It is a strange, precarious position in which to find
oneself. Only a few years ago, I had
started a relationship with someone that anyone would claim to be their soul
mate, if they had happened to luck into feeling and being where I was
then. We went everywhere together,
shared the same dreams and goals and vibrated so close to the same frequency
the universe would likely explode. That
is all over now. I pulled the plug and walked
away and now the mere sound of his voice is enough to plunge me into
upset. Like most persons in my point in
time looking back, I wonder how we got from there to here. It certainly wasn’t on any road map we were
using toward our wonderful long life together.
Of course neither was my five months or so of severe depression.
That was it! Why didn’t
I notice that before? It was plain as
the nose on my face. Granted we went on
for seven more months passed that incident.
But actually the damage to the underpinnings that were important to keep
us going likely occurred during the time he would lambaste me after for not
taking care of myself, that I made poor choices, that my course of action for a
task was incorrect. The firing of the
holy trinity of questions, “Why won’t you do something?” “What were you
thinking?” and “Why aren’t you happy yet?” and the honest doubt that he knew not
how to deal with any future incidences of me being down again.
Who could blame him right?
A depressed person could.
There are plenty of blogs out there that advise one on how
to best deal with a person experiencing depression and we read them. We listened to plenty of audiobooks. We went to plenty of therapy together later
on and I heard much of his opinion on how my personal therapy did not seem to
be working. But we managed to muddle
through this horrible thing that I was putting us through. That opinion was the bailiwick of his
friends, not many, a few, but when you’re in the tail end or any part of your
depression, those are the things that sink in.
Depressed people must carry one hell of a positive charge because we
attract a megaton of negativity. Luckily,
he decided to go party with his friends for the weekend at this point in the
process, after I expressly said I wanted him to stay home and I did not feel
safe. Because you know, depressed people are such downers, but it’s not like he
didn’t get away on his own plenty without having to go cross country to do so. I hope that break was truly what he needed
from me and the unnatural stresses I placed upon him, because it evoked in me
the first realization about him, that in a moment of true need, he could not be
trusted to follow through. Now, that is
something, a singular moment when one feels their trust is misplaced. How you recover from that is by saying it was
fine for him to go later so that he will believe he did the right thing by
you.
Then over the summer we lived in a sublet. It was not that bad. I was given the opportunity to heal further
without a job and took up biking and worked on music, but not that much. I kept the house clean, cooked and easily
continued my upward spiral to confidence and mental stability with the
occasional panic attack. But then a new
issue arose regarding my contribution to the relationship. The need to be constantly managed by him,
adjusted, fixed. Have you ever had
someone tell you something was a certain way and every time their lips moved,
it felt like they were trying to convince themselves it was true as they
simultaneously were saying it to convince you it were true too? When they finished, neither of you felt very
assured? This was the tone and progression
of our conversations in increasing frequency.
The bonus was at the time it was not initially perceptible but over
time, it equated to feeling unexpressed, unfulfilled and unheard. Even couples therapy seemed to be more about fixing
me than helping us at times. And coming
from my background of feeling like damaged, unlovable goods like I and most of
us have (read my first blog) feeling in need of repair, unsatisfactory and irreparable
can be par for the course. We have our
inner litany down, I assure you. So in the end here from my side was the
beginning of the eroding of our empathy for one another.
Now, after a three month separation and official break up,
he within a week of that is seeing a person that, before we moved to the west
coast he insisted we meet and had been chatting with online before we
left. From my perspective, he had
already checked out long before I left, possibly even before our big move. One of his big things was feeling the need to
find something better, whether it be a place or a person or a partner. Making sure he had the best possible outcome
was something with which he struggled.
Now while together, he assured me that I was good enough and you know I
was a hard one to convince, so that in of itself was probably a decent
foreshadowing of our demise. But when
you lose trust, empathy and finally communication, any one of them is likely
sufficient reason to walk. So I left him
so that he would not have to worry whether I would be capable of holding down a
job, prone to bouts of severe depression or able to cash in on all those dreams
we initially sent out into the universe together, because after several months
of his deciding what he thought was best for me, I thought it only right to
return the favor. At least this once.
