[This was written a little while ago; I happened to be going through my Google docs, found it and decided, what the hell? So, here is it for your reading pleasure.]
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“Why can't we see that there's/more to love than we'll ever know/Sometimes you're closer when you're/letting go” -Emerson Hart
I constantly struggle with the “letting go” part of relationships. After losing people that meant the world to me, without any say in it whatsoever, actually “choosing” to let someone go is something I will struggle with until the day I die. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of permanently shutting a door on someone and never ever contacting said person again. It’s sad, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s just not...me.
HE and I have said “good bye” multiple times now. Yet, we always end up having to communicate for business-type reasons (my freezer, the vet, etc. ) and once that line of communication is open, we spend the rest of the day reminiscing and going round and round in circles of “I wish I could’ve”s and “you will always”s...things are said that mean more to the other than the rest of the world could possibly ever understand, and they make me wonder where in the hell everything went so terribly wrong.
We were in love. Like, the kind of love that most people only ever dream about.
Sure, we had a really screwed up beginning; but you know, looking back on it now, he wasn’t the only one that could’ve/should’ve done things differently. Yes, he should’ve been more upfront with the things going on between him and HER, but I also should’ve put my foot down and demanded commitment or nothing at all and stuck to my word. Part of our continual back and forth was more than my fault, because I was so petrified to not have him as part of my life, despite the fact that the pieces of him that I had at that point in time were not the pieces I deserved. I should have demanded the respect I deserved then, and I should have walked away without looking back when it wasn’t given to me. That was my fault. I see that now and I fully accept responsibility for that part.
Then, we made amends. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, doubt was seeded between us and it was a downhill catastrophe until the very end. I doubted his ability to be faithful and true, and he doubted my ability to be trusted and to stick it out through the hard times. We both wanted to be “right” and we were both stubborn (see - stupid) enough to fight for that right-ness; the unfortunate part is that what we were really doing was destroying every little bit of the other that we had at one point cared so much about; our heads were so inflated with our own “self righteousness” that it wasn’t until we were more broken than a shattered mirror that we realized: somewhere along the way we had lost each other and done things, on both ends, that hurt the other deeply.
Hurt can be demonstrated in monumentally different ways; everyone shows and deals with their pain differently - this key fact is what ended up being the final nail in the coffin of our love story. He was hurting on the inside from my lack of trust in him - which, yes, was more than “deserved”, but he needed me to give more than I was able to - and sought some “feel goods” that undoubtedly were a terrible place to seek them from. At the time, it dulled the pain and seemed okay because it was essentially harmless - no physical action was taken. Sometimes though, in trying to dull our own pains, we destroy the ones we love the most, in ways we never conceived possible.
I was struggling to hold on for the last few months of our relationship. I felt distanced from him, I felt pain and anger; I felt like a roommate just sharing a mutual space with this man who I thought I was going to marry. We failed at communicating well with each other and that fueled our downward spiral. In the end, I chose to leave and say “enough is enough” because neither one of us could take any more of the destructive patterns we were part of. Sometimes, when you love someone, you have to know when to walk away. Granted, I tried everything I possibly could to stay by his side and work through the bad with him; but I also had to take care of myself and make sure I was doing the absolute best for me that I could. In the end, walking away and leaving the pieces behind were what I deemed best not only for me, but for him too. I know he doesn’t understand it; but the way I see it...we were killing each other. We weren’t working. Someone needed to acknowledge that and put a stop to the pain we were causing each other, regardless of what form that pain came in.
It doesn’t take much intuition to know when your partner isn’t happy, isn’t satisfied, isn’t in love with you anymore. Sure, we LOVED each other; but we had lost that spark - you know, the one that makes you smile all day long just thinking about the other person...the one that makes you want to call in “sick” to work so you can spend the day in bed with the other. It just wasn’t there anymore; amidst all of the garbage that was going on, our spark burned out, and we suffered greatly from it.
So how am I supposed to let go of all that “work” and passion, tears and effort, that I put into him and us? Am I really supposed to just stop thinking about him, stop trying to pinpoint where our switch flipped from madly in love with each other, unable to get enough of one another, to survival mode and just trying to trudge on through to any sort of higher ground? My mind doesn’t work like that; I’m a scientist. I solve problems systematically by piecing things together in a very meticulous, chronologic fashion. I don’t just forget about things; I don’t just let things go. Especially people. More especially people I love(d). Even more especially a man, the only man, that I have ever truly thought I was going to spend forever with.
I don’t know how. I know I need to; I know he needs me to. I just...haven’t learned that part yet, and will continue to struggle until I do.
...I miss him, and he’ll never know.
~Somewhere between forever and always, Chelsea Leigh
