Head Over Heels: Falling in Love with Mr. X
- Holly
- Jun 9, 2024
- 9 min read
In early 2018, I had an emergency appendectomy. My aunt and uncle, luckily retired, drove up and took care of me once I was discharged. It was so nice to have someone to care for me. I had grown so accustomed to living alone and without parents that I had forgotten what it was like. I wasn't able to do much, but we still had fun visiting, binge-watching shows, and going through old family photos. Once I had recovered enough to start physical activity again, I began a landscaping project in my backyard. A friend had come over and started digging a ditch for a French drain while I was still recovering. I picked up where they left off and completed the 25-foot ditch, then dug out and leveled a small section of the yard. It took about three weeks, working a couple of hours at a time, but it got me into shape fast. I was at a standstill with the project as I needed to save for the gravel, but I started more seriously planning the layout and found some beautiful Japanese Maples to plat once finished. I didn't let the physical momentum die and started working out every day. I adopted a piano from my aunt, one I'd taken lessons on as a child. I hadn't played since then but planned to start. To fit the piano in my living room I had to sell my beautiful sofa and opt for something smaller. This led to me refinishing some of my furnitureI, which I then intended to use my skills to start flipping furniture - something I'd always been interested in. I was active and doing things I loved. By May, I was in the best shape of my life, both physically and mentally. I felt great, I felt vibrant.
Falling for Mr. X was easy. In early May, he reached out to me on Facebook Messenger. We hadn't spoken since our school days but followed each other on social media. I had noticed that in the past few years he had been sharing a lot of things regarding yoga, crystal healing, meditation, and enlightenment. I found this ironic since I had grown up as a little hippie kid and he had broken my heart in middle school because of that, as he was going to become a hick. It was nice, though, to see that he had outgrown those days and ways of thinking. I'd also recently unpacked my mom's crystals and put them out on display after having them tucked away for years, embracing that side of myself again. I was hesitant at first, but it felt like a sign, perhaps something had aligned just right, so I responded. We started chatting about where life had taken us; he admired that I had taken on projects like installing a French drain on my own and had kept up my arts and crafts interests. When I told him about my passion for social dance (swing, salsa, ballroom), he said he had always wanted to learn. He told me he was living in the next county over, working in construction management for an overhead door company. He was renting a room from a friend and saving to buy his first house in the next year or two, and dreamed of starting his own overhead door company.
After a few weeks, Mr. X asked if I wanted to meet in person. At this point, I was so impressed by the ease of our conversations that I agreed immediately. He drove an hour and a half to come take me to lunch. We met at a local eatery and while I was nervous, I also found myself excited in a way I hadn't felt before. I don't remember there being more than a few minutes of awkwardness at the beginning of our date. I ordered a glass of wine with lunch and he had a beer - he told me later that he had stopped drinking but ordered a beer to quell his nerves. Our conversations came with ease and we soon found that we had been talking for three hours. While we needed to leave the restaurant, we didn't want the date to end. We decided to go for a hike on one of the local trails, dropping my car off at my house on the way. We opted for a trail that followed a brook in the redwoods before becoming more vigorous. We spent a couple of hours exploring the trail, our hands naturally found each other's, and on the way back, he pulled me into our second first kiss. I immediately felt a recognition; it felt like coming home, like this is what I'd been waiting for, and this man was who I was meant to be with. I didn't want to say any of this to him, in fear it would be too much. After our hike, we still didn't want the day to end and drove back to my house to watch a movie before he left to drive the hour and a half back home.
After our first date we starting texting eachother throughout the day and talking on the phone almost every evening. He continued to drive up to see me on the weekends. We'd pick new hiking trails to explore or go to the river, then come back to town and have dinner. A few weeks later I drove down to visit him. At his suggestion we drove to the coast and explored beaches and small towns, and took a trail out to a rock where woolly mammoth had rubbed the surface smooth centuries ago. I was impressed that he could already pick an outing that I would love and would leave me feeling such awe and wonder. Our conversations continued to flow easily and that night he made me feel comfortable being my authentic self around him. That is something I had never felt before in a relationship - there were always parts of me that I kept tucked away. It was liberating to just be me and and feel loved for it. It was this visit that he confessed that he'd been wanting to reconnect with me for a long time but had not had the courage to reach out earlier. He told me he'd fallen in love me and wanted to be transparent. I knew he'd been married in his early twenties and had a daughter but he hadn't talked about her yet and I didn't know she was living with his parents. Because he knew our relationship was becoming serious he said he wanted to tell me the full story. He'd been young and was enlisted in the military when they had her, and the marriage ended shortly after. When his daughter was 18 months old she'd been taken from her mother by CPS. At the time he was stationed in Japan and said he'd done soemthing intentionally to be discharged so that he could come back to the states and go to court to get custody. When he did, his parents, knowing he was still a wild child, offered to take guardianship and co-raise her with him. He'd agreed and signed over guardianship and they'd raised her together for a few years. He started dating a girl he'd known in high school, and his parents warned him that she was a pill popper. He didn't listen, and when they turned out to be right, he said he told her to not take pills in front of him because he was afraid he would want to try them. He did eventually anyway and became addicated. He said the releationship didn't last long and that once it ended he was able to get clean but had struggle on and off with drug use afterward. He said that currently he'd been sober for more than five years and was confident he would never relapse. He'd done the work, gone through programs and done years of therapy and come out the other side of addiction in better physical and mental health than he'd ever had. He'd worked his way up in life, had helped his company build their business from the ground up, and was consistently in his daughter's life. He was teared up and emotional when talking about how much he had missed and the regret he felt over his past.
This was a lot of information to take in, and while it was not a total surprise, it was still concerning. I could see that he truly regretted his past mistakes and was trying to live a life that made up for them. His awareness of his actions and the pain he'd caused his family were obvious. I have always believed in redemption so I didn't want to judge him solely from his past. He appeared to be somone who felt genuine awareness and remorse over their actions, and who wasn't afraid to show his emotions. We all make mistakes, the important thing is that we learn from them, and it appeared in his case that he had. When I expressed this to him, and told him I had also fallen in love with him and still wanted to continue seeing him, he cried. He said he'd felt guilty not telling me this earlier but had been so nervous that I'd walk away that he hadn't built up the courage before that day.
Throughout the first month of dating, he started sending me songs that he heard that made him think of me. The more recent ones being, "What Ifs," by Kane Brown, and, "H.O.L.Y.," by Florida Georgia Line - who was headlining a local country music festival. When we discovered this, we decided last minute to get tickets for that night. We got drinks, met up with some of his friends, and made our way as close to the stage as possible. The night was beautiful; it was warm enough to not need a jacket, and we held each other and danced. Leaving out any footwork, I showed him a few turns he could easily lead, and he again brought up his desire to take dance lessons. When the show ended, we agreed to go have a last drink with his friends at a local dive bar. We all found a table, and he and a friend went to get the drinks. I was sitting next to another friend, and we started up a conversation. I'd noticed everyone trying to cheer him up, and a few minutes into the conversation, he said he'd just had his heart broken, he was pretty drunk, and started to cry. I set my hand on his knee and told him he seemed like a genuinely nice guy and would find someone else who would appreciate him. Shortly after, Mr. X appeared, clearly agitated and ready to go. I didn't know what had happened, and he didn't want to talk about it other than saying the guys were all drunk and he didn't want to be around them. This was my first encounter with his negative energy and how, similar to his infectious positive energy, it had the power to change the atmosphere of a room. When we got back to his place, we relaxed, and he seemed to level out. By the morning, everything was fine, and he said he just didn't like being sober around his drunk friends and had overreacted. He was embarrassed and apologized for causing stress in our otherwise perfect night. Although I agreed he overreacted, I was impressed by his awareness of his behavior and subsequent apology. I had never dated someone who was so keenly aware of their faults and so readily wanted to continue to grow and improve. I attributed this to the years of therapy Mr. X had undergone and his desire for continued awareness. This made me fall for him even more, soon I would be head over heels.
Looking back, this should have been a red flag: how easily agitated he was, and how his energy could shift the atmosphere of a room. Being a naturally positive person that is not what I focused on, I saw only the good - the awareness, the seemingly genuine regret, readily followed by an honest apology. It wasn't until the end of our marriage that I realized all of this was an act. A masterful manipulation learned from years of therapy. Instead of learning how to truly grow and better himself, he'd taken the skills and used them to imitate genuine emotion and awareness. I would be only one of his casualties.
If you can, please consider donating to my GoFundMe campaign titled 'Help Holly Recover from Financial Abuse and Avoid Bankruptcy'. If you're unable to donate, sharing the link below with your network would be greatly appreciated. I hope to raise funds to pay down the $100k+ debt left to me by Mr. X in order to alleviate some of my financial stress and focus on processing and healing from the trauma. I have always been fiercely independent and struggle to ask for help but I am overwhelmed and exhausted and truly need help with this financial burden.
Comments