Dysautonomia Guy

Category: The ones that kind of freak you out.

This guy wrote me a nice note. Upon looking at his profile, he seemed to meet all of the basic requirements. He was the right age, picture looked normal (although knowing what I now know, why would I even write that sentence...). He was educated, had a job, could put together a sentence. Ok, so I will reply. In writing back and forth, he was funny. I like funny. And smart. I like smart. So off to a good start.

So we moved to phone calls. It is always funny when you talk to someone for the first time on the phone after writing each other. There are times when the voice just does not match the idea in your head. So when he called....Holy Southern Accent, dude! I think there are Southern accents, and there are redneck accents. He lacked the grammatical errors of the sterotypical redneck accent, but phew! He had a DRAWL. He even said, "I know my accent is probably a surprise to you. I get that a lot." Gross understatement. But...moving on!

We talked on the phone a lot. He called every night. He seemed really interested, and in talking, despite the ACCENT, he was well-educated and knowledgable. And then he said, "So your ex-husband is a lawyer."

BIG RED FLAG

And the reason it was a big red flag was because I hadn't mentioned my ex-husband. I learned early in the dating experience that telling someone too much about the bad things can cause regrets later. It is a story I don't tell easily. So imagine the flash of panic that he knew anything I hadn't told him. Was he playing a game? Did he know my FI? What did he know? How did he know? So I asked.

I had told him my maiden name and because we had both grown up in Pensacola, we had talked about where we went to high school. From those two pieces of information, he did research on the computer and knew where I went to college. He found my marriage license and therefore, my married name. He googled me and found my place of employment. He googled my ex-husband and knew where he went to school, when we were divorced, that he worked for my father before and knew where he was working then.

I can't describe the awful tingle of creepiness that crawled up my spine. I had a stalker situation for two years in college, and I was sure that despite my over-sensitivity to that kind of ...leering into my life, this was still creepy. When he sensed that this wasn't a funny little thing he had just revealed, he said, "Aren't you doing the same thing?"

He said I should be doing the same thing. He said to go do it and he would expect it. And by the way, I can explain away all of the lawsuits, he said. He did some real estate business, and there are always lawsuits going on about something. I do think that can be true, but the sheer length of the list under his name in the Clerk of the Court website was disturbing.

As you can imagine, my comfort level plummeted.

The other thing weighing on my mind was that during all of our talks, he had revealed that he had an illness. He had something called dysautonomia, and had sought me out because my profile shows my job as a representative for Social Security disability claimants. He thought I was perfect and a "gift from God" because I would understand his situation and be empathetic. He said mostly he was fine, but he had some issues.

I understood his situation alright. I had a client with this same thing. It is horrible. It causes all of the systems in your body that control autonomic function to fail or go awry. The symptoms include fainting, extremely low blood pressure, inappropriate feelings of intense heat or cold, breathing problems, extreme nausea. It is horrible.

He told me about one time when his mother came to check on him and his blood pressure was so low that she couldn't find a pulse and thought he was dead. We were supposed to meet once and he cancelled because he was too sick. We never did meet. I realized his was a bad case.

This kind of information does all kinds of things to your conscience. I was feeling freaked out already by the amount of research he had done. But I didn't know what to think of the fact that he had sought me out becuase of my job. My job is hard. It is emotionally draining. Back then, I was still working on keeping that at a distance so it didn't get to me every night when I tried to sleep. I didn't want his illness to factor into my thoughts, but I was just coming off of a time filled with my son's diagnosis of epilepsy and a solid year of regular seizures.

The way he described how he decided to write to me made me feel like he just wanted me to take care of him. I knew you would understand, he said. I knew you wouldn't be afraid. I knew you would be there. Is that fair? Is it fair to use the internet to find someone to take care of you? In my mind, I wanted to find someone who could take care of me as much as I of them. Was I heartless of me to think such thoughts?

And there was the creepy feeling of being researched. I couldn't get past that. It was a lot spinning in my head. I would never have left a spouse that came down with an illness. When I love someone I love them all the way. But how do you feel about starting something with someone who chose you as a nurse maid. Ugh!!!

In the end I wrote him a note that I just thought we were not a good fit. He didn't take it well. He called for weeks and continues to "wink" at my profile years later. These continued winks still cause little twinges of that creepy feeling as well as the twinges of the conscience.