I woke up this morning with these lyrics in my head. Which is weird, because while I immediately knew what artist, I wasn’t sure of the song. Clearly one I have heard a lot but the name (as most names) escapes me.
I had to look it up...Willow.
Now, I have listened to this song many times, but it wasn’t one of my conscious favorites. But I guess it spoke to me anyway. And now, this morning as the lyrics resound in my head, it shows me that which I am still working out, sorting through from the last debacle, the last over the top, destructive as fuck love affair I called a relationship.
I'm like the water when your ship rolled in that night
Rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife
This so describes me when I met him. I felt like I was in control. I wasn’t. I was rough and I thought I was the dangerous one, wrong again. He just cut through me and all my defenses like it was no effort at all.
And if it was an open-shut case
I never would've known from that look on your face
If this would have been a more typical love affair, I might have known what I was getting into...but he had guile and cunning right from the start. And I misread the clues.
Lost in your current like a priceless wine
I became lost in him, me and my value getting lost in his endless current of crazy.
The more that you say
The less I know
This is exactly my experience, the more I got to know him, the less I actually knew to be true. My reality altered and changed right before my eyes but I kept listening and so, therefore, my reality continued to change...and not in the good ways.
Wherever you stray
I follow
He strayed, A LOT! But I stayed with him, for two fucking years. Over and over and over again, he would stray in all the ways but I kept following him like an idiot.
I'm begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans
That's my man
And I just kept wanting him to choose me. Somehow all of his chaos and confusion was wanted by me. I kept allowing him in again and he would fuck up my life repeatedly and I fucking knew he would. And there was something I loved about that fact. Self destruction via a man...
Life was a willow and it bent right to your wind (oh)
Head on the pillow, I could feel you sneaking in
No matter how much he lied, manipulated, deceived and hurt me, I kept letting him back into my bed and life. Makes me so fucking sick now.
As if you were a mythical thing
Like you were a trophy or a champion ring
And there was one prize I'd cheat to win
Because regardless of anything else, I found value in him. I treated him like he was a trophy or a champion ring. And I would do whatever I had to, to keep him. And I did a lot of things I am not proud of. I became a woman that I did not respect or like.
The more that you say
The less I know
Wherever you stray
I follow
I'm begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans
That's my man
Over and over and over again. I allowed him to wreck my plans, my life, the lives of my children, my friendships, my career. He would roll in and spin the lie, or rather, he would allow me to create the fiction of us and he would just roll with it while I as always a true believer. Except, except I always knew, always fucking knew that there was something really wrong with the whole thing. I just couldn’t ever prove it...until I could.
You know that my train could take you home
Anywhere else is hollow
We could have had a good life if he would have been capable. If he would have just loved me back the way I loved him. Then we would have had a great life, instead of the hollow existence that he created with all his comings and goings, his lies, his disrespect, his cheating, manipulations and relapses.
I'm begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans
That's my man
My friends, my family, my kids all tried to tell me that he was ruining me. But I couldn’t break free. I just let him keep coming back and wrecking me.
Life was a willow and it bent right to your wind (oh)
They count me out time and time again
I broke up with him I think six times, I have lost count, and everyone would think “ok, this time, after this completely shit thing he just did, now she will quit him for good...” But I wouldn’t. He always came back and I always let him.
Life was a willow and it bent right to your wind (oh)
But I come back stronger than a 90's trend
Wait for the signal and I'll meet you after dark
Show me the places where the others gave you scars
And how he got me was this, each time I would leave and return the bond would be stronger FOR ME. And he would use his pain, his trauma and his grief to suck me back in. I would feel compelled to be something different to him, a healing force in his life, to love him like no one else ever had...but it was all just a fucking game to him. And I just have to say, someone who would use their abuse and loss as a tool to manipulate someone else, is perhaps the lowest form of low that I have ever known.
Now this is an open-shut case
Guess I should've known from the look on your face
Every bait and switch was a work of art
It seemed unclear but it never was. It was clear from the beginning that I was a tool who was in a master’s hands. His guile and cunning operating from the very beginning, designed to mold me into exactly what I became...his chump. The one always left holding the torch and the bag, while he faded in and out as he wished. No accountability, no commitments he couldn’t dodge. And I allowed it all because every time he promised love and delivered something so much less than love, it was so artfully created and beautiful, I believed it, I couldn’t help myself.
The more that you say
The less I know
Wherever you stray
I follow
I'm begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans
That's my man
And so it went, over and over and over again.
You know that my train could take you home
Anywhere else is hollow
I'm begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans
That's my man
The more that you say
The less I know
Wherever you stray
I follow
Begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans
That's my man
Nothing ever changed, the dynamic was always the same. Exactly the fucking same. And I fucking knew it. But still there was something so wonderful in being able to call him mine. Even though I am pretty sure he was never only mine. I know he spread it around. Begging me not to leave him as I drove him drunk and sick and vomiting to rehab for the millionth time. And just a few days later, he preyed upon some unsuspecting woman in rehab. Telling her she was the love of his life, while he was telling me the exact same thing. Using his trauma and mental health issues to play the two of us against each other. He would tell her “I am not doing well and need some space” and he would come see me. Then he would tell me the exact same thing so he could be with her. For four months this went on. And I didn’t have a fucking clue.
See always believed his pain. I always believed in his suffering. I always wanted him to get well and I did everything I possibly could to help that grow in him. I gave him money, I offered countless hours of emotional support, I listened, I believed. And fuck, it hurts to admit, I loved him. I loved someone who would knowingly, willingly and intentionally play two women off of each other for months. Using us both and caring for himself only.
You know that my train could take you home
Anywhere else is hollow
Begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans
That's my man
Hey, that's my man
That's my man
Yeah, that's my man
And I allowed him to wreck my life over and over and over again. Attempting always to prove up that which my inner self knew was likely true...there were others. I tried but I could never ever prove it. So I prayed about it, asked God to please give me concrete proof that all I suspected was true. But it never came...until one day it did.
She called me. The one that I didn’t know existed. The one he had mentioned in passing, weaving her into our story, but in some sort of extra character kind of way when in truth he was telling her she was the love of his life, he was making plans to move in with her, he was attempting to start a life with someone while I was over here waiting to restart our life. The life I had been working so hard towards for the last two years. The one that I waited patiently for. The one that I still believed in.
Every bait and switch was a work of art
That's my man
Hey, that's my man
And once she called, I saw how I had been right about him all along. He was the person I always feared he was. He was the monster who would lie and feel absolutely no remorse. He was the one that was just trying to figure which one of us would be stupid enough to let him move in.
I will never forget the look on his face the day I broke up with him for the last time. I think he thought I was going to beg him to come home. He was home for the weekend and getting out of rehab soon. He needed a plan and the one he had (well the one I knew about - sober living) was NOT what he wanted to do. I mean, live with a bunch of guys and have accountability and have to share a room?? Fuck no, he didn’t want that.
And fifteen minutes after he left my house for the last time, he called her and locked it down with her. And went to her and told her all the things. But see she never completely believed him either. And her doubts and fears caused her to reach out to me. And we compared notes, and we untangled all the jumbled lies and manipulations. We were able to make sense of how we got to where we found ourselves, in love with a con man. In love with a sociopath. In love with someone who is not capable of love, only cunning and deceit.
I texted him “I never want to see or hear from you again”. Then blocked him. And he has remained blocked since that time. My prayers were finally and definitively answered. I got my out and I fucking took it. I have nothing left to say, to him. I have a lot to unpack and uncover about me. How did I let myself be fooled? How did I think that this would ever work out for me? Being with me he got a lot of things: free rent, a lovely place to live, all his bills paid, sex whenever he wanted it, love, truth, trust, patience, understanding, he got to spend my money while he saved his so that he could always have the funds to walk away. What did I get? Abused. Lied to. Manipulated. Conned. And I will tell you that every bait and switch was always a fucking work of art.
And then he became her problem. I tried to warn her. I told her all the truth I came to know, in the hardest most hurtful ways. And she believed me, but... she was
I'm begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans
That's my man
And even though she knows who he is and how it will end, she still engaged. And likely will again. That is just the path of self destruction she and I and probably countless others found ourselves upon. Someone close to him called me the last in a long line of collateral damage. Well, guess I am not last in line anymore. And I wish that made me feel better. That I am done and over and moving on. But I feel responsible and accountable to this other woman. I have come to love her. I have come to care for her. I have come to want a different future for her than the one I had with him.
But I know all too well how hard it is to quit him for good. She my salvation. It was her reach out that brought the whole fucking disgusting house of cards tumbling down. He got found out for good and for sure. There was no way to spin it or wiggle out of it. He was caught and I was left with a reality that everything I thought was true and real and love, was not. And I have had to unpack that and piece out what was mine, how did I let this happen...and why?
And I see now, as hard as this is to admit, that I was that desperate for love. For someone to love me and want to be with me and to say all the things I longed to hear, that I failed to match those things up with reality in a meaningful way. I failed to allow my gut to rule my life, and instead allow him and all his lies to do so instead. They were such beautiful lies...ones that I could almost, but not completely, prove false. And like the song says...”every bait and switch was always a work of art...” And I allowed that work of art to wreck my life over and over again until finally one blessed day she called and blew the whole charade up for good.
It has been a lot to unpack. It has been acutely painful to see how I was duped but I also signed up. I put up with so much. I was so alone in a relationship always hoping for more but never having the guts to ask for it. And I think I finally learned that more comes from not being willing to accept less, ever.
And I pray with all that I am that I will never allow myself to want a man’s hand so much that I allow it to wreck my plans and call him “my man”.
I am gonna go vomit now...and then thank my fucking stars that I got free and there are no lying conniving men in my life today. And I am over here doing the heavy fucking lifting so that is NEVER my willow bending to anyone’s wind again.
Funny how a song that I have heard, but never really listened to, woke me up this morning, coursing through my head, line by line, lyric by lyric and providing me with yet another realization, another confirmation of how much my own lack of worth, value and self esteem was weaponized to keep me stuck, mired in the dysfunction of another. And now that I see it, I cannot unsee it. And I am immensely grateful for the pain that brings, because that pain has been the crucible for me. The fire to alchemize me into a person who will never fucking allow that shit again.
I will come back stronger than a 90s trend...but I will never again meet you after dark. That shit is finally and blessedly over. Thank God. Thank her. I am convinced of all the hollow I allowed...and I can say, with relief and a great amount of gratitude, that is NOT my man. Thank fucking GOD!
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