Ghosts of Boyfriends Past Part IV

The Devil Himself

By the name I gave boyfriend #4 I'm assuming you know that this relationship was not a good one. While I do blame him for most of it, to be fair I had my hand in it to.

I actually met TDH through The Rocker. TDH was a chef at a popular restaurant that The Rocker frequented, and he knew him briefly from there. He introduced the two of us at a party one night.

TDH was perfect in every way. He was like Prince Charming. I'm not kidding, this man blew me away when we started dating by how compassionate and caring he was. He is also the first and only serious relationship that I've ever had that didn't start out as friends.

This was my first mistake. My second was spending a couple of years with this joker.

The first six months of our relationship was all wine and roses and romance. Here's a look at how he treated me. My parents were coming into town, and I was upset because my carpeting was just trashed. I had a friend move in for awhile that needed help, and she did just about everything she could to destroy crap while she was there.

My parents had never seen my house, as I always traveled to the warmer climates when I had time off work. TDH got a key to my house from my sister, and scrubbed every inch of my carpeting while I was at work so that I wouldn't be stressed out when my parents arrived.

I came home from work to brand new looking carpeting. These were the kinds of things he did. I've never been one to like it when someone treats me bad. When they do, I leave, except with him. I think it was because he was so good before that I kept waiting for that guy to come back.

I got along with his friends great, and even his family! Being a chef he worked most weekends, which gave me tremendous amounts of space, which I totally love.

He was also great with my sister's kids. He didn't mind spending large amounts of time with them, and understood why I did what I did instead of bitching constantly that it was my sister's responsibility. The kids adored him.

So where did all of this fuzzy happy wonderfulness go? Right down a bottle. Of Jack that is. You see, TDH had a bit of a drinking problem, and it took me awhile to figure that out, as he was a master at hiding it. Also, he carried around a big secret from me, and I found it out one day while doing laundry.

He had left a pair of jeans at my house, and I threw them in the washing machine. As I took the clothes out, I saw that his license was in the bottom of the washer. I looked at it in horror and realized that his birthday he just celebrated, the one where he was supposedly 26, was really his 21st birthday.

At the time, I was 26 and fastly approaching 27. I know they say that age shouldn't matter, but it did to me. This, and he lied to me.

Lied.to.me.

There were a lot of tears from both of us as we tried to decide what to do. He swore he only lied to me because he didn't think I would go out with a 20 year old. He was right, and I wasn't to pleased about dating a 21 year old.

He was just so damn good to me. Good to my niece and nephews. Good to my whole family. I should have ended it there and then, but I didn't.

We worked through that mess and continued on. It was after this that he started to change. It wasn't noticeable at first, just a little smart ass comment here and a little vocal jab there. I think once his secret was out and I didn't leave, he felt safe to be more of himself, which was not a good thing.

The alcohol thing started to rear it's ugly head, and I'm pretty sure with the benefit of hindsite that there was a drug thing going on too. Some of his friends were latter day hippies, which was fine as long as they didn't bring that shit around me. I'm thinking he was dipping into the fun on that end, and I was just so naive that I didn't realize it, not ever really being around people who were drug addicts before.

After our year anniversary he started getting downright mean. His little jabs had become normal. I'm not sure how this happened. I was a strong, independent female. I made my own money, owned my own house, and answered to no one. How a 21 year old alcoholic could make me question my own self worth is beyond me.

I guess maybe because the verbal abuse started out so slow, and gradually picked up steam. Now I realize that he was just insecure and wanted to make sure that I stayed at "his level". I'm sad to say that it worked for awhile.

I would come home from work and he'd be passed out on my couch, and empty bottle of Absolute on the floor. He'd constantly make digs about my clothes or my hair.

The only reason I can think of why I stayed as long as I did is because I thought I could "fix" him. He was a great person once, right? He was just sick, he just needed help.

It got worse and worse and I was feeling so despondent and helpless. Oh, he put on a good act in front of people, but alone time was a critique of how I acted, what I wore, who I talked to, and why I was bad.

The climax of these two years of hell came with a Halloween party. TDH and I had been fighting bad over The Rocker. While he felt that it was really cool that him and I stayed good friends when we first started dating, he now thought it was ridiculous, and that I should stop talking to him.

I had already invited him to the party, and I wasn't going to uninvited him. It was my turn to host our annual Halloween bash, and I was scared to death that he would do something bad. Not so much because it would embarrass me, but because there would be a lot of guy there that would beat the hell out of him if they knew how he really treated me.

Much to my horror and relief, TDH got so trashed that he went to bed by 10 pm. It had been a rough couple of hours before that, as he traded snide remarks with The Rocker. It had made everyone very uncomfortable, and I think everyone there was also relieved when he passed out.

Fast forward until about 2 in the morning. The circle of soul mates and most of my friends had left, and it was just me, The Rocker, and a couple of other people there.

All of a sudden, all these cars come down my street. I open my door, and all these kids start walking towards my house. I didn't know any of them, but I was pretty sure none of them were old enough to drink. Oh, and they had been doing that already, and were loud and obnoxious to boot.

They said TDH had invited them. I was livid. I went to wake his ass up to see who the hell all these people in my front yard were. He didn't take to kindly to that and screamed, "Why don't you find out for yourself, you stupid slut!"

Isn't it amazing how having other people hear this kind of thing can shock you to reality. It was either that, or The Rocker, who had overheard this, dragging him outside the house to beat the holy piss out of him. It all happened so fast.

We pried The Rocker off of TDH, got the kids out of there, and everyone went home. TDH had crawled his way back to the couch. The next morning he tried to scold me for embarrassing him in front of his friends, and that it was all my fault for inviting my ex-boyfriend.

I listened to his tirade with unusual calmness. There would be no more fighting between us. There would be no more anything. I let him finish, and then told him to get the fuck out. The night before I had gone around my house and picked up anything that belonged to him and boxed it up. The boxes were sitting on his car.

"You're not serious?!?!?!" he said. Oh yes, yes I was. He was leaving that day, and he was never coming back. Oh he tried alright, but I never did let him back.

Quick note for you all...Tomorrow shall be the last of the Ghosts of Boyfriends Past series, ending with The Mystery Man.