We woke up with nothing but “Stabby” anger this morning, and started off the day cussing at the cats. We shuffled around the apartment trying to find an outfit to wear and settled on a halter neck tank top with red, black and white circles, and black leggings that flattered our body, opting to stay away from too much happy colour. It’s always better to look as good as possible when you’re attempting to ruin the man you love, the man who has eroded you to the point of exhaustion, heartache and desperation.
Today was very confusing for me, they, as in all of the rest of them in The head, are wearing down my defences. I had to let everyone inside be more front and center today, to help me recognize his tells, which is to say the cues they know to look for when Fuck Face is lying, or evading the truth. I do not have as much experience with him directly compared to the others.
We’ve stated before that we can read his lies; we have told Fuck Face that we know when he lies, as evidenced in this excerpt from April 16th, the day before we forced him to have drinks with us, after we had dumped him the last time, and to tell him we would no longer be sticking up for him at work because everyone can tell when he lies about things he does not complete, when he tries to act like it is some other reason, besides his own shitty managerial skills; and this had been making Us look bad.
“You are a terrible liar face to face (that's why we wanted you to say to our face that you don't really care about us - we don't believe you in writing)...people can see through you, [Fuck Face] - you are transparent - whether you realize it or not, you are a terrible liar in the face of others.
Maybe you are not used to perceptive people paying attention to you...we are not shocked by this concept. There is no way [Your Wife] is paying attention to you if she has not seen the changes in you that we, and others, have seen since you and "I" have started sleeping together and enjoying each others company. If she has not seen the changes, she must not care...because others see it - others who should care less than your wife.”
He came into work this morning wearing a very casual outfit, something unusual for him. He and us joke about how it looks like a Charlie Sheen shirt, (something Important Boss, who stopped in, also comments on) he thinks it slightly mortifying and points out it’s finer qualities, that it is silk; he has us feel the shirt.
We ask how his night was.
“We [his wife and himself] spent the evening at her parents’ house” he says and tells us how she took him there to have him explain the thing he has done, and why he had done it.
We don’t think this makes much sense, The Wife having him tell her parents this soon, or at all; if he is lying it is becoming too contrived, to elaborate, for a terrible liar such as himself, even at this point, to pull off.
He offers to remove a dirty plate and our dirty coffee mugs; we have quite a collection at the corner of our desk. We say yes. He offers to get us more coffee. Again, we say that is fine.
He starts picking up the items from the desk and begins to tell us more about his evening with her parents, but gets interrupted and has to run around the building and take care of other matters. When we encounter him around work for the next hour or so we glare at him and shoot him looks of disdain.
When he comes to talk to us there is no logical pattern to the things he says, in so that it is a smattering of details, with no order. He talks about things that had occurred over the weekend, how he spent time walking on their property, how he spent time writing about the reasons he had done the things he has done; words he has shared with her over the weekend. He asked her for some time to talk to her and she let him explain.
“I told her the things I had told you” he says, referencing the feeling of nothing being his, the feeling of being emasculated, of his foot being one step out the door because he realizes, just as we do, she doesn’t really need him for anything.
He starts to tell us, again, how she had asked if he loved us; we cut him off and tell him he doesn’t need to say that again. We know he doesn’t love us, he doesn’t need to keep twisting the knife, it will not help him in the end.
“Why would she have you tell her parents?” we ask “why is it any of their business?” We would never ask something like that; we would just tell them our self.
He explains because there is money involved, that is the reason. We don’t know how much of anything her parents have invested in them, as a couple. We do know that Her Father is also a lawyer, like herself.
Her father has asked what, if anything, he might try to get out of this, if it ends in divorce; there had been no prenuptial agreement signed. In short, The Wife had him tell her parents so that there were witnesses to his statement that he will not try to gain anything, should the marriage end.
“You wouldn’t get anything, she has grounds” we say quickly. He mentions sweat equity and that every pay check has gone to her.
Fuck Face says that he has told them he wants nothing but the few things that are his, that he has no moral grounds to ask, or want, for anything.
He discusses with us something we already know, that she does not need him financially for anything. We chime in that she also does not need him for any biological reason, seeing as they had never planned to have children. He agrees. We mention that perhaps she needs him as good farm-hand and that will be her reason for “keeping him”. The idea is not lost on him.
He has hope, because she is letting him stick around the property that this may be a good sign; or that she is doing it so he doesn’t do something else that is stupid. We tell him again, that she probably figures he is a good farm hand in the barn. We also think that she is a smart, that because she is a lawyer she has the ability to approach this with more rational and calculation, and having him there is inconsequential to her final decision.
‘If she loves you, she will take you back” we say matter-of-factly. We say it because we believe that that is how love works; that second chances exist for true love.
He begins to tell us more about what he told her on that Thursday night, what he had told her over the weekend; that he had been having the affair for a couple of months.
“Five, a few…not a couple” we interject.
He goes on to tell us more, about the hardest part not being just the anger, the same kind he sees in our face, he says, but the sadness in her eyes. He looks off wistfully toward the corner of our desk, and we see pain in his eyes as he remembers the sadness in hers. We experience a tiny bit of sadness for her, but then it is gone.
“I’m glad that you can recognize and feel something for someone’s sadness” we say to him coolly.
We mention that we know he had been allowed in the house last night, because he had responded to a work e-mail regarding the new employee that nobody appreciates.
“I go in the house for an hour; she goes out to check on the animals.” He says, “I am allowed to eat (frozen burritos) and shave; I shower in the stall in the barn.” He says that he being banished to the barn with the animals is not a metaphor lost on him. We snort inside our head that, finally, he is grasping metaphor.
He touches our shoulder and says he is sorry. He means it. We know he does. They tell me he means it. They, the rest of Us, feel that he is telling the truth.
“You can apologize all you want, but do you know what you are sorry for?” we say. Words are cheap if they are not backed by an understanding of why you are saying them.
He tells us why he is sorry, it is satisfactory. He understands he has hurt us, and that he should not have let it keep going even after the first day. That the days we told him we liked him, before we loved him, he should have ended it then. He says he should have used the intense flirting as a sign for himself, that he should have stood back and thought about why we was allowing it to happen; he should have analyzed the situation.
He cites us being “a babe” as one of the reasons why he made the choice. Later in the day he makes a comment about “some things you just can’t say ‘no’ to.”
“I’m not trying to butter you up” he says standing just at our door, after we had the good thirty minute conversation.
Before he leaves our office we tell him about sharing our pictures, what our face looks like, with a local girl recently. He does not get the significance, so we tell him that we will likely show more locals our face, it won’t take them long to figure out where we work. We tend to be very visible in our travels, as our path to the places we travel tend to be very concentrated.
“You’re the only one here at work who is married” we look at him, waiting for it to sink in. He realizes then that the entire story, regardless of what details he may have told her, may eventually reach her eyes or ears. We tell him one day we might write a book, our city is small; she will eventually know everything. He knows that people from our city read this blog.
The look on his face, standing just outside our office door both pains, and makes us laugh inside; it’s a Kodak moment, a look I hope to never forget, one the others hope to; like Friday morning when he walked into our office, and looked at us with the most heartbreaking look and asked us not to ruin his life. These looks we have witnessed make us feel powerful.
We know his expression is not a lie; he doesn’t want her to know the details about the affair, unless she asks. He knows there is months of reference and writing about him in this blog. He understands that at this point his life is going to be either shitty, or shittier, depending on what she chooses. The details of this blog will only make matters the shittiest, in his opinion.
In the late morning we watch a video with him in his office a clip on cats in tanks destroying an office building that has us both laughing. We are friends; we have a hard time not being so. His moods, our mood, alternate throughout the day between angst and friendliness; we laugh and talk, we “flirt” in that anytime either him or I say something that can be remotely be turned into a sexual innuendo, we both grin and/or giggle. There is no discomfort on our part – other than most of us desperately wanting him to be our friend again so we can sit on a patio outdoors in the sunshine, and talk with him, like old times.
The rest of the day is a bit rocky; we have an altercation with a customer at work over theft, so it immediately sets us on “stun.”
Girl Crush, an assistant we have on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, asks Fuck Face for a favour, attempting a sexy pout on her face to get her way, and he replies “How can I say no to a face like that”. We shoot him a look he intercepts, one that she sees but probably does not understand fully, despite the fact that we have shared with her that we are in love with a married man we cannot have. She also knows we only hang out with Fabulous People and Fuck Face. We have a lot of time to talk with her on Wednesdays.
He comments on our look as he walks out the door.
“Something about learning; and stabbing.” We say sarcastically to him, shooting him an evil and exasperated look.
“I’d imagine it’s mostly stabbing” he says wryly. He thinks he’s so damn adorable. He know we think it.
Later that day we spent time at his office door where we chat about a movie and the concept of art as a lie. He says the most honest thing regarding his view on art as a lie, stating that really, he says it mostly to be an ass, to be a shit. Finally he is admitting to his more of his pretensions and downfalls – we know he has always known he is pretentious, another thing he had admitted to in the last week and a half. We dare think he is becoming human.
While we stand at his door he plays with his wedding ring. This is a habit he had developed about the time we started our intense flirting back in November. In the past weeks he has played around with that wedding ring so much you’d think the thing spins off on its own half the time. When we go for drinks and when we are alone talking with him in his office is when he is most intense at fiddling with it. We’ve seen him pull it off his finger completely while talking with us.
He mentions wanting a drink, really, badly; a gin and tonic or white wine. We tell him that drinking yesterday on the patio of one of the pubs we had frequented with him was not as enjoyable with ourselves. He says he likes drinking by himself sometimes and we explain that it’s nice for us to not have to listen to only ourselves all the time, something we have to do far too much; that he is one of the few people we enjoy listening to talk, that can distract us, mostly, from the We; and that it sucks for us.
He says that it’s flattering for us to say that.
“Believe me” we say “we are not trying to flatter you. Just like any other time we have told you how we have felt. It’s not about flattery, it’s about us being honest and feeling the need to people what we feel, for some stupid reason.” We walk out of his office.
We have an uncomfortable finish to our day, he brings us back Orange Pellegrino from the coffee shop and we talk about the things that have been written about him. We direct him to the entry Fuck Face: Who He Is – he says he has not read it; we give him a brief description and send him the link.
Just for fun we decide we will read it, sometimes we decide not to read the older things that others of us have written about him.
We read the entry and we get upset and angry all over again. (about the content and how shoddily I think it was written)
As we walk out the door he asks if we are going drinking, we remind him it is Tuesday, the day we get our deep tissue massage. As we leave his office door we say, “I’d tell you to have a nice evening, but I’m not going to.”
He walk home and we feel an assortment of feelings; shitty, angry, upset, mean, confused & disgusted – about him…about the situation…about ourselves.
The bottom line is we believe him; however, it does not change how we feel about sending The Wife an apology letter/e-mail at some point; keeping in mind we have all the time in the world to make an apology.
We definitely don’t want to call her, so his mentioning that they are disconnecting the land line, and having cell phones because of the convenience, instead, something he himself does not have, is irrelevant to what we decide. We know where she works, we know her name – we also have her e-mail address already.
This will be our last entry regarding Fuck Face for a couple of days. We don’t know what she will decide. We have been given adequate information regarding what he has shared with her. We believe, for now, that he is being honest. Given that neither he, nor we, has alternative employment options at this point – lying to us would not be in his best interest. We will find out, and there will be hell to pay.
While there may not be another entry for awhile, you can guarantee there will be lots, and lots...and lots of Tweets. We do have to work with the fucker everyday after all.
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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
Relationships/Friendships:
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 t
