Lives Within Lives

     Sometimes I feel like I have lived lives within lives or at least this one.  I have been one person in one life and another in another.
     Tonight listening to Bon Jovi Dead or Alive I was reminded of an other life within the realms of lives.  People follow Bon Jovi like The Grateful Dead.  I have met such a person where a certain unique man from my past was working near our apartment where we were living.  I had my own place, but I lived with him part of the time across town, took taxis back and forth.
     I had spent several years with a sophisticated good looking Australian man who was not very warm in a general sense, and who was using me to say the least, and I will say the love there was definitely something to be desired.  So when I met the long haired Dan (I will call him to be anonymous), I felt like I was seeing someone I knew like deja vu, like I had seen him in another life before if not this one.  He seemed familiar to me. 
     Our life together was about him working, us shopping and cooking, and about him controlling me to the best of his ability as the  rules got higher and higher, and as soon as I learned the rules they changed.
     When he was at work I would do arts and crafts, play the guitar, clean the apartment, cook, as well as watch TV, listen to my talking books and go down to the beach in my swimsuit to sunbathe and swim.  Once in a while I went out with a friend.  He gave me a cell phone, his cell phone, but if I left it at home when I went to the beach, he would get mad that I did not answer.  Then when he came home he would check every call I made, obviously not trusting me, and was always accusing me of cheating on him while he was at work, with the neighbors who I was not allowed to associate with.  This was of course insane the notion that I was cheating on him.  Of course he partied with them when I was back at my own home, and I could talk to them if we were together, but he said if I ever embarrassed him and drank with them he would "sling me all over the place."  I must have been nuts to go along with these shenanigans no matter how many nice qualities he may have had.  A friend even said to me, "you're not allowed?  Are you nine years old?"
     The apartment was right on the ocean and he was a good provider and let me have my way in terms of TV shows, etc..  There was love.  We slept together every night, but if he got mad he actually told me to sleep in the chair which of course I would not do, just laughed at this because it was so stupid.  We had my mother over for a cookout and he told her that I was the boss, what a lie.  The only thing I was bossy about was the air conditioning at night and not wanting him or us to drink, knowing from experience what it could lead to at the time.
     We were happy for the most part until he began drinking and became war making, violent and incredibly abusive.  At this point I left him never to return except breifly as friends years later.  At this point he had changed and we hung out as friends and he was not acting out, but I eventually backed off because there were other women and his life was full of drama which he thrived on and I thought was stupid and redneck.  Not to mention he started asking me for cigarette money, and that was the winter my son was very sick and I was assaulted by some crack addicts who were illegally camping on my street before the police drove them out of here.  Do not get me wrong.  I still like him at a distance.
    You may wonder why I wanted this.  A friend of mine said I was "intrigued and slumming" but that is not very nice, since we are talking about a person here, although he  did treat me badly.  It may seem weird that a woman like me with sophistication wanted to be in this and could not see what the situation was. Actually I did, because I contacted CASA in advance because I knew what was coming.  I knew about abuse.  I knew the warning signs, just was in denial and did not want to admit it.  The reason why I guess is that I had not really felt loved before, not like this.  I do not mean the controlling and all and in the end it was not like love at all, but there was some sort of love I was not familiar with and it had nothing to do with lust or anything like that, just some sort of earthy belonging and that is what held me at least for awhile.  It is hard to explain, and a life I thought I had with this person.  But, this amount of dysfunction is not healthy for anyone.
     Later a friend was telling me about a girl crying about not wanting to leave an abusive partner.  She said, "I know a woman who is blind, can't drive, and she walked out on a good looking guy she was in love with because he put his hands on her one time and never looked back.  If she could do it, you can."  She was talking about me.