“The weight is coming off,” Siren snapped. She seemed to be panting when she said, “I know what you did to me there. You’re so manipulative and evil.”
“What did I do with the weight?” I asked. It’s Thursday night and she is calling me again. In order to keep my government housing, I have to sleep in South Towers at least once a week. So, Bekah and I chose Thursday night. The first of these the phone rang and I picked it up. It was Siren screaming at me and now this is my Thursday night.
“You kept me fat,” she said.
“I kept you fat?”
“Yeah. I was thin when I first met you and you got me fat so that you could control me. When I was fat no one would want me and you could treat me anyway you wanted,” she said.
“I told you what I tell every woman that I am with. What they look like doesn’t matter to me. Be comfortable with yourself and I will be happy. I told you if you wanted to work out to do so, but I don’t require it.”
“You used me being fat to your advantage. Red doesn’t do that. He doesn’t want to manipulate me. He treats me like a queen.”
Her and Red started dating almost instantly. She defends him all the time though I have never attacked him. She spends a lot of time telling me how much better he is than me. She spends a lot of time talking about Red. She talks about how happy she is with him and yet here she is every Thursday calling me to yell at me.
“Red is amazing,” I said. “One of my best friends. I know he treats his women very well. You are lucky to have him.”
“He’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t want to see you ever again,” she said. “Red is done with your lies and your constant crying. He is done with your drama and your selfishness.”
“Constant crying?”
“Yes, it was constant. It never ended.”
“You’re right. I used to cry all the time. It was hard not to. I held no hope for my future.”
“Are you telling me you don’t cry now?” She scoffed.
“No, I am not. What I am telling you is that I have hope now. And when I cry, I am taken care of.”
“When I told my father that you and I had broken up he sat down beside me and wrapped his arm around me and said very sweetly, ‘I never liked him.’”
“Yeah, I know he didn’t. I didn’t give him much reason to. All he saw was his daughter chasing this guy and he didn’t like to watch it. No, your dad is a good man. I am glad he doesn’t have to watch that anymore,” I said.
Every Thursday I let her vent. I took her venom and I let her tear into me. Because I was living in happiness. I was loved. I was taken care of. And I was going to make it work with Bekah. I did not hate Siren at the time. I had not gotten the distance that I have now and I had not really looked at the situation like I have now. I wanted her to get closure so she could move on.
“You two are doomed anyway,” Siren said. “You and Bekah can never work. Not after Sapphire and me and all the lies and the times you broke her heart. No, you two have no hope of happiness together. When you two break up I want you to know that—”
“Let me stop you there,” I said. “Bekah and me are strong and will remain so. We are going to couples’ therapy and working out all of our issues. We are learning how to talk to each other and how to love each other in a pure and healthy way.”
“You’ll never be pure and healthy, Jesse. You’re a monster!” She slammed the phone down that night.
“Are you going to marry her? Or are you just going to string her along until something new comes along?” Siren snapped a week later.
“I have a ring being made.”
“Made?”
“Yes, I designed a ring for her. I knew I could not find exactly what I wanted and I knew that I didn’t want anyone else to have the same ring as her, so I am designing one to be everything she deserves. It will be ready to pick up within two weeks.”
She slammed the phone down.
The last night she called I told her that me and Bekah were moving in together and this was the last time we would ever talk to each other again. I told her that I wanted her to say everything she needed to say tonight because we were not in each other’s lives after this night.
She said that she wanted to give me something and could I meet her at George’s Cafe.
I told her absolutely not. She could mail it to me if she wanted but I was not meeting her anywhere. I did not want to see her and it would not happen, not ever.
She yelled about that for a while before she stopped and said one more thing. It would be the last thing I would hear from her mouth. “You and I had an unhealthy relationship. It was abusive and terrible and the fact that you used me and threw me away is unforgivable.”
“Used you?”
“You had me buying you dinners and books and then all you did was throw me away. You used me and our relationship was abusive. You have to live with that.”
“Our relationship was terrible but I told you to leave many times. And you could have left at any time on your own. But you stayed. So, it is not my fault you got hurt.”
She slammed the phone down and I never spoke to her again.
She has written me a few times. Once she wrote me telling me that I was a monster. She insisted that my alters were faked and that I had never been abused. She said that I made all of it up so that I could manipulate people into buying me fast food and movie tickets. She called me the worst kind of person but I don’t think she elaborated.
I didn’t write back.
She wrote me again a few years later to call me a few more names and tell me she had found a great guy. She told me that Lean and Fish were so happy that I was not in their lives anymore and all three of them were so much better off without me.
When Teardrop Road started to come out on my blog, she got ahold of me again. I either had her blocked on Facebook and she reached me through my writer page, or I had not blocked her yet and she got a hold of me.
She did not sound as mad. She said she was reading the blog and it was weird hearing herself as the villain in someone else’s story. She said that it just reminded her of a time when she didn’t know how to love. She said, “Every story needs a villain I guess I can be yours.”
I never wrote back to any of these messages and I never will. I said my goodbyes to her and I told her to say hers. I gave her every opportunity for closure and I hope she got it.
As for me, I have no desire for anything from her.
This chapter is from Reality of the Unreal Mind, Vol. 2: Normal Street.
Jesse Teller 