Motives in tears

I recorded this for {D} around thanksgiving of 2024. This before the website and the bar complaint and all the crazy that has happened since. Before the suicide attempt. I just remembered I had done this and listened to it just now. It's 30 minutes long and I'm crying the whole time. I wanted him understand the emotion was real. Honestly I think it speaks pretty well to my motives.

in hindsight, he probably didn't listen to this. He had moved in with his girlfriend by then and gone to the AG's office and things were going great for him. I will go ahead and venture the guess he probably didn't really care. I was in out patient hospitalization and I was doing very well. I was absolutely fucked. I'm still very much not okay. And I'll probably never be okay again. I don't know what to think about that  

Here is the transcript, but if you have the time, listen. 

I needed to do this by voice because I need you to hear my tone. ’Cause I just want you to understand some things.

I loved you so much, and I wish to hell that we had never met. Not for the reasons you think, though. For the reasons of… I don’t think we ever met each other the way we did — physically, emotionally, financially. I don’t think we ever meant each other that kind of harm.

I want you to understand… I’m not being vindictive. I am concerned. I’m concerned about the safety of others, and I’m concerned about you. It sounds crazy — it is crazy. I don’t know. But you don’t have control over it. That’s the problem. You don’t have control over it. And you didn’t mean to. I’ll go to my goddamn grave believing you never meant to do that to me. You wouldn’t have. But you can’t control it. And that’s what makes you dangerous, for lack of a better term.

But I am, in some roundabout way, trying to protect you from yourself. I don’t know how to explain this. I thought maybe if I did it by voice it would work, but I haven’t slept. I’ve had a really bad week, and I’ve just been overthinking all night.

Sometimes loving somebody doesn’t look like love from your perspective. But as crazy as this sounds to you, I’m trying — in some ways — to show you love by protecting you from yourself, ‘cause you can’t seem to protect yourself from yourself. I don’t think you’ve ever been able to. And it disturbs me.

The fact that you have no remorse at all… I understand the level of protecting yourself legally. I get that. I hope it’s in there somewhere. You couldn’t… there’s no way you couldn’t have… I just didn’t know you at all.

I hope I’m right. At bare minimum, I think you’re gonna be a lot more careful from now on. You’re gonna logic your way through some consent. I think this may serve as a wake-up call to you. It served as a wake-up call to me. For me it was that I can’t let people do that to me anymore, and for you it should be that you can’t do that to people anymore.

Dave… you watched it. You watched the second video, man. You watched it. It was pathetic. I have no other word for it. It is fucking pathetic. On both of our parts. Me just trying to placate him. Just… “stop.” And you just not knowing when to stop. That’s the thing — you don’t know when to stop. You really don’t.

In my mind, I want to chalk it up to some sort of misunderstanding, but it wasn’t though, Dave. Come on. For God’s sake. It wasn’t. And you didn’t understand what I’m going through right now on my end. It is trying to figure out how I didn’t realize it was happening at the time.

I know what you think. It was an emotional breaking point for me watching that shit. And I watched it over and over and over because I was trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened. ‘Cause I couldn’t understand how I let that happen. And I shouldn’t feel like I let that happen. It was your job to be in control of yourself. It wasn’t my job to be in control of you.

I did what I could to stop you. But I was also so goddamn in love with you. I said I wouldn’t say it again, but you could have disowned me and I would have gone home with you. Dave, God, I wish I could have loved you through something like this. I thought if I gave you enough love — the love you hadn’t had before — that you would change. And you did. You stopped intentionally hurting me.

On the intentional end of it, you would get blackout drunk and do shit, but that night you were enjoying causing me pain. The other nights, that wasn’t what was really getting you off. You were just drunk and you did what you did.

I wish none of this had happened. Not a goddamn bit of it. I wish to God you had fucking told me what was going on after the fact, instead of making me sit here for months trying to figure it out on my own with nothing. Giving me bits and pieces, just keeping me there enough.

I think we both thought we were helping each other. I didn’t want to leave you alone after that. Good God, the way you drink. And the suicidal thoughts… I couldn’t leave you alone. I would’ve been fucking hysterical if you had killed yourself, ‘cause I would’ve known I did it. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.

I literally walked out of a mental hospital and met you, and then I lost you and walked into a mental hospital. Bookends.

I never got over what happened with Brian either. That’s what I’m working on now, and that’s part of the reason why I’m so upset.

I worry about you. I really do worry about you. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to protect you. Everything got scrambled up. The two things converged at the same time. Suddenly.

I do wish I hadn’t sent that email. I wish I’d gone to the police. Although in hindsight, they weren’t ever gonna do anything. So… scared straight? I don’t know.

But Dave, what you did wasn’t okay. It really wasn’t. The only reason it seemed okay is ‘cause it happened to me. A normal person? You’re in a room full of people that you’ve known for a long time.

That night, I had made a decision earlier that I was going to start using my “big girl voice.” I was going to start saying no when it hurt, when I wasn’t enjoying it. And I honest to God thought that you were gonna stop. I thought there was no way you weren’t. And you didn’t. It kept going all night. I got you back to your place and it kept going. And I just lost. It didn’t work.

I thought it was my mistake — that I hadn’t been clear, that I hadn’t said no properly. That’s what I thought. And that’s not okay, Dave. ‘Cause I watched the video, and I did say it over and over, and you didn’t hear me.

I just wish none of it had happened. It would have been so much easier if we had never met. And I don’t mean that as “I wish I’d never met you.” It’s that if we had never met each other, we wouldn’t have ever hurt each other the way that we have.

I know I’ve hurt you, but I’m trying not to hurt myself anymore. And I’m trying to protect you from you.

I can’t let you do what anybody else did. So yeah, that’s what I have to say. I hope you’re listening. I don’t know.

I do wish you absolutely the best of luck wherever you land. This thing with Herb Olson… really? Goddamn. I wish you the best wherever you land. I really do.

I can’t live with myself not trying. And I don’t think they’re ever gonna do anything. There’s no way. It’s masquerade at this point. But I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to somebody else and I couldn’t stop it. I can’t put somebody else through what I’m going through and know that I could have stopped it.

It’s not punitive. It’s for the safety of others. I see how much it fucked me up. I’m never gonna get over this. I’m never gonna be the same again. I don’t think I could ever have it in me anymore to love somebody as much as I loved you. Give you love the way I gave you love.

I was enabling you with the drinking. I was making excuses for you. And that came from a place of love. But that wasn’t love. Trying to get you into therapy, talking to you — that was me trying to show you love.

I just wanted to love you through it, whatever it was. I don’t know what all the demons are. I have ideas… but it all, for me, was love. As dysfunctional as it might have been. And I can never open myself up to that again. I can never do that again. I can’t put myself aside for the benefit of somebody else ever again.

Best of luck. If you ever need something, let me know. I know it’s fucking weird. It doesn’t make sense to me either. But it’s logical in a way. If you can’t stop you, somebody has to. I have to love you enough to make you stop. I have to love you that much to make you not have the ability to do that again.

Convoluted might be the name of the game, but yeah.