Life is funny. I think it doesn’t work out the way we expect for good reason. Everything has a purpose, including us in one way or another, even if we go a lifetime without seeing it. If everything always went according to plan, then the world would not be the beautiful place it is. Amid destruction is beauty. Amid chaos is humanity. Amid sadness is hope. So everything for a reason. Or so I would like to believe.
H is still not talking to me. Not that he wouldn’t respond if I were to reach out, but he has not called, texted, or in any other way tried to make contact in the last week. This is the second longest time, so far, that we have gone without any sort of communication. The first was back in August after it had come to light by way of Facebook, and a clinically insane obsessive female coworker of his, that he had slept with a radiology tech at his hospital last November. That is a wild tale, like something out of a lifetime movie, I will get to later in my postings. As you can imagine, I immediately broke up with him and left. We didn’t talk for two weeks after that, which was a huge deal for us. We were physically apart for 9 weeks all together, the longest separation to date, before he flew out to California asking me to come back home. I agreed. At the time I felt healed. I had spent a lot of time with friends and alone, in an attempt to find myself again, something that I felt was lost through the turbulent course of our relationship. I even dated for the first time in my life, which was interesting and informative in its own right. Unfortunately, for the both of us I was gravely mistaken. I was still healing and not ready to come home and forgive. Having over or under estimated myself, I honestly couldn’t say at this time, I was definitely not yet in the mental and emotional space to be able to rekindle our relationship and try again.
We can’t seem to stop fighting. This most recent fight however is different. Every time we have fought in the past and the relationship was put on pause, it was me calling the shots. Me who was breaking up with and leaving him, me who was not talking to him, and me who gave in again in the end to give it another try. He was always the one to apologize, begging me to come back, making all the right promises, and eventually coming after me when I wouldn’t return the first time he requested. On the flip side, he was also always the one hurting me. The promises always ended up being empty ones. Things that were discussed years ago still have not come to fruition. Excuses were endless and my patience wore thinner and thinner as time went on. We each had our role to play however. Him the forever optimist who always held on to the visions of our future and remained hopeful that it would come to be. Me, the busy bee, who implemented those visions. Always forgiving and believing him, I made all the plans, booked all the flights to see each other while we were long distance for 5 years, and made all the date night reservations. Thats when things were good. When things were bad, and I felt H fucked up, he never gave up or let me go, relentlessly chasing after me asking for another chance, and another, and another until I agreed to return. As a result I never had a moment to step back and face my reality, fully process my emotions, and discover who I was in the moment. I was never really free to heal. Consumed with what I perceived to be love, I also never fully left, cut him off, or completely stood on my own because I knew he’d be back, as he knew I would never actually leave him. Through this cat and mouse game we have been playing, years and years of issues grew into such deep resentment that eventually I felt as if I had been pushed over the edge of a steep cliff, falling onto such piercing jagged rocks, that it drove me to become enraged to the point where I viewed everything through a lease of crimson red anger.
Last month we went to Cancun for my birthday. We stayed at an incredible all inclusive resort and had the most gorgeous room with breathtaking views. What was supposed to be a memorable getaway with some friends turned into a blood bath of stabbing words said out of drunken outrage. The trip started great, we had been looking forward to it all week and getting along really well. As soon as we pulled up to the airport however I discovered a gift he had been hiding in the trunk of his car, a scrub cap made by some nurse, and became very upset. I had been telling him for months that I could no longer handle all of these other woman. I was done with it and if we were to work out he needed to set boundaries with these “friends” of his. The whole plane ride to Mexico he held me making decelerations of love and loyalty for me and me alone. Truth be told I was so angry and hurt that I was hardly listening. We landed and were civil day one. On the second day we were sitting in the jacuzzi with other people and I got so drunk I asked him to go with me to the room. He ignored me so I went up without him. I passed out for a bit and woke, still alone, to see an instagram posting of him taking shots from one of the women who was in the hot tub earlier. I was furious. He eventually came to the room, with the rest of our party, to wake me for dinner. We argued and I got in the shower to get ready. I got out to find that he left and I was once again alone. I felt abandoned, ignored, and unimportant on what was supposed to be my birthday celebration. Sounds spoiled, and it probably is, but I had felt last in his world for so long that I just wanted to feel like I was actually important to him for once. I just needed to see that I actually mattered. I text awful things to him and eventually found him sitting outside the restaurant. I proceeded to berate him with cruel, heart piercing words of hate and pain as he sat with his head in hands just taking every knife to the heart that I had to dish out. I screamed as loud as I could “I hate you! I hate you! You have ruined everything! You have ruined my life!”. We eventually went our own separate ways and he was gone back to the states by the time I returned to the room later that evening.
That’s how I fucked up. Despite his betrayals, I acted in such an unconscionably unfair and volatile manner that he left. I honestly still can’t comprehend that I did that. It is single handedly the worst thing I could have ever done. I don’t even remember doing it, it feels like a nightmare that I was witnessing from afar through a blurry fog of shame. I will forever be remorseful of my actions. When I returned to the states afterwards, he insisted on picking me up from the airport. His mom, who he confided in, told him that his actions over time gave me PTSD and my lashing out was the result. I returned home again after much discussion, thinking now I was healed. I had gotten everything off my chest and now we could try. Again I was wrong. The next six weeks I had several instances where I lashed out. I felt like he wasn’t listening to me, wasn’t taking me seriously. I made accusations, brought up past issues over and over, and continued to say “I hate you, you waisted the best years of my life”. That is when he broke up with me. I don’t blame him. He is the one not talking to me this time. He is the one now calling the shots.
Everything for a reason, right. Taking advantage of this new freedom is vital for my future I feel. Freedom to think. Freedom to process. Freedom to step back and look at the relationship from a fresh perspective. See it for all of it’s most glorious golden highs, and all of it’s deepest darkest lows. I felt so lost the first couple of days that I could hardly get out of bed. I was a hot mess to put it plainly. Crying, staying in sweats all day, doing nothing else but watch mindless TV so I wouldn’t have to think. Only getting up to cook for my daughter. As the days went on, I found more reasons to be motivated. I joined a boxing gym with my daughter to give us an obligation in leaving the house. She is distance learning because of Covid, so there were days we never stepped out the front door. We started going everyday and it has been a blessing in its own way. We also get up and play tennis every morning, and I go to the gym every afternoon. I can honestly say this is the best shape I have ever been in in my whole life. I am proud of my body, feel more comfortable and confident in my own skin, and starting to recognize who I see in the mirror now. My perspective and outlook on life has begun to change as a result of a healthier body. Healthy body, healthy mind, healthy soul.
Despite all that, I still wanted to reach out so badly, sitting for what felt like hours just staring at my phone thinking “what should I say”, or “why hasn’t he text”. I have always been the one to make the first move though and figured if he wanted me, then he will be the one to reach out. He is in Mammoth on a ski trip with his family. A trip that my daughter and I were supposed to go on but got disinvited by him after our last major fight. Upset at first, I am actually now grateful that we didn’t go. It has given us time apart to breath, relax, and reevaluate our situation. Plus with all the tension I think we each needed quality time with our own daughters. Well I can’t speak for him. For me however, I think it is the best thing that could have happened in this moment. A real seperation.
I have no friends out here and it is not my daughters burden to bear my emotional traumas. I have been left in complete and absolute solitude to face my demons all alone. No one to bitch to, no one to drink with, no one to give me advice on what I should do or point out realities that I don’t want to hear. Just me, myself, and I everyday contemplating what the hell happened. How and when it all went so incredibly wrong, and what I want to do about it without my decisions being influenced by anyone else. Especially him. Freedom to make a choice on what’s best for myself for the first time in a long time.
“Life is the sum of all your choices…You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of…You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life”
-Albert Camu
I have also been applying to jobs both in California and here at home. As I can not make the firm decision myself to leave just yet, I have come to the conclusion that I need to focus on a career instead of my relationship. My attempt at focusing on me. I have been unemployed most of the year, and though I have been fine financially, I need more purpose in life than sitting around and dwelling over H. Even if things were great between us, I need a direction for myself. He has been very supportive through all of this in me not working and instead searching for a passion, a goal, a new career as I did not love my last one. I have looked at schools and considered different fields of work. Unfortunately I have been so consumed with the dizzying tilt a whirl of a home life that I have felt like a robot the last few months and have not been able to make much progress on attaining a new life goal or finding a passion. When we are apart I am motivated, I feel unbounded and free. Probably not a good sign and a huge consideration in regards in attempting to fix the relationship. I would honestly say the same for him. When we are apart we read more, socialize more, work out more. All positive things. The hard part for me is when we are really good its the same result. So we could be perfect or apart, there doesn’t seem to be any in-between.
This has been a recent development. In the past we would each drink more, sleep more, and cry more when we broke up. The 9 weeks we spent apart was so therapeutic for me that to where when I returned home I felt like a new person. I golfed and swam and camped. I read and researched schools and investments. I was productive and generally content. When I returned however, all the negative hurt feelings returned with me and I sank into a such a depression that I lashed out on a daily basis. Now that I am free again, I feel the same contentment. Sad, lonely, but content none the less from not having the pressure or fear of seeing him. Fear of more rejection from him. So why on earth would I even consider going back you may ask. For the record, I am not definitely deciding to go back, though yes I am not solidified in my decision to leave either. Remember the job search, I am leaving that decision in the hands of the faits. I am choosing however how to handle situations different from now on. Not fighting. Not blowing up. Not dealing with anything that I may find disrespectful. Most importantly, not being so afraid to leave. There is such a rich history between H and I, that I don’t want to look back and regret not giving it all I had.
You-and-Me-Wine 