When You Let Go, Really Let Go

I've seen Brown twice since our breakup nearly 10 years ago.

The first was a few months later. I was in my kitchen washing dishes and singing. He greeted me with, "It sings," in a tone of voice that said how dare I sing while he nursed a broken heart.

The second time was a few years later. I was heavily involved with transformational seminars that required me to have conversations with people I had unfinished business with. I basically acknowledged that the elephant in the room had played a bigger role in our breakup than the betrayal, and apologized for treating him like a bad guy who needed to constantly atone.

Then a year or so after that, I called Brown to (falsely) accuse him of giving me an STD.

I'd had an abnormal pap smear. When I went in for my biopsy, I asked my mean, hatchet-faced OB-GYN what an abnormal pap meant, and she tersely replied that I had an STD. She didn't bother to explain what I've now learned from commercials: that a very common virus called HPV can cause cervical cancer in roughly 10 percent of women exposed to it.

I thought I was dying of cancer. So in total terror of my impending baldness, radiation-imposed barrenness and ultimate untimely death, I gave Brown yet another piece of my mind.

Of course, the biopsy turned out negative. I wasn't dying. And I didn't have an STD.

But I was too embarrassed to apologize, because I'd blurted out, "I haven't been with anybody since you, so if I have something, you gave it to me."

I'd admitted to being stuck in my head with him, while he had moved on – into the arms of a Korean woman.

I haven't seen or talked to him since, but through the years, I've kept up with him through his best friend's wife. When we talk, she gives me the juicy second-hand gossip about his wife, kids and drama.

A few years ago, I admitted to my friend Chief that I was still in love with Brown. Her face kinda squinched up. She was my boss at the new job I took while Brown and I were breaking up. Then and now, whenever I describe my relationship with him, she always says the same thing, "He sounds totally wrong for you."

A few weeks back, while blogging about the Brown saga, I confided to her how writing about him brought up all this stuff because "I still hadn't found his replacement."

Chief gave me one of her quizzical looks, and gently pointed out that I wasn't supposed to be looking for Brown's "replacement."

In that moment, I realized that instead of looking for a love that's based on mutual respect, shared goals and shared dreams, I was merely measuring every man against my selective memories of how good things used to be with Brown.

Writing about him has made me realize the extent to which I've been playing the what-if game. The blaming-myself-for-letting-go game. The blaming-him-for-not-trying-harder game. The blaming-his-wife-even-though-I-don't-know-her game.

So I made the decision to really let him go – psychically and emotionally, not just physically. I prayed for him to be happy (instead of hoping he'd waste away from miserable, undying love for me). I prayed he'd have a great relationship with his wife (instead of taking pleasure in second-hand tales of marital discord). I prayed for him to completely release me and for me to completely release him.

In writing this blog, and supplementing it with a deep intention to forgive and be forgiven, I feel like I've finally let Brown go – for real and for good.

Thanks for being a part of my healing process.

(Brown Diaries Parts 1-18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned Part 3 of 3: 1 2 3)

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True Love Ain't Nothin' Like This

I wanted to write something poetic about it being better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but in my case, that wouldn't quite ring true. Damaged people who don't love themselves can not truly love others. They can feel infatuation, obsession, what passes for love, but what they think is love isn't really love.

And that's the truth about me and Brown.

At the time, he would have sworn he loved me, and I would have sworn I loved him. And we both would have meant it – fervently.

But the evidence wasn't in his favor, nor was it in mine.

Love doesn't disappoint, take for granted, verbally abuse and deliberately dupe another person. Because that's irritating, disrespectful and ultimately devastating.

Nor does love cling so tightly to a fantasy and a dream of the future that it completely dismisses another person's reality. Because that's unrealistic, disrespectful and ultimately life-strangling.

In lying and breaking promises to me continually, Brown proved he did not love me.

In refusing to acknowledge, understand and accept that Brown absolutely, positively did not want more children, I proved I did not love him.

We both experienced love as a noun: an indescribably good feeling, the object of the verb making.

We didn't experience love as a verb, with all the selflessness that it entails. Brown didn't love me enough to show up, to support my dreams and aspirations, to want what was truly in my best interests. I didn't love Brown enough to be spacious, to let him be him, to hear what was always being said under the surface.

We both did the best we could, based on who we were at the time, and we both called it love.

Then when sugar-sweet love turned to vinegar, we both fled.

I still don't know what true love is, but I definitely know a whole lot more about what it's not. And that's a good lesson and a good start.

(Brown Diaries Parts 1-18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned Part 2 of 3: 1 2 3)

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I Don't Need a Man

A few weeks after the painful goodbye to Brown, I did something that nice Catholic girls just don't do.

I went to an adult store and bought myself the thickest, blackest, most utilitarian approximation of a man that I could find.

It was liberating.

Because I was addicted to Brown. More specifically, I was addicted to amazing, glorious sex with Brown. And discovering that I could have amazing, glorious orgasms all by myself was a very liberating form of revenge. My plastic stand-in couldn't kiss my eyelids the way Brown did and it couldn't string me along with empty promises and sweet words of love, but it could absolutely, positively handle the mechanics. (Better than most flesh-and-blood men, I might add.)

And knowing that I could take care of my own needs freed me from what had been my pattern:

• I'd be celibate for a few weeks or months.
• Then I'd meet somebody, anybody who was polite enough to get past my no-class meter (which must have been temporarily out of order when I met Semi-Homeless) and who acted like they were into me.
• The hormones would kick in, and usually I'd be panting and naked at the end of the first date – and feeling really bad about it.
• Then in a few days, weeks or months, the relationship would be over. I'd be celibate again, and the cycle would begin anew.

After Brown, I knew unequivocally that the merry-go-round had to stop. So I promised myself – and this time I really meant it – that I was done with being a sexual dishrag.

I still wished and hoped that a man would be my escape route from poverty, from loneliness, from boredom, from corporate America. But slowly but surely, against my will, I've learned to take responsibility for my own dreams and to be my own entertainment, the same way that I learned to push my own joy button after my breakup with Brown.

Over the past year, I've begun to come to terms with the fact that I may never marry. I may never have kids. I may never get the white picket fence that I always dreamed about.

That's not an easy pill to swallow, but neither is the alternative: Blaming myself because I didn't find The One or that I didn't make it work with Brown even though so many things were clearly unworkable.

What I finally realized, just in the last few months, is that I really am responsible for taking care of myself and for making my own dreams come true. These aren't the days before washing machines and tractors, when women needed men to take care of them. In our age of automation, education and not quite equal pay, women are fully capable of taking care of themselves, even if we just don't want to.

I've been doing it for 10 years now.

It's not always easy, and it's not always fun.

But I'll take taking care of myself any day over taking care of myself while being emotionally torn in two by a man who's not taking care of me.

(Brown Diaries Parts 1-18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned Part 1 of 3: 1 2 3)

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Goodbye

I finally did the impossible. I broke up with Brown – for good. In both senses of the word. Good as in final. And good as in what was truly best for both of us.

I didn't berate him. I didn't play the victim. I wasn't particularly dramatic.

I just told him – in person, not over the phone – that my needs weren't being met and that I no longer had the expectation that they would be; that the things I wanted for my future (marriage and children) he couldn't provide; and that there was no sense in prolonging my agony or his.

He was hurt, but he said he understood. He wanted me to have the best, and he would always be in my corner.

For everything that had gone wrong between us – from harsh words to the betrayal to countless broken promises – I knew for certain that he really loved me and that I really loved him. And that's what made the whole situation so damned sad.

Less than a week after the breakup, I had a fever of 101 degrees. I'd wake up sweating. Then freezing.

But that was nothing compared to what I felt emotionally.

Pure, raw pain.

Pure, raw loss.

Grief in its purest, most utterly agonizing form.

I felt like a part of me had died. Like I'd been cut in two, and pain was just pouring out of my body. Like a dried-up flower that would never bloom open again.

I hoped the pain would pass quickly, but it didn't.

It lingered, in a less-intense form, for nearly a decade.

(Brown Diaries Part 18 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Growth vs. Brown

The truce with Brown didn't last. But neither did my emotional neediness. Slowly but surely, I was starting to outgrow my dependence on him – a process that he accelerated by only seeing me once or twice a month.

You see, my first act of independence was that I stopped going to Brown's apartment every weekend like a cheap, convenient and dependable little treat. I filled my empty evenings and weekends with The Artist's Way, a self-help book that had changed my life four years earlier.

After a 27-day absence, Brown appeared on my doorstep, and we made love.

I took a six-day trip to Detroit for my birthday, where I hung out with my Best Friend and got an over-the-top, orange-blond hair weave that mirrored my messy inner transformation.

Brown picked me up at the airport. He gave me three pairs of earrings and a necklace, along with a bunch of reasons why he wouldn't be around for the rest of the weekend.

I found out that I was the lowest-paid secretary at Looney Tunes Home Video and waged a campaign to get a raise.

Brown reappeared. We made love, but now something was different. I was squirmy and skittish. I couldn't relax. In the middle of the night, he woke me up, hungering for round two. I couldn't. Making love to him hurt, like cutting open a scab that had just begun to heal. He left before dawn. The next day, I broke up with him over the phone, saying that I loved him, but the relationship was causing me too much pain.

A software company that I'd interviewed with a year earlier called. Back then, the hiring managers had wanted me for an editor position, but the VP with the final say was turned off by my secretarial background. They still remembered me, and offered me a freelance writing job. It meant an extra $300 a week, which I sorely needed.

Brown and I got back together, and the sex was magical once again.

The software company interviewed me for a full-time, permanent writer/editor position. There was a glimmer of hope that I might finally escape the executive-assistant ranks.

Brown and I fought over the phone. He questioned me about how much the new job might pay. I got an attitude. When he uttered the words, "I don't want to deal with your sh#t," I slammed the phone in his ear.

I excelled at my freelance-writing assignments, and I got the full-time job. A writer/editor title. A $13,000 raise.

Brown came over. After another attempt at nervous, jumpy love-making, he accused me of having an affair. An affair? I told him I didn't know who he was anymore, what he wanted from me anymore. Not to mention, he was talking about moving to Vegas. Without me. He asked if I was afraid I'd be alone when he went to Vegas. I replied, "I'm already alone."

I broke up with him again by phone. Told him that I still loved him and I probably always would, but my needs weren't being met and apparently neither were his. Twelve days later, he was back in my bed.

I started my new job, which was both terrifying and gratifying. I was officially a writer now. Working with people I liked. At a company I liked. At a salary where, for the first time in my life, I wasn't broke.

My life without Brown was looking up. My life with Brown hurt like hell.

(Brown Diaries Part 17 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Deciding Not to Decide

A month after the betrayal, Brown and I had a serious conversation about our relationship.

I asked him to say whatever was in his heart to say. And what he said, in so many words, was goodbye.

He said he thought I was going to hold a grudge forever about him lying to me, and his subsequent promise not to lie was ridiculous.

"What happens if I go to Vegas and win $2,000 and give you $200 and you find out and get mad at me for lying?"

"Why would you want to do that in the first place?"

But it didn't take long to get past that ghetto ridiculousness and get to the real problem in our relationship: the elephant in the room.

He said he could give me "cats, dogs, turtles or anything in this world," but he couldn't give me what I really wanted: children. He would not and could not get his vasectomy reversed, even though he knew kids would make me "50 percent happy."

Then he described how I took on a supernatural glow in restaurants whenever ladies walked in with their babies. How I lit up when I played with his best friend's three-year-old son. How it was painful for him to even look at me, because he couldn't give me that. How it bothered him when he told me about the vasectomy because "you barely knew me, and you cried."

That's when I realized that Brown had interpreted my love-at-first-sight devotion to him as ridiculous, unappealing desperation. I instantly felt ashamed and very stupid.

But he didn't stop there.

He adamantly decreed that if I wanted children, I was going to have to adopt because "I don't want anything coming out of you that I didn't put there."

Yes, he really did say that.

Selfish bastard.

Selfish, tactless, hurtful bastard.

He ended it by saying that instead of being the man who couldn't give me children, he preferred to be "the best friend who f*cked up."

I responded by pleading – yes, pleading – in the most heartfelt, pitiful and childlike of tones, "Brown, please don't leave me. I don't think that I can bear it."

So much for womanly pride and assertiveness.

With absolutely nothing resolved, we both called a temporary, eggshell-fragile truce.

(Brown Diaries Part 16 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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The Wrong Kind of Fight

From the moment our relationship began to fall apart, Brown started acting like it was already over. I wanted him to be the kind of man who was open and honest and willing to do whatever it took to make us work. And I wanted to be the kind of woman who was assertive and loving and able to balance both of our needs.

But he wasn't that kind of man. And I wasn't that kind of woman.

So this is what happened instead.

He reverted back to his old MIA tricks – saying he would call and then not calling, saying he'd see me and then standing me up. Only now, instead of merely pining over him, I fantasized about dumping him in the most painful and embarassing ways. Like humping another guy in his living room just as his key was turning in the lock.

When we did talk or see each other, I was the nagging, enraged wife.

"I feel like you've been playing me for a year and then acting like, 'Why are you tripping?'"

"No, that's not true."

"I don't trust you anymore."

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to be honest with me and not lie to me."

"You want me to say I'll never lie to you again? Everybody lies. But I won't lie about that again."

"So what am I supposed to do – measure all your words on a scale?"

"Ok. I won't lie."

And then I told him if I ever caught him in another lie, he wouldn't even have time to blink, I'd be gone so fast.

"I thought you were gone now."

I couldn't believe he was willing to let me go that easily. Without a fight. Without even a feeble attempt to make things right.

A few days later, he stood me up for an entire weekend. I went to the movies twice on Saturday just to try to keep my mind off of him. Then at 8 p.m. Sunday, I caved in and called him.

Of course, he didn't apologize. He made small talk as if nothing was wrong, even though my anger was a red hot knife and I was stabbing him through the phone line. Finally, I told him the next move was on him, because I felt I was chasing him.

He responded kindly, "You're not chasing me."

I said good night and threw my phone across the room as hard as I could, then broke into yet another firestorm of tears.

I was terrified to be alone again. Having the bubonic plague was more appealing to me than being single. The thought of returning to my old slutty ways – months of celibacy, broken by desperate love affairs and then a return to being alone – made me sick.

Was it only a month ago that I'd been so happy just to wake up next to Brown and watch him sleep?

(Brown Diaries Part 15 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Happy First Anniversary

I wanted to marry him.

I wanted to leave him.

I wanted to forgive him.

I wanted to make him pay.

Such was my state of mind in the days after Brown's betrayal.

I felt sick to my stomach.

I had nightmares and insomnia.

I sleepwalked through work.

I cried incessantly.

He called me a few days after the truth came seeping out. At first, I let him talk to my answering machine. Then I decided to call him back. I told him that I was very angry and that I didn't have a lot to say, because I didn't want to say the wrong thing out of anger.

He asked me what I wanted to do.

"I don't know."

"Will I be the first to know?"

"Yes."

I didn't want to leave him, but I didn't want to be his fool, either. What I really wanted to do was run screaming from my life and lock myself in a dark closet.

A few days later, I called Brown and asked him to come over.

I couldn't get any words out, other than I was very upset that he had lied to me for a year and that his lies had led him to make false promises and led me to have false expectations.

"You can't stay mad at me forever. Do you want me to leave?" He wasn't being flippant. He wanted me to make a choice: forgive him and stay with him, or hate him and break up with him.

"I don't think you're even sorry."

"Yes, I am sorry." He went on to say that this was all his problem, not mine. That he wrestled with guilt for many months before he decided to tell me. That everyone except me knew how much he loved me and wanted to marry me.

Then he massaged me and massaged me and undressed me and made love to me ... while tears streamed down my face.

He let me cry. And remarked, "I hate when you cry. You always cry for a long time."

The next day I attempted to do something I'd never done in nearly all of my 28 years: I attempted to get drunk. I went to the grocery store and bought a bottle of Alizé.

And I felt good for the first time in what seemed like years.

I laughed. I danced.

I called Brown and announced that I was drunk.

I decided that I danced better drunk. That I wrote better drunk.

I even thought that maybe I should follow my Great Aunt's example and become a drunk.

It was better than crying alone in my apartment.

It was the only way I knew to celebrate the first anniversary of my first date with Brown.

(Brown Diaries Part 14 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Compassion Turns to Fury

After Brown confessed his big, monstrous lie, my first reaction was compassion. As he sat on the edge of the bed, head hanging low and pain dripping from his pores, I wanted to protect him. My man was broken, and seeing him broken broke my heart.

He claimed that this was the only lie he'd ever told me, and he explained the origin of the lie: Early in our relationship, I woke up in the middle of the night after dreaming that he had a child by someone other than his ex-wife. He knew by the tone of my voice that I would leave, and he didn't want to lose me.

I didn't remember the conversation or the dream, but I knew he was telling the truth. I frequently have precognitive dreams, and I'm also known to completely forget entire conversations that occur after I first wake up, along with traumatic events I don't want to relive.

Would I have left him if I'd known the truth up front?

Maybe.

My raised-Catholic sensibilities took marriage seriously. An ex-wife was unfortunate but respectable. A baby's mama was cause for concern. An ex-wife plus a baby's mama was a sign that the man was irresponsible and callous. (Which Brown often was.)

But in the moment that he told me these things, he was on the ground bleeding.

So my first reaction was compassion.

My second reaction was numbness.

I had a whole work day ahead of me. I drove to Burbank and did my job as if the earth hadn't just crumbled underneath me.

My third reaction was fury.

It started setting in at 1 a.m., when I started sorting out the incident in a long, tearful vent to my diary. Because when I wrote it all down, I had no choice but to admit how thoroughly Brown had duped me. Now I wasn't just mad at him, I was mad at myself for missing what had always been right in front of my nose.

He claimed it was one lie, but a multitude of lies were wrapped up in that one lie.

The preposterous notion that he would have had a child with his ex-wife years after they broke up. His lame explanations when I would ask why she never dropped the baby off when his two oldest kids came over. His inexplicable money problems over the last two months, which I had naively attributed to my half-promised engagement ring.

Instead of a man who made double my salary and paid one ex-wife child support, he was a man who was now handing most of his check to his Baby's Mama, even before his two legitimate kids saw a dime. He was now a man who made much less than me, with a much higher standard of living to support.

The shock was wearing off, and the confusion, anger and hurt that had been building up all day was starting to hiss and shriek like a teapot on full boil.

The elephant in the room was now trampling mud all over my tiny apartment and blasting dirty water in my face. If I stayed with Brown, I'd be barren by default – unable to have children of my own – but paying dearly in baby-mama drama with what were now the two mothers of his children.

How dare he hide the truth until I was so locked in, so completely in love with him that I couldn't run away?

(Brown Diaries Part 13 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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The Betrayal

Brown fell from grace exactly 10 days before our one-year anniversary.

One night, he came home completely defeated, with his head in his hands, too upset to eat. He wouldn't tell me what was wrong.

The next morning, I asked if he felt better. The answer was no.

I held him for what seemed like an eternity. If I nagged him, he'd keep silent. So I held my tongue and rubbed his back and massaged his temples and tuned into him intuitively.

In a flash, I knew what was bothering him.

"Is it one of the kids?"

That simple question unlocked the door to everything Brown had been hiding from me.

It was his three-year-old son, the one I'd never met.

More specifically, it was Brown's Baby's Mama – a baby's mama I was completely unaware of because Brown had always claimed his youngest son was by his ex-wife.

He described her as his "worst f*cking nightmare" and painted an unflattering picture of a 33-year-old woman who still lived with her mom, faked disability claims, drove a red BMW, was mean to his two older kids, snooped through his things, blew up his pager and pressured him to buy a house.

They'd dated for 18 months and lived together for six months.

When they were still an item, she'd warned one of Brown's best friends that if he didn't do her right, she would take him to the cleaners.

Brown hadn't done her right.

He'd missed the birth of the baby – her first-born – because he chose to be with his dying father. "I made the choice: my dad, who was on his way out, or my son, who I'd always have with me." And, without going into details, he admitted that when they broke up, he'd put her out of his apartment with the baby in tow.

Now, she was making good on her promise.

She went to court lying and crying that he'd never paid a dime in child support, although he'd given her cash from day one. Now the government was garnisheeing his check. He handed me his pay stub: $327 was all he had to show for a week's worth of backbreaking, box-lifting labor.

And the pain wasn't just financial. He barely got to see his son. If she knew Brown was on his way over, she'd pack the baby up and leave the house. She didn't let Brown take the baby home, which meant Brown's older kids couldn't develop a relationship with their baby brother. And now she was threatening to take Brown back to court to get sole custody, which meant Brown would pay even more in child support and would have even less contact with his son.

In short, she was using her three-year-old boy as both paycheck and payback.

Brown was in agony.

And now I was, too. Because the man I loved had lied to me, over and over, for an entire year.

(Brown Diaries Part 12 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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The Pedestal

Ten months into our relationship, Brown and I experienced a month-and-a-half of pure bliss. No abusive outbursts that left me sobbing uncontrollably. Just good times, sweet times. With just a hint of salt, because Brown without his salty side would be like me not wearing my heart on my sleeve.

First, there was my first, last and only truly romantic Valentine's Day. I spent my rent money on a new dress.

The Dress

Brown wined and dined me at a nice restaurant in West Hollywood. A few tables over, a TV starlet and her friends were dining. But all eyes were on me and Brown, a gorgeous black couple in love.

The night before, he had teased me with what he knew I wanted more than anything in the world.

"Where do you drive to see your chiropractor?" he asked.

"Tustin."

"Next month, you and I are going to have to take a trip out to Tustin, but I won't tell you why. You'll have to figure it out."

I wondered aloud if he was going to curse out my natural-remedy doctor, whom Brown thought of as a quack.

He laughed, while I kept wondering what in the world was in Tustin.

Then it hit me.

"THE WORLD'S LARGEST ENGAGEMENT RING STORE IS IN TUSTIN!"

"What's that? You want a ring?"

His birthday was a few days later. I gave him a letter: "40 Ways I Love My Brown on his 40th Birthday." It was a long list, ranging from the pornographic to the sweet to the practical. I sprayed it with perfume and put lipstick kisses all over the envelope.

He loved it.

I even shared with him my dream about writing and starring in a one-woman show, and this time, he was actually encouraging. "Write about your dad and write about your porch and write about your mom and write about Best Friend's mom, but don't write about all your loser boyfriends, or people will get judgmental and think you're a nut."

(Ooops. Tee hee. Guess I didn't heed that advice.)

We spent lazy, conflict-free time together. Like the night we watched George Carlin's standup comedy special, "You Are All Diseased." After one great joke too many, Brown got so beside himself that he literally jumped off the couch, ran through the whole apartment, returned to the living room and flopped on the floor. Half-naked and howling with laughter.

And the time I stopped by his place after work and hung out for a couple of hours. I put on my coat to go home, and he attacked me. We broke in his dining room table, and I was the three-course meal. I stayed the night and slept like a baby, only to get seconds and thirds in the morning.

"Do you think we'll still be doing this when we're 80?" I asked.

"Yeah," he replied. "Only slower."

I wondered if it was possible to be a virgin even after you'd run out of fingers and toes to count all the men you'd messed around with. Brown made me feel like a brand-new woman, like I'd never known sex before I'd known him.

He was the center of my whole world, but I was also beginning to understand that he couldn't fulfill all of my emotional needs. He could never be Best Friend, the person I shared all my confidences with. He'd never be a woman, and he'd never understand.

But as far as men went, he was tops.

(Brown Diaries Part 11 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Sex 10, Words 3

Brown had a habit of criticizing almost everything about me. Most of it stung. But when he rubbed salt into the never-healing wound of my career disappointment, I always went over the edge.

I was nearly six years out of college, cum laude from Yale University. But while my classmates were presumably on their way to being doctors, lawyers, captains of industry and heads of state, I was answering phones and schlepping coffee as a $16/hour secretary.

After quitting the Lunacy Network without notice, I'd gone temp-to-perm in the home video division of the Looney Tunes movie studio.

My boss was cool. Like me, he was from Detroit – although the Detroit he grew up in was considerably different than the one I grew up in. His Detroit still had lots of white people in it, before all the white people like him fled. He'd started out as a copywriter in Detroit ad agencies, worked his way up to owning his own agency, and now he was a vice president at Looney Tunes.

Cool VP made it clear that he didn't want me settling for life as a secretary, not even his. "You're the best damned secretary I've ever had, and you're absolutely wasting your life." He offered to mentor me as a copywriter, and told me he would help me get started at an agency.

I shared my happy news with Brown, only to have him cut it to shreds.

"I'm not trying to piss on your parade, but I've seen what happens at advertising agencies. You have to be able to produce on demand, and if you can't, you're out the door. And I know you. You can't handle stress at all."

He dug this knife into my psyche while we were in the middle of watching a movie. I held in my tears until the credits rolled and Brown stepped in to the shower. When he stepped out, he found me standing in the dark hallway, with my coat on and my keys in hand, crying uncontrollably.

I told Brown that I was upset, and I was going home. Brown did what I knew he would do. He told me that I was not going anywhere at 1 a.m. He proceeded to undress me and tuck me into bed as he rubbed my back and told me to relax, and I continued to sob.

A thousand words were screaming in my head. How could I be in love with a man who had no belief in me? Why couldn't he take the knife out of his mouth long enough to encourage me ... or to even just say nothing?

In the night, I woke up and found myself holding on to him as if he were my life preserver.

In the morning, we made love, and the words I couldn't say were still there choking me, and I wanted to tell him, but I didn't know how to make the words come out, so I just had my orgasms and choked back the words until it was time for me to go to work. He never once asked me what was wrong the previous night, and I was more or less relieved, because I didn't know what to say or how to say it.

We didn't see each other again for 2-1/2 weeks. I was once again giving him the silent treatment and refusing to come to his house. Brown got so frustrated, he banged on my door at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. I was so happy to see him, all I could do was hug him and kiss his neck and lay quivering beside him after another round of passionate lovemaking.

I still had to talk to him, somehow. And I still didn't have the right words to say.

(Brown Diaries Part 10 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Sandpaper and Frayed Nerves

As much as I loved Brown, I had immediate misgivings about moving in with him. I wasn't sure I wanted to give up the independence of my own place so soon after escaping from my Great Aunt. And, the truth was, Brown was frequently mean to me.

The same tongue that could pour honeyed sweetness in my ear after lovemaking could also be as rough and coarse and harsh as sandpaper, and it rubbed my nerves raw.

"How can you want to be an actress when you haven't even seen Taxi Driver?"

When I described my feelings of frustration and barely suppressed rage over being a secretary with a Yale degree, he told me I was spoiled. I should just go work in a clothing store on the weekends until I managed to catch my bills up.

Since his declaration that he wanted us to live together, I was spending more and more time at his place. And that meant more and more time twiddling my thumbs while he talked on the phone with his ex-wife ... more and more time waiting with my stomach gurgling as he did this or that before we went to brunch ... more and more time watching Brown watch TV ... and more and more time licking my wounds after getting sandpapered by his off-hand comments.

I began to use the same defense mechanisms I had employed as a child with my verbally abusive dad. I shut down. I stopped talking. I tiptoed around Brown's moods. And even though he was still the center of my universe, I started considering the possibility that maybe our relationship wouldn't last.

(Brown Diaries Part 9 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Suddenly Serious, Almost Overnight

About four months into our relationship, Brown went from a guy I saw sporadically to a guy who wanted me around him all the time. I was too "giddy" (another of Brown's favorite words) to notice that his behavior had completely changed.

Truth be told, I was preoccupied.

I'd just quit my job at the Lunacy Network without having a new job lined up. So now, I was temping for 55-65 percent of my full-time salary, while I tried in vain to find someone, anyone to give me a real job that didn't have the word secretary in the title.

Brown proved to be the most beautiful distraction.

He picked me up for a romantic drive in the real Beverly Hills, which I didn't even know existed. I'd only been to "the flats" – the palm-trees-and-Rodeo-Drive areas I'd seen in the movies. Brown took me high up into the canyon roads that threaded through the Hollywood Hills, past gorgeous mansions that were 10 miles and a world away from my one-bedroom Mar Vista life. We pointed out the mansions where we wished we could live, ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant and made magnificent love in my less-than-magnificent apartment.

There was only one damper on our day.

Brown said, "You know there's only one thing that bothers me about you. You know what that is?"

"I'm messy, I'm disorganized, I'm a crybaby, and I don't cook?" I ventured helpfully.

"You want kids." He looked me dead in the eyes. "You realize I can't have any more kids, don't you?"

"I'm hoping for divine intervention," I replied. I wasn't going to let a little elephant like his vasectomy stand between me and my dream of ultimate blissful housewifeness.

Brown snorted. "Yeah, well, it'll have to be something like that. Baby, I had an operation by the foremost physician in his field."

I said nothing, but thought to myself, If he could just soften to the idea of having two – only two. My raised-Catholic mind wanted seven babies, but I'd settle for two. His operation could be reversed. He just had to be willing to do it.

A week later, after one of our marathon love-making sessions, when it felt like the planets were colliding, waterfalls were crashing, butterflies were flitting and birds were singing, I confessed that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him and he declared that he was never going to let me get away from him.

A week after that, he spent an entire day at my house. I was floating so high on Brown's cloud, I even cooked for him. Brown was floating on a cloud too, because he asked me to move in with him.

He was going to move from his current place, a large apartment in a once-nice neighborhood that was rapidly turning hood. And when that happened, he wanted me by his side. I was so surprised, I almost dropped a dish.

I asked him if he was burnt out by marriage, and his answer surprised me. He had loved being married, he wanted to be married, he liked having someone to come home to. And even though he'd just had a sleepover and all-day-over at my place, he invited me to spend the night at his.

(Brown Diaries Part 8 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Spinning in Brown's Orbit

When Brown and I first started dating, I was working for a startup cable TV channel that was supposed to inspire alcoholics, drug addicts and others in "recovery" to get clean. The only problem was, all of the company's not-quite-recovering execs relapsed at the same time.

I'd been lured in by a $3,000 raise and a title that didn't include the word secretary or assistant. I thought "marketing coordinator" meant I finally had a job that would lead to bigger and better things.

Instead, I found myself doing boring and unenviable tasks like calling every cable system in the United States to confirm their contact information and enter it into a database. While insane people literally screamed at each other and at me.

At work, I'd surreptitiously type diary entries to myself that went like this:

My life stops, every day for nine hours. It comes to a complete, grinding halt. Like being at the top of a roller coaster, before you take the downward plunge. The only break from the monotony is getting sh*t on by passing birds and rudely bumped by the next set of roller cars.

Was it any wonder that Brown, the only bright spot in my miserable workaday life, became the center of my universe?

We only saw each other about once a week, but after glorious, heavenly, mountain-moving sex, he would kiss my eyelids and say the darnedest things.

Like I was the best lover he ever had, in all categories. Best film, best actress, best short story, best visuals ("'Cause you be staring at a brother with those big eyes"), best foreign film ("'Cause from time to time, you do start speaking in tongues and a brother don't know what you're saying") and a few more that made me laugh and go all gooey at the same time.

Or he'd say something really insightful about my job, which he nicknamed the Lunacy Network. "The Lunacy Network is just like Star Trek. A big ship floating in outer space picking up strange forms of life. It never went anywhere, it never landed and the captain was always in a dilemma."

Was it any wonder I absolutely, positively made him my sun, my moon, my stars, my universe?

In a rare moment of letting his guard down, Brown told me that I "sedated" him, that I gave him calm and peace. He was having a hard time at work and a hard time dealing with his dad's death, and I was, in his words, "low maintenance."

It was true. I never put pressure on him. I never nagged him. I never demanded that he spend time with me. I never asked for money. I never snooped through his things. I never did anything except love him with all my heart. I was his satellite, happily spinning around and basking in his glow.

(Brown Diaries Part 7 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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The Onion That Didn't Want to be Peeled

Brown was solitary, secretive and moody, but he covered it up with jokes, chattiness and sarcasm. I always knew there was more to him than good loving, loud laughter and a UPS job. But getting to know the real him was something that happened crumb by crumb.

Over time, the bare-bones facts of his life began to emerge.

• Brown was 39 years old, divorced and the father of three kids.
  
  
• He'd grown up in L.A. He'd gone to high school with both the children of rock legends and with classmates who would later become rock legends.
  
  
• He had served in an elite branch of the U.S. military – the kind that did secret missions. He'd been parachuted in the middle of the night to unnamed foreign countries. He was a skilled marksman. And yes, he had killed people.
  
  
• At one point, he had briefly dabbled in selling drugs. He'd stopped when his ex-wife started to show a little too much liking for cocaine.
  
  
• He had a functionally dysfunctional relationship with his ex-wife. Once, I found myself waiting outside while they had a knock-down, drag-out screaming match. But for the most part, they got along for the sake of the kids.
  
  
• They had three kids. A mischievous 12-year-old boy who thought I was pretty, a seven-year-old girl who didn't want to share her daddy with me and a two-year-old boy I'd never met. I asked Brown how in the world he and his ex-wife had gotten back together long enough to produce the baby, and he replied, "A quickie."
  
  
• He was smart and multi-talented, an artist at heart. As a kid, he had played the violin. He had a beautiful singing voice. He watched every movie known to man. In short, a frustrated actor or writer who had never really attempted to give it a shot.
  
  
• Brown had a secret dream of going into interior design. His UPS route was one of the most exclusive furniture and design centers in Los Angeles, where architects and designers shopped for the rich and famous.
  
  
• He made twice what I made as a secretary. UPS paid bonuses based on package weight, and Brown cashed in because he delivered furniture, rugs and other heavy items.
  
  
• Brown hated his job. Several months before, he'd been falsely accused of stealing $50, an insult to his intelligence as well as his integrity. He'd been exonerated, but now he was permanently disgruntled and hanging on just for the paycheck.
  
  
• His dad had been a major lover-man playboy. (It was genetic.) He'd died the year before, and Brown was taking it hard.

Learning what made Brown tick was an almost impossible task, but learning how he felt about me was easy. He loved me. He was crazy about me. He worshipped me. It was one fact he never even attempted to hide.

(Brown Diaries Part 6 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Blissfully Together and Desperately Alone

The first few months with Brown were not great. My love for him was great, but our actual love affair was lonely.

When he was around, I felt like this:

I love Brown so completely. I can't even try to hide it, try to play cool. If I could clone him, I would. If I could keep him beside me every day, I would.

Or this:

Every woman should be so lucky to have a beautiful man like Brown. Every woman. I am so happy and so thankful that I found him. That's one prayer that definitely came true. I love Brown. Love him. Love him 30 times over. Love him.

And especially this:

I so enjoyed our lovemaking yesterday morning. Brown took me to a place I have never, ever been. Where I was full and I was sated, and I didn't want or need any more, but he kept giving me more, and all I could do was surrender in accepting it, and the most incredible, calming feelings of pleasure washed over me.

But most of the time, he wasn't around, and I was left feeling something like this:

I feel so sad, I want to die. I can't think of anything else but Brown. I haven't heard from him all weekend. That's all weekend. He paged me Friday afternoon and said he'd call me on Friday night. The call never came.

He frequently said he was going to call, then didn't. Promised he'd come right over but actually appeared three hours later. Said he'd see me tomorrow, then never showed up.

I felt like a stupid, weak, snivelling little woman. I even made a feeble attempt to break up with him about four months into our relationship: I didn't answer his calls for a week, and I practiced cussing him out in my head. Then I caved in and called him. Truthfully, I'm not sure he even noticed.

So what, you may ask, was going on?

Part of it was life.

Brown worked a lot of overtime. Brown had three kids. And most importantly, Brown had secrets that he wasn't ready to share with me.

(Brown Diaries Part 5 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Pillow Talk, Lunacy and the Elephant in the Room

I guess now is the time to admit that even though I made it to the third date before giving it up to Brown, our third date was only a week after our first.

Absolutely no shame, no apologies and no regrets.

As much as I wanted that man, and as much as he wanted me, three dates was a HUGE accomplishment.

But that's not to say that both of us didn't continue to wave red flags right underneath each other's noses.

It took Brown only three dates to discover that I was both promiscuous and emotionally needy. In the aftermath of our first night of passion – heart open, legs open, everything open – I proceeded to open my mouth, too. I spilled the beans about my recent casting-couch ordeal.

Major red flag for him.

But I was madly in love and didn't want there to be any secrets between us.

A few days later, he reciprocated by telling me something I didn't want to hear: A few days after the Vegas trip where we first met, he'd had a vasectomy.

I cried hysterically. Into the phone. Into the ears of the man I'd been dating for less than two weeks.

I told him how much I loved kids, how much I wanted to be a mother, how hurt I'd be if I were barren by default.

Another major red flag for him. It was lunacy – lunacy was one of Brown's favorite words – for a girl he'd just met to be crying like she'd just had a miscarriage because he didn't want to have any more children.

Too bad he didn't understand where the real lunacy lay. The lunacy wasn't that I was devastated, the lunacy was that I believed I could change his mind. I called my abusive psychic, who told me that vasectomies were reversible. I instantly felt better, and decided not to break up with him.

I didn't understand until years later, and I do mean years, that no man would willingly let a doctor snip away at the family jewels unless he really, truly, absolutely, positively, irreversibly did not want to have kids.

So Brown now had a pocketful of red flags, as did I.

But the truth was, Brown was just as smitten with me as I was with him.

Less than two weeks after we met, he was referring to me as "his girl," leaving daily messages on my machine that always began, "Hello, gorgeous," and even peppering our conversations with references to us eloping. He didn't want to end it any more than I did.

But for the rest of our relationship, the vasectomy would be the elephant in the room that we both tried in vain to tiptoe around.

(Brown Diaries Part 4 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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The Magical, Wonderful, Unbelievable Third Date

I don't remember the actual date. We must have gone to the movies at the Magic Johnson Theaters. No idea what we saw. But after the movie, we made out in Brown's car. That I remember.

And then I remember following him home.

And having my world absolutely, positively, completely rocked.

He was more wonderful than I can ever describe. Better than all my dreams and fantasies combined. He was hands-down, no debate, the best lover I'd ever had.

In his room, by the ambient light of a paper lantern, we devoured each other several different times, several different ways. Every single time, every single way was like a million answered prayers lighting up the sky to prove that a better day had, indeed, arrived.

I knew his baggage factor was high, but I also knew unequivocally that he was the man for me.

(Brown Diaries Part 3 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Red Flags and Marshmallow Goo

There is a moment of clarity when you first start dating someone, but you haven't yet let yourself fall into the wonderful, marshmallow goo. In that moment, you clearly see the big, red flags the other person is waving. And then you decide to dive into the goo anyway.

The first things I noticed about the cute guy from the bus were:

• He talked a lot, but revealed nothing.
• He routinely made offensive remarks about women.
• He had a tart sense of humor.

I had already had a prophetic dream about him.

I was in bed with my husband, but not quite in bed with him. I was kneeling on the floor and lying across his lap because I wasn't quite comfortable being in the bed with him. He knew exactly what I was up to. He kept thrusting against me very seductively, and I kept inching my way into his bed. Finally, I was on top of him. He said, "This is your house. This is your bed. So get used to it."

A few days later, we had our first phone conversation. It lasted 2-3 hours.

It was totally against The Rules, the how-to-catch-a-man book of the 90's. The rule for phone calls was to set a kitchen timer and hang up after 10 minutes.

We talked and we laughed, not a kitchen timer in sight.

He was 15 minutes late for our first date. That was also against The Rules.

I let that go, too. Watching the movie I picked turned out to be his punishment. It had gotten an A+ review from the LA Times. But it turned out to be a horrid, artsy-fartsy film about poor folks in Ireland. He talked sh*t through the whole movie, but he stayed to the end. He also paid for the movie tickets, bought coffee afterwards and put $5 worth of gas in my car. After Semi-Homeless, that made him a keeper.

I still knew very little about him. I had picked up that he was divorced, that he had three kids, that he was 39 years old. And he was a UPS driver. I wasn't sure how I felt about his blue-collar job, but I was sure how I felt about Brown.

I was now up to my hairline in goo, and I loved every minute of it. My lust for him was hotter, redder, wetter, more explosive than a volcano. At the same time, my heart was soft, liquid, gooey, sweet.

Brown didn't try to put the moves on me on the first date or on the second. Nor did he engage in one of my pet peeves, lacing our conversations with sexual innuendo. He was cool, respectful, and for me, slow-paced.

Giving it up too soon was definitely against The Rules.

I decided that if I could just make it to the third date, that would be Rules enough for me.

(Brown Diaries Part 2 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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