Unfinished

We were friends before the story actually starts. We met in college. I told him stories of my awful ex-boyfriend, and he indulged in my fantasies of murder. We would sit in his car, talking about how easy it would be to sneak poisonous leaves into their burgers. He told me about his school life; the obsession with movies and shows. And all this seemed impressive to the girl with no friends.

Our friendship took years to turn romantic, but it did. He was fun and wild, and he really seemed to get me. He made me feel special, like a femme fatale, like I was in a movie. We had a lovely start - all intense connection and creative collaboration. For the first time, I felt heard and seen. He made me feel safe and special. An intoxicating combination. 

It was different right away. I didn't want to date him, I wanted to be his partner. I wanted to skip all the awkward dating (we did) and arrive at the comfortable, compatible thing, always things. I had found my guy. Part of this was fueled by a newly awakened desire to take care of another person. I wanted to make him happy. It was like a tortured, romantic fulfillment of Maslow’s hierarchy. I wanted him to be happy and carefree, and I would do all sorts of very loving, very out-of-character things to make sure those things were true.

Then things started to turn—a little earlier than we liked to admit. He stormed off one weekend and left me alone in an unfamiliar situation. When I argued, he didn't understand. I was supposed to be angry. I forgave him instead. More than that—I didn't think there was anything to forgive. It's been normal. He didn't mean to do that. I was having a tough couple of months — my degree was taking over all my time and the pressure was crushing me. I would come hostel from classes and multiple other tensions, drained. I had so much work to do, but all I wanted to do is curl up and be quiet for a while. He kept talking to me about his own little bubble on the phone, and he wanted attention, but I didn't really respond. And I couldn't. I needed to disappear.

He would leave me again in an unfamiliar situation. He would hurt me and I would tell him it doesn’t matter. And in doing this, I constantly told myself that I don’t matter — my fear, my pain, my outrage,  — none of it matters. Apparently, it was a lot to expect - talking to each other nicely, and being there for each other sometimes; and he just had to leave for some random fucking place on my birthday. 

I had a raging row over his actions one night, and when I tried again to put my arms around him, to comfort him, he kept pushing me away. It was never a fair fight. Without him, I was too afraid of the void I would fall into, the empty space left by his absence. I felt that I was nothing without his flattering mirror to be reflected in.

But he left.

So what happens next?

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You’ve built your entire self-esteem around this love and you don’t know who you’ll be without him. You see yourself as part of a whole — you and him. No one understands you like he does. Your confidence in yourself was always low.  You wouldn’t know what to do without him.

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You don't think of an escape, you think of a return. You want things to go back to how they are when he makes you feel good and happy and seen and loved when he's sweet to you.

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It was a long and messy and complicated breakup. There were relapses, as with stopping any bad habit. You stepped off the nauseating merry-go-round of romantic entanglement but remained close.

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Why even try to remain friends after everything he had done?

The dynamic was familiar, and being someone's prize made you feel special. On its pedestal, a favorite beautiful object is seen. Oops, he broke you so many times! Yet you were so expertly glued back, no one even noticed the cracks. Not even you.

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You will be focusing on letting go of the emotions and nightmares of post-trauma that you have been dealing with for a long time. You know now, in order to survive, you don't have to forgive him. Forgiving others is easy because you don't respect what they have broken. I can't ever forgive him for breaking me.