The Lying Hippie - Part 2

 Before I go on about my third trip where I found out many secrets about Harold, here were some things that I should I have paid attention to more closely that were red flags.

He was not poor.  He came from a good family that lived in a suburb of San Diego.  I think his parents wanted him to find direction and they would let him live with them for awhile.  His dad was an engineer and his mom didn't work.  Yet, he made out like I was the rich girl when my step-dad tuned pianos and made drive shafts for me to go to college.  My mom had worked off and on cleaning homes, cleaning offices and doing factory work. I was a legal assistant with a college degree.  It took me about 10 years to find a stable job. I was not a rich girl by any means.

He had a cell phone and I did not.  This was in the early 2000s so I'll admit to not knowing how cell phones worked.  When San Diego had wildfires in maybe 2003 or 2004, I was worried about how he was doing and called his cell phone. I left a message and he sent me an email that he was fine.  He also said that I shouldn't call his cell phone because he gets charged for it.  No, he had other reasons but at the time I didn't know and I apologized.

When I volunteered for the 2004 presidential election, I kind of found it grating the lectures he gave me about talking to potential voters.  I asked him if he would volunteer in his area and he said he was too busy working.  He would do his civic duty by voting on election day.  For someone who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, I kind of thought he shouldn't really lecture anyone about how to vote and why they should vote.

Before I went to see Harold in October 2005, there had been a 4 month gap in communication. His last email had been about being upset regarding the 2004 election.  I see it now. He was a massive drama king but at the time he worried me.  I thought he was suicidal and I had no way to contact him.  I wasn't even sure he existed anymore and I had to figure out how to go on with my life.  I was just starting to feel like I should move on, when I heard from him on April Fool's Day.  That should have been a sign right there.  He had been working endless hours driving a truck for extra money and just about killed himself working non stop.  I don't think I got an apology for the lack of communication but at the time I was glad to hear from him.  

He had gone back to work at the printing press place and our emails were more regular.  He had asked if I was coming back and like an idiot, I planned a trip in October 2005.  This time I found a hotel closer to where he lived and close to places I could walk to while he worked.  I know to any one person or two people who read this, shouldn't he have taken a day off to spend time with me?  Yeah, you would think, but he played the poor soul card so much, I would take what time I could get.  

A few days before my trip, I heard nothing from him.  At this time, my mom had come back home to live with me again.  I was worried that I was going to show up at the airport and he wouldn't be there.  She told me to just go have fun on my own, I knew the city.  I prepared myself for the worst.  When I got to the airport, I didn't see anyone waiting for me and my heart sunk.  Someone tapped me on the shoulder and it was him.  I hugged him tightly.  He looked terrible.  He told me that he had a lot to tell me but of course, he had no money to pay for parking.  And like the good girlfriend that I was, a sucker, I paid for it and he took me to the hotel.

On the drive over, someone kept calling him and he ignored it.  We made small talk but I knew something was up.  He did take the call at one point, he told the person he was fine.  He hung on the person. When we got to the hotel, he went outside to call someone.

Here was another red flag that I ignored from my first visit.  The first morning we spent together, he thought I was sleeping and went into the bathroom to talk to someone.  When he came out, he said he was talking to his sister.  When we had breakfast, he had stepped away and went outside to talk a phone call.

When he finally sat me down to talk, he admitted he was an alcoholic. It explained a lot but not enough.  He said that he had been in the hospital the night before.  His roommate didn't want him picking me up and he even asked me if I would drive his car.

What I think really happened?  He was pulled over for a DUI.  He was in the jail the night before. I found out years later from one of his friends that he was going to prison if he didn't go to a rehab center.  He would tell me weeks later after I left, he had to go to court because of his license plates.  It was probably his second or first DUI.  

I was happy that he was honest with me.  He wasn't completely honest.  He would lay out the other truth bomb after we went to his apartment and his landlady told him that this Alison called.  She said you need to cut that one loose.  Here I was thrilled to be at his place, meet his landlady who was nice to me and from Wisconsin and I had cats surrounding me which I loved and I'm like Who is Alison?

When I asked the question, he had a story to tell me.  Fake story, but he told me a story that Alison was a friend and he was her guardian ad litem because she had problems.  They had been involved at one point but they were friends.  He wanted to be free of her.  She was the friend who bought him the Converse shoes he was wearing.  She was the friend he went to the movies with.  She was the friend who kept calling him.  I was heartbroken.

I asked where does this leave me  as I'm crying my heart out.  He said he couldn't stand her and wanted to be done being her caretaker.  He loved me but he said he could never live up to my expectations.

The script got flipped on me that this was my fault for the way he was.  I was the woman who expected him to be a man.  How selfish of me.  I let him call the shots.  During our months of no communication I had resigned myself to be alone. Being with a partner and having a family was a ghost of the past as far as I was concerned.  I didn't demand anything of him.  It was a nightmare listening to this conversation.

He told me he loved me and I told him I loved him.  He was going to make this right.  He hadn't been to work for a week because he was on an alcoholic binge and he was able to go back after he called his manager.  He had dropped me off at the hotel and he said he would call me.  

I didn't know what to do other than cry. I thought I wasted my time on him and there was another woman.  I felt so foolish.  It didn't stop me from acting foolish or in this case, continue down Foolish Road and making bad decisions.

We walked around Seaport Village that night.  He knew I was ready to bolt and he did the thing that kept me coming back.  He talked about the future. He talked about places I could get work and we could get an apartment together.  He told me how green my eyes looked that night.  He forgot the part about them being red.  He talked about us having kids together.  He had wanted a little girl with big eyes like me.  I caved.  I figured he would have dumped Alison and their guardian ad litem thing, whatever it was.  I went home thinking maybe there was a future again. 

A few weeks later, I came home from work and saw that he had sent me emails.  They were kind of obnoxious emails and I thought, isn't he two hours behind me?  Isn't he supposed to be at work?  I asked him if he had the day off and he said that he was using his bosses computer which really sounded bad to me at the time.

A week later, he emailed me and told me that he had been let go.  He said other people had been let go as well.

No, this is what I think had happened.  He was on another bender with booze when he emailed me and was at home.  His drinking caught up to him and he was the only one let go.

There's a whole lot of lying going on this post, so I think I need to take a break.  This really is a long tale of lying, more lying and well, booze and lying.  

In the next episode of the Lying Hippie, we'll find out my worst nightmare came true on the fourth trip.

I was left at the airport with nobody to pick me up.  Sounds awesome doesn't it?

More tales of the Lying Hippie coming soon. I'm exhausted just typing this out but I actually had never shared this with anyone other than my mom.  Yeah.  I'm that embarrassed by what happened.