As, I said before, these lies were so unnecessary. Before Derik and I were dating, back when we were just friends and he was dating my best friend, I thought he was so awesome! I loved how "real" he was and I truly considered him to be one of my best friends. When we moved to my mom's house, I introduced him to all my new friends and some of my old ones and they all loved him too. They thought he was funny and charming and totally approved.
He didn't fool everyone though. My sister, Jessica, could see right through him. When she came down to visit for my Grandpa's funeral, she was furious. She could tell exactly what kind of person he was. She was always really good at reading people and even when I was younger, I couldn't lie to her, because she could see right through it. She had this uncanny ability to know what I was up to at all times, no matter how hard I tried to hide it. I guess Derik thought he was charming the pants off her, but immediately after meeting him, she went to Mom and confronted her about it.
"Why are you letting him stay here, Mom? He is a grown man! Me and him are the same age and he is taking advantage of you and her! Why are you allowing this?!"
"Don't you dare say anything to her, Jessica!", Mom said. "I allow him to stay here because she would leave if he did. I don't like it either, but at least I know where she is and know she is safe."
By that time, Mom had seen Derik's true colors, even if I hadn't. She had asked him to begin paying rent if he was going to stay there and although he said he would, he gave her a little bit of money one time and that was it.
Mom also didn't like him anymore because she was certain that he terrorized her dogs. She came home one night from work and found her little dog Bailey stuck behind the washer. She had run behind it to get away from Derik, who I personally had seen scare the dogs before by stomping at them, and she had gotten stuck. My mom loves her dogs and that really pissed her off.
My Grandma Wilma was also not fooled. I remember the day that I introduced Derik to her. My grandma had to have surgery on her stomach and my mom, who had worked in wound care, brought her back to our house to care for her and change her bandages while she recovered. I brought Derik in to meet her and right before my eyes, he transformed into this slimy, car salesman type and tried to charm her. I remember watching this take place and thinking "Oh my gosh, look at how fake he is acting!" His whole demeanor changed, his facial expression changed, even his voice took on a different sound. It left a really bad taste in my mouth. Later I found out that Grandma took my mom aside after meeting him and told her "You need to watch that one. He's not what he seems. He's a snake."
Derik soon abandoned even the pretense of having or looking for a job. I paid for everything. We got a joint bank account, which was a huge mistake and he made way more withdrawals than deposits. He would buy something almost every single day, or tell me he was hungry and to go get us something to eat and when I would ask him for some money to pay for it, he would just look at me like I was crazy. I ALWAYS ended up footing the bill. Why did this always happen to me? Why did I always end up paying for everything? All I wanted was a self sufficient man who could take care of his own business. That's it. I didn't want him to buy me anything or take me places or pamper me like a princess. Love me and be a man. Simple.
Soon, I noticed that Derik was being gone from home for longer and longer periods of time. I knew he wasn't working, so I wanted to know where he had been. He told me that he was spending a lot of time at the studio working on his music.
........Wait.... what?
Let's rewind. I have to set the stage for this one. This is the thing that really extinguished my feelings for him; the beginning of the end, I should say.
Back when I was still dancing (and this was about a year ago now), Derik started talking about how he got picked up by a record label. Now don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to knock his singing. He could sing a little bit. He wasn't bad, but he wasn't great either. He only had one run that he could do really well and he was always a little too pitchy for my taste. I sing also, so I'm a pretty good judge on whether someone can sing or not. All in all, not a terrible singer, but mediocre at best. That's why I was suprised when he said that, but at the time, Derik could do no wrong in my eyes. I was excited for him. I encouraged him to let me listen to his music and in time, he brought me a CD. It was a plain CD with the title of his album scrawled across it in Sharpie and he told me he hadn't had labels printed up for it yet. Okay. Perfectly reasonable explanation.
So I listened to it, and it was good. Like, really REALLY good. It didn't quite sound like him, but that didn't phase me because artists generally use auto tune and other effects on their music to make it sound better. No big deal.
I started dancing to these songs. And when I quit dancing, I let friends and family listen to the CD and would brag about how awesome and talented my boyfriend was. So a year goes by, and during that year Derik would randomly disappear for hours and then tell me he had been at the studio. If you recall, I was used to this because my previous boyfriend spent hours and hours in the studio.
Then one day, when I was on my way home from work, one of the songs came on the radio! I was super excited because it was the first time I had heard one of them on the radio, but as I listened, I couldn't help but think that it just didn't sound like him. I had always thought that. So when the song ended, I called the radio station and asked the DJ who sang the song that was just played and he told me a famous R&B artist's name. I repeated it back to him, confused. Surely I had misheard. He said it again. I thanked him and hung up, shocked. Might I add that this famous R&B artist had the same initials as Derik.
I was furious! The realization hit me that he had been lying to not only me, but several people, for over a year. Then I felt foolish; I had been letting family and friends listen to this CD and telling them that it was my boyfriend. And where the heck had he been going when he said he was going to the "studio"? Was he cheating on me? Probably. Then I was incredulous. He was blatantly plagiarizing a famous artist's work. Are you serious?! This can't be real life.
By the time I got home, I had worked myself into a frenzy. I sat in my car for a few extra minutes to calm down and figure out how I was going to handle this. I couldn't let this one slide like I had the other lies. I knew he was lying to me about the car and his job and everything else, but I let it slide because I still cared about him. But this was too big, too involved to let go. I had to confront him.
I was pretty sick of being with Derik by this time. I felt like I had to constantly walk on eggshells around him. When I got home from work, I didn't know which Derik I was going to get; the kind, loving one, or the one who ignored me and when he did talk to me, made me feel like I had done something wrong and I had to guess what it was. Usually, when I got home, I just wouldn't speak to him until spoken to, so I knew which Derik I was dealing with. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. He literally gave me anxiety attacks sometimes.
I decided to give him a chance to confess.
I walked into the room like I didn't have a care in the world and said hello.
"Guess what, babe?"
"What?"
"I heard your song on the radio tonight on my way home from work!" Fake smile.
"Oh yeah? That's cool." he replied.
"Yeah. It's weird though," I said. "When the song was over, the DJ said that the song was by <insert famous singer's name here>. I wonder why that is?"
I kid you not, he said, "Oh yeah...well... our initials are the same, so that's a pretty common mistake. They say that all the time."
When he said that, I was just blown away. You mean to tell me that a DJ, whose job it is to know songs and the artists they are performed by, told me the wrong person? I don't think so.
I just said okay, and went to bed. Needless to say, when he tried to get some that night, I refused.
The next morning when I woke up, Derik was gone. I got up and called my friend Diamond and told her what happened. She was sympathetic.
"I hate to say I told you so, Crystal, but... I did. He is a habitual liar; he seriously cannot help himself. I told you when he did these same kind of things to me and you didn't believe me."
She was absolutely right. I didn't believe her and look where that got me. I should have listened. I would have been better off with Chris. He didn't work, but at least he never lied to me about it.
I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up here. I'll cover the confrontation next time I write but this post is getting pretty long and so I think it needs to be split up into 2 parts.
To be continued.....
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