you guys want to hear a funny story? no? well, suck it up.
when i was a freshman in college i began dating a guy named troy*, or as i like to refer to him “the guy with short man syndrome”. troy was so great in the beginning. he was thoughtful, sweet, funny, daring and adventurous. he was all of the things that my last boyfriend was not. i would travel an hour and a half both ways just to hang out with him. when he decided to move to hueytown to be closer to work i was overjoyed! because i was only eighteen at the time we spent most of our time at his apartment watching movies and cooking dinners or going to his dad’s house in the country and riding horses. ahhh, we were happy.
about three months into the relationship i started to notice a change in his attitude. specifically, he acted like and told me that i was the stupidest person in the world. one day as we were driving back to birmingham from his dad’s house he went on a tirade about how i would never amount to anything, that i shouldn’t hope for any better work than a counter server at the waffle house, and that if i lost just a few pounds i would atleast be good enough for street work. he was screaming, i was crying, and i wanted to jump out of the car and run away. on another occassion he was pissed off about something trivial and threw an unopened can of soda at me, barely missing my face.
oh, but don’t get me wrong. it wasn’t all bad…he wanted to marry me. yep, that little shit wanted me to walk down the aisle with him and we could live in horrifying bliss for the rest of our lives.
around the ninth or tenth month of the relationship i had had enough. i broke it off the week before memorial day. on memorial day weekend alyce (armed with a baseball bat) and i went to troy’s apartment to get my stuff.
fast forward almost ten years later. i’m at this new job that i like very much. i notice that one of the girls here has pictures of horses on her desk and we start chatting about them. i realize that she has the same last name as troy so just out of pure curiosity i ask her if she knows him. yep, she’s his wife.
hiswife! peopleareyoulisteningbecauseihadanaxietyattackandhadtositdown. he has apparently told her something about me because she then says, “i have asked him not to come up here until i talk to you about it.” wait, are you telling me that there is even a slight chance that he could come waltzing in here and i will be unarmed? if he is here, who’s running hell?
i could act all cool and non-chalant about it but the simple fact is when i see him i will go into some sort of regression and completely freeze up. i won’t be cool and confident, instead i’ll more likely be some dribbling idiot.