The Post That Took a Month to Write - The End of a Chapter

This post took me a month to write.  A lot has happened in that month, and I sat down several times to write this, but I could never get it out quite right.  Even after numerous rewrites, I’m still not sure it’s where I want it to be, but I’m ready to move on from it – and everything it’s about – so I’m going to drop the mike and walk away.

The last few weeks have been…difficult. Christmas Eve I found out some information that I had been suspecting for a while about my ex.  Out of respect for his family, whom I love dearly, I will not be going into details, but it was really difficult to hear.  I had spent the previous three weeks or so of our breakup defending him to my friends and family – hell, I was defending him to his friends and family.  I thought the breakup was going to be good for him and allow him to get to a healthier, happier place.  I was trying to maintain cordiality with him in the hopes of being able to be friends one day, since he was one of my best friends for two and a half years.  I even still took him to a concert that I had already bought tickets for as his Christmas present.  Turns out it was pretty much all for nothing.  He is now someone I do not recognize, and do not want to be a part of.

It has been incredibly difficult to reconcile the really great guy that I dated with the person he is acting like now.  It makes me question pretty much everything.  I keep trying to figure out when everything became a lie for him.  I thought we were really happy, and then in October I noticed a change in behavior, but he kept insisting we were okay. It was work. He was unhappy in the area he was living. Lies, lies, lies. My instincts told me there was something wrong, but I had no reason not to trust him, so I did. I pushed aside all the thoughts in my head and the noise in my heart and renewed my efforts to show him I loved him. 

November just kept getting worse. It made me start to hesitate about my life with him.  He had broken up with me in November of 2013, right before Thanksgiving and here he was acting weird again.  Was this going to happen every year? Was I really going to be okay with getting nervous and worried and questioning everything every November?

Thanksgiving was a complete disaster.  Looking back now and knowing what I know...just makes it so much worse.  I fully own up to my craziness on most days and I admit I was acting a nutty and out of character that day, but he definitely surpassed me on the Richter Scale of Crazy.  That day which started off so normal, so nice and ended so dramatically will probably sit with me for the rest of my life.  It was the day I really saw how different he had become, and how much I did not like the person he now was.  My life had turned into an 80s country song.

In the last month, my few interactions with him have been so bizarre and out of character for what I knew of him.  Based on stories I hear, it sounds a lot like he has become the person he was a couple years before we dated.  Every time I thought that the last of the b.s. had passed, something else came up.  His reactions to things are overinflated and ridiculous.  It took almost two months to get my stuff back, even with everything he has going on now.  I keep thinking it’s the end of our interaction, but somehow there is more.  Even as I type this, I get a text from him saying he need something from the trunk of my car.  I have asked him to delete me from his contacts, but apparently I have to block him.

The worst of it is that he gaslighted me.   He made me doubt my instincts and pretty much told me I was being crazy for all of my apprehensions and voices in my head.  I’m so frustrated with myself now for not trusting that which has always pointed me in the right direction (if I bothered to listen).  If learned anything from this experience - although I hope I learned a lot - it is to trust my gut, and not just swayed by the pretty blue eyes of the boy I love.

Those who know me well know that I had trust and commitment issues before him, a lot of which he helped me to start working through.  With the way things ended up ending, and all that I have found out after, it makes it difficult to not take 5 steps back to where I was before.  I just don’t want to give him that power over me.  He carried his ex’s actions with him like a blanket that I constantly tried to prove worthy of taking off.  I don’t want his actions and behaviors to create massive roadblocks in my next relationship the like of which I had to deal with in him.  I know we all carry around our pasts, and the people who we’ve known, but I want to learn from the experience and walk away from it.  I do not want to be completely jaded and labelled by everything that has happened the past several months. 

With the posting of this blog post, I am making my decision to walk away from the drama and craziness the past few months have brought.  I am not built to be an emotional mess and I do not like living inside the plot of a CW tv show.  I will look back fondly on all of the amazing memories I have with a remarkable man, and be grateful for not being around the person who took his place. It’s the start of a new year and a new chapter in my life.  It’s going to be a year of new adventures and treasuring all the amazing things in my life – but that’s my next post!

Image borrowed from Jenny at http://purehappylife.com/life_quotes_love_quotes/one-of-the-happiest-moments-in-life-is-when-you-find-the-courage-to-let-go-of-what-you-cant-change.html#lightbox/0/