I can't say he didn't warn me...

I met Daniel at the very start of 2009. We began chatting after he responded to a personal ad I had placed on Craigslist. I know what you're thinking.. Craigslist? I suppose you're sort of right - but the fact of the matter is that I threw the ad up just to see what would happen. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd meet someone with whom a first date would last 5 days and after nine-months of dating we'd move in together. But, I did.

We have very different backgrounds and while that didn't seem to be an issue at first, it certainly began to present itself throughout the duration of our courting. His family is uber-successful where mine is, well let's just say that my father is meeting with a lawyer this week to discuss his options for a 2nd filing of Chapter 11. You'll learn plenty more about my family life as this blog picks up and I build a basis for you to understand why it is I am filing for divorce from Brooklyn, New York.

As this blogs title indicates, there is a bit of a double entendre thing happening here and I hope I can introduce the various ideas with which I am beginning this story in an eloquent and easy to follow manner. I am beginning my story in real time. Today is April 18, 2010 and while the rest of the world knows me as Kitty Graves, for the purposes of the remainder of this post I shall be termed Brooklyn.

Breaking up with Brooklyn: A play in one act - one short, vicious, and surgical act, was performed live in front of an audience of one; me, on March 17 of this year. Daniel and I had been having our various problems for a while and as this posts title indicates, I can't say he didn't warn me... I can't say he didn't warn me that if we continued to have these "relationship talks" for much longer he'd be on his way. I can't say he didn't warn me that he had a ridiculously easy time with letting people go. I can't say he didn't warn me that he could be a cold-hearted son of a bitch. What I can say, however, is that for some strange reason I truly believed he'd never do or be those things to me. Reality is a bitch, though - isn't she?

These aforementioned relationship talks began around a month prior to the actual break-up. My being this firestorm of emotion makes it nearly impossible for me to sit quiet with my thoughts. With that in mind, when I noticed Daniel had been acting a bit disinterested in - well, everything except for Playstation 3, porn, and our cat, Stratus, I began to feel pretty insecure and anxious. I asked for reassurance that we were OK - and I asked for it commonly. I've always been hypersensitive, or as I like to refer to it, very intuitive when it came to picking up on someone distancing themselves. Abandonment issues aside, I really do have some sort of knack for knowing when things are amiss. I brought it up - to a fault - and insisted we discuss the feelings I was having. Daniel went from a man that talked about marrying me and thinking about having children to someone that would jump for joy for a night alone in our apartment. If I was on your end of the intertubes reading this, I'd think to myself "well, maybe he just didn't love her anymore" - but I don't think that's what it was about. Love was never our issue - I believe it to be a lot deeper than that.

Earlier I mentioned our first date lasting 5 days. I wasn't kidding. Daniel and I linked up for a drink with the intention of following up drinks with a hip-hop party in Brooklyn, NY. There's this DJ troupe called The Rub and their parties are pretty awesome. I mentioned the idea and once he and I had met and been comfortable enough with each other to commit to a full night of hanging out, we walked the few blocks over to the club where The Rub was doing their thing. January in NYC is serious - and as we waited on the snaking line to get into the spot, I reached out for the warmth of another human in the form of a hug. Minutes later we had our first kiss. The night was amazing. We listened to and danced to old school hip-hop, drank plenty of alcohol, and generally enjoyed each other’s company. The reason I bring any of this up at this point is because before we even left the club we had begun to discuss our various 'issues' and we shared these thoughts with each other in an attempt to not fall into the same traps we both had in the past. Looking back on it, it’s almost like we were working to keep the relationship alive before it was ever technically born. Either way, my honest admissions included telling Daniel that I have a tendency to find reasons to run away from people who seem to be good for me. I admitted to not believing I was "good enough" for a higher caliber of human being. I admitted that I had tons of insecurities and wasn't sure I had anything in common with folks who have had a normal life. He admitted that he would look for various reasons to dislike someone quickly and then run the other way, never giving them a fair chance. He also admitted having an aptitude for dropping someone in the blink of an eye and never looking back.

I can't say he didn't warn me.....