Don't let the door hit you on your way out

Usually, when I write these types of things, I try really hard to be vague, leave out certain details, and be respectful of the other people I am talking about because honestly like I've said many times, they're not only my stories to tell. However, with this one... I don't give a shit.

I started seeing this guy a few months back, how I met him is a story in itself. Anyway, when I first met this guy I wasn't looking for anything that came with an emotional attachment. I was still getting over my past relationship, and I wanted so much to just focus on myself, but we started to spend some time together, and I really enjoyed being around him.

Within the first couple of weeks of he and I seeing each other, he got into an argument with one of his sisters and from what I understand, it was not a good one. He was supposed to come over later that day, but he was having a bad day and taking it out on everyone around him, so he decided to bail. In all honesty, I didn't care about him bailing, but he had something in my room I wanted out - that I won't get into. 

He ends up coming over here to get it, but boy was this man mad. I get he had all this pent-up anger about the argument he got into with his sister and was annoyed I asked him to come to get his thing, but DAMN, I really didn't do anything. 

When he got here, he was having a full-blown meltdown. I used to let my emotions take over me like that, so honestly, I really felt for him when he was going through it. He got into my face screaming, literally two inches from my face, or at least it felt that way, he was throwing shit and my entire apartment complex got a whole viewing of what felt like a Lifetime movie. All I kept saying to myself was, "this isn't about me" which it wasn't, but oh my did I ignore a HUGE red flag. A few days went by, we had a conversation and we talked it out. I know, not my smartest move, but hey, we're all human. 

From there (for the most part) things went really well. We were spending time together and let me tell you this man is a charmer. He was so kind, spoiled me, and was a really great support in the things I was super stressed out about during the time. 

Because of the fact that this man had a total and complete uncalled meltdown in front of me only a few weeks into seeing each other, I tried to be careful about the relationship, so I didn't really mention him much to my friends or family. On top of the fact that I wanted to be more private about my relationship since I wasn't so much like that in the relationship prior. As time progressed a bit, I started slowly introducing him to my friends, but I barely mentioned him to my family. AND MAN WAS THAT A SMART CHOICE - though they're probably going to read this. 

We would get into disagreements here and there, but nothing too major in the beginning. As time progressed the smallest things you would think could be totally resolved and pretty quickly might I add -  started to become things that were just unnecessary.

However, being the person that I am - I ignored those red flags too because I try so hard to care about people and understand them, and sometimes I do it to a fault. This man has a lot of childhood trauma which I thought I knew a lot about, but now as things have come to my attention, maybe I didn't. When I say that, I mean a lot of the stories he seemed to tell me about were fabricated. I honestly don't even think he did it on purpose, I think he really believed those things in his heart of hearts, which really just makes me sad for him. 

I took him to meet my best friend about two weeks ago. We went to a White Sox game in Tampa, because well - I love the White Sox and I wanted my friends to meet him. We got into an argument the day before we left Tampa to come home. I don't really remember how it started to be frank, but somehow it turned into the fact that I called him religious. He hated that, though he lives his life - or believes he lives his life by the New Testament. I told him once again, that when we disagree about something, it doesn't need to turn into an entire thing, that we can have a conflict, respect each other and find a resolution. It seems looking back on the last three months he really just doesn't know how to do that. So we came back to Fort Lauderdale and we were just not getting along, probably because the argument from Tampa wasn't actually resolved.

When we got back from Tampa, he had a little incident with his dad. Let me preface this, he blames a lot of his childhood trauma on his dad. In the time we were together however, he seemed to be getting along with his dad, at least enough to work with him and golf with him every weekend. I honestly just thought that maybe they were rebuilding a relationship, and I thought that was pretty great. 

This man is never on time for LITERALLY anything, and that shit drives me nuts. He was supposed to meet his dad at his dad's house for a job and you guessed it, he was not on time. His dad ended up leaving because this is an ongoing issue with him. This made him beyond pissed, he left his dad's, came here, and ignored his dad for days... DAYS. All because he was mad that his dad left when he wasn't on time... if you can try and figure out that logic, let me know because I'm still lost on it. Since he was ignoring his dad, that meant he wasn't working... again another red flag. I mean I can understand having feelings towards someone whether they make sense to others or not, but if you're going to work with someone in your family and maybe don't have a great past relationship with, you should probably prepare yourself to be able to separate personal and business. That's just my opinion though. 

I told him how I felt about the situation and how I thought he should go about it. Looking back on it, I have a tendency of having an opinion about other people's choices and the ones I don't agree with telling them how they should change it. This pissed him off, as it pisses off everyone I do that to. I need to work on that.

Last Thursday I asked him for space and because of the build-up of me putting my nose where it didn't belong and the argument we got into the week before in Tampa... it again turned into an entire blowup. Friday we didn't speak and Saturday we spoke a bit because I brought him some things he had here at my apartment. After that conversation, he told me he wanted to take a few days to himself, which I respected because I can understand that due to the fact I just asked him for the same thing as well. He told me he would reach out Monday and if we wanted to have a conversation then, we would. He didn't wait until Monday, he reached out the next day asking if we could grab lunch and talk. I agreed.

He took me out to lunch and honestly the conversation went really well. It took me by surprise, but I was happy nonetheless. Monday came around and he asked to see me, I wasn't opposed so again, I agreed. He told me he would come by after work. I called him on my way home and he asked me if I minded if he came a little later because his friend stopped by and I said it was fine. I mean he hadn't seen his friend in a while, and they're really good friends. Long story short, he wasn't here when he said he was going to be. As I stated before, an ongoing issue with this man. It leads to an argument and then to de-escalate it, I just said we would see each other tomorrow and we agreed to go to get ice cream after work.

Tuesday morning came and was having already a bad day - something again that had absolutely nothing to do with me. He was throwing his tantrum, so I stopped responding. That however did not stop him from blowing up my fucking phone. After all the red flags I already ignored, I was so over it, so I just didn't engage. 

He texted me yesterday morning asking if he could come and get anything left of his that was at my apartment and if I would be around later that day. I told him I wouldn't and this pissed him off - for what reason? Probably because he didn't have control of the situation, and he didn't like that. He started saying all these crazy things telling me he was going to show up with a police escort after work. Most of the time his threats are empty, but I did what I thought was best. I called the non-emergency police line explaining what was going on, I changed the codes to my apartment front door and talked to the apartment complex management staff to remove him from the guest list. Mind you, none of this did anything - so I wasted my entire morning.

After work I full-blown avoided my apartment, I went to dinner with a friend because I felt like even if he did show up, after all the work I did, he wouldn't be able to get in, and once again he could have to wait until the weekend to get his things - like I told him A MILLION TIMES.

Oh my goodness, writing this is fucking draining... probably because I'm running on three hours of sleep and last night was a shit show. But anyway, back to the story.

When I was at dinner we were once again fighting - mainly because he wasn't getting his way. So you guessed it... he showed up at my apartment not even 15 minutes after I got home. The timing was honestly a coincidence. He was knocking on the door, and neither I nor my roommates opened it. I was kind of pissed because all the work I did earlier in the day to remove access for him to be able to even get to my apartment door was a HUGE waste of time. To be frank, he's kind of scary if you couldn't figure that out from everything I've already written. I was fine with him getting his stuff, but maybe a police escort was a good idea. Coincidentally, we both called them.

After almost two hours passing he showed back up at my door and texted me that if I left his stuff outside the door, we didn't have to even see each other, so I did. There was something in my closet I didn't want to grab - again won't get into that - so I waited for the officers to grab it. 

While this is all happening he's texting and screaming at me from the other side of the door, he called me the C-word along with a lot of other offensive things. I won't type them out, because they're honestly that offensive. If you know me, you know I don't take much offense to curse words - that's how offensive they were. The cops finally came and took the rest of what he needed and escorted him out of the apartment complex. Maybe I seem crazy, but the entire thing was so upsetting and a bit traumatizing... like what the actual fuck, and how the fuck did we even get to this point when we had been dating for not even three months? Again, if you can figure that one out, let me know because that as well is lost on me. 

I didn't sleep last night - hence the fact I'm running on three hours of sleep. I ruminated about this all night. I have the tools to stop those things, but man what a fucking night.

I am not even upset the relationship is over. Honestly, I always knew from the beginning it was a right now relationship and the things I needed for a long-term relationship this man did not have - one being emotion regulation. I just went through a very intense therapy program learning about myself, self-love, and emotion regulation so that I can be happy and I knew dealing with him and his bullshit wasn't something I could really do for much longer. Mainly because he comes off like a nut job and probably because he is.

What I am upset about, however, is ignoring the red flags when I knew they were red flags because I tried so hard to be understanding of someone who didn't really understand himself. I was trying to understand someone that the things he did understand were toxic - didn't want to change. From what I understand pretty much every one of his relationships has ended this way. Seems like there's a common denominator here, buddy.

I don't really know why I wrote this. Maybe because this shit show really taught me not to try and take red flags by pouring white on them.. because they just end up being pink flags and nothing is really fixed, just masked. Or maybe I wrote it because if I didn't I would go absolutely insane. It's just insane that someone you can really enjoy and learn to care about can be a person you don't even know, or even care to know by the end of it. It's crazy how two days before this all happened, he was so kind and loving, but then flipped a shit not even 24 hours later. Insanity, actual insanity. Either way, I am glad to be done with that. So that's a summary of how the last three months of my life have been. I hope you enjoy it!