So we reignited a relationship and I feel things had been better and going good except for here and there comments. She comes around very convincing, surprising me here and there and saying things like, "When I first talked to you, I walked away thinking 'That woman is a rockstar.' And now if I were to talk to you, I would walk away thinking 'That is a sad and depressed woman.' And I know I did that to you. And I want to make it up to you." Even then I told her I am skeptical, as she has taken back apologies in the past. She told me she means it, she is not faking the tears, and that she is not going to take any apologies back. She did take that back a few months later, last night, before I ended up just leaving. She always piles me with amazing in the beginning and it wanes and disappears. I always feel so off balance with the inconsistency. She had made the effort of making a lot of changes to better our relationship in some ways, so I put all my trust into it. I believed so much that it would last.

She told me we should make coupons for each other for Christmas. She saw I wasn't too big on the idea but told her okay. I was already planning at that point an all expense paid trip to Chicago because Christmas is also our anniversary, so I wanted to make it special somehow. Afterall, she told me she couldn't wait to spend the majority of the break with me. I wanted to do her up in a new outfit and make her feel special. This was to be found on a scavenger hunt along with a several page letter of how I feel about her and what I love and appreciate about her, as I know we both often feel unseen. However, three days before Christmas (a week into break and whenever we have the chance, she is distant or showing no interest), I simply said, "Hey, you really got me pumped saying you can't wait to spend the majority of this break with me. So I am curious, are we going to spend any time together?" This led to her telling me she is tired of my feelings every three or four days and her puking and having spasms and sending me into a couple panic attacks.

Anyway, her ex husband who never really acknowledges me was going to be over Christmas morning so in the best effort to try to include myself, I got all her kids and her ex husband Amazon gift cards. I wrapped presents and helped set everything under the tree and get everything ready for her son's birthday. And I realize that everyone 's stocking is past the brim except mine. It was nearly empty, with two things in it. I honestly would have stuffed it myself if I had known, just to make it look like I fit. She told me what she had for me was too heavy and they are under the tree, which were food items so her youngest would continue to believe there is a Santa. So I sat there listening to her and her ex husband talk about her extended family I am not allowed to be a part of as she makes no effort per usual to bring me into the conversation, after she also let me know there would be no affection in front of him. This is after she told me this is our home and she isn't going to bend over backwards to make him comfortable and if he is uncomfortable with our relationship, he doesn't have to come into our home. She said, "Kind of like how you seem to feel uncomfortable in front of your ex husband." I told her I still do, though. When she reaches over for me, of course I will hold her hand or kiss her. I held her hand in front of him during dinners many times. Her reply? "Oh way to make me feel bad over a simple request." I have never met such a group of excluding people. And maybe she belonged in that group. Her extended family gave me attitude when I tried to join them two years ago. Her ex husband got pissy and said, "Why can't she go be with her OWN family?" And she complains that her extended family is like that. But so is she. She is no different. My ex husband, who is from the Middle East and grew up around strict morals, treated her to...

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She recently told me to get to writing and start building our fortune.

Which she is absolutely right about one thing. If I were ever to hit any kind of fortune, it would not be my fortune. It would be mine and my partner's. No question.

The only thing is, she never treated me the same. She never treated me as such.

With her unwillingness to help in such a small way, she uses the cop-out, "It is my feminism." I say that definitely gives feminism a bad name. Isn't feminism about helping other women? In this case, helping another woman with trying to achieve a brighter future and attain her goals? To not help another woman is no form of feminism. To help other women is not only the highest form of feminism, but also altruism.

Yet she has complained that her ex husband did nothing for her. And he should have. And she is right about that. He should have. But then she turned around and $#%^ on me in the same way.

She is not altruistic at all. Whatever she does for me, she has made clear that something absolutely must be done in return. She claims I have done nothing for her. Which is the first thing that made me cut this awful relationship off again. I am tired of not being seen or appreciated. And then she tells me I throw things in her face, which I do not. I feel this falls into her hands perfectly to belittle my character, because the only time I will start listing things I have done is when she claims I have done nothing for her. I started working on her yard when I did not even live there. The only thing I was waiting for was grass seed that she said she was going to get as well as duct tape to move the trampoline, both of which never happened. Did I get anything in return while I was not living there? No. Did I expect it? No. I started helping to work on a room in the basement she claimed would be mine but was still dictating what would be in there and how it was going to look (there was no guarantee or foreseeable evidence it would be mine as she has given and taken so many times) while I was not living there and feeling like I was being treated as an outsider and probably always would be. Did I get anything in return? No. Did I expect it? No. She claims while I did live there I didn't do anything. Yet I did indeed mow the lawn, clean the house, do the laundry, fold her four very capable kids laundry, got on the roof a couple times to clean out the gutters, etc. Many times I even cooked for her. A couple times I did these things while I did not live there. Did I expect anything in return? No. Then she belittles all that work and tells me the only things I did were things I enjoyed, like painting. Actually, painting got real old real fast. And even this comment baffles me because, even if that were true and it were the only thing I did, and even if I enjoyed it, who cares? She didn't get to keep the cleaning I did, the laundry I did, the gutters I cleaned, the dinners I cooked. But she benefited because she, due to my work, has an incredibly beautiful home inside. Due to my choice in color and my work, she gets to keep something. I benefited in no way from this relationship.

Instead, I am afraid. I am afraid to open up and be the person I once was. The person that a few different people actually followed to tell me I have amazing energy. I am afraid to write due to her threats. I am afraid to do so much as greet someone without feeling like they might be judging me behind their smile or thinking I am weird or ugly. I am afraid to open myself up to anyone for fear of experiencing something like this again. I never knew it existed.

So she likes to say she is always willing but in order for her to be able to help, she has to know. I never would ask. I never would say. She liked to SAY "if I can do anything, let me know." Which almost got irritating for me to constantly hear because my gut instinct knew it was just words. Last year, I asked her to help me get to school. She told me no, it was my responsibility....

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"Whether with a narcissist a week, a month, a year, a decade, or a half of a century, one thing is for sure...one day you will wake up to the revelation that it was all just a figment of your imagination."



And at that moment, something in me clicked and everything was rendered fake. I no longer believed that two years prior, her crying during our first kiss (which lasted all night), was real. I no longer believed the time was real when we were laying next to each other near the beginning and she looked at me with such (now suddenly fake) sincerity, a tone that touched the depths of my soul at the time, and said, "Wow...wow. So this is what it's like." She explained to me how after 40 years she is finally in love for the first time and had no idea it could feel this way. I no longer believed in the times we fell asleep holding hands or walked embraced through cities, one of us walking backwards. I no longer believed in our eleven hour talk or her proclamations of needing me and not being able to live without me and loving me more than anything. I no longer believed in any of our incredible moments, which I once cherished as the best of my life.

I don't know why it was that moment that our whole past was suddenly apocryphal. It was not when she shook me and screamed ###$ you in my ear three times. It was not when she had me collapse on my knees in Bronson Park telling me she didn't love me and wasn't in love with me. It was not when she allowed me to walk in the cold on a damaged knee with bags weighing me down to the most dangerous part of town at night while she left torturous images in my head of her going to spend the night with her ex-girlfriend (which, to my knowledge, were just threats). It was not when she took off on her moped leaving me to cry in the grass. It was not when she would send me the most verbally abusive texts, telling me to go back to men and find myself a sugar daddy. It was not when she locked me out. It was not when she dumped me on repeat. It was not her admitting the person I met and she made herself out to be did not exist. It was not the countless times she showed such a painful indifference toward me. It was not the time I was hungry and she would not allow me to go with her to get myself a bagel. It was not the countless times she brought me to tears and left me to cry alone, one time coming in to tell me "This ain't the Jerry Springer" show and slamming the door. It was not taking advantage of my most sensitive and deepest vulnerabilities as means of power. It was not her giving things and taking them back or throwing in my face what she did for me. It was not her throwing me up against a wall once and passionately kissing me and taking my breath away and then reminding me I was not her girlfriend and then, when that made me cry, getting mad and reminding me not to ruin an important dinner for her. It was not how she could break my heart and leave me silently aching while she put on a completely different face for the public. It was not the fact that whenever I said something hurt my feelings, she made me feel awful for saying anything, telling me I am ruining her spirit and bringing her down, and, rather than my feelings be recognized and seen as important, it would spiral into days (if not sometimes longer) of hell. It wasn't the fact that my feelings never seemed to matter.

It was

that she told me if she finds out that I am blogging or if I talk to anyone in the community, she will destroy my life. I told her that if she hurts me, I will reveal the unstable emails and texts I have and will do the same. She told me she isn't worried and slammed the door. In tears, I walked downstairs trying to explain to her how much she is hurting me and how her threats are unfounded and some of the texts she threatened to send to my closest friends we had already established were taken out of context and she was twisting them. I said this while she stared blankly at her...

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