Author's Note:
People may remember this series of stories. I first posted them on Literotica in 2009. They were a mixture of fiction and fact taken from my life. The 'Breaking Jen' series became pretty popular and each one rated higher and higher as my writing improved. I think by the fourth and final instalment they were getting close to a 4.9 Lit rating.
I took them down for a few reasons. I am very fond of them. I am a better writer now and I really did think that I could do, what is actually a very personal story, much more justice. So....after a massive re-write I re-present to you the new first chapter of 'Breaking Jen' (there are four in total).
Think of it as a 'director's cut'. The original 'Breaking Jen Chapt 1' was little more than 13,000 words and the new version is now closer to 21,000. There are additions and omissions to the original story.
In turn I will be re-writing each of the other three chapters but there is no time table on that. They will appear as time and inspiration allow.
Some of this story is fiction and some of it is very real. Considering the subject matter some of you will find it hard to believe that there is genuine emotion and an unconventional love story of sorts going on. I guess not everyone's love story can be like 'The Notebook'.
For me I guess the most tender of moments ended up coming from some of the harshest and unexpected circumstances.
But....it is a love story none the less, and sometimes, you have to take love where you find it.
Peace and love........William.
(aka real_first_time)
*************************************
I want people to know that I'm not a spiteful person by nature. I don't believe in carrying grudges or holding on to hurt.
I remember once hearing a certain quote and it has stayed with me ever since. I honestly don't remember who said it, or even where I heard it anymore, but despite all that, I still remember that quote word for word.
'Holding a grudge is like swallowing poison and then expecting the other person to die'.
Those words seemed to resonate with me and I tried every day to live by their sentiments. But, as much as I tried, I wasn't completely successful in living a grudge-free life. There was one exception that I just couldn't shake.
Jen.
Jen was the girl I was going to marry one day. She was the one.
Have you ever been in love with someone so deeply that you would literally step in front of a bus for them? I'm not speaking metaphorically here. I mean you would actually trade your life for theirs if it ever came down to it.
I would have given my life to save hers in a heart-beat. It was that kind of love. Perhaps I should have been more careful about whom I gave my heart to, but I think that love tends to trump good judgement. That's been the story of my life.
Deep down we all know how a love like that always ends. The truly ironic part of it all is that knowing this still makes no difference at all. You never see the end coming until it's much too late to stop it.
We do it to ourselves over and over again, each time thinking 'this time will be different'. But it never is.
The world I thought I knew ended for me in a single day.
Sometimes there are clues and warnings, but sometimes you just get blind-sided by life. It's hard to explain.
Let me put it this way. Imagine you are standing beside a deserted highway surrounded by nothing but barren and lifeless country-side. Out of the corner of your eye you spot a beautiful wild flower growing out of the dirt on the other side. It distracts you, and you think to yourself 'how could something so beautiful grow in this desolate place?'
You look right and left and see nothing but empty highway before crossing the road to pick that flower. You never see the huge truck that appeared out of nowhere until it hits you. You were so focussed on that flower that you didn't see the danger until it was far too late.
To say it broke my heart when the truth about Jen finally came out doesn't convey the feeling. Words can't express what I felt. That's the dilemma I have in writing this. I'm trying to use words to describe to you something that words cannot express.
No. Saying it broke my heart doesn't come close. It would be more accurate to say that it destroyed me.
By now maybe you're realising that this is no simple story or work of fiction. While much of what you're about to read is fabrication there is a very high percentage that is drawn from pure fact. Do not doubt that the pain was real.
I will blur the lines of reality in some areas, but I think we all do that in our own way. Our own emotions often colour our memories making the truth subjective to our own experience.
I have no delusions about myself. I know what I am. I know that I am damaged. I know that my past has made me almost unable to trust or to connect with someone on a truly personal level. That inability caused me to seek other ways to deal with people.
It actually saddens me that these new ways have turned out to be infinitely more effective.
The kindest of acts are not appreciated fully without first showing cruelty. I wish that were not true, but knowing that was a kind of revelation. It made me into the kind of man I never wanted to be, but also wildly successful at what I do.
I remember feeling physically sick when I first discovered the truth about Jen.
The realisation that I wasn't the only man in her life, there were many. Knowing that what I had cherished the most in life had been a lie. Knowing I was worthless.
Jen had worked for a law firm but she was not a lawyer. She planned events. She organised the conferences and travelled to all the cities where they were held. She was good at it. A true multi-tasker in every sense of the word.
She was skilled at manipulating people and situations to her own benefit. I knew that from the outset but in my stupidity I had assumed that I was somehow special, that her manipulations did not extend to me. I believed in my heart that she loved me.
A natural flirt who used the attention she got to her own ends.
Maybe it was my own stupid male pride that was my undoing. Like having a tiger on a leash, you start to think it's tame until the day it bites you.
I had been made a fool of for years.
While attending conferences in other cities she had regularly taken her flirtations to the next level. I don't even know how many times that must have happened or how many other guys she had fucked over the two years we were together.
I do know that some of them were guys she would see regularly when she was in certain cities, and some of them even knew about me.
She had a great thing going. A stunning and gifted liar. I really do have to give her that.
Maybe some of you will understand now. You don't bounce back from something like that. It changes you. It changed me.
It was as if the experience broke me and then re-made me on an almost daily basis. You go through stages that repeat and recycle over and over again. Each time is just a little less painful than the last. Sometimes you go through those stages many times in one day.
You get to experience every negative emotion. Humiliation turns to anger. Shame to depression. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
The down-ward spiral.
I thought about her for years with that mixture of heartbreak, anger and sadness.
In time, a profoundly different man emerged on the other side of the hurt. A calculating man devoid of empathy.
A predator who pursued and used women in ways that were radically different to anything he had ever done before.
There was no alluring mystery to me in the females that I sought out. I saw through the outer image that each projected and instead found the woman underneath the facade. The rose coloured glasses of infatuation had gone. They were replaced by the eyes of a colder man who fed off of dominance and control.
I became a dispassionate observer.
An emotionally detached man who would analyse the women around him and then act accordingly without feeling or hesitation.
I fed off of their emotion and in turn I gave them back the kind of experience no other man had dared to. I made their most desperate feelings real.
In a way I became a kind of vampire, but not in that pathetic 'Twilight' sense that has become so popular now. In my own very real way I drew out their dark tendencies and fed off of them. They screamed out to be used and I simply obliged.
There are many of you who will accuse me of being a woman hater after what you have just read. I wish it were that simple. If that were true then I would have nothing at all to do with them.
I don't expect you to fully understand what I'm about to tell you because I don't understand it myself, but the more detached I became, the more I was fascinated by what I saw. The discovery that women have a power they aren't even aware of.
Tragically fickle creatures too hung up on their own self image to know what it is they really have.