{ The End is a very rare Bon Jovi song. The video was originally included here, but was removed from YouTube, losing the cultural reference of the title }

“Did you see it coming?”
Were the first words of the only mutual friend Mr.Big and me had.
Actually he was more a friend to me, and a business relationship to him. I gave him a name on this blog in 2018. When he was also the only friend who knew the man I had suddenly fell in love with that year.
But I forgot which alias this was.
Probably because he played such a pivotal role, being connected to my secret lover as well as to the first-new-crush-in-four-years of 2018.
I just didn’t want to acknowledge the importance of the role Xavier (as I just looked up his name in my old blogposts) had in my life.
As if by not writing about him, I could undo all he knew about me.
Except on a Tuesday when I was heartbroken over the sudden breakup with Mr.Big and I didn’t know who else to call.
“Did you see it coming?” being Xavier’s first words.
Yes and No.
Yes, in the sense that the time period Mr.Big and me did not have sex, had become longer than it ever had. Although Mr.Big had made an effort to kind-of stay in touch. Because he cared about me.
He knew he was running late offering a date, and he also knew I was going through my personal version of 16-month hell, which was reaching its 4-month long crescendo.
His messages tried to be supportive.
He was the first one I emailed I knew I was autistic, without a diagnosis. In light of recent events I think my decision to never get a diagnoses will be even better understood.
Tried to be supportive.
But it was clear my diagnoses and my openness about it, had wiped away the last bit of hope he had of ever having a normal relationship with me.
In hindsight, that is.
At that moment, I just tried to label it as a panicky response from someone who never had to deal with autism. Not as someone who is at his wits end, trying to juggle sustaining a healthy family life, and at the same time give in to a desire for fun, sex, laughter.
For love.
God, I loved that man.
Still do.
One of the things I said to him, was that it was going to be difficult getting a new lover. “You will probably rule from your grave.”
This blogpost is all over the place, I know it is.
It’s just that I had to start somewhere. Putting some words to some paper.
Writing endings to all of the books I wanted to create from the blogposts.
But last night I even considered stop being LS Harteveld all together.
Wipe all blogs clean, delete the sites and take all my books down.
Just cease to exist.

Because I still believe it was my pen, my decision to write about our affair in order to stand my ground, keep my back straight and not get crushed under the weight of being a secret mistress.
It was my pen way before the autism, that made it difficult for him to choose for me and to smoothly slide me into his life.
Five years worth of blogposts as a secret mistress, would make me stand out like a sore thumb in social relationships.
Not my autism.
Even if I tried to keep my penname and body of work hidden, I would still be a liability. And even if no one would find out, and I would lie for him, he would always know how we had started out.
I was the embodiment of his “betrayal”.
Quotation marks, because I think betrayal is how he views it.
That I am the face of what he doesn’t want to be.
Yet when I see him, I don’t see betrayal at all. I see beauty, uniqueness, giftedness, a talent for loving everybody around him. I see a heightened sensitivity, that has made me wonder all those years how he was able to pull it off living two lives…..
By not allowing me in, that’s how.
By keeping the face of his sins hidden.
“Sins”, again, which I never considered sins.
If a man is a good husband does not rely on how many women he loves, how many lies he tells, how transparent or non-transparent he is. Whether or not a man is a good husband, a good father, a good lover, a good man, depends on many different things, and he appeared to have them all.
Just not the quality he so wished he had:
To love only his wife, and be truthful.
A desire to be normal.
I know how that feels.
And No, I didn’t see it coming.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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The End is the first chapter of 7-figure Rock Star Writer part 7: The End

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