I've drafted and drafted and drafted posts about this to try and find a way to talk to tell you all about it. It's not a big secret. But it's something I'm not proud of.
And yet I need to get it off my chest.
So, here it goes:
My ex-boyfriend came back into my life in December. You know the
ex-boyfriend that broke up with me a week before my birthday via text? The one that took me about ten months to really get over because I was never able to talk to him about
why we broke up and therefore never had closure?
Yeah, that one.
Letting him back into my life was the stupidest, most asinine thing I have ever done in my life. When I was in
Boston, I got a drunk, two A.M. text that consisted of 'heyyy.' Not eloquent, but it was the first time I had seen his name show up on my phone's screen in about a year. I will never forget how I couldn't even catch my breath as I deliberated what to do: Do I text him back? Do I tell him to fuck off? Do I just ignore him?
I had flashbacks to our breakup and decided not to be a bitch and just say hello back - What's the harm, right!? Bad idea. We started talking and catching up and within about a month my feelings (the feelings I had worked to get rid of for just about a year at this point) were back - and back in a bad way.
Fast-forward through the next few months: he visited my apartment almost every weekend to spend the night. Nothing actually 'happened' past a bit of making out but that was worse than if something had happened - because I read into our cuddling & conversation seshs until 5am like whoa.
"If he's not trying anything on me, then he must be falling for me again. No 27 year old isn't going to not try something on a girl unless he really likes her," I thought.
(I was really, really wrong)
I tried to initiate a relationship with him. I thought he was being shy or nervous and I didn't mind making the first move. I asked him to go to small things like a movie or one of my school's shows with me. I thought that small things would ease us back into the groove we hit for about a year in our relationship. He would at first, but then began resisting. He would bail on me and go out with his friends and instead just get absolutely wrecked and text me about how much he missed me, etc. Signals were very mixed.
One weekend when he came over, I told him that we should start hanging out at his house (he lives with his brother & his brother's girlfriend - who is a good friend of mine still and how I met my ex) and he had what I can only describe as a panic attack and started to freak out - saying that they wouldn't understand us hanging out and that they would think he was weird that he was friends with his ex. Cue the dramatic, tear-filled four hour conversation in which I try to convince him being in a relationship and him just resisting completely.
(Hint: If you have to convince someone to be in a relationship with you then you don't want to be in a relationship with them. I see this now.)
His reasoning was that he wasn't in a good mental place to be in a relationship. Looking back, that's probably very right. He would get very drunk, very often and was just not stable at all - when he got money from his dad (his dad of all places - not a job. I mentioned he was 27, right?) he spent it quick on meaningless stuff (like $300 on one purchase of video games or liquor) and was just not a nice person to anyone - he was alienating friends left and right. I stood by and tried to be moral support for him. I convinced myself that this was a phase and he was still the same calm, man that I had dated two years ago. (He wasn't)
In all fairness, he was just diagnosed with a heart disease that isn't too positive. He has gone to the hospital six or seven times in the past three months with all sorts of heart palpitations and shortness of breath. I understand that this can make someone freak out, but he had completely lost it - he was being reckless in many ways (you shouldn't drink, much less get wasted with heart problems that severe) and it was just hurting his cause more than it was helping him.
It got bad from there. He would promise to come over and cancel at the last minute. I would go to the party that we were supposed to be going to together and just cry the whole time. He would randomly not talk to me for a few days and then come back around act like nothing happened - even though I was so anxious over the past few days that something had happened to him. We would Skype and he would just hang up and walk away. It was weird and random and I was giving 2,000% when he was only giving about 3%.
So, after about two months of me trying to convince him to give me a second shot & trying to find things for us to do & only seeing him when he wasn't around his friends & working so hard to help him when he was sick or in the hospital & crying on a daily basis, I had enough. I was with my best friend Briana when I turned to her and said,
"I just can't do this anymore. I'm sick of crying"
She helped me form a text to him that got all of these feelings out. I got the strength to tell him that he is not to speak to me again unless he wants to get his act together and be in a stable, functioning relationship. He took two days to respond, but when he did all hell broke loose. He told me he understood but had a thousand reasons as to why we can be friends and why I should be in his life, etc. He was actually fighting for me for once, but not in the way I wanted.
I eventually asked him point-blank if he wanted to be in a relationship and he said no, but...
And that was the final trigger for me. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but right then and there I told him that he is not to speak to me again and let the next three or four pleading text messages go ignored. And now he is out of my life again. I cannot tell you whether or not it's for forever this time, but it's for the better that we don't speak right now.
I don't know why he came back in my life or why I had to go through all of that. I don't know why I let myself get that sucked back in or why he truly couldn't commit. I can hypothesize all I want about why all of it happened. But I am grateful because I think it was, more than anything, what I needed - a way to get some closure. For the first time in almost three years, I do not think about him on a daily basis. I've started talking to other guys. It's a moving on I never had a chance to experience before. And I am so lucky to finally be able to just move on with my life and have the chance to find a guy who will never put me through all of that. Who wants to be in a strong, committed, mature relationship like I do. Who likes me for me.
So, here's to moving on.
