[This isn’t pretty, elegant, concise or calm. It’s kinda stream-of-consciousness and get-it-all-out-at-once. It hasn’t been edited. I’ve been trying to write about this for awhile, but the words wouldn’t come. Until now. So here they are.]
On October 2nd, I gave Emery a ride back to his truck from a bar where we’d met for drinks. And in the 15 minutes it took to drive from point A to point B, we kept the conversation light and cheerful. I had decided a couple of days before that I was going to move to San Francisco, a move Emery had been pushing me to make almost as long as we’d been together, which was over a year at that point.
I pulled up to the curb behind his truck, and idled. He suggested I find a place to park, so I did.
And he told me that he was feeling “itchy.” When I asked him what that meant, he said he didn’t know. But he wasn’t sure whether this, us, was what he wanted. He thought we were as close as we were ever going to get and would never get this close again. He wanted to pull back a bit. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. Honestly, he didn’t say an awful lot. He was vague. I had to dig and dig to get as much out of him as I did. When I suggested that we take some time off, he agreed. When I asked if he wanted to break up, he cried unabashedly. So I said, okay, why don’t we take a few steps back. I’ll move to the city as planned, and we’ll take it easy and see where it goes. He calmed down a bit. He asked how I managed to stay so calm. We kissed and held each other and he got out of my car and into his truck and drove away, and I sat there in that parking lot, chain smoking and repeating the word “awful.” This is awful. I feel awful. This feels awful. Awful.
A week later, I moved to San Francisco as planned. And eleven days after that, Emery broke up with me.
He still couldn’t really say why. We didn’t do a whole lot of talking about it, to be honest. I mean, I talked. I begged. I asked questions. I cried, I yelled, I got drunk and hysterical and catatonic and hysterical again. But, honestly, for the most part, I remained calm. And he couldn’t explain, or wouldn’t. It was just over. There was nothing I could say or do. He offered me no hope, no grievances that I could try to amend. After a year of telling me that I should give in and trust, of assuring me that my doubts were silly and unfounded, he did exactly the thing he’d promised he wouldn’t. He left me, suddenly and without explanation. The thing I’d most feared.
And it was, and it is, awful.
People have tried to console me, telling me that it probably just wasn’t meant to be. Well, obviously. It’s over. That means it’s meant to be over. I’m pragmatic, tautological in my reasoning. It’s over because it’s over because it’s over. And if it wasn’t meant to be over, it wouldn’t be, but it is.
Others have said that I’m too good for him. And I normally poo-poo this sort of mindless platitude, but in this case, yes. It’s true. I am too good for him. And I’ll tell you why.
I have the capacity for great love, great passion, heartbreaking sadness and ecstatic joy. I am intelligent, funny, generous and warm. I am brave and daring and strong and I deserve someone who appreciates those things, who understands those things, who also has the capacity for great depth and intensity.
So fuck you and your ambivalence. Fuck you and your numb indifference. Fuck you and your “I hate having to do this to people. I hate breaking hearts. I hate breakups.” I am not some interchangable girlfriend-figure. I am not someone that you are doing this to. I am the girl who loved you fiercely and wholly, even when I was scared, even when I had doubts, because you told me it was safe.
And you lied.
People have the right to break off relationships at any time and for any reason. And the end of this one is not the end of my world. Emery has the right to do whatever the hell he wants. It’s fine.
But the manner in which he did it, and after all the promises that he wouldn’t leave me without a damned good reason, this callow indifference to the suffering of someone he claimed to love– it shakes me to my core. Because I believed that I could trust him. I believed that I was right to trust him. And if I can’t believe in my own intuition about these things, that means that I can’t trust myself.
Which I already suspected. And that’s so much worse than not being able to trust some boy.
So, yes. I am angry. And oh, I feel awful. I have dreams about him leaving me, sometimes more than one in a night. It’s not a replay of what actually happened, but a different setup each time. In one, he loves someone else. In another, he simply doesn’t love me anymore. And I think that, in a way, it’s my mind trying to come up with an explanation, since he never really gave one. There has to be some reason. All this pain can’t be for no reason. Right?
It’ll be two months tomorrow since he left me. I don’t know why he did. I suspect I’m better off. I know that I deserve more than what he could give me. I believe it’s for the best. But that doesn’t cut down the rage I feel. It doesn’t make my heart whole again. I think it might be a long time before I trust anyone again, and I suspect that that, too, is for the best. In the meantime, I am sitting in my bedroom in San Francisco, trying to wring what wisdom I can out of this whole mess. And I am nursing a despair and a bitterness that colors everything I see, do, touch, taste, feel, imagine or dream.
It’ll pass. I’ll be better off. In time.
Self-Indulgent Drivel 