The Devil Pt. 1

To say I was smitten at first sight would be an understatement. She was everything I thought I wanted – confident, sexy, and experienced. I had no clue at that moment of the destructive effect she would have on my life.

We worked together at a large retail store; she was a receptionist, I was a cart attendant. My friends saw her first, and immediately set out to gain her attention. I should have backed off – they were my best friends. But regardless of the possible ramifications, I could not control myself. For the first time in my life, I saw something I was willing to mortgage my future to obtain. Once she figured this out, I was a goner, and I didn’t even realize it. Over the following months, she masterfully played my friends and I off each other, slowly destroying the relationships we had spent a life time constructing. From this experience, we would never recover, but that is for another time.

Once friendless, I was completely beholden to her. Forced to befriend her clan, I came to rely on her for everything but the air I breathed.

During the first year we were “together”, she hooked up with no less than seven men in front of me; each time blaming me for not being enough of a man to keep her happy. I dutifully responded each and every time by spending more money, time and effort to meet each and every one of her needs and desires. Sinking so low as slink out of her bedroom when other men would come calling. I was ashamed of myself for devolving into a helpless puppy, but believed her with every ounce of my being when she said she was trying to figure things out.

When others would get wise, and cast her aside, I was the one she called to comfort her. This cycle repeated itself at an alarming rate. Shockingly, and to my great surprise, as our first year at college came to an end, and the steady stream of men had dried to a trickle -- either sick of her childish games, or gone for summer -- she informed me that she would let me be her “exclusive” boyfriend until she boarded a plane for a foreign land the following fall. I thought my perseverance had finally paid off. As time would tell, I was horribly wrong.