After years of blaming his terrible treatment of women on his personal demons, 36-year-old Dave Hawkins finally realized that he had been the demon all along.
“I thought I was cursed like I had demons looming over me like the dementors in the Harry Potter films,” says Dave, who consulted a priest, Reddit, and his Future Hendrix fan club to figure out why he was on his fourth divorce, hadn’t seen his children in over three months, and owed $50,000 in legal fees. “It’s just like, nothing ever seemed to work out for me, specifically.”
According to sources close to him, Dave was convinced that a woman he stole $500 from after a one-night stand had placed a hex on him.
“After that night, weird shit started happening,” Dave says. “My second wife asked for a divorce and took everything I owned. She even told everyone I cheated! It was like straight out of a horror movie.”
Dave’s therapist weighed in on his journey of self-discovery.
“First he accused me of gaslighting him when I said that his refusal to take responsibility for his actions manifested in his misfortune,” says the psychologist his dean recommended to him after his second sexual assault allegation in college. “But after 16 years, we finally reached a breakthrough. I’m so proud of him.”
And Dave feels proud of his growth, too.
“Up until most of my 30s, I was too young to understand that I had to hold myself accountable for any harm I caused,” he says. “But when my youngest daughter was born, I crashed my car into a tree while my wife was giving birth. I wasn’t on my way to the hospital or anything, just out with friends, and my life flashed before my eyes. At each terrible moment in my life, I saw one common factor: I was always doing something kind of shitty to someone else.”
At the end of our interview, Dave put every woman from his past in a group chat and sent them this text: “hey. you don’t have to answer this or even read it if you don’t want to. I know I’m the last person you want to hear from. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and just wanted to let you know that I’ve gone to therapy and my therapist said that you should forgive me so that I can start my journey to healing. thank you for your support.”
