The Most Boring Human Being on the Planet

When I first started seeing the psychopath, he used to drive me around his property in an ATV. He would stop, pick a flower or a plant and give it to me, and then share information about what it was. He seemed to be a walking textbook on horticulture. It was not really anything I had been interested in before but it was fun to spend time together. I appreciated the knowledge he was sharing. I appreciated even more that he had taken the time to learn, because I personally LOVE learning new things. You can imagine that my little female heart also melted while he was picking me wildflowers.

I sat outside in late afternoons, after work, and watched him build a wooden fence to contain a small vegetable garden he was planting. I liked very much that he was interested in growing food. It's almost a thing of the past here, with the convenience of quick and easy grocery stores. Ok, so he built this rickety wooden fence out of wood that was rejected for any other purposes. It was installed literally one step away from his front porch in the yard. It looked terrible - it was the first thing anyone would see if they drove by and it was not at all pleasing to the eye. I did kind of suggest he might want to do this on the side of the house instead but he insisted it was going to stay right there.

According to him, he cut down trees on his own property and had used a portable sawmill himself to mill the wood into planks. It was piled up high on his front porch in stacks to cure. It also looked terrible and there was only a narrow path to walk in the front door. But I appreciated that he had the knowledge and the wherewithal to do all this work himself. The wood was to be used inside his home.

The home itself was an old 1800's farmhouse that he said he had gutted and was remodeling himself. It was unfinished. There was no furnace installed, the trimwork was unfinished, much of the drywall was incomplete, the floors were bare OSB. One couldn't comfortably walk without shoes inside without risking splinters. There was no kitchen sink. The inside was pretty dirty. The kitchen and bathroom were just covered in filth. I appreciated that he had done so much work himself to make this old run-down house a home. He would explain all his plans for the house and I was captivated that he had the knowledge to do all the work himself. I overlooked the filth, the reasons behind it, and I cleaned it over and over to make it more presentable.

He was a very interesting guy. He had plans. He had knowledge. I knew he wasn't perfect, but that was ok. I didn't need perfect. I excused a lot of the unusual behavior on the way he was raised, lack of previous female care, and plain ignorance.

By summer the garden sat untended. He had planted tomatoes and they were overgrown monstrosities. He told me I would have to go pick the tomatoes because he was allergic to them. I asked why he had even planted them and he said they were for other people. I spent hours trimming, tending, and weeding the garden while he watched or stayed inside watching TV.

The home stayed unfinished. Once his father came to do a small amount of woodwork upstairs. He paid someone else to do some painting, and once paid someone to do some small drywall work. By winter it was apparent that the only heat in the house was a small woodburner in the basement. There was a brand new furnace still sitting in shrink-wrap downstairs but he never installed it. I discovered that he had been 'remodeling' for the last 12 years. 12 years!

The stacks of wood never moved. By then I knew it was obviously finished curing. It had been stacked there for years.

The rides around his property were over. No more flowers, no more horticulture lectures.

I kept cleaning the house and he kept making it dirty. I was appalled that there was always food splattered on the walls in the kitchen. He never cleaned a thing. He wouldn't even fold his own laundry if he washed his clothes. There was still no kitchen sink/faucet. Dishes were washed in the bathroom in buckets. He didn't see anything unusual in this. He kept accumulating and piling up random things outside, around the garage and wherever the easiest place to put it was. The property looked like an abandoned landfill.

By December he spent at least 20 hours a day lying on the sofa watching television and dozing off and on all day. The only time he went out was to go to two neighborhood bars in late afternoons. We went nowhere. We did nothing. He gained weight, and a lot of it. If I made a comment about his circumstances he would say that he was sick or tired. He started mentioning that his mother had diabetes and maybe, just maybe, he had it too. He mentioned that the men in his family died young and he was going to as well. I worried a lot about his health but he refused to see a doctor. That was very frustrating.

So, of course the emotional abuse had begun by then. I was feeling ill all the time as well. I was also sick with worry. I would go to his house and do....nothing. There was no internet connection to keep me entertained. He watched meaningless and violent television programs that I wasn't interested in watching. I was never allowed to change the channel. There were only a few books there, but I never brought my own. He didn't appreciate that I turned a light on to read. So in the evenings I would take a shower and then fall asleep by 9:30. I didn't realize that I was dying of sheer BOREDOM.

I did start questioning why I was even there in the relationship. He didn't seem to care if I was even there most of the time. I would frequently sneak out while he was sleeping and go home, only to have my phone blown up with text messages demanding my return. I always said no...I had things to do. That was a lie. I needed to escape, to be able to breathe, and to get up off the sofa and do something - anything!! The abuse escalated. I attempted to emotionally distance myself from him. The push and pull of his dramas kept me far off balance and I couldn't bring myself to just leave for good. Pity, misguided love, and malignant hope kept me there far longer than I should have been.

The only way he had to keep me interested in him and the relationship was to manufacture drama and hype up my emotions. And he did that with great skill.

I stayed for another six months until I was physically abused by him. Then I listened to his lame apologies and took him back, only to be abused, cheated on, and led to believe more bullshit that wasn't true. I finally got smart, started looking into his past and present, and the truth of him was undeniable.

Everything was lie. Everything at the beginning was manufactured evidence to make me believe he was so much better than he really was.

He's a cheater, a pathological liar, a criminal, a user, and an abuser. He's also incredible fucking lazy.

It also took me a long time to realize that this man was truly the most boring individual I had ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Under the cracked shell of humanity, there was just absolutely NOTHING THERE.