15. Johnson & Alex

I loved living alone. I had one friend from graduate school up the street. I loved living in Johnson. I could walk to the grocery store, the post office, the bank, and the woods. I had an hour commute to work, and a half hour commute to my internship. Even with all the driving, I still felt a huge weight off my shoulders. I came home to a quiet space. I hugged my dog, and nobody was telling me what to do or what I was doing wrong. It was just quiet. I could breathe. I could relax.

I’d like to say that was the end of my roommate story, but it’s the unfortunate truth that my roommate drama did not end there. 

Alex and I were emotionally dependent drinking buddies. It wasn’t until I met Alex that the thought of opening a beer on Saturday morning even occurred to me. That was what we could do that day, just drink! Instant dopamine. I felt exhausted in every aspect of my life, and this felt good. 

To say Alex had commitment issues would be like saying Australia is a large island. It’s obvious, something everyone knows, yet I didn’t really ever think about it. I just thought it was me that needed to change or wasn’t god enough. At this point I had known Alex for over a year, and I was never officially his girlfriend. I had broken things off with him once, got back together, multiple times. He told his mother he was “seeing me”, and I spoke on the phone with his friends, we would loosely talk about a future buying land together and the possibility of kids, but I was never officially his girlfriend. 

I ran into one of my Uncles with him in Burlington. I told my Uncle he was my boyfriend because I was afraid of what my dad would think if he heard I was out with a boy. At least if he was my boyfriend I wouldn’t be a slut? I wasn’t sure. I told Alex why I did this and he started laughing and said I was being “crazy” and “I should never do that to a man”. He then proceeded to tell his friends half of the story, that we met 6 months later than we did, and painted me as a total crazy woman who was trying to trick him into marrying me and settle down with a white picket fence.

After the first time I broke up with him, he became “friends” with two girls who were best friends. I asked him if there had ever been anything going on between him and either of these girls. “Those gothic anorexic chicks?!” he said sarcastically, and assured me they were just friends and told me I was being nosy and making something out of nothing. These girls were loud about who they were, had tattoos in all the show off spots, and told me my music taste was too mainstream and overall I was just boring. I could never get tattoos like them, my dad would tell me I was trying to get attention. He wouldn't say it out loud but he would think that I was an idiot and a slut for trying to get people to look at my body. I did not have nearly as cool a taste in music. I didn’t even feel like I had the time to listen to anything, let alone find cool things to listen to. I was blonde, quiet, pursuing higher education, and socially awkward. They were loud, fun girls with style who were able to get men to do anything for them. I felt like I couldn’t compete with these girls, they were everything I was not. 

One of the things that hurt the most while dating Alex, was his constant comparing my life to these girls. According to him, I “had it easy compared to these girls”. One of the girls never spoke to her father because of he was violent with her mother. I never argued this with Alex, because it was true. I never had to deal with trauma and fear of my dad in that sort of way. I also was primed my whole life to believe I “had it easy”. So, I was comfortable with Alex putting me down when I had a hard time with my father and mother, and stating I was ungrateful and didn’t know what actual hardship was like. “I want to show Stephanie that men can be good”. If I stated I was uncomfortable with this dynamic I was “crazy” because I wasn’t actually his girlfriend and didn’t have the right to “control him”, and “deny Stephanie what she needs, he is just trying to be a good guy”. It was a fucking emotional hamster wheel of guilt.

They didn’t care that I was a badass about to graduate from graduate school while working full time, they didn’t care that I had my own story and hardships that I worked incredibly hard to overcome. To them I was small, insignificant, and something they felt superior to.

Alex became obsessed with these girls, and I became obsessed with Alex, or Alex’s validation that I was lovable. Alex started drinking more and more, and eventually stopped working all together. He was staying with friends and me a lot. I eventually asked him where he lived. “With you!” he said while laughing. 

I was not thrilled. I imagined the next time I lived with someone it would be at least slightly romantic. I wouldn’t just be a convenient place for someone to save some money. I told him if he lived with me he had to pay half my rent, which he agreed to. I felt like I couldn't kick him out, because then he would be homeless, and we would probably stop dating. So I did what a good girl would do and let him sneakily move in with me. I felt incredibly used and low, but that didn't matter as that was normalcy of what our relationship.

We lived this way for a couple of months. He cooked for me and helped me keep my house clean. I had a problem with cluttering things. The counters were always covered with stuff I couldn’t seem to find a permanent place for, and things I wouldn’t touch for a month. He was also a really good cook. He could cook something that would last a few days that was cheap and delicious. I learned a lot about cooking from him.

He was constantly messing up in his remote job, sometimes it was because he was drunk. He thought the problem was that he needed a vacation. He went to Peru by himself. I was upset that he didn't ask if I wanted to go with him. He laughed at me and told me I was asking for too much, and if I went it wouldn’t be the vacation he was looking for. So I watched the show Weeds and drank by myself for two weeks. In one episode they found a cock ring. It occurred to me that I found a similarly sized “bracelet” at Alex’s old apartment. It was studded with metal studs, like punk rock fashion, so I knew it came from one of the girls he was friends with. It dawned on me. The thing that Alex told me was a “dog bracelet” was a cock ring, left by one of his “friends”. I was “crazy” to think there was anything going on and to not trust him around.

I emailed him and told him my discovery. He was concerned about who would pick him up from the airport. With a broken heart, I picked him up. I stayed in his childhood home while he kept trying to have sex with me. I pretended to fall asleep. “Maybe that bracelet was left from when we did a bunch of BDSM stuff” he said in a last ditch effort to engage with me. My eyes opened wide and I screamed that he needed to leave the room. I left the next morning, he was crying and said he shouldn’t have lied when I asked him.

I had had it with Alex and asked him to pick up his stuff and never come to my apartment again. He did so. A neighbor of mine saw him leaving and said to me later after I told her what happened over a cigarette.  “He seemed really nice,” she stated, perplexed. Like it was impossible he was a bad partner who needed to be broken up with, because she met him once and he was nice to her. It baffles me how people believe that just because someone has charisma it means they’re a good person.

I wrapped up my internship, and didn’t have a job lined up. So I thought it would be safest to move back to Burlington where I had social life and a job available through my current employer. I started looking for a place to live there. The last couple of months were peaceful, I loved that apartment.