I confess I wrote this for Jason.
I met him on Plenty Of Fish, a dating site back in 2019. The site’s algorithm said that we were a “perfect match”, and upon further inspection, at least in profile comparison, we were very similar. However, after a nasty separation from my daughter’s father, I couldn’t stomach jumping into the dating world. Many years had passed as a single mother off the market. At that time, I was massively overweight and unhappy with myself. So, despite the encouragment of friends and family to seek out partnership again, I decided to call it off with the people I was talking to and delete my profile. Jason being one of those people, begged me not to disappear into the world. He propositioned me, stating that we could be workout buddies, and help each other reach our weight loss goals. He stated, he too was overweight and unhappy with himself, and had just started going to the gym. He said I was an amazing woman, and that he would truly regret it if he lost touch with me. He stated that he rather be my friend than lose me altogether. It took much coaxing on his part, but reluctantly I agreed to continue contact.  I allowed his words to count. Within 6 months of texting every day, and talking on the phone, and of course 60+ lbs down, he proved to be more than my accountability system. He was my best friend.

Organically, we decided to meet in person at the 1836 Saloon and Grill, in Marshall Creek Pennsylvania. The halfway point between our towns.  As much as I hate to admit it, Plenty of Fish had nailed it. He was perfect. Not in the fantasy way, but in the practical way. In the way that we both gravitated towards old cemeteries and abandoned houses/buildings. His pastime was ghost hunting and creating his podcast, and mine …all things spiritual. He was a published Author, and I was a hopeful one-day writer. Our humor was in sync, and every conversation was never-ending, and enjoyable. Those two things seldom ever go hand in hand.
He was a bassist, and I played guitar. He was 6’7, and I was 6’0. I loved how he doted on his two daughters, and he seemed to share my morals and values. Especially regarding family. He was the oldest of 5 from a large Irish-American family, and I was as well. The similarities were remarkable, and the chemistry was almost tangible. It just felt right– as in the way one recognizes and connects in an ageless way with another soul. Naturally, we fell in love. 

I went to see his band play in Asbury Park, and also out in Warminster Pennsylvania. He would point me out whilst on stage and compliment me in front of everyone in the venue. I felt like I was living in a rom-com. We would hike and go on picnics, and make love out in the woods or take late-night drives down to the shore, sit on the beach, and discuss our possible futures.  He was amazingly affectionate and kind. We spent most days and weekends together out in nature or venturing around various towns along the Delaware River. We spent most nights messaging through Facebook, as the mountains surrounding his property limited his cellular service. His heart was as big as he was, and those two young adult daughters, who didn’t live with him full-time, were often the topic of conversation, as was my own. My daughter at the time was very young in age, so as neither of us had ever had a partner in our children’s lives, we respectively didn’t visit each other’s homes.

After some time, it was only natural that we propelled our relationship forward and meet each other’s children. However, the plans that he would make would get unexpectedly canceled for one reason or another. He started avoiding the conversation, and then as fate would have it, using the rising pandemic as an excuse. 

He gave me no reason to disbelieve him, but if you’re picking up the red flags in this story,—- you are absolutely correct.
After months of being head over heels, spending significant time with each other, as well as a bout of COVID-19, I found out serendipitously, that he lived with another woman. And had for 13 years.
My heart was beyond broken. The air was vaccumed from my lungs. Desparate disbelief swept over me.  I couldn’t believe it, this just couldn’t be real.  There was no way this was true. No way.

I confronted him and recorded the whole conversation.  He admitted everything, and stated he didn’t know when the right time was to tell me. He was insistent that there was no love between them, that they didn’t even sleep together or in the same room. He stated that they were basically roommates, and that he was madly in love with me. He promised he would tell her about me and end things, but he needed two weeks to do so. At the time his reasoning was that he assumed the pandemic would end— thus making it easier on his child, as she would return to school, and no be around the house as much. He felt it might be awful at his home for her in the interim of breaking things off with his so-called “roommate.”

The problem was—unbelievable deceit.

The problem was…. (even though he swore up and down that I wasn’t)

………I was the other woman.

I am and never will be…. the “other woman.”

I’m much too much a feminist. It is men that have made me so. There is a great imbalance that occurs when someone deceives anothers’ loyalty and disrespects the union without calling it off first. I have been cheated on before, and made to feel crazy for assuming it. I would never do to another woman what was done to me.  It’s always a choice, and I did not choose this.
I would have never allowed him to touch me, or talk to me the way that he did. I would have never blurred or crossed the boundaries, let alone entertained an intimate relationship. 
That is the type of woman I am. That is my choice.
You don’t get to take that from me… and he did. I couldn’t get over the deceit.

My broken heart took me hunting, and I found his supposed roommate on Facebook. In opposition to his testimony, she seemed very much in love with him. Unlike him, she had pictures of him all over her page. She had helped him raise his daughters, and they had apparently lived together for a very long time. She was a first responder, hence why she was never around.

Literal sickness overcame me.

I was disgusted. I wanted to peel the skin off my body. I couldn’t imagine this reality. I thought I was capable of seeing through bullshit— but here I was… after 36 years… the other woman.

The hotel whore, the woodland floozy!? The escape from a dulled relationship!? I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t.
I thought long, and hard with great pain. I stopped eating, and I drank myself into numbness most days. But I was never numb enough. Grief took over me. I was on a very dangerous and unconcerned autopilot. I lived on tears and vodka. Until that immense pain grew to disgust, and then resurrected as anger.

FUCK HIM.

If he was my so-called “soulmate” (what a joke)— he would understand there would be no trusting him. Not unless I created balance of course. Break his trust the way he broke mine, and expected me to love him through it. Could he do the same for me!? Would he!? Deceit for Deceit. Great loss…. for … great loss. An eye for an eye, and now we’re both blinded by love and lies. (In hindsight, this was pathetic and desperate— but this is my confessional- this is my truth, I will spare myself no embarrassment.) 
I contacted her privately, and sent her his recording, I informed her that I had been in a relationship with him for well over 6 months at this point.  I was honest about being very much in love with him, and wanted to believe what he told me. However, I was not ignorant, I needed her to confirm the nature of their relationship.  I explained that had I known that there was even a chance of her existence, I would have never pursued anything with him. I had never cheated in my life. 

Boom. Fuck your two weeks. Your children don’t live with you, and how dare you think I live and love on your clock.

She surprisingly stated I was a liar, a “groupie whore of his band”, and refused to listen to the recording I had sent her. She stated he was very much in love with her, and threatened me to leave him alone.
Again, I find myself in disbelief. As a woman who sees the injustice done to other women by men, I would not have responded that way. I couldn’t believe that she would refuse to listen to the recording, the irrevocable truth. I wanted so badly to ask her if she measured his love by all those moments he spent between my legs and arms. If she tasted me on his lips? If she smelled me in his clothes. If she could sense all his love for her—- in all the significant amount of time we spent together. The truth is and was — neither of us were sacred to him.  We were robbed of authenticity. 

It was irrelevant and petty, and so I kept those comments to myself and lived on with great pain. She was clearly not a woman’s woman. Looking back, I’m not sure what I expected to happen—— what good did I think that would do? Did I act out of pain, selfishly? I honestly don’t feel that was the case, however—- you can judge away. It’s ok, I’m imperfect. Perhaps your mental scale tips in his favor. Perhaps you empathize and identify with her emotions, and her chosen denial. It matters not.
We were never again. His last text to me was…
“I know I deserve the worst, and believe me, I have been sick to my stomach knowing that I’ll never ever have an opportunity to be with someone who is spiritually entwined with me. Because I fucked that up and I deserve to live my life in that regret, and sorrow. A lifetime of misery though was totally worth knowing you do exist.”

During our separation, I wrote a piece called, ” Like that of an abandoned house”, and in great secret hope I prayed that he would read it. I posted it on Facebook–publicly on purpose. If he ever read it… I never knew, and now I never will.

 I will post it next to this post for reference. 

One day, a little over a year later— the song he always dedicated to me, Billy Joel’s “She’s Got a Way” kept playing everywhere. It was ridiculous to the point that coincidence seemed improbable. It played in the convenience store I walked into, and then moments later on the car radio, and again,  when I walked into my house and asked my Alexa to play music— it played in my kitchen. I had the sudden urge to see how he was. I put his name in the search bar on Facebook and immediately saw that he had run his car into the back of a tractor-trailer on the highway just the day before. Pictures of his accident were all over the internet. The hood of his car was completely obliterated. Pieces of which went directly through the windshield.  The very same car, just a year or so ago…. held my auspicious heart, as I spent hours on the passenger side zooming around PA.  Happy, hopeful, and madly in love.  That very same car in which he professed his love for me, he died.  

In that moment, once more—– he stole my breath and shattered my heart all over again.

My personal world was painful without him in it, but to learn that he was no longer in the world at large—- well, that was a whole other sadness I now had to contend with. 

Life is relentless and brutal, especially when it comes to learning the fragility of trust. Certainly, even the deepest of love simply cannot exist without it.  The echo of which, however, is a muse for creativity that continues to live on—– in memory and of course….through words.