Fool of Me For Shadows: #AMuseDWeasel #20134102

Today’s soundtrack begins with “Latch”, by Sam Smith.  The acoustic version. 

It was January 2013.  I was approaching my 34^th birthday and at some point, I had started sharing eye contact with someone who I saw twice a month at my moonlighting-gig.  We had innocently started inboxing a few months prior because I had some hauling that needed assistance and he was someone who did that….hauling. 

We had been sharing each other’s space for nearly a year by the time my birthday came around. We ‘worked’ together….For the longest time, I could NOT remember his name.  So I never gave him eye contact. I never spoke or looked at him much because I couldn’t remember who the hell he was.  But something about turning 34 changed that.  I was feeling myself in the beginning of 2013.  I was genuinely seeing the optimism in my life, the reasons to be optimistic and I was happy.  Like, I had found some hint of internal joy that seemed relentless.   I felt beautiful, I felt awesome, I felt like a woman of positivity who sought to change people for the better with the words she spoke and from that, I had no reason to NOT feel like what I wanted couldn’t be had……see, I had been in a relationship for seven years, no ring.  Foolish.  When I finally asked for a small ring from tiffany’s that had their NY address (and thus said New York City around the ring) for my bday, I ended up with shoe….a tape dispenser shoe that cost ten dollars from Meijer’s that I could have expensed at work any of the other times I saw it….it wasn’t even the fucking shoe I wanted. So I went out and bought my own fucking ring and put in on my finger and strut my big booty ass out of Tiffany’s feeling like a boss and never looked back…..by the time it got to me and #MuseWeasel, I was confident in a non-emasculating way.  I would later learn, not from his admission but from my perception, that I emasculated him quite a bit, by accident.

It sparked from an inbox that said “ how many licks do you want for your birthday”

……in that moment, I remembered his name. His dimples.

His smile. His build. I remembered him…..not because he inboxed me a lick request. Lol. ….but because we had already been very lightweight flirting for a while, but I didn’t really take it seriously.  January came and went and after my birthday, our contact grew from here and there, to quite a bit.  Then came the night I celebrated my birthday amongst  public friends, associates and strangers…..and I flirted….heavily….with him…in public.  I had set my dial on him. I was confident in me; in who I was, how I looked, what I wanted and what a blessing it was to be offered a piece of me in someone’s life.  And I wanted him.  So I went after him.

#MistakeNumberOne: Women don’t chase. If he doesn’t pursue you, he’s not interested.

By March, both Justin Timberlake and Fantasia had released new CDs.  Justin’s spoke of love requited and Fantasia’s spoke of unrequited love, the potential for regret and loss.  Two opposites that were heavily played by me, daily.  I vibed to those cd’s sooooo hard.  They served as the soundtrack to ‘us’.  It’s interesting now, because I can hardly stand to listen to either CD.

This morning, I put Fantasia’s CD in the player.  

It seems as though I used Justin’s music to project what I would ultimately want from a man who I initially only wanted to be ‘cool’ with.   And Fantasia’s cd, well that was the ultimate Foreshadowing of what was to come.

_ Side Effects of You:  That’s the title of her cd.  …and it has a song to match.  Listening to it then, I liked it, but I wasn’t suffering….i was excited….like she spoke of on one of her other songs, “In Deep”. ….she spoke about wanting to go ‘in deep’ with her muse.   In “End of Me’, her chorus seems eerie to think back to:

“You make me wanna love you

Even though this love might be the end of me

I can’t help but love you

This love is no good for me, could be the end of me.

And I can’t help but, love,

Love

Love you.”

It’s scary to even type that, knowing I listened to this as I would drive to our place of meeting, excited and ready to love this person who had already told me “you don’t want these problems”……

It’s scary to know that I still put my heart out there on a clothes line and waited for him to blow me dry but all that ended up happening was me becoming a sacrifice for his next relationship.  I wanted him.  The more we talked, the more I wanted him.  We would spend hours on the phone talking about the whatevers of the world.  We clicked…..we clicked in a way I had not ever clicked with anyone else before……we had the most random of things in common and where he was low, I was high and vice versa.  He was great at geometry, but not algebra. I was great at Algebra, but not geometry.  The more time that passed, the more it seemed like he was not supposed to be a fleeting individual that was here merely to leave footprints across me.  I thought more and more that WE were good friends……becoming better and both open to the possibility of whatever.  That’s all I wanted.  I wanted to be open to the possibility.  I knew there was a chance that I was wrong, but I was willing to take that chance…..’even though this love might be the end of me” , I was still willing to just see how good of a fit we were for each other.

I would play “Lose to Win” sometimes and think of the times prior to meeting this man that I was ‘losing’, and how he was my win…..or at least had great potential to be. I liked his personality. I liked that we talked a lot, on the phone…..not texting, actually TALKING.  That he would actually call me……that he would return calls when he said he was.  And then he took to texting me early in the morning when I was getting ready for work.  Sometimes he would call in the mornings just to say hello….i couldn’t remember the last time someone had done that…clearly I was on his mind.

We would spend HOURS sitting in the car talking……we clicked sooooo good.   It made me so excited.

By the time summer rolled around, we had engaged in a very spontaneous situation that had me driving home biting my lip in erotic confusion…..did we just do that? 

Did that just happen ???

 Did I like that shit ?

It was public.

It was night time, but it was very public.  Cars drove past us as we cemented our bodies together temporarily in a heated moment of giggling and taking things too far……we were on the parking lot.  We were wide open.

We were so reckless.

I was so reckless……and from the moment I allowed his entry into my interior in such a way, I lost everything.  I took him in, as he naturally was, like a fool…dangerous shit in broad parking lot…and he instantly became my Tunnel Vision.

“ have you ever

Needed someone so bad

But he aint willing to make it last

Sometimes you gotta lose, to win again”   ~Fantasia

I will be honest here….i don’t know where to take this story in particular. I don’t know how to explain it….who to talk about first or how. …I don’t know how to get to New Years Day 2014, twitter, Instagram, BAE and Filler Flowers....yeah, believe me, this story is a complication that had me one step away from a Plea Deal, seriously. ....there were nights i would lie in bed, awake, in PLOT MODE...i think having a roomie at the time saved me from doing the most because her bedroom was downstairs....there were many nights that i almost left the house at 1 am.  I don't know how to get to that point....it means having to relive it ALL.  ...but if all i do is relive that situation daily, surely by way of blogging, i won't succumb to old emotions ....i don’t know how to get to the five hundred dollars that I shelled out in four months in subconscious attempts to buy my way into his heart. which was something I had NEVER done....i have bought awesome gifts and helped out w/a twenty before, but I've NEVER done the most like i did here....was i desperate ?  Was i truly in a place of lowered self esteem to allow this shit to happen???…I don’t know how to explain how quickly I lost the me I started off as. …I don’t know how to explain the breakdown of communication….i don’t even know how to explain the love.  I don’t know how to accept how long I knew he wasn’t into me and still I bought his 7-11 lies like they were on sale for BOGO.

I don’t know where it came from.

I will say this: I don’t believe he DESERVED my love. But oh boy, I tried everything just shy of gluing my love to the walls in his house to get it to him. …..there were things he would say or do that made me feel like he was welcoming ME, specifically ME, into his life on a different plain than anyone else.  But that was just the way I view the world, not the way he operated in it.  The things he was doing were always for HIM…..they never had anything to do with me.  Kissing me in front of his son was not to say “You are a special lady’ ….and I should have never taken it that way.  It was to say thank you for the money that he was being handed. 

The times he would manicure my yard to perfection and actually gave me some appreciation for having THE best looking yard on the block was not because I was someone special.  IT was because he has a true passion for yard work and wants his own demonstration doing just that. He wants a lawn care service.  My yard was merely practice.  He had never cut a hill like that before and he was learning precisely how to approach it, treat it and get it perfected with the most ease as possible. He was practicing so that he would get better with straight lines and speedy time.  He was using my yard as a sacrifice for the rest of his lawn care services he offered to others……..

He wasn’t hooking his ‘baby ‘ up.  He was preparing himself for the next yard he was going to play in. And what I didn’t know until I had allowed myself to be made a fool of, was he was ALREADY in that yard the whole time.

And he had put that yard inside of my mouth. 

Two CDS….two different soundtracks to us. We had a beginning and an end.  And I was playing them both at the same time, not realizing I was living in what would become shadows.  I was playing songs that were foreshadowing what was to come……yes, I was a fool for him….

But I was a wayyyyyy  bigger fool for those shadows Justin Timberlake sang to me. I believed in our Mirrors. ….but I would only end up with the Side Effects of Him.

“Nobody told me,

Nobody told me, the side effects of you.” 

*cue Meshell NDgeocello's Fool of Me* 

#AmusedBy #UsedBy #MuseWeasel #AMuseDNumber #20134102