When I went on the ex-Virgo's laptop on the night of March 24/morning of March 25, I went right to his Twitter DMs, and you know that feeling? That awful, sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, that feeling when your heart drops after you've seen something truly wretched, something unimaginably horrifying? Imagine that. If anything excruciatingly painful has ever happened to you, like in an emotional way, if you've ever been traumatized, I want you to recall that now. That's how I felt when the first thing I saw in the ex-Virgo's Twitter DMs was a message to Carla saying his friend gave him an edible and he wanted to know if he should take it the next day at work.
His friend gave him an edible.
His friend.
Not his partner. Not his significant other. Not the person I've been lying to as I've lain next to her for the last almost three years.
His friend.
When I saw that message, I was transfixed. I could do nothing but scroll up, scroll up and see what seemed to be hundreds of messages between the liar (huh. Look at that. I guess I was wrong when I said my ex-Virgo would always be my Virgo to me) and her. Now, to be fair, other than the my-friend message and one message he'd sent her in January (on the 19th?) seemingly the second he woke up before he even text me (because you know I immediately checked my texts) telling her how important she was to him and that he hopes he didn't sound stupid but he valued their friendship so much, nothing was "inappropriate," but I think it's safe to say just the existence of the DMs was inappropriate.
Before I go any further, I will say that I never told the liar he couldn't talk to Carla. I was fully aware that up until the previous week, they sat together at work and often shared lunch; according to him, they were work best friends. They even text each other (although when I asked the liar who he was texting at about two in the morning while he and I were in bed one night and the answer was Carla, I told him middle-of-the-night texts had to stop. No desire to not be that girl would make me begin to be okay with that). I am not a crazy person who gives a flying fuck about opposite-sex friends. What I did care about is the way that they were friends and, if it makes sense, the way that the liar didn't care about my caring about the way that they were friends.
My issue with the Twitter relationship between the liar and Carla wasn't that they had one, it was how they had one; it was his interacting ad nauseam with her but not at all with me while the world and I bore witness, so having DMs wasn't the problem (if anything, it was considerate! At least that's what I eventually managed to convince myself); it was the extent of the DMS: The liar - who, by this point, didn't interact with me on Twitter at all, be it on my timeline or in my DMs - and Carla sent each other messages and tweets pretty much around the clock (which, of course, includes the middle of the night despite the liar's insistence in the past that as soon as I asked him to not text Carla in the middle of the night, he stopped).
I think I went back to about December before I went upstairs and woke the liar up. A three-hour argument, which moved from the extra bedroom to our bedroom, ensued during which he told me he wouldn't stop talking to Carla because he just couldn't do that to a friend but assured me he would stop talking to her in a natural way now that they no longer worked together; in fact, he had even told his therapist that and that he was going to be relieved when they stopped. I then told him we were done, but in an attempt not to be rash, I wasn't kicking him out; instead, I'd let him stay and figure out where he was going to live. The two of us dozed a bit, and then at about 7:30, I took my dogs out. When I got back, the liar was gone, and so was his phone. What's a girl like me to do in a situation like that? Go back downstairs and look on his laptop again, of course!
I went downstairs and opened up his laptop.
I clicked on Twitter.
I was locked out.
The liar -
-the liar who had nothing to hide, the liar who at first said he had no idea why he had called me his friend, he didn't mean anything by it, and then said that he had done it because I had such a problem with Carla, he never brought me up to her despite the fact that she had no idea that I had a problem with her, and no you didn't read that wrong, but go ahead, read the sentence (a little bit reformatted I guess for clarity although if you're looking for something that makes sense here, you're shit out of luck) again:
The liar told me that even though Carla had no idea I had a problem with her, he never brought me up to her because I had such a problem with her -
- had changed his password.
Okay, I thought. No Twitter password? Fine. I'll look somewhere else.
So I did. I looked and I looked because I knew - I knew - I'd find something, and after however long, there it was: a folder in his Google Mail labeled "Scribe Docs" even though he hadn't been a scribe in almost three years. In that folder, the one that should have been labeled "Carla Docs" or better yet, "I'm a Lying Come Pinga Docs" were some e-mails between the two of them, some photos of her from, I think, times his whole office went out after work but who honestly knows? (surely not I), and these
I'm not sure if you could see it anywhere in the photo, but the one with Patrick? That was sent on Valentine's Day. The photo on the bottom? That's something she drew of the two of them so the liar wouldn't miss her after she left the doctor's office where they both worked. It's them surrounded by all their favorite things (can we just take a moment to acknowledge how absolutely cringe and perverse this is, these drawings being produced by a (then) 23-year-old girl and embraced by a (then) 33-year-old man? He made that weirdo drawing of the two of them his desktop background at work for fuck's sake (although in three years I was never once a lockscreen or background picture on his phone). Can we please collectively gag?).
It was at this point that I went upstairs and threw the liar out . . . and regretted it as the words were coming out of my mouth. Still, regret or no, I let him call his friends, I let them come in three cars, I let them load up their three cars plus his, and I watched him leave my house.
And then I panicked.
What had I done? I loved my love so much but I lost him. I made my love go, leaving me all alone.
The Aftermath
The ex-Virgo (huh. I put this blog on hold while I went out to dinner with some friends to a place the ex-Virgo and I went a few times which made me a little bit (or, okay, maybe a lot of bits) sad, and out came the ex-Virgo instead of the liar just now. I guess it's easy to infer my minute-to-minute feelings about him depending on what moniker I unthinkingly type out) and we talked sparingly throughout the week and then saw each other the next Friday when he came with me to take the dogs - the new dogs he convinced me to adopt and I was left to care for all by myself - to get groomed. While we sat in the car waiting for them to be done, we talked about a lot of things, but the one I remember most is how I should know him better than to think he'd be having any sort of relationship with Carla because, as I was aware, she was a virgin who had never had a boyfriend, and he wouldn't want her first experience with a man to be like this. I should know him better than to think he would do that.
We went back to my house, had sex, he went home, and soon after, we decided we'd give couple's counseling a try. Over the next six or seven weeks, I did everything I could to try to compromise, including telling the ex-Virgo that fine, if he really wanted Carla in his life that badly, if it was that important to him, they could stay friends, but I had to be her friend, too. Not like her best friend but meet her at least. We could all go out.
This should have been an easy choice, right? The ex-Virgo gets to keep the girl and the friend. Spoiler alert: that wasn't what he chose. What he chose instead was to not choose for weeks and then announce in counseling we couldn't do that because things would be too weird (despite his previous and then-still-current insistence Carla had no idea of anything that was going on, that had ever gone on), so he was going to stop talking to her. He just needed time to figure out how.
I wish I could tell you what his plan was, what he finally decided, but I can't. We didn't make it that far.
The night of Friday, June 2, the ex-Virgo's last day at his job of two-and-a-half years (a job I noticed he always said he couldn't stand but didn't leave until Carla did), we had plans to go see a double-feature of Kill Bill. Whenever someone had a last day at his job, everyone went out afterward - he'd been to plenty of last-day affairs without me, in fact - so I thought it was funny they weren't having one for him and asked him about it when he got to my house. He told me almost no one was left, and Robert, the only person who was really his friend, had other plans. I can't say I believed him, but I left it at that.
Not too long into the second Kill Bill, the ex-Virgo's phone started going off. He told me it was his frenemy Juanky from work. He was with Sophie, he told me, and then he turned his phone off.
On the way to the car, I asked about the call again. What exactly did Juanky want? The ex-Virgo reiterated. And he was just with Sophie? I asked. He was just with Sophie, the ex-Virgo said. Does Carla know today was your last day of work? He told me that she did. He talked to her about it earlier that day while he was driving home.
The ex-Virgo went to the bathroom as soon as we got back to my house, and I went upstairs. I wanted to believe him. I really did. God, did I want to believe he was telling the truth. In counseling earlier that week, I told our couple's therapist I was to the point where if he got me a coffee and accidentally called it the wrong thing, I'd be done, and because I unwaveringly did not want to be done, I did not want him to be lying. I tried to let it go. I loved my love so much and I didn't want to lose him, I didn't want my love to go, leaving me all alone, so I tried to ignore it. But I couldn't. I went on Carla's Instagram, and this is what I found.
The guy in the middle? That's Juanky. The guy on the right? Robert. The one who couldn't go out with the ex-Virgo because he had plans. The girl on the left? Not Sophie (is it just me, or does Carla have a wonky eye?).
Calmly, I walked downstairs to the bathroom where the ex-Virgo was still on the toilet. Juanky was just with Sophie tonight? I asked. He said yes again. Are you sure? I asked. Emphatically, he said he was. He wasn't with Carla? I asked. He wasn't with Carla! the ex-Virgo said. Standing at the bathroom door, I raised my voice. He wasn't? Are you sure? The ex-Virgo looked defeated. Fine, he was with Carla.
Calmly, oh so calmly, anyone who knows me and my temper would have been so proud, I told the ex-Virgo to go home. To call me when he was finally done talking to Carla.
Are you serious? he asked.
If I don't listen to my own boundaries, how can I expect anyone else to? I asked in answer.
Well, he didn't go home. He refused to leave. He stayed in my bed, and we argued all night while he begged and he pleaded and he begged some more, and by the time the morning rolled around, he was sick and nauseous and wanted to go home to sleep and think, and because I've written about this before, this part you know: Two nights later, he text me (nearly incoherent, drugged up on Benadryl) and broke up with me through our cell phones. In print, not even with his vocal cords. He also told me that he'd called Carla and told her everything because he "didn't deserve a friend," yet somehow, as I found out this past Monday night, she's now his girlfriend.
Well, I say somehow, but if I'm to believe the liar - and we all know I can't - I know how because right after I asked him about it, he called me and we talked for nearly three hours until almost 2 a.m. when we got off of FaceTime, both of us sobbing, saying our final goodbyes.
It's getting late now, though, and I've got a bed to get ready for, so that story, people who read my blog, is not a story for now.
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