Chapter Seven: Distance and Pain

As my mate's children grew older and started to have kids of their own we started to drift apart. I always had a problem with getting too close to people. I think this started back when I was sexually assaulted when I was about five years old. It was a horrible experience, one that put an end to my innocence as a child. I had left my body while being sodomized with a foreign object. I could see what was happening to me from above; hear my high pitched squeals of agony as I was being "punished" for something I didn't mean to do. I re-entered my body as I was told to clean up the mess that was made from the horrific act. It was then that I started fantasizing about being invisible. If no one could see you, no one could hurt you. I constantly had thoughts of suicide during my pre-teen years, thoughts that carried on until my late teens. My sophomore year in high school I started drinking heavily and taking drugs figuring that one day I'd just pass out and never wake up again. When I became a young adult I decided that I didn't want to go the way of my brother so, instead of drinking and taking drugs, I started to push people away to keep them from getting too close to me. This is a tactic that I developed in high school. That's probably why my class mates used to call me "Mike the knife". By the time I got together with my ex I had perfected the technique. People would start to get too close to me, either in person or in the workplace, and I'd turn on them. With a sharp dagger of the tongue I'd say something deeply hurtful to them. I'd be an asshole straight out of the blue. That usually did the trick. It gave me the same perverse comfort that the delusion of being invisible gave me when I was a child. But in sabotaging my relationships with others I was ruining whatever chance I had at being successful at whatever I did. Particularly in the retail industry, where I usually found employment. Hard work was never a problem for me. Our success in life, however, is mostly built upon the positive networking interactions that we forge with others. I would always look like a good candidate for advancement for whatever company I found myself working for then, KABOOM! I'd blow it out of the water.

With my ex I started to distance myself from her and her growing family. I completely couldn't relate to all the love that they shared with one another. It was alien to me. At least I had a view, from the outside looking in, of what normalcy was supposed to look like. It didn't do our relationship any good. I became a weak appendage in her life, and ultimately we both called it quits.

At the time of our breakup I had been working as an assistant manager at a coffee house. I was doing pretty good; at the top of my retail managerial class. I thought our parting would give me a chance to move ahead in my life on my own two feet. Maybe after a couple of years of success we might even consider getting back together, only this time I could be the financially strong one to allow her to ease back on her career and spend more time with her children and grandchildren. The plan sounded great at the time, but I underestimated how much of a support structure that my ex had become. She was always the one to handle all the finances; pay all the bills along with whatever meager capital contributions I could make. I was allowed to float from job to job for years with her being our pillar of strength and security. I had become functionally disabled from a personal finance standpoint. She was more than just a crutch to me. She was a motorized wheelchair.

Next up: Falling