Valeri edged his way back into my life

Valeri was showing no signs of giving up..

For a month he came back daily to the gate and rang the bell, he never attempted to get in nor did he show any signs of the monster he had been before.

Valeri seemed level headed and normal again despite being ignored and rejected by me every day.

He was calm, subdued and like a man grieving for the love of his life but despite missing the good side to Valeri that I was now seeing daily and was also grieving for, I knew I could not let him in.

It was hard and it hurt me to have to keep rejecting the side of Valeri I was seeing now whom I was very fond of and I had wanted him to be all the time!

I watched him on the two CCTV cameras installed at the front of the villa on the monitor screens everytime he came.

There were times when I just wanted to let him in and speak to him. I even questioned myself as to why I was shutting him out of my life now he was seemingly normal again with no signs of his aggression being present for a long time now.

I had spent alot of time with Valeri over the previous 6 months. Practically 24 hours a day, every day for 6 months in which time of course there were good times amongst the bad. Now I was seeing only the good side of Valeri on a daily basis through CCTV and from a safe distance.

He would ring the bell at the gate knowing that I would not answer but still every day he tried.

I would watch him on the CCTV  monitors come full of hope and then walk away sunken day after day but he was never angry, just upset.

I saw him waiting many times on the bench at the end of my street and when I drove by he would get up full of hope and wave only to have me ignore him but he displayed no signs of anger.

It was starting to wrench on my heart strings. I was not going to let him back into my life again after he had now beaten me up twice but I really felt so angry with him to have made me now have no other choice!

I felt angry and upset with him for ruining everything that we could have had and annoyed at him for now being the person I had wanted him to be all along.

I was angry that he was not giving up now I wanted him to leave me alone and I wished he had just never let it go so far as to hit me and he could have made more effort to control himself before he had hurt me as the damage was done and no matter if I could be 100% certain that he would never do it again, it was too late as he had already done it.

There was a time when I drove to the beach and saw him lying on a bench as I walked down to the beach from the car park and I just walked calmly back to the car and drove away as he shouted after me begging for me to just talk to him and as I drove by he fell to his knees and was broken.

On another occasion I was driving up from another part of the beach and he jumped out in front of the car from nowhere.

I put the brakes on and only just missed him but still I blanked him and reversed the car and went the other way. I saw him in the rear view mirror fall to his knees in tears.

I was crushed too but it was the way it had to be.

Valeri had left many things at my home and I gathered them all up and when I was sure he was not home, I left them on his doorstep so I was sure that he was in no doubt that I was not going to take him back.

He was home though as I found out as he ran after me bare foot after seeing me from the window but I was in my car and had driven off by the time he got downstairs but he still kept running after the car until he was out of sight and could no longer see him in the rear view mirror.

I was returning from the beach another day and he was by my car and so I walked back to the beach and went another way. When I reached my car he was gone but as I drove away he again appeared from nowhere and jumped in front of the car. I nearly hit him and braked so hard that the car stalled.

I locked the doors and tried to start the
Engine again but I was panicking and couldnt start it.

Valeri was by my window and had tried the car door which was locked. He was pleading with me to open the window and talk to him but I did not.

I couldnt start the car so I told him to step away which he did.

He was calm and said he just wanted us to be able to talk when we saw each other as not being able to say hello or ask how I am was making it so hard to move on. He was starting to accept that it was over but hoped that we could try and be friends again one day as he could not bear the thought of us never speaking again after spending every day together for the last 6 months.

I wound the window down a little and spoke to him as I was also feeling that way too. I did not want to not be able to speak to him again and I hoped too we could be friendly and not make this any harder than it already was.

We parted and I felt better for knowing that we could now acknowledge each other and be civil if we ran into each other again.

Valeri did not come to the villa and ring the bell at the gate after that so a few days later when I saw him in the town next we talked and it was perfectly normal. It felt nice to see him and chat a while and it was hard to then leave him if I am honest as we had laughed as we did in the early days.

Before long we were talking more and more then one day I ran into him on the beach I mentioned that I had no water at the villa as a I had had a flood in one of the cottages so had to turn it off until I could find someone to fix the leak. He offered to help but I declined.

After a day of no water and not able to find someone to fix it, as a last resort I went to his apartment and asked if he would help to which he agreed.

He invited me in to wait while he got ready but I refused at first and he started to laugh and said he would leave the door open if it made me feel safer and he would give me a baseball bat for protection.

I went into his apartment and he left the door open and gave me a baseball bat!

On most of the walls of the apartment he had written in pen many things that were about me in both English and Bulgarian. Some things were beautiful comments declaring his deep felt feelings and some were not so nice and clearly written in times of anger and paranoia. There were many phrases or comments that I had said to him in the past that he had written over and over again trying to make sense of and his thoughts and feelings on those things as they had changed over time were all written down too on the walls.

At first I was freaked out by it and I wanted to leave but I didnt.

I told him that I felt uncomfortable about it and asked him if he thought it was normal behaviour and that I felt I should leave.

He surprised me by saying that he could completely understand why I would be freaked out by it as he could see that it looked like it was not the behaviour of a normal person.. he went on to explain that he needed to make sense of it all and seeing as he had no paper left to write on he decided to use the walls as he wanted to decorate anyway so it wasnt as crazy as it looked really. He then said I was not to worry as his overall conclusions were that he loved me and he understood that he had been a 'put' which is Bulgarian for cunt and he wished he had just trusted me from the start or bought more paper!

I started to laugh and as I read through his comments I did actually understand his thinking process and logic which I told him made me think I was not normal either. At this he started laughing to and we both read through the many comments and were able to pinpoint the times and events when he had written certain things and we just laughed and laughed about them.

On one part of the wall he had written 'bitch' and later had crossed it out and written 'angel' underneath for example but the scribble that made us both laugh the most was that he had written 'I wont be told what to do!OK!' which was something I said to him regularly but underneath he had written, 'Because she dont like being told what to do I think she mean by anyone not just me!' Ok!

Valeri said he could not believe what he had done to me and that he had hurt me and said he had considered killing himself because of what he had done to me.

Valeri then came to the villa and sorted the water but he did not come into the villa and said he would rather not for now which again surprised me.

He suggested that we should go somewhere together with Lula for a few hours that afternoon, away from the town, just as friends so we could talk freely about all that had happened, put it behind us and even have fun.

We got in the car and went to the mountains and had a wonderful afternoon which was lighthearted and easy and after the intensity of the previous months it felt good to have a change of scenery and to laugh again.

When I dropped him off that evening, I felt that we could perhaps salvage a friendship from all of the heartache and something good could come of it afterall so we agreed to do it again soon.