Or … what I BELIEVE is the truth. I can’t be sure.

That part was maybe the hardest of all. Or maybe the second hardest.

My pride stung! I was led into this disaster of a relationship and that even with my eyes wide open! Why had I done that?? I began to wonder about his stories already end of March as we met in the beginning of February 2021. 2 months in, and I was beginning to feel that something wasn’t right.

But I continued. I kept letting it go with the flow.

And again … why?? Now I can’t for the life of me, figure out, why I was soooo stupid!
Didn’t I think I was loveworthy? That now somebody seemed to love me, and I had to take what was there?  Didn’t I think higher of myself? Or was I just been swept away by the love and was acting the blind fool?

I spent a lot of time during this spring and summer, wondering about this. Sometimes – like right now as I am writing this – I think about it again. But now I have learned to accept that I apparently was temporarily insane and that I again have learned some valuable lessons. At least I hope so.

The second thing that was hard is to accept, is the fact that I will NEVER learn the truth about what happened. That took a really long time. And I think that was the hardest part of it all. Maybe the love died back in December/January 2021/2022, but I had to beat myself up about it before I could move forward.

But I have accepted it now, and I think I have pieced together the puzzle to what I THINK is the truth. At least it is a believable version. And with that version I got closure. Truth or not.

The Bodyguard had – as I have mentioned earlier – a traumatic childhood. He told how he was molested by his uncle and how his mother took the uncle’s side. The mother had a diagnosis and could during the night wake the kids up and franticly sweep up their possessions and them and put them out in a car to move them to a strange town. There she would give them new names, because “the authorities shouldn’t find them”. This happened several times. I can’t imagine being a kid, waking up in the middle of the night, being put in a dark, cold car and with a panic mother to start a new life with a new name.

He was placed in foster care several times, was at some point living in an orphanage and was constantly being put down by his mother, who favored her 2 daughters. Then his dad dies (alcohol) and his grandmother on his father’s side, who were his only support.

So yes, he had a shitty childhood, and I do believe those stories. They were told to me several times, and I saw how affectioned he became. So at least HE believed in those stories. I have no doubt in that. Even if everything about him was traumatic … those I believe because they make sense to me, and they fit into my puzzle of the truth. If that IS the truth … Dunno …

At some point in January, where I had a conversation with him on phone, and after having pushed him a lot, he admitted that he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was hearing voices; they were telling him that he was nothing worth, and that was why he tried to commit suicide. He also had hallucinations. He WAS admitted into attentive care, but it was because he had swallowed a lot of pills, not because of the cancer. He had lived with this as long as he remembered. Always hearing voices, telling him that he was worthless and should just disappear. It was a mix of voices, his sisters and especially his mothers.

And that diagnosis makes totally sense to me, and I think his mother suffered from it too. According to the stories he told me.

He also admitted that he currently was living in some psychiatric house with other people who were having a hard time. And he was ashamed that he didn’t have his own home, that was the reason for the lies. I said that there was nothing to be ashamed off, but that he should have been honest with me. And yes, that diagnosis scared the shit out of me, because thinking that he had been in my present (and even my daughter’s presence 2 times) while hearing voices … that terrified me.

I know that I know NOTHING about the diagnosis. The only reference I have is a colleague of mine, whose son eventually murdered her after his voices told him to. And yes, that makes me prejudicial. Many people live peacefully with this disease I know now, because I have read a lot about the diagnosis since, and yes, I considered if that was something that I could live with in a boyfriend. But I wasn’t sure that I could do that.

But I will say this, even afterwards thinking about his disease, there has not been one single time, where I felt unsafe together with him. There was never a time, where I felt uncomfortable or at risk, so I really WAS considering if it would be possible to continue the connection.

But if I should make the effort, then he also should try by for example by sharing where he lived. He said that the secrecy about his whereabouts was one of the major triggers in his disease. Nobody was to know. Maybe caused by the strange relocations from his mother, or the abuse as child – who knows, but his identity was his main trigger.

Crying, he assured me that his living conditions was the ONLY thing he ever lied about, that his year had been catastrophic and that was the reason for his final breakdown. If that was true, then who can blame him? The drama was tremendously. He claimed that he really had cancer and claimed also that everything else was true. But for me, it didn’t matter anymore. I wouldn’t have believed him no matter what. It was too late for any trust to be rebuild.

The conversation where he admitted having lied about the apartments, was heartbreaking. I could literally hear his internal struggle, as he confessed it to me. He WAS trying to be honest, and he WAS trying to fight the disease and that strangely gave me some comfort. At least the love that I had felt from him, wasn’t a lie. He tried to overcome the urge to lie about his identity. He really tried to do that for me.

But he failed. His disease won in the end, and I had to let him go.

In reality HE had let ME go already in November/December, but I apparently didn’t get that because he kept declaring his love.

So … that is the story about the Bodyguard. How I went into a dysfunctional relationship with my eyes open, even if I consider myself to be both rational and sensible. So, for a relatively intelligent woman I am mind-numbingly stupid!

It took me the entire spring of 2022 to get over that a**hole. And … I don’t even think he was an a**hole, because I don’t think that he had a choice. And that was probably the saddest thing of it all, and maybe also the reason that it took me so long.

But with every step I took during late spring and summer, I got over him, and I can tell you exactly when I knew that I was completely done with him. It was probably long before, but I knew with absolute certainty in July. Because I wrote to him and wished him happy birthday. I had 2 numbers on him and 2 numbers on his nephew. None of them worked anymore.

I was waiting for an emotional reaction of the fact that now where the phone numbers where gone, that there was no way that I could ever get in touch with him again. I had (and have) no clue of how to contact him. But there came no reaction at all. I was at peace with the fact that he was gone forever. And that was a nice realization. I needed that.

And that was when I slowly opened my heart to someone else. Someone decent and wonderful, who really deserves my love.

But before I get to write about him, there was of course some dating during spring which helped me get over the Bodyguard. I am sure that some of it you will find pretty amusing.