Broken Bonds

Facebook notification.. I thought a blast from the past. My ex who moved when we were 13 has requested to follow me. I felt weird, I had not heard from him in about 23 years. I looked at the notification and put my phone down. I was at work, chatting away with a colleague. At 13, I was so in love with him. I wondered about him often but never found him over the years and gave up. Here he was in my notifications though. I didn’t accept the request until the next day. Surprisingly, about an hour goes by and I get a message that says “ So you’re going to accept the friend request and not speak?”. I laughed and spoke. He then messaged me back saying “ So you in a relationship, married, talking to anyone? I’m asking for a friend.” I reply back “Nope, single and content”. So we start chatting away. After the first conversation, it turned into multiple conversations. He told me he was single but had a “stalker” which was none other than the mother of his youngest kids. He then asks me if I had any kids. I tell him I have a daughter. At this point he tells me, “ I have a team”. I said “say what?” He says, I have 7 kids. Most people would see red flags! Not my dumb ass, I continue to talk to him. We discuss regular things and he mentions the mother of his youngest 3 is the stalker, and she’s pregnant. I then don’t believe any of what he’s saying. So he has some of his friends confirm the facts. Of course, I questioned it given they were his friends. We talk everyday for hours on end. After maybe 2.5 weeks he asks when can we go out. I tell him we can go out when my daughter goes out of town to visit my brother. We both get excited as the day approaches. By this time we are planning what we are going to do. We decide to go out for some drinks maybe dinner and catch a movie. Friday night we talk all day. It was nice to reconnect. Atleast that’s what I thought at the time. We say good night and end our call that evening. Around 1:30 a.m. I start getting random calls from his #. I missed the first one, cause I was cleaning my house. Then the second one came in followed by text messages. The messages came with screen shots, and memes. Which really through me for a loop cause they started like this “ Why you wanna meet my n****?”, “Meet me hoe!”. At this point I’m like yup, dates officially cancelled. Then I get notifications that someone is trying to message me from someone’s phone I’m not familiar with. These messages read “ Baby, you not gone believe this dumb shit”, “Please pick up the phone”. So I pick up and he tells me, the mother of his kids, swiped his phone while he was dropping the kids off. He then explains that she took the phone and ran out the house with it. He’s insisting I come pick him up right away. RED FLAG # 2. I tell I’m my daughter is still in town and I don’t want ANY part of what’s going on right now. As we are on the phone the “stalker” is driving back up and he tells me he will call me back. I get several more calls throughout the night but I don’t answer. Early the next morning he calls me again from another phone and explains that she hit him with the car and the cops were called the previous night. She also ran over his phone to prevent him from talking to me. Yet, he’s still saying we are going on our date. I tell him, that’s highly unlikely because the last message I received from her assured me I wouldn’t see him at all. Meanwhile, I was headed to the meet up spot where my brother and I had scheduled to drop my daughter off. As I’m heading back home I get more messages about how bad he wants to link up this evening and continue with our plans. The problem is his stalker went everywhere he went. I would get random messages throughout the day about his location. Around the time I decided to really dead the situation he asks if I could pick him up from a gas station if he had someone drop him off. I tell him I could and make my way to the gas station. I pull up and he’s sitting in a truck with someone else I knew from school. He hops in my car and we drive off. With all the craziness going on, we decided to just go chill with my cousin and his friends at a house party. I text my cousin for the address. Before heading that way we stop at the ABC store for some liquor. As we are driving we discuss further through details of the previous night and how he managed to get away. I tell him she acts like they are still together and he assures me they aren’t. He then tells me she cheated on him with a guy from their job and that’s the father of her baby. We stop at the ABC store and get what we want. I then put the house party address into my phone and we head to the party.... TO BE CONTINUED...