Part 11: She Said, “I Feel Stranded, and I Can’t Tell Anymore If I’m Coming or I’m Going”

Jan – April 2007

Over the holidays, Sherlock and I had broken up. In mid-January, I thought he finally had his head screwed on straight (never) and gave it another go. Ultimately, I did what women do – I choose the least of the evils. Sherlock was a decent guy when he tried to be, and I thought that if we could just get past the bullshit drama, we would be fine. I had no interest in “getting back out there.”

In March I decided to buy a beach house from my company’s extra inventory. I brought Sherlock along for that metaphorical ride, with him thinking it was “us” and me knowing it was “just me.” Near the end of the whole process The Boss said a bunch of times “Don’t buy the house, it’s not a good deal.” I thought it was.   I sort of knew something was off, but he had his chances and it never materialized into anything so what the fuck. Why was he trying to stop me from doing this? I finally admitted to myself that perhaps there was a twinge of protectiveness or jealousy with respect to Sherlock and so I limited the conversations about Sherlock to almost nothing. Then for the rest of March, I barely saw the Boss.   But I had a dream which I wrote about on a secret, now dead, blog.

Well, now, I had a sex dream about my boss. This isn’t the first one, but this was the most graphic. In the past, I’ve woken up and known that it occurred in my dream, but didn’t have details. In this dream, there are details. I remember us for some reason being on a trip, or in a hotel or something, not at one of our houses. For whatever reason, we had to lay next to each other because there was only one bed. When I looked over, I pulled the sheet and realized he was rock hard. Fuck. Me.

My jaw dropped to the floor and I reached over and and tried to put my hand around it. My fingers couldn’t even close around it, it was so thick. Then he rolled over on top of me and we started making out. At this point my clothes were off, though I don’t recall them being off when I was first in the bed, and I don’t remember actually taking them off. He gets on top of me, and we had sex with him on top of me, then he rolled over and I was on top. It was getting really hot, and then just as we were about to change positions, the inevitable happened.

I woke up. Fuck.

I’ve gone through varying stages of wanting to fuck my boss. I was really attracted to him when I first started working for him 4 years ago. Then I met his wife and my attraction waned. But then he filed for divorce and I was the one he would call to bitch about his wife. Nothing has ever happened with us. I never got the indication from him that he would even want something with me. We’ve had some late night texting. There have been some late nights of emailing. But, it all seemed pretty on the up and up and I never got any indications of any interest. Except maybe once.

When I got together with the crazy Asshole, my boss said, “I hope you know what you are doing.” I said, “What? What do you mean?” He said, “He’s a mess. And he’ll inevitably screw your life up.”

We don’t cross paths a lot anymore. But he was at work yesterday. And last night, the sex dream.

I suppose it was already in my head that Sherlock was not the man for me. And you know what happens when you have a sex dream about someone? Then you want to have sex with them.

April was the big month of change. I went to a friend’s wedding in L.A. and was witness to another friend unravel on a drug-induced spiral and suddenly, I was done. I never want to be the girl at the wedding giving the maid of honor speech blabbering on about nothing that makes any sense. I never want to be the girl who everyone is whispering about. I never want to be the girl who my soon-to-be mother in law catches snorting coke on the toilet at the rehearsal dinner.

I had also suddenly started having these very vivid dreams about K. Totally out of nowhere. I had a dream we were on our cross-country trip in 2001 and we were at a gas station out west somewhere. There were these beautiful mountains in the background, and K and I were just exchanging words about nothing in particular but it was so comforting. I woke up with two thoughts. First – Sherlock is not the one. Second – where is K? Is he alive? I knew I was going to end it with Sherlock once and for all. I knew with Sherlock’s track record, the end was not going to go well. (It didn’t. He threw a bunch of leaves at me and tried to keep Thora. Wtf. Then proceeded to contact two of my friends to beg them to talk some sense into me.)

That week, the Boss told me I was being laid off. I said, “You just made it easy on me. I need to get out of here and away from this guy, so this comes at a perfect time.” I also wanted to find K and see if he was still alive. The Gift of Fear says you need six weeks to break stalker behavior, so I planned a cross-country trip for May 5 through June 15. Exactly 6 weeks, to make sure I could get Sherlock out of my life for good.

K sent me an IM that week. We have always had this relationship where we just know it’s time to check in with the other one. We had a very long and very deep conversation about us, our past, our love, our drug habits, and his recent release from 90 days in rehab. K is stubborn enough to stick to his guns, and he wants sobriety so very badly. He tried to give me some words of encouragement to break my own cycle, but that was done. I left it in L.A. and have never gone back. I didn’t need rehab. I needed to wake up. K and I briefly discussed a relationship, but somewhere in that drug-induced haze, he had conceived a child with someone. Now he had a baby.

I think somewhere around week two, I found out Sherlock had a new girlfriend. But I persevered on my trip instead of running back home. See? He was never the one.

For the first time in many years, I was free to go wherever I wanted. But the further I got from home, the more I wanted to go back. That’s the funny thing about being born and raised on the east coast. Going west always seems fascinating, like it holds promise of new and better adventures, but in my heart, I’m an east coast girl and I can’t change that.