Learning to live again... (484 hits)
Category: RomanceRating: 1.75 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by KarmaJane (View user info) at 2004-08-09 11:58:36 EDT
I'm sitting here after midnight wondering what happened. Not what happened in a day, a week, a month but what happened in the last year. How, in the tiny space of a year, did I get to be this way? What made it possible? How is it that I fell so far, so fast? Naturally, I'm in one of those morbid moods right now where nothing seems right and all I want to do is get under the covers in bed and wait for the world to end. Unfortunately there is no comet heading for the Earth right now that I know of. So I guess my second choice for something to fill the time was to rant and try to figure out what went wrong. I know that figuring things out this way takes a lot of time and wades through a lot of unnecessary rubbish in the process but it fills the space in time that I have quite nicely.
Thinking about the nosedive the state of things have taken in about a year, I think I'm still sometimes in a state of something resembling shock...if "shock" were to last for about eight months, feel like someone had kicked you nice and hard in the stomach every so often, make you burst into tears at the most inappropriate things and make you expect to be vomiting blood any second now for good measure. Perhaps a better term for it is "downright fucking horror" but we'll settle and call it "mourning".
The thing that set my mourning period off was pretty silly in most peoples' minds and probably not worth all the fuss. It was a death. Not the death of a person or even of something tangible; it was the death of a relationship. And, before anyone begins to think that I'm overreacting completely, to be fair it was my FIRST relationship of the non-plutonic kind (sadly, I'm 21 years old). I've been in mourning for about eight months but, to make it a nice round year, the whole thing DID take about four months to get sick and die.
Why was this relationship so improtant to me? Firstly, because it took me a good 20 years to get one, so letting it go felt a tad wasteful. Secondly, it was with a friend who I happened to lose in the process. My best friend at the time. Yes, we were best friends. Yes, we were stupid enough to let sex wiggle it's way in. Yes, "love" followed, snapping at sex's heels.
The reason I say "love" like that is, like most failed relationships, that the degree of love wasn't exactly equal on both sides. It was like swimming; I jumped in headfirst whereas he was more likely to just dip his toes in...then shiver at the temperature. He loved me but didn't see it as a serious thing. I loved him and didn't want anyone else. I guess I should have expected this kind of imbalance to fuck things up eventually but I didn't. I now know why they say that love is blind.
The whole relationship was one big bunch of opposites. Which can be exciting to begin with but, after spending every spare moment together for over a year, can wear thin after a while. I expressed my feelings freely, he held back. He didn't like to be touched too often, I'm an extremely tactile person. We argued a lot over our differences, almost constantly in that dying four months. But, even though we were at odds with each other personality-wise, it would have worked in a lot of ways had he just let it. We had that wonderful way of being so comfortable together that we could just sit in what they call a "companionable silence" for hours; our friends often remarked on that. The smell of him made me feel safe. He only had to kiss me to make me hot all over. To me, he was "love with a pulse".
The thing that changed it all was that he developed an attraction for someone else. He got a crush on an unattainable girl (he was overweight and she didn't look at men like him "that way"). I got jealous...and wrathful. He soothed me with promises to leave her alone. One day I arrived home from being out of town for a few days and found out that he was out with said girl. Innocent as far as they saw it but, like idle hands, a jealous woman's mind is the devil's playground; I imagined so many sordid things. I screamed, ranted and threw things. HIS things. He never got with this girl but his promise to me was broken and I was terribly hurt.
A few days later, without any goodbyes or discussion, he had stopped talking to me. Our "friends" did the same. I became a different person. Once a vibrant, fun-loving and animated person, I'd become a quiet and unhappy mess. I cried almost every day for the first three months. I hurt so badly that I sometimes wished for everything to end. Seeing him in the street made my body shake and my heart leap into my throat.
After a while the time between crying became longer and longer. The pain faded to a dull throb. I still missed him dreadfully but my heart seemed to beat normally again. I got on with life but there was still a hole in my heart; one that seemed to get a little smaller every day. I was healing. But not without the occasional relapse.
So what, after eight months, has set me in this horrible and painful mood? I discovered that he has found someone new. Someone that he is proud to label "his girlfriend". Someone he obviously loves more than he loved me. It hurts. I've never seen this woman but I think I hate her. I want her to hurt him like he hurt me. Just so he knows how it feels to seem to be bleeding to death but unable to find a wound.
I don't want to care. I don't want to hate. I don't want to hurt. I don't want to cry anymore. I've cried enough. Isn't what seems like an ocean of tears enough for one person? I don't love him anymore. Hell, I don't even LIKE him. But still. It's the whole unbalanced issue that was so prominent when we were together. He's happy first and I haven't moved on. He has friends and love, I'm still learning to live again.
User Reviews
Submitted by Quasiplasmohedron (user info) at 2004-08-13 05:34:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2004-08-09 18:46:36 (#)
Ranking: 2
This was very well written.
Submitted by apple_tush (user info) at 2004-08-13 05:16:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I just wanted to add a 'well done' for having the strength to recognise the feelings you are experiencing. They may not the most pleasant but it takes a lot of guts to start picking yourself up and dusting off the old, which you are obviously doing now.
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2004-08-13 04:58:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You will achieve some kind of closure on it eventually, for all the psychobabble that word entails. It took me a long time, but when it happened it was like a bolt of lightning when I least expected it. I did write a post about it, but I'm not a linkwhore so if you want to read it I'm sure you can find it.
Good luck, stay strong.
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2004-08-09 18:46:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was very well written.
Submitted by heater (user info) at 2004-08-09 18:34:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I give you...free heat!
Submitted by Finding_Neo (user info) at 2004-08-09 13:47:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No +2 for you not having the brains of writing him some kind of letter. Do that and then you might be able to drop it.
I assume you know his adress.
Submitted by Karlito at 2004-08-09 12:26:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"The thing that set my mourning period off was pretty silly in most peoples' minds..."
It's only silly to people who have never been in love. It will get better.
Submitted by SpikeGoddess (user info) at 2004-08-09 12:22:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I wish I could say I know how you feel, but I don't, entirely.
Keep writing about it. Pain fuels creation.
Submitted by cuberat (user info) at 2004-08-09 12:13:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Heartfelt. Well written. I only wish I had something more that could comfort you.