Day 11

The last couple of days have been a wild ride. A crazy, wild ride, but in the end, a fabulous ride. I have exactly 482,000 thoughts in my head and I'm going to try and keep them in order and have them make sense.

So, the last time I had a chance to sit down and put my thoughts on paper, was Sat night. I had just talked to Dino he was getting ready to go to the family thing with the kids. I was finishing up getting my computer working and I was going to go to bed early. I was comfortable being home, I was peaceful because I knew that we had had a great Friday night together. No Karen, no crap, just us. I knew from our phone conversation that he felt good about his day Saturday, getting the hardwood floor started. Peaceful. Normal.

I went to bed around 9 and probably fell asleep shortly thereafter. I was awoken at 10:30 by my cell ringing. It was Dino, and in my half sleep I thought "how sweet, he's calling to say goodnight" I couldn't have been more wrong. I picked it up, said 'Hey baby" and got "hello there" back. It was not Dino. It was Karen. It was Karen, calling me from Dino's cell phone. The sound of that voice certainly woke me up. I didn't know where they were, or why they were together, but I knew they were. It's the only way she could have called me from his cell. I could recite the whole conversation word for word, but to be honest, I don't see the point. There is nothing she said that I believe, and she doesn't deserve that kind of press or time. After just a couple of ridiculous statements from her regarding how I was all done and she won, I said "let me talk to Dino" Her response was that he was asleep on her floor, he was very tired from working all day. She claimed that they were at her house for a romantic evening. I knew in my gut that just wasn't true.

She finally said "I don't have time for this" after about 10 minutes and hung up on me. She hung up on me because she was not in control of the conversation and she knew it. Every thing she said to me, every accusation she made, I had a response for. A very calm, controlled response. There was not one time in that conversation that she got under my skin, not one time that she made me doubt Dino, or myself. She couldn't get to me and she knew it. She knew it, and she didn't like it. She didn't like it one fucking little bit.

About 5 minutes after she hung up I called his cell and it went straight to voice mail. Now, I didn't know where exactly they were, but I knew this. He wasn't in her company by choice. I sat in my bed for probably 6 or 7 minutes thinking what the fuck is going on. I won't tell a lie. There was a moment, albeit a brief moment, where I thought "my god what if he really is over there and he's asleep, and she picked up his phone?" The moment was short lived and then I realized that she could have done god knows what. For all I knew she bashed in his head and he was lying on the floor bleeding to death. I got up, put on some shoes, grabbed a coat, and headed to his house. I was going to do one of two things, save mah man, or be proven to be a complete and total idiot.

Now, as I'm driving to his house (it's about a 15 minute ride) my cell goes off. It rings twice and then stops. I'm driving, I'm shaking, and I can't possibly pick up the phone. It doesn't beep so I know that no one has a left a message. I don't know if it's Dino or Karen but I figure I'm going to be at his house in 10 minutes and I'll deal with it then. I get to his house and it's dark. Pitch black dark. No lights on, no nothing. I pull up to the garage, I get out of the car, I look in the garage. It's empty. His car is not there.

I get back in my car, I pick up my cell and I dial his number. Honestly, I still am NOT believing that he's at her house. I don't know where he is, but I'm worried. I'm worried that she's friggin killed him. He picks up his phone on the first ring. He's on low battery, we both are having shitty reception and it's hard to hear one another. I'm screaming "where the fuck are you. Are you ok" he's screaming "I'm on my way to your house". I yell back well I'm at YOUR house you fucking idiot. I think at that point we both laughed. I heard a fuzzy broken up, "stay there Deanna I'm turning around".

I go into the house, I grab a beer, I light up a cigarette and I wait. He gets there 10 minutes later. As he gets out of the car I can hear him on the phone. I know he's talking to karen, I can hear her voice. He's telling her "this is it. Done. Finished. Stop calling my phone, stop coming to my house, stop harrasing me etc etc. Now, these are all things I've heard him say to her before, but this is different. The tone of his voice is different, the strenght of his voice is different, there is no doubt that he's done. He's not kidding. He's not playing games. This is where it ends.

He hangs up with her, he comes in the living room and he says "I can't stay here. I don't want to be here, I don't even feel fucking safe here" I say I know, I understand let's just get the fuck out of here. We get in our cars and we head back to my house. Now, why he didn't just stay at my house to begin with is something we both laugh about. He basically drove back to his house, got me, and we went back to Plaistow. We just weren't thinking at that point I guess. Anyhoo.

We get to my house, we sit down and I say "what the fuck happened tonight Dino"

He tells me that after he talked to me, he took a shower, had a bite to eat and was exhausted. He called the kids and his sister and said he was beat and really didn't want to go to the family thing. His sister was going to take his kids, and he was going to crash and get some sleep. He passed out on the couch and the next thing he knew, Karen was there. She wasn't there long when she went over and grabbed his cell phone off of the charger. That's when she called me. He actually heard a good portion of the conversation, including my responses back to her. I did say, why didn't you just take your phone back. His response to me was basically that the only way to get his phone out of her hands was to take it back physically. He was afraid to do that. Afraid that she would then call the cops and say he assaulted her, afraid she would assault him thus beginning a physical assault on both sides. Given that he lost control a few nights before, and threw her cell phone against a wall, he figured it was best to just let her keep talking. I actually do think that was the way to handle it. You don't take a bone from a rabid dog.

After she hung up with me, he took his phone back, put on his slippers, turned off all the lights and said "I'm leaving Karen. I'm not going through this with you". He walked out the door and got in his car and she did the same. We don't think she followed him, which really doesn't matter because he nevah made it all the way to my house, we think at that point she probably went home.

The funny thing is, It is one long country road that connects my street and Dino's. We HAD to have passed eachother that night. Neither one of us noticed the other yet we both did exactly the same thing, at exactly the same time. Go to eachother.

He said I just couldn't stay there anymore. She's driving me out of my own home, I can't even be there right now. It's like I'm living a fucking nightmare only I don't wake up. He expressed concern that she would go back to his house that night, and I said Nah, she won't. That's not her MO. She did her damage for the night she's home in bed. I couldn't have been more wrong.

We didn't know if she was still calling or not, he had turned his phone off. We headed up to bed to try and get some sleep. I won't tell a lie, we both tossed and turned. I had to be Crumby's at 7 and he got up with me. He was going to head home to do some more work on the floor. As we both got in our cars he said to me "I hope she's not there when I get home, if she is, I'm not going in"

My phone rang 25 minutes later. I was already at work but ran to grab it. I knew it wasn't going to be good. Karen wasn't there, but the carnage she left behind was. Based on the the call log on his phone, we think she went back there around 2 am. She was calling and calling, and he wasn't answering, and she could probably tell that he wasn't even listening to his voice messages. That must have pissed her off so she went back there. Now once she got there, and he wasn't there, she had to KNOW where he was. There was only one place he could be. My house. As near as we can figure, because really it's hard to know what a crazy pyschotic person thinks, she went into a blind rage. She threw a lamp through a living room window, broke plates and glasses against the slider, ripped a couple of kitchen cabinets off the hinges and totally destroyed them. Took all the toilet paper in the downstairs bath and stuffed it in the toilet. She tossed around pictures, beer cans, whatevah was in reach, she heaved it. Then she went upstairs and tore his bed apart.

After he told me what she had done, I said "call the police" Honestly, I don't remember if he said I already did, or I am. He called back about an 1 1/2 hours later to tell me the cops had been there, they took pictures, yada yada. He told them everything. He told them to pull her records from her shit with her ex. The restraining order he put on her, the phone harrasement shit. All of it. He told them about the 2 times prior that they had been to his house because of her, he showed them his call log on his phone, he left nothing out. He was done. Stick a fork in me done. The cops said they were going to try and track her down that day and they would be in touch so Dino could sign the paperwork.

I was able to be out of work at 11 and told him I would be there to help him clean it all up, he didn't need to go through that alone. He did have a good portion cleaned up by that point. Not 10 mintues after I was there he said "holy shit she just drove down the street" I actually laughed and said honey your paranoid. Now, Dino lives on a cul de sac. A dead end. There is one way in and one way out. We went and stood in front of the window to watch because, if it was in fact Karen that he saw, she would HAVE to drive past the house again in order to get back to the main road. He was right, it was her. She looked in the driveway and I have no doubt the first thing she saw was my car. I don't know if she was just being crazy, or if she saw us in the window, but that crazy pyschotic bitch actually waved on her way by. I shit you not. She fucking waved. A princess wave. A sarcastic, look at me, wave. I'm still in awe ovah that one.

Dino finished cleaning up and the whole time we were talking. Talking about how hopefully this will end it, now that he's pressing charges. Talked about how this has affected our relationship, talked and talked and talked and talked. We went to home depot, we stopped at my house, we hit the grocery store, we went back to his house and we were still talking.

He thanked me for being there with him, for giving him the space that he asked for, for believing in him. We talked. And we talked. And we talked. And we laughed some, and we giggled some, and we flirted some, and we made plans. And we made some decisions.

We're all done giving Karen power. We're all done letting discussions of Karen be the focus of our conversations, of our lives. When there is something major such as her court date, he'll tell me. If there is a problem getting the phone co. to block her number, he'll tell me. Beyond that. It's done. Karen is a skeleton that shall NOT be allowed to overtake either of us. She has to be dealt with, she is being dealt with, she's all done. ALL DONE

We ARE together. We WANT to be together. We will no longer give her the power to come between us. Buh bye now.

Am I naive enough to think that this is the final chapter with Pyscho woman? No. I fully expect that she has a couple of more tricks up her sleeve. She hung up on me because she couldn't control me or get my dander up. She didn't like that. She flew into a rage and went back to Dino's that night because he wouldn't pick up and talk to her. She got even angrier once she went back there and realized that he was with me. Karen doesn't like to lose. Karen doesn't like to be told no, and she has been told no. I have no doubt that the first time she calls his cell and hears "we're sorry, you're call will not be accepted" she will fly into yet another rage. It will still suck to deal with it, but now there is a difference.

Neither one of us will deal with it alone. We're in this together. Good, bad or indifferent. We're in this together. Karen can do whatevah she wants, she won't change that.