Obviously, not a single shred of this is reality.
However, I do enjoy the rare moments where I can be naked, lazing around in a sun beam that snuck in through my boring, standard blinds. I do have a few fabulous marabou lined robes, and one that is a gorgeous purple lace, but I also have a lot of cats, and I will not have my fineries destroyed by their claws. One of my favorite things to do in the early whispers of fall in Colorado was take an afternoon nap with my window open, allowing the breeze to make its way across my body, hugging every last inch of me like a blanket while I slept in as much sun as my small apartment window would allow.
Derek's work schedule is one of two things: packed full of classes for two weeks, or empty for two weeks. When he isn't in class, we tend to lazily go about our day after Alex is dropped off at school: sometimes we'll take a morning nap, waking up at noon to have some coffee and enjoy each other's company quietly, while we each do our own thing (very often, I'm reading school materials...or procrastinating and cruising pinterest while he reads articles on NPR, or plays Candy Crush. We're modern!), sometimes we both have crafty things to do, so Derek heads down to the woodshop while I paint, or pour, or do resin crafts. We will go hours without talking to each other, immersed in our seclusion, but with the added bonus of knowing if there's a moment where the silence needs to be broken, we can take a break and go visit the other and see what they're up to. Or, there are days like today, where we take advantage of the empty house, and have as much sex as we want as loudly as we want, and then lay in bed and talk for hours.
Today I talked about the time I faked an allergy to chocolate for years on end because I was too embarrassed to admit I had a panic attack, and why I had the panic attack that I did.
When Allen and I split, we split on very amicable terms. I think he was perhaps a little less done than I was, because he was sour about my swan dive into singledom and the obvious fun I was having. After a visit from my dear friend Kati and her then boyfriend Matt where she expressed that I looked amazing and I glibly exclaimed, "being single looks good on me!!", Allen angrily told me how much I had hurt his feelings by saying that. Aside from the occasional remark like that for a few months, we got along swimmingly. He became the brother I always wanted, the best friend he had been to me when our relationship was boiling over with unbridled warmth for each other, just without the other shit that clearly got in our way. We still did a LOT of stuff together. If Allen had work functions, I would attend with him, because why not? If he was dating someone and she could go, well obviously I wouldn't overstep, but sometimes, it was just easier to take me. Allen's work friends knew me and liked me, and though ease and lack of spontaneity were the driving force behind our breakup, it is not something I mind in friendships. So Allen didn't really tell people we had split up, to prevent confusion. Which I can understand, honestly. I got a lot of pushback when I told people I lived as a roommate with my ex, and no we were not involved, we were just best friends.
Allen had one friend in particular that I was quite fond of. Will. Will is married to a very nice woman named Andrea. Allen and I saw them together a lot, they knew us, we knew them. Friendly friendly, all well and good. Except Allen hadn't advertised our split yet.
So on one of our first few dates, Dan and I went to BJ's, a nothingburger of a brewery chain off of GoG in the Springs. I'm guessing we had a good time, since like...I would go on to be hung up on Dan for years, despite the fact that he was, for me, objectively the worst, and despite the fact that he was, to me, objectively cruel...but really, the only thing I remember is us eating a pazookie. A dessert I had never heard of, but is, in fact, just a fucking cookie but in a fucking EZ Bake Oven type tin. Stupid. It is not a pizza cookie, it is a fucking cookie, full stop. We ordered a chocolate chip pazookie with ice cream. And as we were leaving, Dan was caressing my back in a very "I am totally planning on pounding this woman" kind of way. Unmistakably intimate. And as I was luxuriating in the gentleness of my new lover's fingers grazing my skin, I heard a laugh I recognized. A laugh, and then a gasp. I turned around, and I saw Andrea with two of her friends. And she saw me. And we looked at each other for a solid minute, both of us silent. Her friends looked in my direction, curious as to what made Andrea stop talking. Andrea whispered something to her friends, and they all looked back at me with disparaging looks on their faces.
I had promised Allen I wouldn't mention that we weren't together anymore. I don't know if he was ready to let go of that yet, though not because of me, but because having a family really gets you out of work duty in a pinch. Andrea didn't know. She had no idea Allen and I weren't together anymore, all she knew was that I was in the same space she was, with a man that was very much NOT Allen. I couldn't hear the judgment, but I felt it. My mind went, "..........................FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK. Fuck fuck shit. SHIT. SHIT!"
I watched Andrea and her friends head into the smoothie bar next to BJ's, and Andrea kept turning back and her friends did, too, each look more withering and cold than the last. All of this happened over maybe a minute? Enough time that I had stopped walking to Dan's car, I had stayed rooted in place, and I must have been breathing fairly heavily, because he asked me, with a misleading amount of concern in his voice, if I was ok. And I realized I was starting one of the worst panic attacks of my entire life. I was only 26 at the time (bad news from the future! The panic attacks get worse from here!!!), and hadn't ever really had a panic attack that I was not in control of. My body was heaving, because I was having trouble breathing. I was wheezing a little. You know. Trouble breathing. I was trying to figure out why I was freaking the fuck out so hard. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was allowed to date!! I was allowed to be with another man, I was well within my rights as a single woman! But Andrea didn't know I was single. And now her friends had labeled me a wanton slag. And I knew she'd be quickly texting her husband that I was a total tart, running around on their dear friend Allen while he stayed home, tenderly caring for our child, while I was off having seventy dates at once, flaunting my cheating lifestyle in front of god and whoever else was looking. That this man and I were practically FUCKING IN THE PARKING LOT!!!! The sheer inhumanity of what I was putting Allen through. And then Will would text Jim, and then they would both text Allen, and Allen had an opportunity to either play into it, or cop to the truth of the matter and clear my good name. Well. Clear my name, at the very least.
Dan saw that I was in distress, and I knew I had to say something. I had to tell him I was having a panic attack, but...my brain was working overtime. And not in the good way it normally works overtime, in the dumb way it works overtime the other parts of the day where I'm not being smart. I could have said anything. I could have said I saw a former best friend that I had had a terrible falling out with, and pointed back at Andrea and her friends. I could have said that I was having a panic attack, because that is totally understandable and normal, especially since I had already disclosed that I have borderline personality disorder, so a massive panic attack was not so far beyond the pale that I would be setting off alarm bells. Fuck, I could have said I was being fucking POSESSED. Anything would have been better than what I said, because what I said ended up being something I had to continue to lie about for the rest of our relationship.
I said I was allergic to chocolate, and I was having an allergic reaction to the chocolate chips in the cookie (I refuse to call it what BJ's called it. Just call it a cookie). The fucking STUPIDITY.
Dan looked at me and asked if I was going to be ok, I said yeah, I just needed to get back home to take a Benadryl. I actually think I said, "my pills" because my dumb brain couldn't think of what an allergy medication might be called. I continued to have a panic attack for the duration of the drive back to Dan's apartment (a short drive from the restaurant. What an agonizing time for me!), where I promptly told Dan I would be taking myself home to take my pill and I would not be returning for the rest of the evening.
I recall Dan asking me the next day why I would eat chocolate if I knew I was allergic to it. for this, I was well prepared, because as it happens, I do have a few food allergies that are not debilitating at first blush. Specifically apples and anything in the coriander family. I can eat apples, and drink apple juice, in moderation, but if I have too much of anything with apple in it, I will break out in hives, and get a little bit tingly all over my mouth parts. Same with coriander. Sometimes it's fine, and I can be around it when people cook, I can have it in my food, and there are no problems. but then other times, if I so much as walk into a room with coriander related particles in the air, I cannot breathe, I break out in hives, and my eyes start to itch. Derek can attest. I am a good actress, but not so good that I can will hives on myself. So Derek can rest assured that his wife is truly allergic to the things she says she's allergic to, and is not faking to cover up a fart that happened on their fourth date. I told Dan exactly that: that my allergy to is comes and goes at random. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it isn't. And that either satisfied him enough to not press the issue, or he knew I was full of shit but was gracious enough to let me hang on to a shred of my dignity. It was the beginning of our relationship, after all, and he was about to make me watch Top Gun. So it's not like he didn't owe me courtesy. I kept up that ruse our entire relationship, and for his part, he did remember. I carried Benadryl with me dutifully (I am nothing if not committed to my role as an allergy ridden love interest), and made sure to, every once and awhile, have the teeniest, tiniest, chocolate reaction.
Derek and I chuckled about this a little bit, he told me I was stupid and should have just told Dan exactly what happened. I wondered to Derek if I had been more of myself with Dan and less of who I knew he wanted me to be, if maybe he would have loved me and not treated me the way he did. I told Derek that, if Dan were to ever read my blog now, I felt sad that he'd be introduced to an entirely new person, because the me he was with was only part of the real me. He got a lot of the best parts of me, but he didn't really get the good stuff. The Drea in this blog is such a far cry from the Drea that Dan knew, and that is partially his fault. Mostly his fault. 90% his fault. But even still, how jarring would it be to discover this entirely new person? To look at someone and go, I thought I knew them, but I didn't know this.
And then I thought about how fucking stupid it is to think that like, knowing I faked a fucking chocolate allergy added any dimension or depth to my character. As if THIS turns me into an entirely new woman that Dan suddenly can't recognize! WAS I EVEN NAMED ONDREA??? The foundation of our relationship was based on lies!!!
Well. Kind of. But not in an intentionally deceptive way. Just more like....Dan pretended to be someone else, I pretended to be more emotionally thick skinned, and together, we lied our way into my heartbreak a couple years later. Good stuff.
I think about all of the things I've written in here over the years, though. that, if Dan were to go and read all of it in one sitting, or a few sittings, I have written an awful lot in here, I do think that he wouldn't recognize me. I remember when he found my blog that I wrote about him (which I still have, locked away as drafts, and I still read it every few years, because I just don't understand. I don't understand how you could read the heartache I was writing down and not be more apologetic to me, or how you could read all of that and not want to somehow fix it, even if that fix didn't meant staying with a girl you couldn't love for whatever reason), he said he had no idea he was hurting me so much, and I thought he was an arrogant, oblivious idiot. How could you not? I stared into space trying not to cry 75% of the time, he never brought me on trips he took with his friends and their partners, nobody knew about me, what part of those things shouted "SHE IS SO HAPPY!" to Dan? Yikes.
But if he couldn't notice that, and it was pretty fucking obvious, then I feel certain he didn't notice the myriad other things I've written about farcing my way through when Dan and I were....well, farcing our way through our time together.
If he couldn't notice that, then I feel confident that my chocolate allergy fib lives and dies with me.
