This past New Year's Eve, I sat a table at a bar surrounded by friends, drinks, and the best love I have ever had in my life. My boyfriend and I kissed at midnight, and then he drunkenly confessed that we would be engaged by the end of the next year. My heart was overwhelmed and everything felt right and I knew I was going to be okay.
Two weeks passed and everything had completely turned around. He was sleeping in the guest room, and barely speaking to me. He had become very insecure about a relationship I had with a great guy friend of mine. He was scared I was going to cheat or want someone else. I said, wrote, and gave him every word I could think of to assure him that it wouldn't happen. It wouldn't happen if said guy friend was Robert Downey Jr. I was in love with him, and was holding on to the names we had picked out for our future kids and the song we slow danced to in the living room practicing for our wedding. I wasn't going to give up on us without a fight.
I knew from arguments that we had had in the past that his coping method was to have space and time to sort things out. This is the complete opposite of how I operate, as I will argue until I am blue in the face and have a resolution rather than letting things simmer without being addressed. But he had told me time and time again, that him taking space didn't mean he was leaving or giving up on me, he merely need to cool down before we could more forward. I assumed he was just cooling down for the few weeks he had distanced himself from me, and didn't think it meant either one of us walking away for good.
My world, as I was giving him space to breathe, was falling apart. I was just put on a new medication for my fibromyalgia that caused some terrifying and risky side effects. I started to feel like I was being crushed under the weight of my depression, which was growing by the minute. On a Wednesday night, alone, scared and confused, I took 6 xanax and 6 tramadol and waited. I don't think I really wanted to die, but I knew it was a cry for help and that if it was 12 pills this day, I wasn't sure it wasn't going to be 20 pills the next. So I went to the hospital.
I was given the runaround by one facility that didn't think my situation was dire enough to be admitted. But I wasn't about to leave, left to my own devices, and hope that outpatient treatment would be enough to keep me safe. I went home to gather my things, and go to another hospital that would admit me for treatment. The whole day was a dark, heavy and foggy one. It felt like someone else was in my body and taking me where I needed to go while I watched it all happen through my own eyes. When I got to the house to get ready to leave, Ryan walked out of the guest room and stared at me silently. I could tell by the look in his eyes that something was wrong, but couldn't even really process it at that time. I was in motion for my survival.
A long silence broke when I asked him if it was over. There was no yelling, no drawn out conversation or any skirting around it. He said he didn't think he could trust me and he was done being with me. I started to cry and sat down the couch to continue on my way to getting help. I called my mom and asked her to bring me to the hospital. Through tears I collected my things and tried to push down whatever I was feeling in reaction to his decision to leave me. The last thing he said to me was "Don't tell people I am the reason you are going in there" and I left.
This is where I have gone from confusion to anger to bargaining and am trying to find acceptance from in what has unfolded since that night. I spent a week in a mental facility trying to sort out my medication, my mind, and my heart. It was the best place to be following a break up. Something you ladies should consider. While locked away you can't set anyone on fire. I knew the hardest thing would be coming home to him being gone and starting to live all over again in a completely different life. THIS guy had apparently used the week I was in the hospital to leisurely move his things back into his parents house. During that week, he proceeded to use my house like a bachelor pad. I came home to find that he had been staying there, watching tv, drinking beers, and living the good life until the night before I was released.
Here's what kills me: even if he had decided he could never truly trust me and wanted out of the relationship, do you have no respect for the 2 years we spent together to the point that you have no care or regard for the fact that I am in the hospital, sicker than I've ever been in my life? How do you cut someone out that fast, and not look back? How do you not care even a little about the friendship that was established in all the time we spent together? I went through the normal breakup motions for the next few months. Sent him a few emails, some angry, some pleading, some expressing my shear confusion on how we had gotten to that point. He seldom responded, and if ever it was simply to say that he had no intention of talking to me or seeing me ever again, not even for the sake of explaining himself. He was happy and wanted me to move on. So I have been trying to do that ever since.
Timehop is an asshole of an application as it reminds you of the happiness you felt in years past about people and relationships that are no longer in your life. There should be some sort of filter that only shows you things from interactions with people that you still like. So every morning starts with the question "How could we have been so happy doing this together exactly one year ago?"
This past Labor Day I scrolled through pictures of our trip to Wisconsin together last year with his family. As my heart began to ache, I wandered over to his facebook page to find him with his new girlfriend at the same places as we were photographed together the year before. This girl was a long time friend of his, who he told me time and time again not to worry about as he had no feelings for her. (The irony). After reliving that weekend with him, planning future vacations with his family, and making love on a golf cart in the middle of the woods, I flipped through a picture of his vacation to find out that he had proposed to his girlfriend on this trip. Only a short 8 months after we had separated.
I've tried to understand how all of this happened so quickly. If he had always had feelings for her. If his insecurity about my feelings towards my friend was merely a reflection of what he was feeling towards his. I questioned if she was around the week that I was in the hospital, in my house. And the worst of all the questions, did he have the money saved up for a ring while we were together? Is she wearing my ring? At least he wasn't lying about being engaged by the end of the year. I just didn't know it wasn't going to be to me.
If 8 months is enough time for him to move on, get engaged, and become future step dad to this woman's son, than it is enough time for me to move on. My heart is still sore. This one hurt. I have never considered my future more seriously with any other relationship. And I needed him the most when things ended. He wasn't there. I am sure that warrants me painting him as a bad guy, but I still can't even do that. Because who he was when we were together we genuine and real and the biggest love of my life.
The fact of the matter is, at 28 years old, I am the happiest I have ever been on my own. I am dating. But I am not jumping in to anything too serious until I find solid ground in this new person I am becoming. I have kept quiet about this situation outside of close friends, because I don't want to tarnish the memory of the time we were happy together. And I do wish him the best. A part of me still wishes it would have been me. But I rest easy knowing that I was the sparkle in that relationship. The "poof" if you will. The girl that gave him a reason to dress nice and go to wine tastings, comedy shows, concerts, hotels, and incredible dinners. I was also the girl that would sit around in his t-shirts singing loudly to Tenacious D drinking beers, or cooking together. I did that relationship right. And I will do that again someday and that guy is going to be the luckiest bastard on this earth.
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