laws. In the stories of others departing similar high-control groups, I would notice this pattern again and again: an “unshakable faith” first called into question by the group’s failure to live up to its own standards.
And then I finally—finally—met Chad.
He had declared he’d come to the play and then failed to show, and I had nearly decided that he was a lost cause. That he didn’t really want to meet me. That it was all just some sort of imaginary friendship for him. That this whole thing really was an episode of Catfish. Three times in as many months he had told me he’d be in Deadwood and would see me, and three times he had failed to appear. I’d spent those months making excuses for his behavior, rationalizing and justifying his neglect: “What respectable person would want anything to do with someone with a past like mine? Whatever the reason, a girl who’d tormented grieving families at funerals and liberally tossed around epithets like ‘fag’ isn’t the one to bring home to Mom.”
Still, I was wholly unable to grasp why he refused to just tell me that. I must have seemed insane to him, expressing my undying love in one breath and begging him to please just let me off the hook in the next, to just admit that this wasn’t going anywhere so that I could move on with my miserable life. I was in the throes of obsession and despair that I suppose is typical of an unrequited first love, so I certainly wasn’t going to act the part of the sane, rational, self-respecting one. After the third misfire, though, I could not ignore what was painfully, devastatingly apparent: his dereliction was no accident.
MEGAN: Chad? Tell me sometime. I can be patient. I just don’t want to chase something that doesn’t want to be caught. I’m almost convinced that’s what I’m doing.
To my great amazement and relief, he finally materialized the weekend after the Jewlicious Festival. I had been cut off from my family for more than four months by then, and had been slammed repeatedly into the outermost threshold of my capacity for heartbreak and rejection. Just at the point when I thought I would lose my mind from hurt, shame, and rage—at myself, mostly, for having believed his sweet words when I knew in the smallest parts of myself that I didn’t deserve to have someone care about me like that, that I didn’t deserve any good thing in this life—Chad texted from a casino in town and said that I should come meet him there.
It was 10:30 P.M., and I was livid. In the back of my mind was a niggling worry about what he’d think of me, whether he’d be disappointed, but I had no mental energy to process it. Instead, my circuits were overloaded with humiliation and anger: we had obviously arrived at the portion of the program where the catfisher pretends to finally follow through with a meeting and then stands up his foolish victim for the last time. I was incensed at the thought, and I absolutely was not going to take another moment of this sham if it turned out to be another evasion. I had every intention of following through with the threat I issued in response to Chad’s invitation.
MEGAN: If I leave my comfy bed and come there and don’t see you, I’m so never talking to either one of us again!
I changed out of my pajamas and made my way through the crowds dressed for St. Patrick’s Day—it was March 16, the night Deadwood was having its holiday pub crawl. The casino was packed with people alive with alcohol, roaring with laughter in outlandish green costumes, and I had no idea how to find him. He must have been watching the door, because after a few moments, he stood up at one of the blackjack tables with a sheepish look, almost apologetic. I recognized him instantly from across the room—too tall, too blond, and too like his photo to be anyone else—and my anger evaporated. I slipped through the throng, following him to a less populated corner of the room where we sat down at adjacent slot machines and began to talk.
The chaos surrounding us dissolved as I watched him in the garish lights of the casino floor. I couldn’t take in anything but him. Some remote corner of my mind noted that his gray pullover and lean, muscular frame made him look like a college