Relapse

(5 January 2002)

A “James Bond” theme party.  Even though I was the photographer and not a guest, I decided to go dressed as a Bond woman.  My hairdresser went all out to make me look fabulous, after she’d finished I had just half an hour to run around to find the right top to complete my outfit.  It was fun getting dressed up, how often do you get to play this role!  I arrived shortly before the party began.  There was a fabulously handsome man who caught my eye just as I caught his.  He had dark hair and sparkling green eyes.  Later in the evening when Bogdan, a Bulgarian, and talked, I was astonished because he asked so many questions about myself and my family.  He seemed genuinely interested in getting to know who I really am.  We also spoke at length about living life as a bicultural person, how it changes you, and can even make it difficult to hang out with people who aren’t bicultural. Usually when I meet men, they spend the conversation trying to impress me.

I was weary because Bogdan was a lot younger than me, but he said right off that he was getting over a bad break up and didn’t want to get into a serious relationship, so the age difference didn’t matter.  He wasn’t going to freak out about the age difference, because he was looking for a light relationship himself.  At least things were clear, or so I thought.  I wasn’t in love, or so I thought, but I did get really attached to him, much more than I realized.  Bogdan was really intelligent, imaginative, sweet, and especially caring when I wasn’t feeling well.  But soon there were red flags, warning signs, which I don’t want to see.  There were clearly constant lies , though I couldn’t catch him out on one.  It began to tear me apart.  I became paranoid, how could I be sure what was the truth and what was a lie?  I knew instinctively, but still wanted proof, certainty.  

Near Christmas it got worse.  For Christmas he said he was going to go to the countryside with a school friend, that he was excited because he’d never been out of Paris.  Then it looked like that might not go through, so he was going back to Bulgaria to see his family, then he said he had to stay in Paris because he had so much studying to do for his exams.  Then the countryside story came up again.  Then he said he was going up to Germanyto spend Christmas with friends there.  Going to Germany changed from Christmas to New Year’s, and the countryside story came up again.  The story kept changing on a near daily basis.

Bogdan’s creativity and his mobile phone provided him with myriad ways of avoiding talking about things, it would cut off, he’d be on his way into the metro, there would be interference just when I was trying to discuss something he didn’t wanted to avoid.  He’d “send” text messages which I never received, and he never got many of my text messages.  Curiously enough, the men I’ve met often never receive text messages and voice mail messages, or send messages that I never receive, while my girlfriends always get my messages.  Men also have a way of losing their mobile phones frequently, or dropping them and breaking them, so they’re in the shop for a few days.  Two men told me they’d dropped their mobiles into their bathtubs.  I finally teased Bogdan that he had a special mobile subscription for men, which includes a booklet of all the ways of using your mobile to give excuses for not communicating, to avoid women, and to dump them.  He laughed like he knew he’d been caught, and was delighted that I was bringing it up lightly rather than harassing him about it.  In any case one thing was clear: he didn’t want to spend Christmas or New Year’s with me.  There was some one else.  Obviously, he was trying to get back together with the ex from the beginning, or maybe she was never really and ex.  The situation felt all too familiar….

Finally he decided to stay in Paris for Christmas and go to Germanyfor New Year’s.  I asked if I could come along to the Christmas party he was going to, but he turned me down saying that it was going to be in a Bulgarian Orthodox church and everyone would be speaking Bulgarian.  Of course I would have preferred that to being alone.  Finally when I pushed him on it, he admitted that his ex was going to be there, and “it would be awkward.”  If she was really an ex why was it such a big deal?  Just a week before Christmas he was talking about how one year he’d been abroad in a country where he knew no one, and was wandering around on Christmas Eve in the town center, in the snow, when he ran into a school mate who invited him to her place for Christmas, and how awful it is to spend Christmas alone.  Seeing his ex was more important than my having to spend Christmas alone--a pretty clear message.  I made some calls and confirmed that there are no Bulgarian Orthodox churches inParis.  At last I’d caught him out on a lie.

I suspected he wasn’t really going to Germany, and I knew that I could catch him out on one of his lies. I could check my mobile bill to see if I was charged for a call to Germany.  When I called him on New Year’s, there was no noise in the background, it sounded like he was alone, and he was pissed off  because, as he claimed, his friend had got so drunk he’d passed out, so Bogdan was just sitting there doing nothing.  He could hear the party noise in the background from my end of the phone, and sounded irritated by it.  When I checked my phone bill, I could see that there weren’t any long distance calls to Germany.  Even when you’re certain you’re being lied to, it’s satisfying to have proof, and even more satisfying to know that the bastard had to spend the evening alone.

(15 January 2002)

Bogdan came by one night particularly out of sorts.  I just looked at him and said: “You tried to get back together with her and it didn’t work out, right?”  “How did you know?”  “Just and educated guess.”  He said he didn’t really feel like seeing anybody.  When the house of cards came crashing down on my head, I took it badly.  Far worse than I should have for what was supposed to be a light relationship, obviously I’d been daydreaming that it could be more than that.  In matters of the heart things are never logical.

(20 January 2002)

I’m taking the break up really badly.  I’ve gone back to heavy drinking after four years of success in fighting the bottle.  This is no minor detail.  While I was at university I was dating a man whom I had every reason to expect marriage.  When he broke things off with me I nose dived into a clinical depression.  The symptoms were unbearable.  Severe insomnia was keeping me awake all night long, night after night, and affecting my performance at university, which I found intolerable.  I rocked compulsively, and agitated my limbs so violently while in bed that I developed bed rash.  The only hope of sleeping was to immobilise my legs by tying them up tightly.  I also tried higher and higher doses of sleeping pills to no avail.  (Curiously my psychiatrist at the time didn’t offer me any medication to help cope with the symptoms.)  That’s when I turned to alcohol.  At first a glass or two a night was sufficient to help me get to sleep.  Soon I was mixing large quantities of alcohol with the sleeping pills, which seemed dangerous but I was desperate.  Within weeks I realized that I was dependant on alcohol, that I was an alcoholic, I could not stop drinking, so I quit the sleeping pills.  There’s a pattern here of abandonment issues and turning to alcohol.

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