Very few of these encounters really left any kind of impact on me other than temporary physical pain that just acted as a tormenting reminder of my inability to be satisfied. It was like I was cursed. I had to find new and more exciting ways to get off. Sometimes at night I would walk through the downtown alleys alone, drunk and completely lost in my sexual fantasies about being taken against my will. The men in my fantasies were always sexy, handsome, and extremely adept with their hands, always knowing just what to do to please me. I wasn't there to be used by them to only satisfy their own needs. My pleasure was always paramount for them. 'Fantasies' being the operative word here. I didn't want to be raped for real, of course; I wanted to live in the fear of being overtaken and helpless. There's a difference. Every sound would make me jumpy, my heart would beat unrelentingly out of my chest. I lived in the thrills, the adrenaline rushes, the powerful jolts of fear; or what I thought was fear at the time. What did I know?
Warnings rushed through my head often, like: What if something was to really happen to me, for real? What if I would get seriously hurt? What if I would actually get raped? What if I would get killed? How absolutely insane I must have been to put myself in those potentially fatal situations for a bit of excitement. I was living on the edge, so close to spilling over, and I relished in it. I didn't want to one day be laying on my deathbed and think, 'I was afraid to live'. I was sinking so deep into my fantasy world that I couldn't listen to my own warnings and I leapt headfirst into the shallow end of a swimming pool. My desires were all that existed in my world.
Think of the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you eat or brush your teeth; such simple things you do every day without thinking. You don't even realize that people from other cultures learn them differently from you and experience the entire world differently. Those people could look at the way you do your basic everyday things and wonder how you could exist like that, and you could look at them and wonder the same thing. Cultures are strong influencers; so strong, in fact, that you don't even notice they're there, governing your every move, until you learn to take a step back and recognize them. And once you do, you'll never see yourself or the world around you the same way again. In my case, I was so submerged into my world that I couldn't fathom existing in any other kind of reality. My world was The Game and I felt like I was alone in my darkness. I felt I had to use coercion to get the reactions that I wanted, and then I would be surprised when they didn't give me exactly what I wanted the way I wanted it. I felt the idea of these fantasies was still taboo, and I didn't know how to address it well, or safely. I guess I was ashamed because I didn't think it was 'normal'. What is normal anyways? I always hated that word.
I was constantly thinking about The Game, even unconsciously. I wasn't aware of my thoughts yet and how they governed my behavior. My fantasies were so present in who I was that I would bring out little snippets here and there when I was hanging out in groups of people, sometimes as jokes, songs etc. It was very random. I didn't even notice I was doing that. I think I was looking for reactions. I needed so badly to feel I fit in somewhere but I was always afraid of judgment. If someone was interested in what I was saying, even in the little snippets I would interject into regular conversation, I gravitated towards that person. I felt an instant connection, like 'finally, I'm not alone!' Sometimes, and more often than not, I would get reactions like 'woah' and I would recluse myself from the group dynamic, instantly ashamed of myself and my 'perversions'. Instead of recognizing that everyone has their stories and their core beliefs, I took it as an insult against myself for my own inability to be part of the norm. Did I truly want to be, though? I always felt the norm was boring and in a sense, I pitied those who were unable to expand their horizons. This was a form of judgment, though; thinking that my way of Being was better than theirs and lumping all of them into that category. It wasn't right, but it took me a long time to recognize why.
Are judgments like these necessary? Do they allow us to stay safe and in our comfort zone? Where do we draw the line between what is necessary to maintain our safety and what is judgment based on fear or Ego? We tend to feel we need to categorize the people around us as being good or bad; but people are so much more complex than that. It's sad that everything is scrutinized all the time; there is very little in the way of freedom with all the prying judgments floating around. I'm not saying I have all the answers, far from it actually. I just have a lot of questions. Sometimes, that's all you need.
Through all my impulses and promiscuity, my emotions were jumping all over the place. I was really feeling the flares of borderline in everything I did and I was given the option to try medication. I went on some antidepressants and they made me numb. After a couple weeks I decided to stop them on my own without consulting my doctor. I thought there was no point to life if I couldn't feel anything and I didn't waste any time discussing alternative options. Not too long after, I was back to my escapades.
One of my favorite things to do was to find hidden alcoves all over the Cegep to have sex. I found the radio room was a great choice; the walls were padded. There was also the hidden spot under the stairs in the H wing on the first floor, or the 8th floor hallway, which always seemed deserted. Around the same time, I was working for a few months as a bartender in a game room and I began playing fooseball (table soccer) with some of the other students who would come by the bar in between their courses. It was a really fun dynamic there. I had enough free time to study and I made money hanging out in a chill place. In the evenings, they had karaoke and I was still in love with the stage. I always put on quite the show. To this day, my friends insist I look like I'm having sex with myself when I'm singing. I met so many people at this bar and it became another home away from home. I still loved the feeling of knowing everyone around me and of being the center of attention. And I won't lie when I say my fooseball skills really improved. I'm pretty sure the instincts I learned from that game have most likely saved my life numerous times over the years.
I was always out, either working as the shooter girl at night or drinking and doing drugs with my friends at the other bars where I was still a regular. I was doing so many recreational drugs by this point that my tolerance was ridiculously high. It would take me 7 pills of ecstasy crushed and snorted to feel anything at all, and it was almost always mixed with some cocaine. One particularly fun weekend, I overdid it with no sleep and no food for 3 days and just a mountain of these drugs. When I got home, I tried sleeping but my body was trembling and pale and I felt like I was going to die. I managed to crawl myself across the floor and to grab the phone to call an ambulance. I made it to the hospital and woke up with my parents standing over me, worried. My mother was crying, which made me cry. In this sappy moment, I promised my mom I was done with these drugs and I wouldn't touch them again. I have mostly kept my promise, barring 1 or 2 more times that I did a small bump of coke but it was always tainted with this promise and I couldn't enjoy it anymore. The promise was too powerful. So that was it; I quit on the spot.
One day, I started seeing a girl named Linda that I knew from the bar. It wasn't really seeing, seeing. I mean, she was in a relationship with another guy, but anyways. We would spend time together and kiss. I brought her flowers and took care of her. She seemed so helpless for some reason. I wonder if this is what being the dude in the relationship feels like. Not sure if that's politically correct but whatever. She was sweet, but had little depth and insisted on having a man in her life at all times for fear of being alone. She cut things off with me after 3 weeks when she met a new guy and moved with him to the Eastern Townships, around 2 hours away from the city.
One night a few months later, I went on a date with a guy I had met at the bar. We drank Merlot at my place before we went out to a party, which was at a house that had a ridiculous number of rooms and a sick rooftop terrace. That place was like a maze. He and I spent time on the roof where he offered me a bit of coke. I don't know why I did it but I took some and I started to feel queasy nearly immediately. It was probably psychosomatic since I had made the promise and my guilt was starting to show. I went searching for a room to rest my head and I found one with a comfortable bed. The date came with me to make sure I was OK. I started feeling myself falling out of consciousness and then he began touching me. I didn't want him to, but I didn't move. I wanted to see what he would do if I just lay there with my eyes closed. Maybe a part of me wanted to know if he was a good guy or not. Was he willing to take advantage of me?
Sadly, he was. I listened as he unzipped his jeans and shoved himself inside me, quite hastily might I add. He wasted no time. He didn't even put on protection. I immediately woke up from my lovely nap and shouted at him to get off me, and I punched him hard in the face. His lip bled. I ran out of the room and cried to the guys in the house that 'I woke up with his dick in me'. They dragged him into the streets and beat him. The next day he called me and said he still wanted us to date. I replied that if he ever reached out to me again I would call the police.
Would you consider that 'asking for it?' Or was I just giving away my swords again to see what kind of person he was? He didn't have to choose to abuse me. He could have done the decent thing, couldn't he? The choice was his, after all. I didn't force him to put his dick inside me. I just laid there looking helpless, easy and isolated in a dark room. He did the rest. Is it crazy to expect more from people?
After that experience, Linda invited me to the Townships to spend some time with her and her beau. They had been together around 3 months by this point. I decided to go and get away from the city for a weekend. They came to pick me up and drove me out there. That's when I met Alex. We were supposed to have lots of threesomes but Linda wasn't feeling it. She kept saying she was tired and got annoyed at everything. She basically wanted to be left alone. She left Alex and I to ourselves most of the weekend. We smoked a ridiculous amount of weed and, as it turns out, I was quite hilarious when I was stoned. We laughed. A lot. I felt we had the same way of thinking and we talked until the wee hours of the morning. Then, the impossible happened; I fell in love.
Alex fell for me too. Poor Linda; to this day I feel sorry for taking him away from her, but in retrospect, it's probably a great gift I gave her that surely hurt at the time, but given what was to become of me and Alex, it was likely the best thing I could have done for her. Alex drove me home after that weekend, dropped Linda off at her parent's place in the city, and swung back around to pick me back up and to drive me back to the countryside. From day 1, we spent every moment together and officially moved in together 2 weeks later into the apartment he was supposed to move into with Linda. I know, I've paid the guilt price for that over the years, believe me. Karma is real and my debt has been paid.
So anyways, Alex claimed he was the leader of a street gang from Atlanta, and that he had to come back to Canada where he had been raised to escape something or other. He had a bandana that he alleged belonged to a friend of his who had been killed; it was stained with blood. I needed the danger to pull me in. I relished in his intoxicating stories. I listened to him talking for hours, hanging onto every word he said. They gave me chills and made my blood rush from adrenaline. Thinking he was some big badass was such a turn-on for me. We spent every day together from the beginning. I became so attached to him that when he wasn't around me, I didn't know who I was anymore. He wasn't helping me live my fantasies, though. He had his own world and I tried to abolish mine to fit into his. And it worked.
One thing about Alex was that he was very well endowed. I wasn't accustomed to taking something so large and he inevitably shoved it too far and burst one of my ovaries. Yes, it's as painful as it sounds. I was unable to walk or move much for 4 months. I was prescribed Oxycontin and was pretty much stoned off my ass the entire time. I remember playing Sega Dreamcast; I had a controller with no memory card and Soul Calibur that I had to restart each day since my progress couldn't be saved. I barely even noticed, that's how fucked up I was on the Oxy. Alex took care of me, carried me around and brought me to my doctors' appointments. We grew very attached to each other and after a few months, we got engaged. He let me choose my engagement ring. I was so proud of that thing, like it defined my existence all of a sudden. My ovary healed pretty nicely. Apparently the doctor performing my ultrasound at month-4 was shocked to announce that the cyst that had developed magically disappeared on its own and everything looked normal. But by that point, having spent so long in this dependent relationship, I didn't know what being myself meant anymore.
We were attached at the hip. I no longer wanted to go to school so I dropped out with 1 class left to graduate. All I wanted to do was to be with him, to smoke massive amounts of weed, play videogames, watch movies, have sex and order food. Our apartment was a horrible mess. We stayed locked up in our bedroom for the whole year. His dad gave him money so we didn't have to worry about bills. We had a corner store down the street that delivered everything from canned soups to toiletries, so we really had no reason to leave the apartment. We nailed blankets to the windows to keep the sunlight out and spent the year being horrible, stoned slobs. Eventually I grew restless. Life had become a fantastic vacation from reality at first, but after about 8 months, I was starting to feel trapped. I knew I was useless to society and that wasn't good for me. I was changing and Alex didn't know how to deal with the new me. He became mean and abrasive, attempting to manipulate me into continuing on the path of self-destruction and inutile existence. We got into many arguments when I told him I was to return to school to become an esthetician.
That was a really fun course; learning about makeup, nail polish, facials and massages. It felt like a yearlong pajama party. I made some great friends there and would invite them over after class to come smoke weed with Alex and I. They came a few times but then grew reluctant because the place was so dirty and stale, closed off from sunlight and grimy from a year of neglect. I was becoming embarrassed to bring people over, and Alex really felt that I wasn't the same person anymore. He continued to berate me and belittle me, and his insults got worse over the course of the year.
One day, we got into a really bad fight and I ran to a friend's place for comfort. I don't quite remember how it happened but I ended up grabbing a knife and cutting my wrist a little. I did it wrong. And I knew I was doing it wrong while I was doing it, but I was also doing it for dramatic effect. My friend freaked out though and she called an ambulance, which took me to the psychiatric ward of the Montreal General hospital. From there, I ended up enrolling myself in an outpatient program for patients with borderline. It consisted of 12 weeks of both group and individual therapy sessions. The doctor was very well known, the best in the country and a specialist in borderline patients. He tried to convince me to end my toxic relationship; he said I was living in denial and that I could absolutely survive without him. I didn't believe him for a while but eventually, after a few more months and catching him in some pretty crazy lies, I left Alex and moved back home to my parents.