This is not what Beyonce promised me...

[mustard1234]

I left. I cognitively understand that leaving was the only self-respecting move I had to play. The problem is, I feel like I'm about to evaporate. It's a bit difficult to start getting over someone if you don't actually want to. This is proving to be a lot more painful than I thought.

 

 

Backstory:

I was in love. Really happy and in love.

Emphasis on happy.

I dance fast and hot and hard and we'd pretty much announced that we wanted to do that forever thing. Looks, values, ambitions, the way his curls hit his eyebrows, the way he touched me in the morning. I was done. It was a lock. No questions or hesitation. For the first time in my life no one and nothing else tugged at my heart except for being in this little world with him. Cue sunset.

 

Two Thursdays ago, I see two weeks worth of texts to another woman. Making plans to meet. She canceled last minute.

Ouch. Screaming, burning of personal property. He begs me to stay. We both cry.

I am broken, but I stay.

 

Last Tuesday, he kisses me and tells me he'll be right back after helping a friend move.

Five hours later he comes home high. No sorry. No explanation. Just looking at me and explaining before I ask that he doesn't need anything and I can go to bed. I should mention his being on no-drugs probation (as in, with the state of California) and his promises to me that he'd stop getting high. This isn't the first time we've been here.

I am broken, and this time I leave.

 

My head is on fire and I can't breathe. I walked away but that feeling of vindication and something better and self-love is not there. At all. I want to crawl up to his window and beg him to hold me again. My internal organs are made of shock and ash and gelatin. I want to go to dinner and watch a movie and walk in the park listening to one side of his iPod as if this never happened. Maybe my mind has to catch up with facts. Maybe I'm stupid. Or insane. I just know that it feels like I've made a horrible, horrible mistake. I want what we were two weeks ago. I want it back. I can't have it. Ever. This is threatening to undo my concept of the universe.

 

My baby brother has been holding faithful vigil over me as I cry and try to hold down food. My best friend has promised that if I revert and she has to go physically remove me from the house he and I used to share, she will...then will send me the bill for her airfare Got my stuff and walked out the door. +5 points for dignity. The question isn't if I did the right thing. I've been pacing the halls of this board too many years to ask that. It's how do I convince myself that I want to let him go.

 

All I see is what we almost had. And how this was a few very important degrees short of what I've been waiting for my whole life. It's somewhere between being honestly unbelievable and feeling horribly unfair and that's making my mind twist over itself.

 

I have no interest in being done with this love. That is wildly inconvenient. Empowerment is flavored differently than I expected.

 

Thoughts? I need anything.

[LTS48]

First, this post is absolutely beautifully written.

 

Second, you have to understand where you are right now in the healing process. You have just been "shattered." The most intense part of grief.

 

I suggest you read The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson. It will shed some light on why you feel the way you do about this sequence of events, as well as why you should believe that this was the right choice for you to make.

 

I applaud your strength to finally say, "enough." I wish I possessed the same!

[mustard1234]

L

 

I appreciate your kudos and support. Thank you for the book reference, will definitely follow up. People are crazy for it on Amazon.

 

I can't shake the feeling though, that somehow I'm the one who is breaking contract or abandoning him. It's weird but on top of everything else, I feel massive guilt for going. The loving people holding my spit cup and smelling salts as I get through this say that his hurt isn't my problem. But the idea that *I* let go and he's going to eventually find someone else (oh. sweet. God) because I walked away. It literally crushes my skull. While I get that it needs to be over, I don't want it to be over. Not even a little. I just want him and damn near whatever that entails. That 1% of resistance must be my dignity screaming out from the bottom of a pile somewhere. But the overwhelming portion of my desire is to say I don't care. Not even a little. And pretend this never happened. Is that even sane?

 

No, it likely doesn't make sense. But, that's where we sit.

...really think I might spring for overnight delivery on that book.

[catfeeder]

Aww, my heart goes out to you. No, you're not the one abandoning this relationship. He made that choice for both of you. You're just the one brave enough to recognize it.

 

Consider attending some Alanon meetings. It's an umbrella org for chapters that each operate differently and have their own focus, so if one group doesn't appeal to you, there may be others nearby that hit the sweet spot.

 

Alanon folks know your pain. They're each dealing in their own ways with alcohol or drug users who's behavior is wrecking their lives. Some have walked away and can help you deal with the fallout of that, while others continue to live with the lover or are parents or siblings.

 

People who aren't in your shoes can give good head food, which has its own value--but the visceral stuff can use the kind of empathy that other sufferers can provide.

 

Head high, and we care.

[mustard1234]

Hey cat,

 

Yesterday was awful. I fainted...how lame. I will definitely keep AlAnon in mind.

 

The biggest thing haunting me is that *he* was so careful to 'take it slow' at the beginning of our relationship because he wanted to make sure we had the foundation to make it last. He'd been hurt before and wanted to make sure *I* was who I was claiming before we got together and kept our physical intensity/the pace of our relationship slow and steady for AGES.

 

...I really admired that and took it as a sign that this was it. Yeah, fail. That part is super confusing me and pissing me off. I broke down and sent him a text yesterday. I asked him 'You took so much time for the foundation of our relationship. Why toss it out over cheap escapes. I just don't get it'

He writes back: "You're the one who left. So I don't have any answers for you, there."

 

I don't know what I was expecting...but, ugh. I left it alone after that. I'm mailing him a few books and clothes of his that I've found in my luggage as I get ready to relocate to Denver (yeah, I'm a runner. Don't worry, I'll get to a shrink about that, someday lol). The Im-going-to-die portion of the pain has finally let p a little bit but I'm still reeling from the disappointment. He had all of the qualities that I thought I wanted. I mean, from the values he used to tell me he ran his life by to the way he walked. He was it. Absolutely.

 

I would've stood next to him for absolutely the rest of my life and been happier than a pig in sht. I hate that this wasn't it. Bitterly hate it.

 

Ugh.

 

Ugh.

 

Ugh.

 

Life is difficult.