Predator

The owls showed up eight days after I found out about the lie. I’ve always felt connected to owls, something about their oversized eyes that mirror my own and the feeling that their spirits echo all the lessons learned since the beginning of time. My ex’s ex once said that I looked like an owl, thinking to insult me. I’ve never been more flattered.

The owls came in a set of three. In the dream, I was running through some shopping mall-esque sort of thing. I approached a staircase leading down, and at the top of the banister, an owl was perched. It gazed at me with wide golden eyes and nodded at the stairs to urge me on. At the base of that staircase, there was a second staircase, with a second owl with wide golden eyes, beckoning me down. Then a third staircase, and a third owl. Their presence gave me strength and courage as I barreled out the door of the mall and entered his house.

His house. The man who was my teacher, my mentor, my lover, my loss. He wasn’t home; I ran in to find his wife, her mother, the three little girls of his, and the fourth child, who in reality had not been born yet. It was imperative that we protect the girls from some unseen danger. I could feel it resounding through my head, “protect the girls,” but there were three of us and four of them, and we didn’t have enough arms to hold them. Then he burst through the door, the man who made me believe that I was special, an exception, a dark blot on an otherwise perfect record, pursued by a man with a gun. “Protect the girls, protect the girls, protect the girls,” and when it seemed as if we would all die for his sins, the sins of the man who eight days ago had resigned from my alma mater under multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, coercion, and assault, the gunman paused, pulled off his ski mask, and laughed. It was all a joke, an elaborate prank, no one was in danger. I woke up with a sigh of relief, then remembered it wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a hoax. I’d been hoping for the punchline, or for any defense at all, but when I asked him what had happened, the man who had dedicated his life to helping his students, he was flippant and nonchalant, and when I pressed him, only slightly, he disappeared from my phone and my life. And I knew then that I mattered not even enough to him to lie.

When my friend Stef called at midnight to break the news, I was walking down Second Avenue to the train after work. At first, I thought they had found out about us—our secret nights in hotel rooms and the furniture loft when we happened to be in the same state. But then he started naming names, boys’ names, boys I had spent years doing shows with before graduation, boys who were my friends, and my face felt fuzzy. Everything was red and black and glowing white, and I kept saying, “No” over and over again. “Is this real life? Is this actually happening?” It was inconceivable, but the cement block that had landed in my stomach assured me it was true. My eyes were wet, and Stef’s voice was solid and calm, “Yes, Alyssa. This is real. Yes, Alyssa,” and the train pulled up into the dimly lit station at 86th Street.

The only thought I remember having was, if this is the level of betrayal that I feel, what must his wife be going through? Oddly enough, that thought had never occurred to me when I was the adulteress. It had felt as if he was living two lives, one where he loved his wife and kids, and one where he loved me, and that those two worlds never touched or impacted one another. Little did I know, he was living lots of lives, and we were all obliviously impacting each other.

Sociopath is a word I am now as familiar with as my own name. The quest for knowledge, for the hows and whys, was my coping mechanism through the grieving process, for which all the past grief of my life had left me wildly unprepared. How can you comprehend the loss of a person that never actually existed? To love a façade and then watch it dissolve—your love was real, but what you loved was not. For months after, I would remember things, non-incidents, moments when we laughed together or when he mailed me Christmas decorations my first winter in New York, and I’d think, “…. even that? Even that was manufactured?” And for what? I don’t know. I know about the manipulation techniques, the pursuit of information that can be used to draw the victim closer to you, the disregard for other humans beyond what they can do for you, the sexual exploits with both boys and girls because sex is not about desire, but about power. But what I still don’t understand is what he gained from me. Was my adoration from 1500 miles away and a few great blowjobs worth fourteen months of daily mundane texting, the postage required to send me mail, the venereal disease I unknowingly gave to him? There was a lot of effort that went into slowly slowly winning me over because my instincts were screaming, “No!” when I met him five years prior. What was the reward?

When all is said and done, I think he will come to realize that it was not worth it. Because I am a survivor, not a victim, and I am hellbent on making sure he never preys on anyone ever again. I am an investigator by nature, and it’s not so hard to find his home address, the school he works at now, the church he occasionally preaches sermons at. Sociopaths are not very good at laying low because they need attention to flourish. And I know that the information gathered will in time lead to the systematic destruction of his reputation. It started because I was vindictive and obsessed; it will end because I am obligated to prevent someone else’s hurt. If I know, and do nothing, I am complicit. And I will not be complicit with a man who infiltrated my life simply for the fun of it.

He never saw the agony I was in. He didn’t witness the first panic attack, when I thought I was dying in the bathroom at work, and afterwards, couldn’t turn my head for days because my muscles were locked up, nor the subsequent panic attacks. He didn’t feel how the depression sank into my bones and manifested as the lack of ambition, exhaustion, and somehow losing time so that I was always five minutes late everywhere, though I’d never been late in my life. He didn’t see the phases of nightmares, or the time I’d woken up screaming because he’d rounded a corner in my dream, and he wasn’t supposed to be there. He didn’t know about the writer’s block, how I couldn’t have an original idea and was afraid I’d never write again. He couldn’t feel the heaviness that rested on me for years and threatened to push me deeper and deeper down until there were no fragments left of the girl I used to be. I thought I was lost. I thought I was irretrievable. But neither does he know the fearlessness that slowly grew from the knowledge that the worst possible thing had been done to me and I was surviving. Never again would I fear rejection, or heartbreak, or infidelity because once someone actively seeks to ruin you, everything else pales in comparison. So easily I forgave all the exes who had hurt me in the past, so readily I jumped into relationships once I had healed because now I was far too strong to ever break again. He does not see that strength either. And he does not realize that I will tell the story over and over and over again until everyone who needs to hear it has heard it.

At the Bronx Zoo, I come upon a parliament of owls. Nothing sounds more regal than a parliament of owls. All of them, in one motion, suspend the court that’s being held and turn to meet my eyes. We hold this connection for what feels like an eternity as my boyfriend stands next to me, not breathing for fear of breaking the spell.

Afterwards, I say to him, “They recognized me.” Just as the three owls in my dream pressed me forward, these owls seemed also to be instilling me with purpose. Encouraging me, “Go forward, go on. Wisdom and truth are behind you, and you have the protection of a thousand ancestors surrounding you. You are amazing. You are worthy. You are alive.”

And so I live.