I tried to wash the dishes to one of my playlists and suddenly I'm on the floor crying.
My break-up pattern has been somewhat different this time around. My usual three days of intense mourning was interrupted by the necessities of life: a new client for my freelance writing business, my social life, trying to get myself fed with no car.
Oh yes. I spent last week praying for my ex. You know what he was doing? While I was out one weekend day, he flew down to L.A.,
stole took
the car he had supposedly given me and drove it away with no word.
I've refrained from saying anything about the breakup here, trying to 'be classy." But the pressure of holding it all in takes its toll. And I end up crying in the middle of washing dishes.
It has been a HUGE disappointment, the way he has behaved. Long emails saying "f*ck you" and other really bridge-keeping sentiments. Bipolar swings to "I miss you, I love you, you can keep the car until mid October," and when that did not garner the response he wanted, taking the car out of nowhere.
Why should I have to be quiet while someone hurls obscenities and accusations at me? Why should I pretend they don't affect me. It's abusive. No other way to say it.
I don't dump my negative energy on my exes once it has ended. I find a productive way to work through it. I don't need to have the last word.
It's been hard because my best friend hasn't been around as much as I have needed her and I haven't had as much time for myself to grieve fully.
I feel the weight of all the secrets of the last eight months pushing forward. I want to tell them all but I don't want to be Emily Gould.
I want to finally be able to say that the reason I have felt like such a joy fraud, the reason why my life was so miserable is because I hated my relationship.
I tried to make my relationship with H sound like this wonderful impetus for growth; I touted
the joy of settling like Sally Struthers holding an orphan.
In truth people, we fought every single day we were together. Three times a day on the weekends. It took us months before we could have a fight-free day. And those were the days I spent hanging out with friends instead of talking to him.
Might I remind you that this was a
long-distance relationship.
In the end the truth was too loud to ignore:
never settle. My law professor at Harvard told me this on the phone five years ago when I was in a terrible relationship, "Never settle. Never ever settle."
In my fear of heading into my 30's unengaged, in my fear of never finding the one for me and of not being able to find someone to love me enough, I settled. I clung to commitment like a rock in the fear. I swallowed my disappointments and we fought and fought and fought.
And the biggest disappointment is not that it was a horrible relationship through and through. It is that it was also luscious, pregnant with love. A desperate, clinging one that we lived for. It is that we tried against odds that we probably should not have. It is that as hard we banged our heads into every wall in our way, it was STILL
THAT
HARD.
It is because of this that makes me so utterly upset he had to deal with the ending in that way. To throw SO MUCH negativity on someone else. It left me no choice, no way to remember him with the love I want to, but only to turn away and try to shield myself from the negativity.
I am also gifted with the bitter-edged drink of hindsight. Things I normalized in my relationship, with the help of friends, I have begun to see in a different light. I see the way his "gift" of the car was a leash. How it was controlling, not loving.
I still fear no one will love me as passionately as my ex did. But that may just be a good thing.
