We Wrote a Bad Romance.
I find that the blank page is an ominous thing. The glaring white of a blank word document or notebook page is almost as threatening as it can be utterly blinding. When I sat down and decided to start writing again, I ran into the age old obstacle of writer’s block. What would I write about? What genre would it be? Would I try my hand at fiction again? Maybe start a blog (which I’ve done, several times, and never kept up with)? Or maybe I’d write some kind of memoir nobody cared about, a chronicled play by play of my life for people to read. In the end I decided on traveling, which is my passion (though I still dabble a little in fiction on the side), though even when you focus on your passion, words sometimes fail you. Personally, I am one of the worlds most accomplished procrastinators. For me to have anything solid written down – let alone finished, ha! – is something that ought to be lauded with a medal, and is completely due to the fact that in the past, I have had deadlines to meet. When working at my own pace and with my own deadlines, it’s quite difficult.
That said, this post is quite late and was hard to write, but it needed to be done. I apologize for my slowness.
Nine years ago (and some change), I was dating a boy, as people tend to do when they’re young. He was a major presence in my life during the influential years of my early and mid-twenties. During this time, you’re still growing and learning and trying to figure out who the heck you really are. You might think you know, and you might roll your eyes at this statement in general, but honestly, I don’t know that anyone ever fully figures that out. I’m in my early thirties and still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. People change through the years; they evolve, they learn, and they adapt. It’s just how human beings are.
This boy was a force of nature, a bit like a hurricane. He burst into my life, riding on the coattails of another relationship of mine that had just ended. My previous boyfriend had left me standing on the road by his house in Florida as he drove off on an adventure – namely, college in Oregon. I was angry and sad at the time, but it was something he needed to do. I understand that now.
It wasn’t too long after that day I met him – online. Back in the early 2000s, online dating was still pretty taboo. It wasn’t nearly as prevalent or accepted as it is these days, and instead of using an app to communicate, we used AOL instant messenger or plain old email. There was no Tinder, no POF, no match.com. There weren’t really smartphones as we know them just yet. That kind of technology was still in the beginning stages, and thusly, we relied on scanned pictures of ourselves that we emailed each other. Every day when I got home I’d boot up my computer, listen to the now hilariously outdated pings and buzzing of dialup, and rejoice at the iconic, automated declaration of You’ve got mail! upon logging in. We would write novels to each other, learning about one another via email in the days before everyone had free minutes on their cell phones.
Anyway, this particular boy continues to be a presence in my life – if only in memory. You don’t forget the people that hurt you, and you don’t forget the people you love, especially when they happen to be rolled into the same person. You learn from your mistakes, and you learn what you will, and will not, put up with.
He…is a little hard to describe. I was drawn to him like a moth to flame, sucked right into his spell before I even knew what was happening. He was obsessed with the concept of beauty – his own, specifically, though he held others to certain standards as well. He told me all the things I wanted to hear, called me sweetie and baby and all the stereotypical pet names that couples use, and I ate it right up.
He was cunning and sly, sneaky and manipulative while still managing to be charming and poised. He seemed to have crippling self-esteem issues that he expertly covered up by subtly degrading me and others around him.
We spent a rocky and tumultuous five years together after we met. I left the safety of my parents’ home in my small town and moved in with him. I had dreams of college though, and he hitchhiked onto that dream and after a few months, we left his hometown and moved to to a popular college town so that I could finish up my AA and transfer.
College was a whole new era for the both of us, though it affected us in vastly different ways. For me, I was finally attending the school I’d always wanted to. I was taking classes I was interested in, a language (Ancient Greek) that was incredibly difficult, and learning about ancient Egypt and Rome and Greece all while trying to juggle a rocky life at home.
For him, he was surrounded by young, beautiful twenty-something’s that were not me. They gave him the attention he craved, the validation he so desperately sought. He spent night after night out without me, never answering his phone or divulging any information about where he was headed or what he was doing. When prompted and pressed, he grew angry and defensive, turning the situation back around to me and my ‘paranoia’. It made me angry. It made him angry. I didn’t know what to do because I loved him desperately, but I was so unhappy I was beginning to do poorly in my classes. I think we were both unhappy, honestly – not that we would admit it to each other.
When I found out he was cheating on me, my world shattered, even though something inside of me already knew this was happening. And it does happen to the best of us, unfortunately.
I’m not absolving myself of any back lash, because of course I reacted. I was angry. Furious, even. I was hurt, and eventually, we broke up. I got my own apartment and did my best to heal and move on and see other people, but I couldn’t let him go any more than he could let me go. We were too young, too intrinsically bound at that point. I think he was more furious he’d been caught than he was upset about the actual breakup.
He manipulated me, my friends, his friends, and anyone else he thought might be of some use to him. He managed to find out every move I made and made a point of informing me I was being monitored, and didn’t hold back in his email messages to me. I was evil on the inside; I was a cold-hearted bitch, unfeeling, and uncaring. He was a lying, cheating, asshole that was equally as shitty as me.
We were very unkind to one another, which does happen when a couple doesn’t split amicably.
He didn’t need me, he said. I didn’t need him, I said. My personality was grotesque and no one would ever want me, I didn’t deserve to be happy. He was a piece of crap that would never be happy, I said. It was a complete roller-coaster, one we desperately needed to get off, but we were too young and stupid and reckless to stop the ride.
I ended up taking him back. After that, everything went back to the way it was, which I guess at the time that’s I was after. It didn’t make things any better, and I never trusted him again. I don’t think he trusted me, either. We moved back closer to our parents after I graduated in December of 2006, and by August of 2007, we had broken up again, this time for good. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but it was for the best.
It drove him bonkers, I think, that he was the dumpee and not the dumper. He wasn’t upset about losing me specifically, more… he was upset about the fact that he was losing something, period. And that’s all I really was, I think. A thing, a possession to collect and have. I was something that he could display and say ‘this is mine. She belongs to me’, and I think to lose that not on his own terms shook him up in a way he never expected.
I go into this mess not to bash my ex-boyfriend (or myself, actually), but to give insight as to why my mental health has been in utter shambles for so long, and why travel healed me and provided me a way to relearn who I was when I wasn’t in a long term relationship. I’d bounced from one five year almost immediately into another, and I no longer knew myself. I needed a break from the monotony; I’d been driving my friends and family nuts with my dilemma, and it was time to switch that off and make a change in my life that would have a lasting impact. I needed to get away, and going out of state wasn’t going to cut it. I needed something more than that, so I started calling in favors from old college friends. I had a girlfriend that was living in Ireland at the time, so that seemed a logical place to start. I sent her a message and asked if it would be alright if I visited for a while, and she welcomed me with open arms. I can’t thank her enough for that kindness, because getting out of the country was my saving grace.
