Oh, I'm sorry... I'm not offering advice. I'm asking. Do you know the answer? I definitely don't. I've been sitting here at work for the past hour, sporadically bursting into tears and trying to understand why my life is so far from the life I was anticipating last year at this time.
Then I had a boyfriend. A man I loved (the first "real" relationship I've ever had--late bloomer that I am) who supposedly loved me back. If I'm going to be honest, I can say that things started getting weird right after he told me he loved me, and by Thanksgiving (which was about three weeks later) I could tell he was pulling away. I didn't do anything to push him or pressure him. I figured that was the worst thing I could do. I just tried to remain calm and be open to whatever happened along the way. I never in my wildest dreams expected him to leave me. I mean, who does that? How do you get to be thirty-six years old and think you can just say "I love you" on a whim? How do you raise the stakes if you have no intention of sticking around? If you don't "see a future" as he so often told me after the fact? Once the breakup was happening, I remember asking why time and time again and getting "I don't know" for a reason. My whole life was shattered, my soul decimated, (I HAVE YET TO RECOVER) and all for "I don't know." Who does that?
Here's the time line for those who need it:
10/27 - "I love you, and I'm not afraid." My first "I love you." What an idiot--I believed him.
11/11 - He gives me an iPod Nano with video screen for my birthday.
11/28 - I hear my second "I love you" while we're having sex. Both times he said it first. And I never said it in the month between. I didn't suddenly add "I love you" to our daily vocabulary and freak him out. He did it all on his own.
12/3 - He breaks up with me. Well, kind of. It's not very clear, and within a couple of miserable days for both of us, after talking and e-mailing, it's more like a "break."
12/19 - He sends me an Edible Arrangement. Those things are like seventy bucks, btw.
12/24 - He comes to my family's Christmas Eve gathering--something he insisted upon. I would not have invited him, but when I mentioned it he said, "I want to go to that!" And he'd already decreed that we would exchange presents no matter what. So he comes over. He opens a hundred dollars worth of carefully picked out (and wrapped) presents from me. I open an arm-holder for the iPod wrapped in the Sunday funnies. Seriously. Did he run out of Christmas paper and I wasn't even worth three bucks to buy some more?
12/31 - He spends New Year's with his parents. Who I've never met, btw.
1/10 - I go over to his house thinking we're going to talk and patch things up and he breaks it off for good. He says, "I like you. I loved you..."
"So now it's 'loved,' past tense," I ask.
"Yes."
When I ask what has changed, he can't tell me. "I don't know," is all he says. I am the same person he said he loved just a month ago, but now he doesn't love me. I have done nothing differently, but he has changed his mind. He "doesn't see a future."
"Then why did you tell me you loved me?" I demand.
"I don't know."
All of this haunts me. After a few months earlier this year, still in touch with him, still hearing him offer these wishy-washy explanations, and believing he's just scared (because he admits that he is) he finally tells me he's seeing someone else. Actually, he didn't even tell me. I found out through someone else. But it doesn't matter. He's seeing someone else. He's selling his condo and moving in with her. And instead of just telling me that, he has let me believe that there's still a chance, that it's just fear of commitment wigging him out. He's let me in every time I've reached out, and even though I've said, "If there's someone else just tell me," he never does.
S0 I am a mess. I have been a mess since last December, and nothing I have experienced since then has helped to make it better, or helped me to forget him. As angry as I am in moments, because he took away all of my hope, and my confidence, and my ability to believe, I still love him. Still miss him. If he called me tomorrow I would take him back. And I am crying again because I know it won't happen, and because I know I am pathetic.
The universe has not sent anyone my way to replace him. I cannot find ANYTHING redeeming in this experience. I have not learned anything except that love is a joke, and people are liars, and pain is the only certainty in this world. I can't find the "reason" for meeting him and losing him. I can't forgive him. And I can't stop picturing him in his perfect happy new relationship while I have hovered on the brink of suicide.
I almost killed myself a number of times this year. I am past that point, thankfully, but to say I feel "good" would be a complete lie. To say that I have any kind of hope for ever being happy, or ever finding "true love" would be a complete lie. He has ruined all of this for me, and the universe stood idly by and let it happen.
So how do I find things to be thankful for in light of all of this? All I want to do is e-mail him and say, "I hope your life sucks as much as you deserve!" But of course I can't. I'd just end up looking like a psycho, or worse he'd reply and say something like, "I'm very happy and I hope someday you can be, too." FUCK OFF, ASSHOLE. I don't understand any of it.
Today I needed to use my little digital voice recorder to transfer files from my work computer to my laptop, which couldn't pick up a Wi-Fi signal at the time... I was enormously thankful for that device in that moment. I said out loud, "I love this thing" because I forget sometimes just how versatile and useful it is, until I need it for something like that. Best eighty bucks I've spent in a while, and worth every penny.
So that's one thing.
I'm thankful to have one job that I love, and one job that is at least flexible enough to keep me from otherwise hating it.
I'm thankful for some really good friends who have stepped up in recent days to remind me that they care what I'm going through--especially when my family has kind of not been able to do that in any way that's helpful.
I'm thankful for my guitar. It's a gorgeous black Martin, and I never thought I'd be lucky enough to own a high-end guitar like a Martin.
I'm thankful to be relatively healthy (even if I don't currently have health insurance to deal with some other stuff I wouldn't mind dealing with).
I'm thankful to have a place to live, even though I don't have any money to contribute to it presently.
I'm thankful to have a car that is relatively new, and running well. I'm thankful to the pastor at the church where I work for paying for new brakes when I couldn't afford them.
I'm thankful to the friends, and virtual strangers, who are helping me through my current financial/legal crisis. If I have to deal with these things, at least I don't have to do it alone.
I'm thankful for "The Office" on DVD... I can laugh at that show no matter what. Even after seeing every episode numerous times. Sometimes that actually makes it funnier.
I'm thankful to have a place to spend Thanksgiving... even if it's the same place and the same people I have dinner with all the time, it's still a nice day, and it beats many of the alternatives.
I'm thankful for my fish. They may not be able to snuggle up next to me in bed and show their appreciation, but they still need me, and I need to be needed.
I'm thankful for a lot of other things, large and small, and I need to focus more on these things instead of all the things that are "wrong" with my life.
At least for one whole day.
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