I
Once upon a time, a fifty-year-old man faced epic writer’s block. He’d been self-publishing his novels since 2011. The first was a short romance-mystery story titled “Without a Word.” It’s not well written (but has since been re-edited not to be so…bad). The psychological thriller “Prisoner of the Game” followed in 2013. As of this 2023 writing, it’s one of his best-sellers, continually hovering in the top thirty range in Amazon’s Horror Suspense genre.
His magnum opus, the “Displaced” series, is the project he’s been working on the longest. He began writing the epic in 2008. In 2019, he released the first three on Amazon and other outlets. The following six in the series are finished and ready to release. The last, Book X (that’s ten as per our Roman numerals tutorial), is unfinished. And therein lies the problem. He’s been working on that novel since the end of 2020 and is half-completed. He can’t seem to get it finished. What comes out is substandard and feels forced.
That man is me.
I blame the stall on writer’s block, although I suspect the reason is far more profound.
One theory I have is the eventual completion of the series. I know it’ll leave a gaping hole in my life. When one has worked on the same project for fifteen years, it becomes a massive part of their existence. That hole will linger for a good long white. I call it Post Project Depression. It happens on every time-consuming project I work on, whether it’s a project for work or a film, but most definitely with writing.
Then there’s the other reason, which I suspect is closer to the mark.
Becca Saccarelli.
Who’s Becca, you ask?
It’s personal, Dear Reader, and a very, very long story we’ll get to eventually because it spans thirty-two years of my life and is arguably my second biggest mistake. The first was my marriage to a different woman named Marie, who also felt the need to engage with multiple men simultaneously.
That’s me, born under a bad sign, only attracting women who dig polyamory and discovering too late in the game I wasn’t good enough for either.
This will be difficult to write, as I don’t really talk about it anymore, and even then, only with a friend who knows both Becca and me. So, bear with me.
Becca is a character in the “Displaced” series, a work that’ll be referenced often. She’s based on a real person from actual events in 1991 that became part of the Displaced saga, even if fictionalized to some degree. I can’t use her exact name for this project as I have no doubt she’s reading it and will fucking bust a gut if I identify her by name. She’s always so paranoid that her Idiot Hubby will somehow find out, and I’ll ruin her gravy train. So I’ll call her Becca, too.
Her origin story in these tales is still a piece away, closer to the end of Act I of this work. I only bring it up because Becca and I have a long history dating back to 1991, and it never ends well. Not for me, anyways. It’s also relevant to this exposition.
When one person uses another for whatever their reasons, it fucking hurts. I was never Becca’s first choice, not in 1991, not in 2009, not in 2012, not in 2015, and certainly not now. Whoever provides the money is. Whoever lets her get away with having multiple men (or affairs) is. I’m neither.
Her Idiot Hubby, however, does.
For years, Becca lied to me, claiming her marriage was only on paper ‘for her kids,’ but would still engage in ‘a couple of five-minute fucks once or twice a year’ after ‘too many drinks.’ If I wanted to be the ‘boyfriend,’ I had to agree to these terms. If I could wait five years for her last kid to enter high school in 2021, she’d leave Idiot Hubby, and then I wouldn’t have to be a secret anymore.
That ended up being bullshit. When the youngest kid reached high school, Becca moved the goalposts again. But the joke was on me; there were never any goalposts. She was never serious about leaving.
Between needing his endless well of cash, there are also her emotionally fragile kids who couldn’t possibly fathom life without two ‘happily married’ parents. I have little doubt one of them will get knocked up, and Becca will continue to stay because of the grandkids. There’d always be an excuse I’d have to accept to play the part of her personal play toy, bowing at her feet, begging for scraps of attention that fall off Idiot Hubby’s table while searching the horizon for those imaginary goalposts.
She takes care of him while I take care of her. She gets her cake and eats it, too, while I starve.
Yeah. Fuck that.
She’d write her sweet, affirming Facebook posts to him on their anniversary while getting off with me on the phone late at night. She’d tell me she wasn’t taking trips with him, and then photos on social media would appear to the contrary.
Oh, and of course, the vacations where ‘nothing happened’ and ‘we don’t share a bed.’
Yeah. Right.
On more than one occasion, I had friends tell me if I was stupid enough to believe that, I deserved the hurt that would come when the truth came out.
Sometimes I’d see pictures of her with a drink in her hands while snuggled up to Idiot Hubby. I know exactly what that means. One of those ‘five-minute fucks’ ended that night because that’s what she does when she drinks.
And there I was, believing every word and that she’d be faithful to me and only me because I was somehow special.
“It’s all a show, Kev,” she’d say. “What you and I have is real.”
Nope. It was actually the other way around. Life with Idiot Hubby was for real, and I got the show. Besides, once a cheater, always a cheater.
She did me a favor and spared me from a life of stress, anxiety, and misery. If we’d ended up together, the first person she ended up having drinks with that wasn’t me would be gettin’ him some of that.
As long as I remained a secret half a country away (we live on opposite sides), one Idiot Hubby wasn’t aware of, I was good enough. If I resigned myself to being the side piece she’d never agree to see, much less be with, I was good enough. As long as I adhered to the play toy role and remained in the toy box until she was ready to play with me (when Idiot Hubby wasn’t looking), I was good enough.
When I decided I’d had enough of being used, degraded, and disrespected as a fucking human being, I had no choice but to walk away. My self-esteem was the lowest since the falling out with my father, Charlie, the ugly divorce from my ex-wife Marie that lasted years, or when my son decided he longer wanted me as his father and walked away.
The one woman I thought I loved more than any other didn’t love me, or at least not how I should’ve been. I invested everything in her, years of my life, while stupidly believing bald-faced lies. I wasted opportunities with other people who would’ve loved me better. And for what?
Nothing.
And nothing is what I got.
It’s what I deserve, really, for such an epic fuck up.
Becca is another reminder that I wasn’t good enough, just as I’d not been for dear old dad, my ex-wife, and my kid.
I’ve not held any true palaver with Becca since May 2022, after she moved her ailing mother to her side of the country. That situation was lining up to be her next excuse for moving those imaginary goalposts again. She’d need to stay with Idiot Hubby because…the money. Or, more likely, that’s what her mother would want. If Becca’s mom wants something, Becca will do it, no questions asked. There’s probably a damned clause in her will that stipulates that if Becca ever leaves Idiot Hubby, she’ll lose her inheritance, which is supposedly substantial. It certainly would explain a lot.
As you’ll read later on, her mother held money and college over her head in 1991, making her choose between that and me.
Guess who lost?
During the brief email exchange in May 2022, Becks applied the guilt trip from hell. Somehow, I was the bad person for not being there for her while she remained married and just using me for whatever hole Idiot Hubby wasn’t filling (which was always an odd metaphor since he’s still serving all the holes that count, apparently). She didn’t need me. She has her husband to get her through whatever ails her. If he’s good enough to get a piece of ass or a blowjob on their anniversary, then surely he can take some time out for whatever brings her down. For better or worse. Blah, blah, blah.
Associating with her in the years preceding 2022 fucked with my mental health to the degree that it was becoming dangerous. Since I choose not to drink or do drugs anymore to escape, I had to turn all that anger someplace else. Usually, I turn it inward, so no one else has to suffer from that anger, ‘the lashings’ as Becca would call them. Doing so causes more than just depression.
Sufficed to say, I’m far from over it; all the damage of the last six years I stayed with her, believing the lies and suffering the broken promises.
I used to enjoy writing the “Displaced” version of Becca. Her real-life counterpart used to help me write the character, develop her, and even assist with her dialogue. We spend so much time developing the Becca Saccarelli character and her part in the “Displaced” saga, I wonder if I could’ve written those books without her. Now I have to do this last one without her as she duly informed me last we wrote to ‘just keep Displaced to yourself.’
Spoiler alert: The character of Becca Saccarelli dies in the last book. So not only do I no longer enjoy writing the character because of her non-fiction counterpart’s indifference, but I know the fictional version will be no more. I’ll have to let them both go.
“Displaced” has several themes, one of which is the inability to let go. The protagonist, Pearson, suffers from this more than any other character. He postulates that it’s easier to let go of a loved one when they die because that’s it. It’s over, and we can do nothing to change that. It’s not the same when they continue to live, but aren’t part of one’s life. They’re still out there somewhere, having moved on and no longer caring.
When Charlie died, I understood that better than ever. I got my closure after the horrible shit he did to me. He’s dead now. He can’t ever hurt me again.
I can’t say the same about Becca. She could still easily hurt me. Or rather, I could still let her. I could choose to be her bitch, the second-best puppet she keeps in the shadows from Idiot Hubby. I don’t, though. But like any potent painkiller, addiction is always a threat; all it takes is one moment of weakness and day 245 becomes day one. The entire fucking clock is reset.
I once heard that the time to get over a relationship is half the time the couple was together. If that’s true, I’m not even into year one of a three-year stint. I have to remind myself constantly; I wasn’t good enough then, so why the fuck would I be good enough now? Answer: I’m not. I won’t ever be. Even if I had a million dollars, I still don’t have whatever mystical connection she has with Idiot Hubby. That’s something I can’t compete with and win. It’s better to accept it now and deal with being alone, dreams crushed, and hopes shattered.
I still wake up far too early in the morning, unable to get back to sleep. I’ll play those last six years over and over in my head, wondering what I could’ve done differently to be good enough like I did when I was a kid, wondering what I could’ve done to make the other kids like me.
The answer is still ‘nothing.’ There is nothing I could’ve done differently. I’d have to degrade myself and sacrifice whatever dignity I have left to be ‘the other man,’ while Idiot Hubby lives ignorant of me, getting everything he wants. All I’d see from that relationship is an occasional phone call or occasional text. She’ll never physically see me. She’ll never come to see me and never agree to see me. We tried a few times, and each time, it was a clusterfuck where I got my heart cored out of my chest with a butter knife. Again, there was always an excuse. Even if I was five minutes away, her Idiot Hubby still took priority. Or she had to blow me off to show up at one of her kids’ schools because their entire world would’ve crumbled into the ground if Mommy wasn’t there for cake and juice. Meanwhile, I sat at a scumbag motel after pissing away over a grand to fly out there to wander around a town I didn’t know for three days, wondering what I did wrong to deserve that punishment.
Becca was okay keeping me in that role, never doing a thing to change it. She had this lousy credo I hated hearing. She’d say, “I live my life day to day, letting the Universe guide me.” In reality, it was a euphemism for “I’m comfortable where I am, I’m happy doing the bare minimum, and I have no intention of changing anything.”
She said I could leave if I wasn’t okay with her terms. It was all my choice.
Indeed. And after six wasted years, I had no choice. The self-destruction was becoming too much.
It still amazes me how quickly she got over it and moved on like I didn’t really matter. Why should it? She never had to sacrifice a goddamned thing. She always had Idiot Hubby to meet all her primary needs. Secondary needs are expendable. I was expendable.
She’d try to say differently, but actions are greater than words. Eventually, I had to see past the words and pay attention to the actions. That’s when I knew I’d spend the rest of my life pining for and coveting what I could never have and be even more miserable for it.
No one should be okay with that, no matter how undeserving they are.
And yet this shit haunts me nonstop. I wish I could forget. But I did this to myself. I allowed it to happen. Now I pay the price, which seems to be a lifetime commitment.
The only person to blame is the horrific sight that stares back at me in the mirror. He’s old, beat up, and looks like he’s just done with everything. There’s no hope in those hollow, sunken eyes. His soul is buried beneath so many protective layers, it may never again see the light of day.
I think these are the actual reasons for my writer’s block.
II
“Well, that’s your side of it, Kev. There are three sides to every story. Yours, hers, and the truth.”
I won’t deny that.
She’d probably say I’m taking many things out of context. I left out a lot of stuff that I may or may not get to later. Stuff that’ll offer additional context but ultimately will make her look really bad. Some of those things are simply better left unsaid.
She’ll tell you how often I stressed her out or made her life miserable because I could never come to terms with being the secret, the other guy, the affair (and I can’t even call it that since we haven’t slept together since 1993). She’ll also tell you I’m a narcissist. She may have added sociopath or psychopath in there too. Not that I care. I’ve been called worse. Even by those who pretended to love me.
She’ll tell you I always have to be right. I guess it depends on what I wanted to be right about. If there were happy memories of the time between 2015 and 2021, I have trouble remembering them now. All I remember is the pain and anguish of never being good enough, and if that led me to be a narcissist, etc., then so be it. No one should have to be that degraded, that used. But I allowed it to happen, so that’s on me.
Her favorite nickname for me was ‘asshole.’ But you’d have to ask her why I was. Most of our inability to get along, in my mind, always revolved around the fact that she refused to leave her personal ATM, her refusal to ever physically see me, or always hiding behind her damned kids. If she needed to justify everything she continued to do with Idiot Hubby, that was her favorite go-to; her damned kids.
I’ll freely admit then when someone hurts me, I lash out. She’ll tell you I frequently did so. Her acknowledging that she was constantly hurting me? Probably not.
In addition to being ‘the asshole,’ I was also ‘Mr. Extreme.’ She constantly said I ‘had to be right all the time.’ She’d always say she ‘was always wrong,’ and that she ‘was never good enough,’ or that I was ‘never happy with her.’ It didn’t matter the situation or topic. It got to where those were the only responses. Funny, I felt the exact same way about her.
I always saw her self-deprecation as a tool to make me feel bad. Emotional guilt-tripping. I’m sure she felt that way at the time. I mean, when two people toxic to each other won’t let go of whatever is causing conflict, stupid shit gets said, on both sides. Still, as long as she justified remaining actively married and lying about it being ‘on paper,’ then yeah, I’d never be happy with being last place in her life. If that makes me an asshole or a narcissist, then I’m guilty.
I’d have been perfectly happy if she’d chosen me. I don’t know if she understood that. She’d say many times over she’d chosen me, but her actions always said the opposite, and those are what counts.
I’m sure she’d sit here and tell you about everything I did wrong and that I was awful for not accepting my place in her male hierarchy. I can’t imagine she’d waste time defining her need for both a husband and a boyfriend unless it was to repeat the ‘it’s all on paper’ lie or some excuse involving her kids. Because no one in the history of ever with teenage kids got divorced, right? Her actions always said that wasn’t what she really wanted. She was comfortable where she was, and she didn’t see the need to change. I wasn’t good enough for her to change her life, but I was good enough to be her bitch.
She could have left at any time, too. And, like me, she didn’t. She tried a few times but always wanted to come back.
And yet I’m the narcissist. I’m the asshole. I’m Mr. Extreme.
Becks and I were a toxic black hole that neither of us truly wanted to escape until I was finally able to after being bloodied and bruised.
The excuses would never end. I lost. Idiot Hubby won.
III
As noted in the Preamble of this work, a fellow writer recommended I write my memoirs, as that’s material I know, even if I never publish. Thus, Tales of a Gen-X Nothing was born, and here we are.
I’ve not returned to “Displaced” yet, as the thought still gives me anxiety. I know I won’t get any usable material. I also actively avoid anything that drives my anxiety into overdrive.
This exercise in recanting details from the worst parts of middle school has been…challenging. I ended up writing a handful of filler posts for the blog as I didn’t want to do this anymore, that is, recall shit from middle school. I just wanted to find excuses to sleep versus listening to my Heartbreak playlist (which saw me through many years of writing Displaced, especially the books that starred Becca) and slogging through these memories.
At least I broke the writer’s block. More or less.
I force myself to keep going, though. My perfectionist ego won’t let me leave a project unfinished. With that in mind, I think the following tale will be the last of the middle school era. They’re the leftovers, things that happened that contributed to the mess of a child I was when I began high school.
