I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I feel like myself again. The bad news is that I feel like a total wreck. My sadness is finally at the level I expected it to be. When I didn’t cry at even the biggest triggers a few weeks ago, now I cry at everything. I think I prefer this, but I wish it was just sadness and not also doubt. Today it’s exactly one month ago. We could have been together for two years and one month. And since a few days ago, I have started to doubt my decision. This is probably just my emotions clouding my judgement and I should probably give it more time, but it’s torture. Not talking to him, not seeing his face, not falling asleep in his arms. Ugh. I should actually be working on my thesis, but I can’t concentrate anyway. So instead I’m going to lay out my thought process here. Maybe it will give me some clarity.
Last week I’ve been talking with friends about their relationship struggles. Nobody is perfect after all and neither is any relationship. But every time they brought up something they didn’t like, I just thought: He wouldn’t do that. He would make time, he would never say something so insensitive. And when they expressed things they missed I would think: He complimented me, he could handle my mood swings, he could apologise. And that made me panic. How could I have broken up with someone who has all these amazing qualities. I was even starting to appreciate some of those qualities more than I was when we were together. Then I got angry with myself, because I always make a point of still cherishing the good things in people when they are still around, and expressing them. And I did. And this is probably just a phase of romanticising the good and forgetting the bad. But I had more or less forgotten the bad. Our relationship had never been really bad. The only things I missed in him were these: the ability to tell me he was going AWOL and a passion for life. Now the first I saw as something that was within his reach, because I believe that is just a pattern of behaviour you teach yourself. But that would require one to want that. Also, I may have overlooked his mental health in this. You see, my used-to-be-boyfriend has bipolar disorder. For him this means he has days on which he sleeps for 4 hours max, has a lot of energy and a drive to go out and do stuff, mostly with people. On other days 14 hours of sleep is not even enough and lying in bed listening to music or watching movies is all you can ask of him. And then he also has loads of days in between those extremes. In the low periods, sometimes he just goes off the radar for a while and he says he cannot predict when it is going to happen or let anyone know he needs that time alone in advance or during it. Not even me. That was hard to deal with. Now that I’m writing all of this down I feel conflicted again, as I used to. On the one hand I felt like I know how to handle being with someone like that if I just keep in mind that he won’t be available all the time. On the other I felt like sometimes I had a boyfriend and at other times I didn’t. I can’t say I like that feeling. It makes you insecure, angry, desperate. He once told me he knows it’s hard being with him. He said he didn’t want to give me this kind of life. Of course I was defensive about it then, but now…
The second one is a bit more complicated. I have a zest for life. I know I sometimes sound like a young grandma, but I love living. I am excited and curious about what the future holds for me. I am optimistic. Happiness is usually my default emotion. That is not the same for everyone though. I am no student of psychology, but I do know some people just have lower levels of endorfines, serotonine, dopamine, all that stuff. There’s not much you can do about that, except maybe medication. And since my used-to-be-boyfriend was absolutely against medicine, that was no option. However, I believe he has a problem with life. He feels disappointed with it. I often thought he had the idea that there were just two choices for him: try to make his passion (music) his work and fail because “it’s like buying a lottery ticket”, or try to get a well-paying job in something that kind of interested him so that he could have nice things outside of work. To me, those sounds like some awful options too. But I believe those do not have to be the only ones! It’s not up to me, though, what he believes. However, these conflicting ideas about life made it so that we didn’t think a future with the two of us together was going to work. I often tried to spark a conversation about where he saw himself and us in a few years. He could never give me an answer. I could have waited longer, of course. But that would be waiting on an answer so I could compare it to my own and then make a decision. I don’t want to spend my life waiting. That’s why I broke up with him. I am reminded again.
The fact that he was a wonderful person is probably going to mess with my head for a while longer. And the fact that the circumstances under which we broke up can change will also make it hard to get over this. But at least I remember why I did it. And I am still behind it.
“The important thing is you have time.” – Jane the Virgin (Ch. 93)
P.s. I have added another page to my website. It contains some mini poems. Feel free to take a look 🙂
Tea Time With Amber 