The Other Woman

I learned an ex-lover of mine was found dead in his home, through a Daily Mail article. Upon a quick google search, I’m overwhelmed by countless articles and tributes. There’s speculation surrounding his death, but I knew from the second I read the headline, it was drug related.  

Anyone that knew him was aware he used and abused both legal and illicit substances. It was no secret. The word “meth head” would occasionally be left by Facebook users whenever his image or name was used in the promotion of affiliated work events.  

Scrolling through the articles I see a tribute made by one of his former colleagues. It included the phrase “Men like these are hard to come by...” It’s important to note, this was written by a man, a distinction that’s significant within this context. He worked in a predominantly male occupied industry, and was therefore surrounded by people who influenced and even perpetuated some of the behaviours he subjected myself and other women to. There is no shortage of men like him, not even after his death.  

I once had a crippling black and white pattern of thinking. My mindset would swiftly change from being open and compassionate to paralysing, with a primitive disposition of “all men bad.” Sometimes it functioned in a way that made me feel it was a completely separate entity, one I would wage war with. This feature of mine, magnetised misfortune. Daughter of substance abusers with a long line of alcoholism through both sides of the family. It made me receptive to the struggles that people face, in a way that dragged me down. I’ve forgiven egregious behaviours that harmed my safety and wellbeing. This all made possible by the ability to bounce from disgust to exoneration in a matter of hours. My own desperation for attention from anyone that disguised their actions as love, blinded me to cues that should have flagged my “get the fuck out of there” signal. This made me desirable to men shackled by their own sense of shame. 

I feel my own sense of guilt coming to the forefront of my mind as I’m typing this. I’ve written about this man before, but with a title Size Matters It’s unlikely it’ll ever see the light of day. It’s a strange and wildly intrusive thought that part of a man that has been inside me, is now decaying in a coffin. That’s all I can think about during my brain’s sad attempt to process that this is in fact real. I have pressure behind my right eye pushing against my optic nerves, and almost every part of my body wants me to sit this one out, but my brain and fingers cannot be stopped. 

Being respectful of those who have passed is a societal expectation that I have never been fond of, but it’s something I must force myself to do. Whilst I feel horrible for the grief his family is undoubtedly experiencing, the way all sin is absolved as soon as someone’s heart is no longer beating, is inconceivable to me. 

Two truths can exist, and I’m incapable of pretending otherwise. Addicts can have just as many moments of compassion and kindness as they do being cruel and deceitful. Just because someone is no longer physically on this earth, does not mean that it changes the history of that person. 

This man and I met five years ago. I was twenty-two. He was a few years older. We were intimate. He used me to cheat on his girlfriend, the same girlfriend that was featured in the article that broke the news of his death. When I made the discovery that he was not the bachelor he was pretending to be, I was naked in his bed.  

That evening he had asked me to bring alcohol to his. I watched him down a whole bottle of Smirnoff Red like it was water. The first time he invited me to his home, there was alcohol involved. We drank strong red, and he whispered sweet nothings into my ear. Selling the dream that any woman with strong maternal instincts has. I fell for the fantasy, his words backed by nothing. I started seeing images of quitting my job to live in a house with him, enclosed by a white picket fence. The same one he had described whilst his hands caressed my body.  

I was young and naive, but not enough to let the image of him and another woman as his lockscreen slip by. A happenstance event that stamped out the flames of our love affair. I wasn’t supposed to stay the night, but he pleaded me to. We got ready for bed, turned the lights off, and it was then his phone lit up, revealing the image of a “picture-perfect” couple. I immediately confronted him, angered by the sudden consciousness that I had been lied to and that I was being used to break a commitment to someone else. His response to “how could you?” was “she’s an ugly mole.” A clear projection. She was beautiful, with a manicured and glowing appearance, I couldn’t fathom why he would want the company of another women. He offered to take a picture with me to replace the lockscreen image. A change that would have been reversed the second I left. There was a frenzy of back and forth when I got home. I wanted to believe that I hadn’t been used to settle a score in a game of insecurity that only he was playing.  

My brief relationship (if you can even call it that), left me with an altered perception of men and a case of chlamydia. The latter was promptly treated with a course of antibiotics, but as a woman who has a compromised immune system, the disruption of my gut microbiome still negatively impacts me five years later, with significant dysbiosis; imbalance in gut bacteria. My aforementioned perception, regarding trust in men, is a more complex treatment process that I am still undergoing.  

Later, I found out that I was one of many. He had cheated on his partner with multiple women. In my quest for reasoning to this man’s infidelity, I recovered information that he often sought the company of women who supplied him shards of potent nervous system stimulants.  

I developed a friendship with one of these women. She told me of the way he wooed her, completely unaware of the existence of a girlfriend. Picnic dates, pulling her close to protect her from the bite of the wind, and smoking meth. A true romantic.

This girlfriend of mine shared that she had made a vow to herself, to never inject anything into her body. When a new high was offered to her, that's exactly what she did. A bid to chase the same high she had experienced upon that first hit.  

I’m no longer friends with this woman but I’m glad to say our friendship ended when she was sober. I hope she still is, but addiction is a slippery slope. She was introduced to methamphetamines by a lover previous to the one we happened to share. A man I had once personally heard claim “meth is one of the cleanest drugs when you smoke it.” This statement was made before an accident, in which he crashed his car while high off the substance.  

Anyone that has someone in their life that struggles with this specific addiction, should know it changes the user’s brain forever. It rewires the neurotransmitter pathways to make individuals reliant on the drug. Becoming the only source of happiness by damaging dopamine producing neurons. It changes the structure of the brain and can impact the cognitive function, impairing impulse control in decision making. With its highly addictive properties, it creates a cycle that is designed to trap those who partake.  

After cutting contact with this lover, information of major events in his life filtered into mine through tabloid headlines. Even at a distance, I could see the alarming signs that he was not in a good place. Asking for work opportunities via Instagram stories, and losing his license after blowing eight times over the legal limit. At the time I thought this was his karma for treating women the way he did, but I never could have anticipated ending the way it did. No one is infallible in times of instability, but addicts are particularly vulnerable and prone to making poor decisions when their view of life becomes uncertain. This man was stuck in a self-destructive cycle and his decisions ultimately ended up taking his life.