Thursday, November 20, 2014

Boston to LA and the death of my relationship


If a relationship ending is like a death in the family, then I've been feeling all of this shame and guilt, because I'm the one who murdered it with a rusty spoon. (continued after text below...)
I have remained somewhat silent about what happened, but recently have come to the conclusion that as I have always been an open book, I will come clean about what I've been discovering about myself. 

I told my manager that I had broken up with my boyfriend and he laughed.  He said, "I've never heard of any couple that moved out here together, or a long distance couple where one person moved out here, that it actually worked out.  They always split up! It'll be fine, you're fine, there's plenty of people to meet out here, you're young, focus on your career." 

I'm interning at a management company, learning about the business of Hollywood, getting ready to become a part of it, and I love it here in LA.  But LA came with a price, and that price was my relationship.  A 3 year relationship that I used to think was going to be my only one, my future husband, my soulmate, my one and only. But he wanted New York, and I prayed, I prayed and I prayed and with all of the positive energy, friends, and happenings that have happened during this program, I felt like God wanted me out here.  Too many coincidences, too many opportunities for work have fallen into my lap, and it just feels wonderfully and perfectly right to be here.  My William didn't fit in with that, or at least he doesn't feel that he could right now. 

I have severe abandonment issues. I have troubled memories as a child, shitty friends, divorced parents, the usual things that make kids whine and cry, and be sad, that scar them for life.  I'm not about to get too specific, but I will say that these issues were VERY prevalent in the beginning of our relationship.  I had never had a boyfriend, so I had trouble merely trusting the fact that Will wasn't going anywhere.  He wasn't going to abandon me, he wasn't going to stop coming back after a while.  He wasn't going to lie to me and tell me he'd be somewhere and disappear when I had my hopes up. 

But this mindset took A LOT of work!  He would be unable to sleep over, or he'd already slept over and it was the afternoon and he would go to leave and go home, and I would burst into tears!  I had panic attacks and felt like a small child with inexplicable anxiety when he would leave.  Any rational human being would take one look at a girl like this and be like, "Peace! I'm outskie, you got problems girlfriend!"  But he never did that.  He kept loving me and building something with me, through every fight, through every joyous moment, through life events like deaths, job losses, and disappointments. I no longer knew what life was like without him.

And then one day, as we had discussed many times, it was finally time for me to put on my big girl pants, and go to Los Angeles for a postgrad program.  I didn't know if I was coming back, I honestly had no idea.  I just knew that God wanted me to go, and New York wasn't the place for me to go at the time. So I went.

After a few weeks, it started to settle in that Will wasn't here. It crept up on me slowly, having little crying fits in my car, forgetting that he wouldn't be there when I went to a comedy club, calling him and not being able to expect him to swing by and stay over, missing his body next to mine, missing his face... then that started to turn into anger.  I kept asking him why he wouldn't come visit, and it was always about money, or work, or not knowing his schedule, etc. I was growing bitter and feeling lost and alone, realizing that I didn't know how to do this and be anywhere without him as my support system, my lover, my best friend.

So I started talking to other guys.

I'm not proud of this. I wasn't sleeping around, but I was trying to fill a void in my heart where I could feel him fading, but the hole was just getting bigger.  I was trying to replace someone that couldn't possibly be replaced.  I thought, "Well, this guy is here, and he likes me, maybe he'd be better for me right now."  And that's the worst thing I could have possibly done to myself.  I started taking the most wonderful man for granted, and I didn't even realize how stupid I was being. 

I even thought about the things I didn't like about our relationship to try and excuse my shitty behavior.  "He won't go to church with me, he hates Christmas, he always has money for weed but complains how he's broke..." when I should've been thinking about how great he was otherwise like, "he sends me love notes, he proclaims his devotion for everyone to see, he helped me move, he was always there when I was in pain, in distress, when I needed him the most."  But right then, in those first couple of months I was here, I started drowning in anxiety without him, getting used to a new place, and I felt all this anger towards him for not being there when I'm the one who up and left!

I wrote this down last week to basically sum up how I was feeling about breaking things off.  I thought it would be better that I ended our relationship because he was so angry with me being such a pain in the ass and whining about everything.  And I didn't want to cheat on him, because I was terrified that at some point, it would happen.  I would be sad and missing him, and try to use that anger to justify being a shitty human being.

I thought that ending things would somehow make me feel stronger, like I didn't need him, or maybe
So here it is.....

If a relationship ending is like a death in the family, then I've been feeling all of this shame and guilt, because I'm the one who murdered it with a rusty spoon.

I gouged its eyes out by hiding my selfish behavior.

Then I plugged up its ears when I stopped hearing my William tell me how much I meant to him. 

I broke its teeth by lying about my evil intentions. 

I chopped off its limbs by leaving him behind 3 thousand miles away and unable to come to me or hold me again.

Then I took a sharpened silver knife and punctured its chest and cut out its heart, string by string.

I took garbage bags and wrapped it up to hide the body from myself in cans, closing the lid shut, but each day its stench gets stronger, and stronger, choking me and beating me down with its rot.

It's dead throat gurgles and cries out to me, "This was you! This was all your fault, you killed me and you'll have to deal with me sooner or later!  You'll pay for this, your secrets will come out and you can't hide from me forever!"

And so each time I feel my addiction, LONELINESS, come creeping up out of the shadows and climbing up on my back, stroking my hair, squeezing my face, stealing my heart, controlling my thoughts with whispers and fake promises, I think, "I just need a fix! Fix here, fix there, then I'll feel better." I turn to other men for attention, empty promises always come so easily for them, and I believe every last one of them.  The hole in my heart that this relationship used to fill up just gets bigger, and wider, and emptier, being sucked up, lapped up, consumed by the addiction sitting on my back.  He finds glory and satisfaction in my demise.

I'm spraying febreeze on the trash cans that I can't move because they're so heavy with the weight of my transgressions.  I need to cover up the stench that haunts me and reminds me of how awful and needy that I am; each man I flirt with, laugh with, give a piece of my heart to, is just another can of febreeze being pitifully sprayed and having no effect, more like making it worse.

I wish I could have it back.  I wish I could open up the cans, unwrap each body part, sew it back together, and bring it back to life.  I want to see it alive and as beautiful as it ever was.  Could I nurse it back to health?  Could I do something to jolt it back, or would it be horribly disjointed, like some Frankenstein's monster, scars and moaning in all its horror, bearing hatred and resentment towards me?  How could its heart beat again, after I had killed it so?

I want to hold it in a deep embrace and have my tears melt away the stitches and scars, and have my love take the other hand so we can be together again. 

But I don't think he'd come to help me fix my mistakes.

So that's it then.

It's all my fault.

I killed us.

I killed our love.