessons that I’ve come up with in regards to relationships going nowhere:

1. Being F*ck Buddies Doesn’t Work

Obviously, right? But I think everyone tries it, or at one point wants to. It’s a relationship of disadvantages; one (or both) of you is thinking, “I’ll just do this until something better comes along” and one (or both) of you is thinking, “I’ll just do this until something better comes along for them”. All this “pragmatic arrangement” does is create an emotional disconnect with the physical act of sex, creating a so-called surprise moment when one person develops and emotional attachment and the person who cares least, does not. You either shrug off that f*ck buddy like an ugly sweater or decide, What the shit, let’s go for it.

2. You Have to Be Happy With Yourself

It’s pretty cliché to say that you can’t expect someone to love you right until you love you right, but it’s also pretty true. If you’re not happy with who you are as a person — whether it’s your emotional state, financial wellbeing or career level (or all of the above, hello) — you end up putting a lot on your partner. It becomes their job to make you happy, and that’s not fair. You also may find yourself putting more work into your relationship, making it your job to keep them happy because if they are satisfied then you can live off of that rather than the self-satisfaction of tackling those personal demons. Your relationship isn’t a cure for all what ails you, and it dissolves into as much snake-oil as it’s worth when put through the crucible that is your psychiatric needs.

3. The Family Connection is Important

Some families are dicks. That’s just the truth of it; no matter how much you love your partner, for whatever reason some families just won’t meld with you. However, if that isn’t the case and your loved one isn’t from a pack of wild dicks (and you, yourself, aren’t from a gaggle of pricks), then you should spend time with their family. You should want to spend time with their family, as it’s an indication that they will one day be your family. One person’s family shouldn’t dominate the relationship, as both parties matter. If you can’t spend time together with your family, or their family won’t spend time with you, you think it’ll get easier as the years progress? Or that you can eventually broker a peace with some shared-blood children, European-royalty style? Creating an Us vs Them situation between you and your families is easily going to be the source of some deep-seated resentment.

4. Bad Habits Get Worse With Time

The longer you’re with someone, the more a pattern emerges for how you deal with things. Fights become like a fire drill, almost soothing in their predictability, lessening the fear of being agonizingly burned alive. You learn early on which buttons to press for certain reactions, which points to hit in a dialogue to lead right to that conclusion you’d been stewing on since before the argument started. Left unresolved, issues that you try to stomp down wiggle under your heel, and you never practiced actually fighting the fire so you don’t know what the hell to do except go through the same motions you’ve repeated as the world burns around you.

5. A Power Dynamic is the Kiss of Death

Something that I’ve found to be all too true is this: The person who cares least in a relationship has the most power. It starts as an evaluation of worth and this is America, so I don’t mean love, I mean dolla-dolla bills, ya’ll. One person may “bring more to the table”, maybe substantially so. May come from a “better” (wealthier) family, have a better job, may have nicer things, may be used to being treated like a little prince or princess, not ever far from the tit, and never too far off from reminding you of it. Perhaps the only quality you do possess is something that can’t be bought; your desirability, your charm, your wit — and you wield these things as an artful weapon. Maybe the only defense you have against someone threatening you with destitution (emotionally or financially) is the ability to not give one damn about the other’s feelings — that opens you up to a whole world of hurtful possibilities! That back-and-forth struggle for control of, not only one’s self, one’s emotions and time, but of the other person, only leaves one of you seething and waiting for a chance to break free. No one wins that sort of fight.

6. There’s a Difference Between Being Encouraging & Being Controlling

You should encourage your partner to be better through support, understanding, and a willingness to participate. Ultimatums have no place in a partnership, however. It can be frustrating if you’re the only one pushing someone who just won’t budge because, hey, they don’t have to — but they don’t have to. You can’t change that element of free will and exerting your will (or your tantrums, your threats, your despair) on them won’t help the situation. At all. If you need to change your partner that much, then, uh, change your partner. As in, get a move on, nothing-to-see-here, that’s all, folks.

7. You Have to Want the Same Things, At the Same Time

Communicating your goals is important. It gets you on the same page, in the same rhythm, on the same team. Whether you want to start a business, a marriage, or a family, you both have to be on board. If you’re ready to start that big whatever right now, but your partner still has a few rings they want you to jump through before they’re convinced, and if by the time they’re ready, you’re over it — then neither of you are happy that whole time. Promises are not plans, they are words. Don’t expect that either of you will want to wait around for your desires to be validated by the other.

8. It’s Easy to Coast

You can get to know a person so well that your level of one-on-one comfort is unmatched. Especially if you’ve given up and stopped arguing about the things that bother you. Without that conflict, because you know which issues to skirt around, which desires to stifle because there’s no place for them in the relationship, you can coast, numbed to the world moving around you. You’re perpetually “making it work”. It’s like vanilla ice cream every day of your life. I like vanilla ice cream. Don’t love it, but I could have it every day if I had to, if I didn’t put up a fuss about wanting chocolate, or hell, even a sno-cone instead.

9. It’s Okay to NOT Get Married (Like, really. Don’t.)

At one point in many relationships comes the “what are we doing?” moment. You look at each other, shrug, and consider the possibility of “just getting married already”.

Don’t.

F*cking. Don’t.

What are you, bored? On some sort of timeline? There’s a lot of things you don’t have to do in this life, and getting married is one of them. You ever see a poker player push all his chips to the center of the table and go, “yeah, I guess I’m all in…”? Nah. If you wouldn’t gamble with your money that way, don’t gamble with your time and your life that way. Marriages don’t fix anything, they aren’t permanent and they’re a bitch to get out of. Be excited about marrying someone, be downright goddamn ecstatic, even if you’re out of practice. If you’re not, then don’t bother.

10. It’s Okay to Break Up

Leaving a bad deal on the table is nothing to be embarrassed about, and you certainly don’t owe anyone a damn thing just because you put time in. You can spend the entirety of a relationship “working on it” instead of being in it. You can accidentally stay with the wrong person because you wanted to play nice, or be fair. F*ck that. If you can only make one person happy in your relationship, for gods’ sakes, let it be you. Cry, be upset, but do that as you pack your bags to leave.

11. Invest in Your Friendships

On a personal note, when my relationship ended, only one person reached out to me: my drug dealer. No shit. I’d alienated myself from everyone that I’d known, and I’m a loner, but damn. The one friend I had through the duration of my relationship was his friend — an awesome (driven, focused, hard-working) guy who hadn’t wanted to see us break up (it was hard to imagine, at the time) but in the end, the ex got him. When I hit the dusty trail, I was truly out on my own. I’d cut off so much to keep my little bubble sustainable that I was pared down to the barest elements. I’ve gotten close with some wonderful (if crazy) women since then, and I wouldn’t give them up for anything. We hear each other out, talk each other down from committing felonies, all those things that good friends are for. A frenaissance is truly in order; a re-connection with those friendships that could have blossomed but weren’t cared enough for.

12. When It’s Done, Leave (And mean it!)

Once you decide that it’s time for the relationship to end, said your goodbyes, packed your bags, gone bye-bye, for the love of the gods, let that be it. When you put out a fire, there are still embers beneath that ash that can give way to flame. Piss on it, is what I’m saying. Don’t keep talking or texting, don’t be friendly to make the other person feel better or whatever. Even if you think you can still be friends, let that shit cool down a good long while before you go kicking it back up. Avoid them, not because you’re weak, but because you’re strong enough to not hear from them. One of you is being tortured, and no one wants to be stretched out on that rack without the thought that there may be a reprieve. If you mean a breakup, then there’s radio silence afterwards.

13. You Can’t End a Bad Relationship Well

It’s impossible. Believe me, I tried. “We understand each other” you say. “We’re going to be gentlemen about this” you think. You were so busy playing nice through the entirety of your relationship that you thought you could simply shake hands at the end of the day, cuff each other on the shoulder, give well-wishes and do an about-face into the rest of your life. Oh, not so easy my friend. Bad relationships exist because you inherently don’t understand each other. A breakup is not the time to make deals. If you have to leave with nothing but the clothes on your back, step right the f*ck out into the rain and go on with your life. It’s not going to be pretty, no matter how much love there is between you — or maybe because there’s love between you. It’s like thinking that an amputation will be painless just because it’s necessary. Losing a loved one like this is actually a lot like losing an arm; you’ll get the ghostly sensations and itches of it still being there, but it’s long gone — and for the better. Trying to end things “on a good note” is like trying to tap-dance over quicksand. Stylish, entertaining, and damn classy, but doomed.

14. There is Someone Better For You Out There

I’m not saying that it will be right away. The timing worked out for me that two months after I’d decided that I couldn’t give this whole thing a year 7 (8 if you count that year we were f*ck buddies), I found a man that makes me happy. I mean, actually, genuinely, happy. I hadn’t known that it could be so effortless, since I’d spent so long “working on it”. I grew up with shitty cars and the relationship I’m in now feels the way I did when I got my 2012 Ford Escape with only 12K miles on it. Absolutely reliable. His family loves me, my mom loves him, we can spend each and every day together without ripping each other to shreds. We communicate, we have goals; long story short, we have the makings of a genuinely magnificent relationship. And I would have missed out on all that if I’d kept trying to fix what couldn’t be fixed. He, too, had been in a relationship that was constant work, had almost married into it. His father says he smiles now.

It’s worth it to hold out if you’re not happy. Keep your head up and your eyes open, also I’m going to throw in “do some good shit” for good measure, just to ensure that you’re karmaically balanced in case the universe takes that into account.

15. You Have to Leave the Baggage Behind

A hard part of moving on, is moving on. It’s also the best part. However, it’s easy to drag your emotional baggage with you. Those bad habits you have, you have to talk them through and ditch them. They don’t belong here. That was armor you needed for the past. That ammunition you carry for the power struggle? You lay down that weapon here. Those hang-ups and insecurities you accrued from your past relationship? Deal with them. Tell your partner what bothers you, communicate about everything that crops up. You’re getting to know each other, after all; don’t leave the other person to have to piece together your backstory, to have to guess about what might set you off. Tear down those walls, open up, excavate yourself of pain you might not have even recognized yet. Pile that shit up and burn it, it’s not worth saving.

But you are.

I woke up in a house that was new to me, in the bed of a man I’d fallen in love with. We hadn’t known each other long; a little over three months had passed since I’d first lain eyes on him. My things were still mostly in boxes, besides the pile of clothes that had been slashed with scissors. I’d been kicked out, stolen from, stalked, and lied to and about by this time. This fast-paced drama wasn’t me, but my new lover and I had met at a strange time in our lives.

Imagine a breakup in slow motion. That a Christmas party was the hair that broke the camel’s back, that a seven-year relationship (five years living together) would expire with the lease. A terminal case of this-isn’t-working, a ticking clock that would last almost a year.

It’s easy to live in that numb space where nothing grows but nothing falls all the way apart. To bide one’s time, insuring against loss with the thought that things will be okay. I prepared myself to be single, to cut ties with everything — if I could quit this, then I could quit everything. My job, my aimlessness, my misery. My habit of getting high every day, of ignoring the decaying relationship I had with my family.

Once I accomplished this, like I hadn’t accomplished anything else — a self-published book that no one read, a university education I couldn’t afford, a general success that I couldn’t attain due to lack of said education — once I accomplished this breakup, I could turn things around. All I had to do was wait.

The night I was kicked out of my ex-boyfriend’s apartment (our apartment: my name was on the lease, too) I moved in with my current boyfriend — to give an idea of what that waiting turned out to be. I don’t owe anyone time; I could die waiting, as my mother told me. You can’t wait to live.

There are mountains that have no foothills; the giants sprung straight from the earth with a cataclysmic crushing of tectonic plates, shooting peaks into the sky. The tumultuous beginnings of my new relationship were as much: a flat landscape, a spotless horizon — then, a mountain!

We were coworkers, friends and collaborators all in short succession. He’d started at my branch the first day of February but had worked for the company before. He was an object of rumor, his reputation reaching me nearly a year before I’d met him. He languished in a relationship, a three year commitment that had stalled early on. She worked for the company as well, as had his previous girlfriend. I’d laughed when he’d told me that she hadn’t ever, in three years, spent the night at his house. That he saw her once a week although she lived twenty minutes away. She still lived with her parents, who were disapproving of the relationship and so pretended it didn’t exist. That was something everyone knew.

He’d scoffed when I shared with him the glacial pace of the ending of my relationship, that my boyfriend was moving out of state when we were through. That we still shared a dog, a cat and an apartment and that I thought that we could end things well. I’d slept on the couch for two weeks after the fight in December and though time had passed, dragging with it a semblance of normalcy, like throwing a pretty sheet over an old ugly couch, the situation was irreparable. Proximity isn’t an indication of commitment, it turns out.

Time had had enough of our shit. It would no longer wait for us; in fact, it seemed impatient. At every juncture we found ourselves asking for more. Our first dinner out we spent six hours talking — not just deconstructing rumor and establishing a minimal-effort, maximum-yield honesty, but touching on a familiarity that we both felt. We could sit in a car in a parking lot and exchange stories for hours. On off days we shared he’d teach me things: how to work a chainsaw, how to refinish a deck, play LPs on a record player. We discussed grant-writing, house-building and gardening, these parallel themes of the future we saw for ourselves. I showed him my book that no one had read, he played me music that he’d written himself. We talked about our families, our hardships, our emotional soft spots.

As our friendship bloomed, our relationships withered where before they had been in stasis. By Valentine’s, they were on a break. Mid-March I’d needed to borrow equipment from his father and was nearly kicked out because I’d taken all day to get it accomplished. By April they’d broken up and I was back on the couch again, defending my decision to spend my time as I wished. I was done with waiting, I could die waiting. I wanted some power back for myself even if it meant I had to take it.

Our cataclysm seemed to move the earth, changing the landscape of what we thought we knew of the people we had been dating. I didn’t foresee that my boyfriend would kick me out, thinking that I had nowhere to go. That he’d keep my dog against my wishes. That he’d tell a girl that I was taking her boyfriend because I was poor, from a broken home, and wanted security. He didn’t think that his ex would fake a pregnancy, key his cars or sneak into his house to destroy our things.

But the mountain is ours, and our new view of the horizon is far-reaching.

With as much dignity and grace as I could muster, I muscled my clothing and furniture to a house out in the country. The day I moved in is the day we started dating. That first week, his ex vandalized his house while we were at work in subtle but escalating ways. She destroyed clothing, stole jewelry, left the water hose running in the back of the house. Police reports were filed and she got the picture, so to speak, but I was left with an empty fury. I hadn’t been paying close enough attention, hadn’t been aggressive enough with her when I’d had the chance and now she’d retreated back to her parents’ house, conveniently not as pregnant as she’d claimed, clinging to innocence when we all knew differently.

With some sense of self-preservation, a curiosity justified by a cutting honesty that I’d begun to practice, a deep need to know — I snooped. This man had yielded his home to me and I wanted to shake loose all its cobwebs, peer into every dark corner. He’s a particular man, precise and sure in every decision. I’m the first woman he’s lived with, but I went in search of evidence of the other. Spite spurred me on, hoping to find anything of hers. Wrath had been speaking to me in tongues, urging me to seek her out, to show her in the strictest terms that she’d crossed the wrong woman.

I didn’t tell myself that this was what I was doing as I opened drawers and cabinet doors. I found nothing under the bed or in the dressers. Then I opened the closet door in his bedroom. I saw her looking back at me from the corner, her face pressed against his in an elegant black and white frame. I held the door, thinking, Fucking Bluebeard.

Bluebeard is a man of myth and legend, a failed magician, a rich baron, a dark, alluring figure with a beard blue as sapphire. He’d had many wives who’d each disappeared and he sought again another. The youngest of three sisters was seduced into his grasp — after all, his beard wasn’t that blue. They were married and she moved into his estate. Bluebeard allowed her and her sisters full reign of the many-roomed manse, even giving his new bride a key ring equipped with keys to every room, instructing her before he left on a short journey that she may use any key she like, save for the one with scrollwork along the side. As soon as he left, she and her sisters tried the scrollwork key in every lock they could find. The very last door was a small, strange one hidden at the end of a hall. The scrollwork key fit into the lock and when the door swung open, all the bodies of Bluebeard’s previous wives were there, decayed, rotting, bloody and dead.

The new bride and her sisters screamed and slammed the door shut, but the scrollwork key had begun to bleed. The new bride’s dress was drenched, so she stuffed the key in a wardrobe. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. When Bluebeard returned home, he saw that the scrollwork key was missing, and blood was pouring from the wardrobe. He told his new bride that she would soon be joining the rest of his wives in that cramped, dank room.

So there I was, staring down at these metaphorical dead bodies slumped over in the closet, staring at me with dead, unblinking eyes. The crazy ex-girlfriend wasn’t the only one there. There were other corpses in the form of cards, photos and love letters. The other woman he’d dated from the company was there, whispering memories of love and devotion and how hot their sex was. A bag of hand-written, postage-stamped letters was a teenage girl enjoying the thrills of her first love. Each was an echo of heartbreak.

Not that he was a headhunter, but I first considered these corpses as trophies of my success. They were gone; I was there, kicking over their remains, emptying their pockets and leaving them again in the dark. But now that I knew they were there, the digging didn’t stop, just as the bleeding of the scrollwork key didn’t stop. I now needed to excavate the landscape.

What I found of the crazy ex first satisfied my spite and soothed my rage, but deeper still and I discovered relics of not-so-old emotion. I uncovered promises that they’d made each other, the framework of a life they’d planned on spending together. I’d wanted to know everything but in the moment, knowing that hurt. I felt wounded by the sweetness there. A fearful doubt crept on me for the first time. He’d loved her, had loved them all, and look where they were now. He’d wanted to marry the crazy ex-girlfriend, even. Had wanted to be a father to her children, to hold her in his arms forever — would have, had she ever stood up for their relationship…

But I was bolstered by the fact that he’d never go back to a girl who’d keyed his cars and lied about being pregnant, were he even the kind of man to go backwards at all. He’d told me before that he only moves forward; that when he’s done with someone, he’s done. I learned what I could from these women; they were inert, after all, and there’s nothing to fear from the dead.

But fucking Bluebeard? He had to be dealt with.

Only…how? I wasn’t supposed to know any of this — I was snooping, after all. I stuffed that discovery away, closing it up in a mental wardrobe where it bled through my thoughts. I’d already dealt with the rumors of him being a heartbreaker, worked through the filters of what other perceived his nature with women to be — but that was before I was one of those women. Was I just thinking that maybe his beard wasn’t that blue?

There was no doubt about the kind of man he was; he’d made himself plain to me. But had I lied to myself? Was I being weak? I’d followed my intuition there but did I have bad instincts? I could only turn to myself for these answers, but the woman I saw in the mirror was strong, and fighting for happiness.

I was no naïve young bride; I’d already fought for and won my freedom not long before. I was a huntress now, a wild woman who ran with the wolves. My instinct was solid, I had no need to be saved. I had no fear of those bodies in the closet, but neither did I want to end up as one of them.

I’d stolen knowledge and locked it away, not wanting to admit that I’d gone looking. He read the distance in me, could feel the locked door between us, and he called me out on it. My Bluebeard is perceptive and intuitive, and so I wouldn’t ever think to tell him anything but the truth — but I couldn’t point to the secret door or pull out the scrollwork key because he’d never given it to me.

I told him everything I felt from my renewed perspective of being his girlfriend, his woman of the house, in relation to the women he’d been with before. I’d fight him, I told him. I said I wouldn’t always be sweet. I was hearing the echoes of those dead women and promising that I wouldn’t be like them. I didn’t care that they’d been hurt, their battles were over. They were there to help me put a name to my doubts so that I could call them out to him, and to myself. They were there to tell me the truth, and that’s what I asked of Bluebeard.

I’m not the virginal bride in search of gallantry or purity; I’m a pack animal, and loyalty is what I ask for, and the truth. I didn’t need Bluebeard the baron, I wanted the failed magician. Once I knew everything, both discovered and requested, I could move forward with him. I’d wanted the ugly truth and I’d gotten it — I wasn’t going to let that be the end of things. Wrath quieted its babble, spite reclined with its belly full and I stood tall with my bloody knowledge, accepting all things as they are.

Fuck those dead bodies; I’m alive.

That’s what honesty is: acceptance free from expectation. Fearlessness is about the same. I’d spent a long time meekly accepting the place I was in, the relationships that I’d built or neglected, with the expectation that one day they’d simply get better. Bluebeard didn’t charm me and I didn’t seduce Bluebeard; rather, we saw each other with no expectations and accepted everything about one another. Our exes had expectations of a future that ignored the truth of things as they were. They didn’t accept that, but that’s fine. All they are now are lumps in the ground to step over, or more limbs piled atop one another in a sealed tomb.

I still carry that room with me as if the scrollwork key hangs around my neck, but the bleeding has slowed to the barest trickle. I feel more free knowing everything, even if I was wounded in the process, even if the knowledge still bleeds. I still love my Bluebeard, blue beard and all, for exactly the man he is — not the man I’d heard of or anyone else I could have hoped for him to be.

More importantly, I fell back in love with myself. I made earth-rendering decisions and I stood by them. I defended my emotional liberty, I set myself free from my trappings. I used honesty as my sword and my shield and rage blew through my trees but did not burn my forest down. I’m free to embrace my wild self, and when I howl, Bluebeard smiles.