We were up before our alarm, despite the fact that we had only gone to bed four hours prior. We woke up feeling ready to take on the day, and Fuck Face, though our eyes stung and our head pounded.
We applied makeup with diligence, like war paint. We dressed in one of our power outfit: a satiny, emerald coloured, fitted button up blouse and our Guess jeans that make our ass look fantastic. We accessorize with understated shiny graphite tinted jewelry and a large beautiful ring on our middle finger. We packed our brown open toe sling backs with the reptile skin texture, to make us that much taller; our nearly six foot stature towers over his 5' 6"'s when we wear flats, this was going to give us a good nine inches of height over his.
We walk into work, hours before Fuck Face arrives and the girl who works for us says "You look fierce!" We know we do. We're feeling awesome and giddy. We deserve to stand up for ourself finally.
We don't know what information he has, if he has read our Twitter timeline from the night before, which he probably had. If he had received the comments from us sent through The Other Girls deactivated account. Spooky getting messages from a "dead" girls account, that's all we could think. Especially comments attached to messages you though were no longer in existence.
He get's into work and encounters us in an open work area. He looks at us and we stare, dead pan, at his face. He seems amused at first. He leaves the area and goes to his office.
Ten minutes later we go to his door to discuss something work related we needed from him. Our first one-on-one time since parting ways on the corner the night before.
"When did you get those shoes" he said as he sat in his chair messing with his shoe.
"Had them for a long time" We say, emotionless, glaring at him.
He turns to his file cabinet. "I never said you weren't a threat", he said going through some papers in the cabinet, "obviously given the situation you would be a threat" he says as he looks at us.
"It's not really the point is it" we say coolly, maintaining the look in our eyes.
We walk to another room to gather some items we need and he says "I'd be a shame if this turned out bad because of a miscommunication".
Clearly he did not get that this was a "miscommunication". Given that we had responded to several of the old Facebook messages from The Other Girls deactivated account, he knew the type of material we had at our disposal, so now he was trying to backpedal.
"Not the point, this isn't about me not being a threat." we grab our final item and walk to our office.
We see him over the next couple of hours around the building and each time we shoot him looks, not looks of anger, but disgusted looks mean to say "You are a piece of shit and you better watch yourself". Every time he talks to us we are dismissive, even in the presence of Important Boss.
We get the impression that he is treating this like any other "spat" we have had over the last months and that he thinks eventually one of us who is not me will emerge and all will be well again. He is sorely wrong. And he has never met me in the flesh.
We sent him private messages posted to our Facebook wall; we tweeted things knowing he'd be watching. Really, how could he not be?
He remained very unapologetic in appearance,so we sent him "The File". The file contained roughly 103 snapshots of Facebook correspondence from as far back as November of 2010, just some of the highlights of the progression of our affair.
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We helped him download a .rar reader so he could open the file. He'd sat in his office and would get up periodically every so often and walk down the hall past our office door; we could see him thinking hard. his brow furrowed, his face set tight.
Not long after he has read them he walks into our office, head half hanging. he stands at our desk and takes a breath, and sighs deeply. He looks us in the eye, and with we are sure what is the most pleasing look he can form, says "Please don't ruin my life."
We stare at him. Silence. In our head we are talking about him, we are analyzing everything, we are disagreeing, there is resolve being chipped away. We love this man. We will never say differently. That moment, the look, those words...his aura...our internal response. That is something we will never forget. The We had a feeling of bittersweet power, like never before.
He does most of the talking. We listen. he deserves to plea his case, after all, we take some responsibility in this, albeit very little given we have been honest from day one - we told him when we were staring to have feelings, we tried to end it more than once to protect ourselves, but our love and desire for our friend was much too strong.
He knows that we have every right to be doing what we are doing, he acknowledges it. He takes the blame. He apologizes for hurting us, for hurting his wife.
"I suppose I should just tell her", he says, as he looks away from us, towards the floor.
We agree that he probably should. It'd be better coming from him than us, that is what we are thinking.
He tells us all sorts of things. Things about how he is sorry. That he doesn't want to lose his wife, that he loves her and it's not the lifestyle that he loves.
"You just don't want to lose your wife and your job" we say, possibly not in that exact way.
"I can get another job, he says. I can't say the same about [wife]." he looks sad as he says this.
He tells us how he is disappointed to be losing our friendship, his drinking partner. He tells us all the wonderful things about us, that we are great in bed (hard to say 'no' to, we suppose), and great company, and he finds us interesting; but makes sure to remind us, as he has before, that he does not love us. He has wonderful things to say about us and always has - it's why we had been confused for so long. He does this more than once throughout the conversation, comments on all of our wonderful characteristics, our sense of humour, our wonderful bitterness, our ability to stand up for ourself; that even before we were friends, and simply co-workers he admired that we were always, but again ends it with, "I don't love you though".
"Yes, you have told us that plenty of times. You don't need to keep reminding us" we say. It hurt the first time, each time he says it it still hurts, but less and less. We never expected him to love us, we didn't want his love in return, we just wanted him.
"I slept like crap last night, I felt bad" he says.
"Was that before or after you read the Facebook messages" we retort. We're still not buying any of his shit. Inside us though, someone is. We're trying to suffocate her. They only call me out this much when they are a complete disaster; they are all weak. They have too many feelings and emotions for this man.
"I felt bad when we parted ways on the sidewalk" he says.
We have no idea what to believe. We've seen him lie before and this does not look like him lying. We've seen him lie so much, not to us, but in general, that we still can't figure out how his wife can't tell he has been having an affair for 5 months; not including two months of going out for drinks and flirting before the sex even started.
It was not all about the sex for either of us. That's the hardest thing to deal with. Despite what people may think, we were legitimate friends, much of our time had been spent drinking and talking about philosophy, art, social media, everything; taking walks while we helped him with an art project he is undertaking; we went to a couple art galleries, and once we went to smoke cigars with him in a local cigar shop.
"You know the hardest part?" we say, tears springing to our eyes as we finger the top of our laptop screen, "We like you, we liked spending time with you and now we've lost that too; you were our drinking partner and one of our only friends". We look at him, "you suck."
He agrees and says that that is one of the things he is also sorry for. He knows he has hurt us.
"I enjoy listening to you, I enjoy talking with you about your writing, and stuff you've been doing. I like listening to you tell me about Twitter, even though I'm probably never going to understand it." We know this is all true. He wouldn't spend time with us otherwise. He goes on to tell us all the things he enjoys about us. He says we're a "great lady." Lady? Spreading it on a little thick, aren't you, Fuck Face, is what comes to mind. We see pain in his face.
"I've hurt two great people" he says, referring to his wife and us. "I was wrong to give you a negative image of her, I betrayed her in so many ways, and that is one of them. I betrayed you both. You may have liked her if I hadn't mislead you".
He is remorseful, or some might say, is doing a good job of portraying remorse. We know though, that had we not put him in this corner, he would not be saying the things he is saying, not taking the actions he is thinking of taking. If he is thinking anything at all other than a way to dig himself out of this shit pile he has created for himself.
At least he is taking us seriously, is the main theme of messages in the head at this point; mixed with sadness.
"Do you want to know why I did it" he asks, peeking down the hall to make sure Important Boss has not snuck up on us; Important Boss is good at that.
Of course we do. We want to know everything we can. We just want to listen to his voice too. Our heart is breaking inside.
The things he says to us, are legitimate and reasonable reasons/excuses; but not good ones, not from a man who loves his wife. His reasons have a lot to do with feeling emasculated (a term that everything he said can be boiled down to); to the lack of feeling power. Nothing is his - all the money is hers. She has a high paying job and comes from a family of money. He has nothing to call his own, and makes what he thinks is a low wage. He explains these things and we know, for the first time, he is being as honest and open with us as he's ever been. These are hard things for a man to say, to anyone. He is trying to save his life.
"Perhaps I should have talked to her about this long ago" he says, his eyes look to the ground. He has been doing a good job of maintaining eye contact with us overall, as we stare at him with our laser eyes. Considering they are soon to celebrate their 9 year anniversary, and this is probably not a new issue, we think that yes, he should probably have tried open communication with this wife, before resorting to an affair.
He has to go take care of some work business, as he leaves he turns at the door and apologizes again.
Later he and Important Boss come back to the office to give us a ride home because the weather was rather poor. As we are leaving we send him a Facebook message and five hours later we send him a second one posted on our wall so that only he can read it:
We know he won't get the messages until he is home. As we get out of the front seat of the work vehicle and he moves to take our place we say goodbye to important boss, turn to him and in a steely cold voice say, "You have a good weekend, {Fuck Face]"
"I hope so" he says as he gets into the front seat.
As we walk toward our building we think: fuck you for hoping your evening isn't anything less than excruciating, you should be worrying so much you get an ulcer.
Later Fabulous People come over for our regular Thursday night dinner and chat. Just as they are leaving we log in to our Facebook account, and we have received a response from him in regards to our messages from earlier that day:
"I hope so" he says as he gets into the front seat.
As we walk toward our building we think: fuck you for hoping your evening isn't anything less than excruciating, you should be worrying so much you get an ulcer.
Later Fabulous People come over for our regular Thursday night dinner and chat. Just as they are leaving we log in to our Facebook account, and we have received a response from him in regards to our messages from earlier that day:
"I'd love to respond to this, but I'm too busy apartment and job hunting right now."We gasp. We stare at the screen. We don't know what to think. We are thinking many things. We are feeling many things. The many of us are conflicted in every direction.
Fabulous People tell us to go Twitter and find some of the woman we usually mention in conversation with her, to see what they think about this situation, and as they leave we stare at the screen, we try to assemble a support group of woman on Twitter who we trust.
We don't know how to interpret this message, it feels very obscure. Is he doing that in anticipation of the outcome when he tells her, and stating it in such a way to illicit a feeling from us; or has he told her and now she has kicked him out? And why is he looking for a job? Is he lying? Doe she know it's us? He's lying. Maybe he's not lying. We wonder how he is doing. Who cares how he is? We are concerned for him. We feel regret. We don't feel regret. Should we look for a new job? We are too many having too many conflicting feelings, everybody is whispering.
The whole time we are feeling...odd...very odd...out of sorts. We go on Twitter and we don't know what to do. We are stunned into a void of...so much whispering...we don't know.
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Tomorrows post will be about what exactly that message meant, how our Friday went when we confronted him about it...until we sat down to write this entry, with a bottle of wine...and a whole lot on our mind, and for the first time an inability to assemble it into anything coherent to explain in written word about how we are feeling.
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For the month of May, Mental Health Awareness Month, we will be posting this at he bottom of each of our entries, to help provide additional information about us, and about Dissociative Identiry Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder.
10 Things You Should Know About US That MIGHT Surprise YOU:
- We used to be a Baptist missionary (yeah, can you fucking believe that shit?!) [we are NOT religious]
- We were once married (didn’t last long) [one of our stories talks about him]
- We have had nearly 30 physical addresses in 30 years, mostly as an adult (nothing could contain us in the early days) [we actually own a house, but choose not to live in it]
- We’ve lived in 2 countries: 1 province and 6-7 different states (running much)
- We have lost 120 pounds since the age of 24 (100 of it when we were 24) [and it's close to 140 pounds now)
- We have a full time job (well, now it's 32 hours a week - but they actually let us work around the other humans!) [it get's harder everyday, and this is the longest we've ever had a single job since we were 17. We've been there almost a year]
- We deal with social anxiety type symptoms every day (and these days we choose not to leave home much, but for going to work) [there are about three people we feel comfortable with being in public with and sometimes we have to be out there alone]
- We have multiple “mental illness” diagnoses (doesn't everybody?) [p.s. all misdiagnosed]
- We have two beautiful cats, who piss us off every day (but they are special, because they put up with us) [though one of us hates them beyond belief]
- We have struggled to survive, over and over, defeating the odds thrown against us (read our stories) [seriously, how are we not dead yet?]
We've copied the stories written here that are specifically about our past (mostly abuse) and moved them to our other blog, called:
Addressing The Issue of Frank: The Origins, History and Life Story of Frank, from "Just Call Me Frank: One Womans Endeavour At Being Frank"
(this blog also contains our artwork/photography - the following links will take you to that blog)
Some of our writing on this blog we like to promote, these are those entries since mid-January 2011. There are bits of writing in this blog that we do not actually promote due to embarrassment over things that some have written - they are here for our own tracking - they are angry, mean, scary things. If you feel like it you can find them on your own. Here are the highlights of what we have written so far this year:
The Mental Health Entries:
Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder
Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder
- Mental Health Awareness Month: Our Introduction
- We Chat With The Father About DID (this post contains information on what DID is)
- Frank Gets Candid (We talk about Catherine, one of our alters)
- **We Freak Out** (this was a very important day, the day we met Marisa, recoverer of DID)
- We Are Fragments
- We / We Get Random / We Have Questions
- Marisa Answers Our Questions
- Frank Gets Candid, About Memories...and Bethany (we talk about one of our alters)
- Frank Lets You Know Bitch (me!) (Bethany got to write her very own entry about herself)
- A Note From Frank, and ONLY Frank (actually not written by Frank)
- Standby and The Death of the Other Girl: Part 1 of 3 (we start talking about the death of one of our alters)
- Our Ears May Be Burning (we talk about what people we recently knew might be saying over Easter)
- We Have Nothing To Lose (Cassandra talk about the death of a mentally ill "friend")
- We Just Need A Good Map (Mental Health Awareness Month Post - Frank talks about DID mapping)
- We Don't Do A Blog Post (we talk a little about mapping, Bethany, unicorns & stuff)
- We Discuss Three Mis-Diagnosed Mental Illnesses
Health:
- When Anxiety Attacks
- Franks/Our 100 Pound Weight Loss Story
- Collision: The Other Girls/Our Terrible Car Accident
- Stress and Expediential Weight Loss
- New Pain and Old Fear
Relationships/Friendships:
- Relationships, Frank...and Love
- A Mistress Without Cutlery
- Fuck Face: Who He Is
- Our First Girlfriend
- The First Boy We Liked, That Liked Us Back
- What Become Of The Broken Hearted
- The "Death" of Standby and the "Birth" of a Villain
- To A Human, If Indeed That Is What You Are (1 of 3)
- The "Death" of Standby and the "Birth" of a Villain (2 of 3)
- Standby: The Final Chapter (3 of 3)
- Standby and The Death of the Other Girl: Part 1 of 3 (to be continued)
- An Ass-Face Comes A Texting
- We Go To University, We Take A Lover
- Our Ears May Be Burning
- We Have Nothing To Lose
- Why Most Of Us Dislike Our Mother
- The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 1
- The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 2
Life:
- All In a Days Work
- All In a Days Work II
- Another Day, Another Dollar; Fuck Our Life
- Please Don't Let Us Be Misunderstood
- All We Have Is Hope
- Cooking With Frank
- A Distraction, In The Form of The Jeans
- Seriously...And @NickSilly Answers Some Questions
- We Get A Guest Blogger - Kinky Sex!
Opinion:
- Religion, You Say? We Have A View On That
- Growth and Change; An Artist Standpoint
- Birds of A Feather, on Twitter, CAN Flock Together
- For Us, It's All About Team Awesome...and Twitter
- Reading We Recommend: Casey Hannan
- Hell Ride: A Film Review
Art/Poetry:
- Evil of Three: A Painting
- Saviour: A Painting
- Deadly Catch: A Painting
- Pretty Things: A Poem
- Erase This Poem
- Envisage of We: A Poem
Humour/Random Fun:
If you have any questions for us we are very open and will answer to our best ability - this is totally the month to ask us questions. You can either ask us on Twitter, in the comment section of a blog entry here, or e-mail us at justcallmefrank2010 (at) gmail.com.
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Resources for You - facts, figures and personal stories of other people can be found on these sites:
World Health Organization - Mental Health: http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/mental-health
World Psychiatric Association: http://www.wpanet.org
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