I have no idea how people survive the demise of friendships like functioning human beings. I have more or less accepted that romantic relationships are transient, and generally happen in a linear fashion where you experience one at a time (with the notable exception of polyamory - keep loving the good love, team!), but you have multiple friendships at once. You can even have multiple best friends at once. I guess that's why this hurts so much: the assumption what we had was special, when really it was nothing.
Any incredibly long-time readers of this blog will be aware that I went travelling in 2013 and, while in Japan, met and fell for a fellow student from Bristol, to the point where after about 48 hours of knowing each other we fucked off by ourselves and explored the country, just the two of us. It was one of the more impulsive things I've ever done and I feel vaguely guilty about it, but it was also amazing and fun and confirmation of my hypothesis that people are generally good at heart.
We broke up after about five months but promised to remain best friends. And we were. That's why I find it so hard to accept that he would just stop talking to me, with no warning, no announcement, no expression of rage or hate or even indifference. First the Facebook messages stopped, and then the texts, and now no matter what I try I get no response. This has included messaging both his girlfriend and his dad at various points to ask if he is still alive; finding and emailing his university account; and sending him post, addressed to his name and Cambridge college with the hope it finds him.
Because that can't be it, can it? He can't just leave me.
We have matching tattoos. On our hips, there are black and white deer surrounded by falling autumn leaves. I have a doe, and he has a stag: when me bump hips, their hindquarters almost meet. I held his hand while he was getting inked, just as he held mine through both my tattoos. There's proof of my existence etched into his skin. He must be reminded of me every time he takes his shirt of, and yet he has still successfully ghosted me.
And, much like a ghost, he haunts me.
The silence on his end is approaching seven months: longer than we were even dating for. And for me, it's been seven months of slow suffocation, of my chest growing heavy and tight when I think about him. Sometimes I can't sleep, and I lie staring at the ceiling thinking about us. How much we laughed. How much of the world we have left to see together. How much I miss him; how I don't think I will ever have him back.
We had no dramatic fight, no closure, and that's what aches the most. I guess I'll never get that. He can move on, having finally supplanted the position of girl-he-has-a-crush-on with the acquisition of a girlfriend. She goes to my university: he must come to visit her. He comes to my city and I know nothing about it. But I can't. He was too much of my life for that.
For me, it was never about romantic love. After we broke up, I had a string of poorly thought-out romances and one-night stands, from an elected officer at my university to a 35-year-old EFL teacher in Fukuoka. There was an Australian I harboured a soft spot for until he grew terrible facial hair a year later; a student who dyed his hair and pubes blue; a dancer; another student (the final, fatal mistake). All these took place after our break-up, but never in the wake of it. With that said, I know he loved me. I know he carried on loving me. I loved him too, recklessly - but we couldn't be together. I'm a dirty cheater and a coward, which I didn't grow out of till I was twenty. My teenage heart couldn't handle monogamy.
A year after we met, we went to Dublin together. We had a kiss after Irish coffees that was nothing more than a peck. I got sunburn while he dozed in a park. We crashed a French stag party and I didn't even seduce any of them. A couple of months after that, we went to Iceland - it was a week of grey, stunning and mundane in the same day, driving in our rented car and laughing.
That was the last time we went away together; I only saw him a handful of times after that, maybe a few snatched hours together in York. One night at his house, when we promised to hang out again but never did. A brief conversation in a York cafe, ended abruptly when we needed to go study. That was the last time I saw him in person: May 2015, almost a year ago.
So, this is it. This is the nearest to catharsis I will get, because it feels like I was replaced. Forgotten, Thrown away. He found a girlfriend, and from then on our contact became more sporadic until it dropped off entirely. He never wished me a happy birthday for my 21st. He never replied to my messages of happiness, anger or joy. He filled his niche and I became superfluous. He let whatever we had die.
And that hurts worse than any break-up I've ever had.
My friends all say I'm better off without him, and I can't think that's true. I loved him. I love him. The pain of wanting and not being wanted back is universal, but I'd rather have something than nothing.
In the end, I just miss my best friend.
Showing posts with label break up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label break up. Show all posts
Monday, 4 April 2016
Thursday, 4 June 2015
Be happy, go think about your ex.
In continuation of my perfectly contradictory way of being, the happier my relationship is, the more I think about my exes. For possibly the first time ever, everything is functional. There's no communication issues, no co-dependence, no unequal states of affection or distance that tests commitment. What this proves to me is that my sadness over past loves is unrelated to my current relationship. It's not that I am "not over" my exes: it's that I will always be sad about the way things ended.
I think part of the reason we can become so bitter to our exes is that, for a time, they were so important to us. The gap remains between what they were and what they are now. Once, they were close to us. They slept next to us, spoke to us over every little thing, held our hands and occupied our heads. But after you break up, they can become strangers.
While I've never had a shouting-till-dawn break-up, there's been a mix. The ones where you stop responding, the ones where you promise to stay friends, the ones that distance tempers into being not quite so harsh. My exes are all on my Facebook, but I wonder if they remember. When we pass by without making contact, do we both think back to the days we said we were happy? Were we really?
None of this can be verified against another's experience and we are all different. Even though it happened more than two years ago, I can still get sad about being broken up with over dessert after going to London aquarium together. I feel guilty for dumping a long-distance girlfriend over text when I was 16, and it makes me sad we don't talk any more. Clinging to the past is toxic, but there's a melancholy in realising these people that were so close once are now nothing.
Losing touch scares me, How easily we can be forgotten, If we are nothing but the sum of the relationships we make, what does it say when they can be forged and broken so quickly? We are all fragile. And I guess that goes for friends, too: the people I know who are graduating used to be so close to me, and are now gone. Yes, when we became friends they were sweet, and perhaps they became less so the better we knew each other, but that doesn't stop them from being close.
We forget too many people. Getting left behind is awful. This is all stuff we know, but don't want to consider. Maybe that's why I think so much about the people I had so much almost-happiness with. Things aren't meant to last: all things end. But it's not really so bad to think about the relationships that did. They had meaning too, and their status as passed doesn't negate the value they had at the time. That is not to say I react healthily: I bottled up my angst at someone who hurt me which ended in wanting to punch them. How are you meant to respond to that, when you also know their own ex had physically abused them? I compete with others on arbitrary scales to measure happiness, and I am aware of my bizarre jealousy over who moves on first and how easily exes seem to get over things. My best friend is technically my ex: he has moved on, and I think I'm losing him now to a girl the year below me. That hurts more than anything, as our friendship survived my multitude of inadvisable relationships and torrid flings: it's upsetting that one person can decide to curtail things and they just end.
Whatever. I think and write about this well-trodden ground far too much. Go stroke a puppy or something.
I think part of the reason we can become so bitter to our exes is that, for a time, they were so important to us. The gap remains between what they were and what they are now. Once, they were close to us. They slept next to us, spoke to us over every little thing, held our hands and occupied our heads. But after you break up, they can become strangers.
While I've never had a shouting-till-dawn break-up, there's been a mix. The ones where you stop responding, the ones where you promise to stay friends, the ones that distance tempers into being not quite so harsh. My exes are all on my Facebook, but I wonder if they remember. When we pass by without making contact, do we both think back to the days we said we were happy? Were we really?
None of this can be verified against another's experience and we are all different. Even though it happened more than two years ago, I can still get sad about being broken up with over dessert after going to London aquarium together. I feel guilty for dumping a long-distance girlfriend over text when I was 16, and it makes me sad we don't talk any more. Clinging to the past is toxic, but there's a melancholy in realising these people that were so close once are now nothing.
Losing touch scares me, How easily we can be forgotten, If we are nothing but the sum of the relationships we make, what does it say when they can be forged and broken so quickly? We are all fragile. And I guess that goes for friends, too: the people I know who are graduating used to be so close to me, and are now gone. Yes, when we became friends they were sweet, and perhaps they became less so the better we knew each other, but that doesn't stop them from being close.
We forget too many people. Getting left behind is awful. This is all stuff we know, but don't want to consider. Maybe that's why I think so much about the people I had so much almost-happiness with. Things aren't meant to last: all things end. But it's not really so bad to think about the relationships that did. They had meaning too, and their status as passed doesn't negate the value they had at the time. That is not to say I react healthily: I bottled up my angst at someone who hurt me which ended in wanting to punch them. How are you meant to respond to that, when you also know their own ex had physically abused them? I compete with others on arbitrary scales to measure happiness, and I am aware of my bizarre jealousy over who moves on first and how easily exes seem to get over things. My best friend is technically my ex: he has moved on, and I think I'm losing him now to a girl the year below me. That hurts more than anything, as our friendship survived my multitude of inadvisable relationships and torrid flings: it's upsetting that one person can decide to curtail things and they just end.
Whatever. I think and write about this well-trodden ground far too much. Go stroke a puppy or something.
Friday, 14 November 2014
Wearing my loves.
I have a soft spot for stolen clothes from my loves. That's lovers in all senses - familial and romantic and friends. They can give me things all they like, but I am terrible at returning loaned things. Possession is temporary: nothing is really ours after all, is it? So I keep things, magpie-like, pieces of people I don't want to forget and reminders of things I need to remember. I used to steal my brother's pyjamas when we were kids; now, I borrow my father's tailcoat to go to a ball. It's wearing pieces of history, bringing the past into the present, taking on old
Sometimes in my head I get an image of me wearing the things I've received from the people who mattered most to me at the time, all at once. I'm barefoot, because my feet are too small to steal socks or shoes; I am in boxers I stole from the dancer I had a mostly-physical relationship with and wearing the oversized t-shirt of a boy I loved, but was not in love with. There's a long necklace from the first girl I ever dated, which hangs low and bronze almost to my navel. And I am wearing the hoodie of the one I am in love with, while circumstances are getting in the way.
When I am sad I wear other people's clothes. It makes me feel connected, reminds me that others exist even when I am alone and lonely. Today I am in my mother's cardigan and my friend's big, blue coat. They are keeping me warm in the cold, keeping the rain away from my face and holding me together when I feel like falling apart.
I know I should give these things back, but things are only things. Material possessions matter less than memories to me. Moment and experiences are transient and can give you the warmth or sadness that clothes cannot. I have always been a physical person, and the proximity and affection of touch is what I seem to perpetually crave. It is getting hard for me to sleep alone. The quiet of my room is no match for the tumult of my brain. And I have always been fine by myself, but that doesn't mean I am not lonely.
My mother's feet are smaller than mine and she still wears my old trainers that I have grown out of. I wonder if she feels fond of me when she wears them. I would. Or does she just see them as trainers, utilitarian things to keep her feet dry?
I don't know what is going on with my life, but I will give back this cerulean blue hoodie if my love asks me to. It's the colour of a clear sky, the highlights in my hair, my eyes in a storm. (His eyes are more green.) If love is putting someone else first then my selfish heart can do that, even if it means martyring myself. I will give back the hoodie that after two months still smells of him. But if he does not, then I will keep it. It reminds me of affection, of being held, warm hands on my cold arms. I am holding myself together as best I can, in other's clothes, to keep me whole when I want to unravel.
I suppose I have always been one to wear my heart on my sleeve.
Sometimes in my head I get an image of me wearing the things I've received from the people who mattered most to me at the time, all at once. I'm barefoot, because my feet are too small to steal socks or shoes; I am in boxers I stole from the dancer I had a mostly-physical relationship with and wearing the oversized t-shirt of a boy I loved, but was not in love with. There's a long necklace from the first girl I ever dated, which hangs low and bronze almost to my navel. And I am wearing the hoodie of the one I am in love with, while circumstances are getting in the way.
When I am sad I wear other people's clothes. It makes me feel connected, reminds me that others exist even when I am alone and lonely. Today I am in my mother's cardigan and my friend's big, blue coat. They are keeping me warm in the cold, keeping the rain away from my face and holding me together when I feel like falling apart.
I know I should give these things back, but things are only things. Material possessions matter less than memories to me. Moment and experiences are transient and can give you the warmth or sadness that clothes cannot. I have always been a physical person, and the proximity and affection of touch is what I seem to perpetually crave. It is getting hard for me to sleep alone. The quiet of my room is no match for the tumult of my brain. And I have always been fine by myself, but that doesn't mean I am not lonely.
My mother's feet are smaller than mine and she still wears my old trainers that I have grown out of. I wonder if she feels fond of me when she wears them. I would. Or does she just see them as trainers, utilitarian things to keep her feet dry?
I don't know what is going on with my life, but I will give back this cerulean blue hoodie if my love asks me to. It's the colour of a clear sky, the highlights in my hair, my eyes in a storm. (His eyes are more green.) If love is putting someone else first then my selfish heart can do that, even if it means martyring myself. I will give back the hoodie that after two months still smells of him. But if he does not, then I will keep it. It reminds me of affection, of being held, warm hands on my cold arms. I am holding myself together as best I can, in other's clothes, to keep me whole when I want to unravel.
I suppose I have always been one to wear my heart on my sleeve.
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Some things he ruined.
So, in the manner of a girl who gets ahead of herself, it turns out my future planning has come to naught. My ambiguous manfriend is now just a "friend", of the "I think we should just be friends" ilk (and I catalogued my emotions pretty thoroughly on Thought Catalog).
It also occured to me that pretty much every post on this blog is about him in some way, seeing as I started writing it the day before our first date. It was the day he quit his internship, and yesterday was the day he started a new one. I'm just the stop gap amusement.
I think I'll have to make this the last post about him, as he's not The Boy any more. He's just a boy, who I thought I knew, but I guess not. I'm letting myself wallow for the moment, because I am upset, but I know I'll need to start feeling better sooner or later. It's not heartbreak, just heartbruise.
But for the moment, here is a list of things that remind me of him:
- Triathlons (because he runs them)
- Whole Foods in Kensington (because it was where we had our first date)
- My dress patterned with locks (because it's what I wore the first time we made out)
- Red-eared terrapins (because we watched them having a fight and laughed)
- Margherita pizza (which I am very annoyed about, because HE RUINED PIZZA. Because he described it as "naked pizza")
- The word "pugnacious" (because we argued about its definition and he couldn't believe I was right)
- My ceiling (because he made jokes about my posters)
- The Crane Wife by The Decemberists (because I spent ages trying to get him to listen to it, and then he didn't like it much)
- Picnics (because we promised to have one. Which never happened)
- Panda cupcakes (because he asked me to bake them as a joke, and I did)
- The music of Passenger (because he introduced me to it)
- London Aquarium (because it's where we had our last date)
- Scuba diving (because he insisted I should try it out)
- Nail varnish (because I painted my nails differently for every date)
- Fight Club (because we watched it together, and guessed the plot twist, and I fell asleep on his shoulder and missed the ending)
- Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude (because he was told to "play it to any girls he was courting", and didn't play it for me)
Every time I see or hear or think about one of these things, I get that feeling of being sucker-punched in the sternum all over again. He ruined them. But luckily time has a way of healing all wounds. It won't be long before they're fixed: it'll just be a while.
It also occured to me that pretty much every post on this blog is about him in some way, seeing as I started writing it the day before our first date. It was the day he quit his internship, and yesterday was the day he started a new one. I'm just the stop gap amusement.
I think I'll have to make this the last post about him, as he's not The Boy any more. He's just a boy, who I thought I knew, but I guess not. I'm letting myself wallow for the moment, because I am upset, but I know I'll need to start feeling better sooner or later. It's not heartbreak, just heartbruise.
But for the moment, here is a list of things that remind me of him:
- Triathlons (because he runs them)
- Whole Foods in Kensington (because it was where we had our first date)
- My dress patterned with locks (because it's what I wore the first time we made out)
- Red-eared terrapins (because we watched them having a fight and laughed)
- Margherita pizza (which I am very annoyed about, because HE RUINED PIZZA. Because he described it as "naked pizza")
- The word "pugnacious" (because we argued about its definition and he couldn't believe I was right)
- My ceiling (because he made jokes about my posters)
- The Crane Wife by The Decemberists (because I spent ages trying to get him to listen to it, and then he didn't like it much)
- Picnics (because we promised to have one. Which never happened)
- Panda cupcakes (because he asked me to bake them as a joke, and I did)
- The music of Passenger (because he introduced me to it)
- London Aquarium (because it's where we had our last date)
- Scuba diving (because he insisted I should try it out)
- Nail varnish (because I painted my nails differently for every date)
- Fight Club (because we watched it together, and guessed the plot twist, and I fell asleep on his shoulder and missed the ending)
- Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude (because he was told to "play it to any girls he was courting", and didn't play it for me)
Every time I see or hear or think about one of these things, I get that feeling of being sucker-punched in the sternum all over again. He ruined them. But luckily time has a way of healing all wounds. It won't be long before they're fixed: it'll just be a while.
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