Goodbye David

David and I kept in touch for months while he was away for work. He was in a remote location with spotty service. We texted nearly daily. Nothing special or especially long. He worked odd hours. Mostly he wanted to sext because there was a serious lack of girls at his location. He did take a bartender out for two dates, but claimed not to have kissed her.  On the day my divorce was final and I was feeling mixed emotions about it, David was the one who called and told me to keep my head up, that I was doing well, that I would be ok.

David and I were both counting down the days until he would be back in the Seattle area. He tried to convince me to take the day off work, pick him up at the airport and spend the day having sex.

In the end, we planned to spend a whole Sunday together. He came over and we pretty quickly ended up in bed. David didn't notice and I didn't want him to, but the sex made me cry.  He didn't hurt me. I consented, it was nothing like that. But something about they way he touched me and talked to me, made me feel disgusting. There was always something about David that made me afraid. It wasn't logical, it was a gut feeling that I continually dismissed.  We had sex again and David got out of bed to get in my shower.

I cried some more and then got in the shower with him. I knew the motions I was supposed to go through and I felt compelled to do so. Part of me also felt like I'd spent months communicating with David and that despite his history with women, he and I had something.

We went and got tacos for lunch. We went next door and I followed like a meek puppy while David perused a gun store and professed his desire to spend a lot of money. I obliged when David insisted that he wanted to drive my car.

We went back to my house to watch football. David complained about my cats. He had been to my house before and taken allergy medication, but we both knew that I had cats and that he was allergic. He asked if I had room in my freezer, because he wanted to put the cats in it. He asked if I had a barbeque, because he wanted to cook my cats. He fell asleep on my couch.

This was not how I'd envisioned it at all. I felt utterly used and foolish. Whenever I try to "go along to get along" it never works out.

After he woke up from his nap, David and I went to dinner. But he left his wallet at my house so I paid. David decided we needed to buy ice cream so I paid for that too. We went back to my house to eat the ice cream. David wanted to use my washer and dryer to do months worth of laundry. He asked again about getting rid of my cats. He invited himself to spend the night, but told me I needed to change the sheets on my bed because the current sheets had cat hair on them.

I was done. Sure, I was still mostly ignoring the part of me that was scared of him, but I couldn't take it anymore. I told David I'd prefer if he didn't spend the night. He was fine with that but asked if we could have sex again before he left. Hard pass. He took his stuff and left and I dissolved into tears.

The last I heard from David was after a bad night out. I was drunk and texted him "help." To his credit, David called and was attempting to talk me down. Most of the way through the conversation, I realized that David was drunker than me and in and out of consciousness. I hung up. The next day, he was full of "tough love" text messages basically telling me that I never change and I'm a whiner. While this may be true, it struck me as unnecessarily harsh. I made a sarcastic comment calling him Dr. Phil, and he disappeared.

David tried to be a good guy. I saved some of the sweet things he said to me because he could be incredibly complimentary. He would call when I really needed him and he knew just what to say. But he was also harsh, and that part of me was always scared of him. Sometimes I miss the funny parts of our conversations, and the way he was sweet to me, but I know I can't reach out to him.