The Series on Monday

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. I hope everyone had a good time with friends or family or both!

Refresh yourself

Part 10
I was wary of JD for the next few weeks. I told myself that I needed to take a serious step back and reconsider everything. I was upset that he’d lied to me about sleeping with someone, but then I was upset with myself for being upset! I felt like I wasn’t in control of my own emotions. I decided that I would work on “getting over” him. But it felt as I was pulling away from him, he was trying to pull closer to me.

One evening he called me very upset. He told me that his long-time friend Katharine, a girl I had been told was his closest and oldest friend, had said some horrible things to him. She’d told him that she thought he was pitiful for not having been successful with his suicide attempts. And then he slipped – he said “and she told me she didn’t cheat on me, which is a lie, I have the proof.”

I was stunned. He realized he was busted and the whole story of how they had been together came out. He was vague and made things confusing but I was determined to understand. What I really wanted to understand was how he thought it was ok to “date” me and go home to her every weekend.

He tried to make me understand how he and Katharine had known each other for a very long time and had fallen into a relationship. What he couldn’t make me understand was at what point he and Katharine were no longer together so that it made it ok for he and I to date. The truth was, at least in his mind, they were always together. The truth was, he was dating us both at one point and the truth was also that he had no intentions of telling either one of us about the other until Katharine beat him to the punch with her hurtful words.

“But you were going to stop talking to me…” he countered.

“Why did you think this was ok?” I asked. He had no response except that he was sorry. He kept trying to go back to how much she had hurt him, but he had hurt me. All over again. It was like he ripped that same wound open, poured salt in and sat back laughing as I writhed in pain. He just didn’t get it – at all.

“I need some time to myself. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.” I told him. And I hung up.

He called me right back and called me every day for the next few days but I couldn’t deal with him. So I ignored his calls and text messages. “Please just let me know you’re ok…” his messages said. I laughed at the irony of his concern after the fact. What was most frustrating for me was that I still cared a lot about him and secretly was happy that Katharine, whoever she’d been to him, was out of the picture. But at the same time, he’d dropped 2 major bombs on me. “Do I even really know this guy?” I began to wonder.