Last night I was watching the latest episode of Californication (one of my favorite shows) and there was an awesome line, "I'm like flypaper for the emotionally disturbed". I started laughing - a lot. It immediately became my MSN name. The more I thought about it the more I realized just how much it pertains to me and the laughs subsided a bit. Within about 10 minutes 4 different girls on my contact list assumed the quote was legitimately about them. All of my long term relationships have been with girls that seemingly are a bit short of a full deck. They seem great at first but over time the cracks in the foundation become more and more evident. I've often wondered why I attract these types of women and how I can stop it. The trouble is that I am usually too caught up in things to notice the subtle signs from the start and next thing I know I am wondering how I let another one in. It's gotten to the point where my mom has given up trying to marry me off and instead says "Maybe you should just stay single for a while, I feel bad for ya". Yes you read that correctly, my mom has given up on me meeting a sane girl and instead tells me to stay single.Of course I have to wonder if the girl is fine and perhaps it is me that causes the occasional drift from sanity? It is entirely possible. I can see how I might grate on someone after a while, but for the most part I am quite agreeable. So this cannot be the reason, I am pretty awesome really. I support sanity, I do not degrade it. Do I just have a magnet that the disturbed girls are attracted to? Perhaps I will never know.
I lived with a girlfriend in 2nd year university, as much for necessity as anything (we had separate rooms). She was going to university too and lasted about 2 weeks before she started missing classes and staying home to watch daytime TV. I would leave for school at 8am and she would still be in bed sleeping. I would come home around 4pm and she would be on the couch (usually still in her housecoat) watching some ridiculous talk show. Whatever, everyone is free to ruin their lives if they want to. I just knew I was paying for school and I was going to get through it. I had tons of midterms and whenever I tried to study for them she would want to lay right on me and I found it very disturbing and hard to study. One midterm I was especially worried about and stressing about so I told her I was going to study in my room. She got very upset about this. I went into my room and sure enough, 15 minutes later my door opens and in she comes. I inform her that I am focused on studying and I need time alone. She does not want to leave my room. I politely ask her to give me some time to study as I can't afford to do poorly on the midterm. She starts crying and slams my door. I have no idea what is going on but I have to study. 30 minutes go by and again she comes in. I tell her I still have to study. Again she leaves and slams the door. I lock my door. 30 minutes later I hear scratching noises at my door and I can't think of what it could possibly be. Meanwhile my other roomate and my buddy from upstairs are watching TV on the couch in the living room watching this all take place. She is actually outside my door with a butterknife trying to pick my lock. Needless to say the relationship did not last long after that and she got kicked out of school.
A little while after that I was out at a club with my friends and met a girl. She was attractive and seemed fairly nice. We exchanged numbers and went out once. I got a bit of a weird vibe from her so we only hung out once (she wondered aloud what color our children's eyes would be and if we would keep living in the city after having kids). I told her I didn't think it was going to work out. In the coming weeks I started seeing her most places I went to. I would go to a bar and she would show up, I would be out to eat and she would walk by the window. Fredericton is a small city but those were a few too many coincidences for comfort. One night I was out with my two roomates and we were having a few drinks. A cougar at the bar was harassing us so I decided to get away from the situation and left to go home. I got home, showered and laid on my bed, quickly falling asleep . I woke up at like 7am and I looked over and this girl is laying with her head on my chest (fully clothed, thank goodness) and I am fully clothed. I've never jumped up so fast in my life. I asked her what the hell she was doing there and she said that I shared a cab home with her. I told her I was decently sober when I came home ALONE and to try again. She told me a few other lies and I eventually kicked her the heck out of the apartment. I later found out that she was sitting on the front step of our apartment building when my roomates came home and she told them I had called her to come over. That's totally normal non-stalkerish behaviour. She actually called me that day to ask if I wanted to go shopping with her and I told her to stay the heck away from me. She either gave up at that point or she got better at hiding, perhaps I will never know. Years later I would get a Facebook friend request from her saying "I finally found you!". Yeah ummm denied. 
Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall for each other. Boy and girl move in together and get a dog and live happily ever after. Not quite. Girl apparently cannot distinguish between dreams and reality. One night we are sleeping and then around 3am she wakes me up abruptly. I manage to ask her what is wrong, if someone is in the house or something? She informs me she had a bad dream about me. I tell her to relax it was only a dream and to go back to sleep. At this point she shakes me rather violently awake again and tells me to go out to the couch, she can't sleep beside me after this dream. I say "You know this was a dream right? Not reality? I've NEVER actually done anything bad to you, ever and you know this". She replies "Get out of this bed, right now!". I tell her I will compromise and sleep as far away from her on the bed as I can at which point she starts to do a fairly decent Bruce Lee impression and physically KICK me in the back and out of bed. I pick myself up off the floor and look at her like she is the girl out of the Exorcist. It wouldn't have surprised me much if her head starting spinning around. Even the dog sighed at her judgementally as he accompanied me to the couch. A few days later my landlord was down in the apartment fixing the washing machine and I said "Hey, can I run something by you just to see if it's normal? You're married, have you ever heard of anything like this?" I proceed to tell him the story and he stares at me in disbelief and asks me if I am joking. I assure him I am not. He tells me this is definitely not normal and to keep my eyes open for further signs of psychosis. Oh there were plenty more. Eventually I got out of that one as well. Around 6 years later I would get an email on Facebook saying "I finally found you!". DELETE. Upon further inspection I discovered she had been emailing my sister in law for a few weeks before and was engaged. That makes total sense why she was so happy to have found me...not so much.
Fairly recently I went on a date with a girl and we got along really well. It was a very simple date but we had a good time. The next day I had an especially busy day at work and then two games of softball after that. I talked to her the day after and I could tell that she was a bit down. I asked her what was wrong. Girl: "I'm just feeling depressed. My summer is ruined". Mike: "What happened? Why is your summer ruined?". Girl: "You didn't call yesterday". Mike: "Come again??". Girl: "You ruined my summer". I think there might be some chance she is joking with me and somehow we get past that. We hang out again. She then informs me she doesn't think I am making her a priority and that "I've been crying since I met you!". It was around that time that I pulled the plug on that situation. Thanks for coming out, crazy don't live here no more.
I wonder what it is about people that makes them act in such a manner without being provoked. I can understand some crazy behaviour if you are fighting or if someone has genuinely done you wrong, but not in these situations. Maybe I should feel special that I can cause such passionate actions in people. More often than not though it just makes me shake my head and wonder where the hell that came from. I'm like catnip to the crazy kitties of the world. I'm sure I will experience more as time goes by and just maybe I will learn whether I am the magnet or the instigator...
“You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy.” - Charles Manson.
"No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it's only a question of degree." - W.C. Fields.
It is you
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