I shoulda never listed to your woeful stories
The ones I'm sure you told a thousand times before me
THE FIRST TIME you traumatized me, I was 29. It was my initial year of graduate school and I had just moved back to the city. I was adapting to a new body; a better one, I thought, than the one that had given me so much trouble growing up. The one that made me hate myself.
(But you didn’t know that girl, and never bothered to get to know her.)
You got to meet the new me, the one that shed both the physical and metaphorical weight of my past. Our first date, I was disappointed. You looked like your pictures, sometimes, in certain lighting, but I didn’t feel any immediate attraction. You told me later it was love at first site for you. I found that so strange we had such different interpretations. I know now, that was a sign for me to not continue a romance with you…but this new me was attracted to your attraction to me. You weren’t like the other guys I had dated before, either; the punk rockers with shitty jobs who cared more about their guitars than romance. I thought that was the sign you were the right choice.
So, I got drunk to entertain myself during what I thought would be our one and only date. I told you about being involved in the Atlanta Zine Fest, and I found it uncomfortable that you pronounced zine “Z-EYE-n”. I mean, surely you know how to pronounce magazine right? It did highlight your lack of familiarity with counterculture, but who I am to judge when others in that very community were not exactly the warm and cuddly friends and lovers I was looking for?
We sat at the restaurant by my loft, the loft that I would move out of months later, in the rain, alone, as you broke up with me on the phone. Do you remember that? I had called you the day before, when a random man walked into my apartment and wouldn’t tell me who he was. My roommate was giving keys out to basically strangers, strangers to me, after also moving her mother and sister in. Remember how you said you “didn’t want to get involved” in that? This was also after you moved me into your condo a few weeks into dating because the love bombing started so early (remember flying me out first class to New York to see Mariah Carey after a month?). But then, as quickly as I was invited in, you intimated I should move out because I had probably done something you didn’t like-and your dad needed the extra garage opener right? I should have taken your overwhelming need for approval from your father as a warning signal, that you were just a lost little boy. Plus, your dad was kind of an asshole. I’ll never forgot when he referred to someone y’all knew, a trans person, as “it”. I was disgusted. You said nothing.
I was 29 and did not have a lot of relationship experience under my belt. I brought to you a very insecure, wounded girl who just wanted love. But I wasn’t making enough money as a TA for you, so I had decided the crippling anxiety I experienced from grad school, a hellish living situation, and a crumbling relationship was enough to leave school and get a “real job” to amen it work with you. I am loyal to a fault.
Then you broke up with me. Within a couple days, I lost my boyfriend, my dreams of graduate school, and my apartment. You just wanted my things out of your place and had ostensibly lost nothing except for your proverbial punching bag to take out when you had a tough day at the office.
I dissociated that day in the rain when you told me on the phone you didn’t want me anymore. I thought you had somehow just turned off your feelings, but now I know you had no feelings for me; just the idea of me. I see now you are chasing ideas, concepts, and will continue to chase them your whole life. I do not believe you are capable of real connection because you hate yourself so much. You’ve hastily bundled your ability to feel up like Christmas decorations tucked away deep in the attic, only bringing them out on special occasions, then packing them back up as quickly as they came to be put in storage again until next year.
I’m so glad I never brought a child into this world with you. I do not think you would be a good dad.
I got over you. It took a while, but I did it. I did it in a healthy way too. Developed my Nichiren Buddhist practice. Did 30 days of yoga challenges. Read. Openly and honestly explored my feelings on being abandoned by you when I needed you the most. Reconnected with old friends, since you “preferred” I spent my time with you and not them.
I met someone else and fell in love. We had a baby. I love her so much. Thank you for leaving me because I had my child because of that.
After my child’s father and I finally broke up after a couple years, you messaged me. You lived with your girlfriend at the time, so why were you messaging me? Because you were having an existential crisis? You “saw my name in the sky” one night while drinking. Come to find out your girlfriend had moved out while you were out of town. I thought that was so funny and I admired her strength, because one time while you were out of town, I packed up my things and wrote you a good-bye letter. I planned to leave too.
You called at that exact moment; I think you sensed something…I decided not to leave. I wish I had.
So, things were bad in your current relationship, and I guess this was your attempt at an apology. I think maybe the word sorry was in there, and how now you understood things better, and admitted you were an asshole. How you were wrong. About us, the roommate situation, everything.
But that wasn’t why you were messaging me. You are under the impression that any woman in your life, past, present, and future are there to provide you emotional support. You felt alone and needed me. I replied tersely, not really understanding why you were telling me about the ills in your current relationship. Did you want to get back together? Assuage your guilt? Did it matter?
I was hoping that would be it, you would interpret my terseness as a sign to leave me alone. I was also proud of myself for not giving you some long emotional response back. But you didn’t leave me alone, because you weren’t really thinking about me or my feelings at all. You wrote back, another long form story about your new life. The mixed signals were already flashing; you told me you thought we were too young back then to make it work. But here I was, reading these messages from my former lover, the first person I really thought I would settle down with, marry, have children with. He was reaching out to me and the old wound I thought was healed ripped backed open.
I was so confused then. We decided to stay in touch. You were going out of town so we exchanged numbers, and you told me you would “text me as soon as you land”. I remember that phrase vividly. Why would you be texting me as soon as you land? Wouldn’t you text your girlfriend? If you wanted nothing from me, why would you say that?
So, you did. You texted me, and we texted back once or twice.
That was it.
I never heard from you again.
Some grand apology, right? One of the cornerstones of Borderline Personality Disorder is an intense fear of abandonment. You had abandoned me once, at my lowest. You then came back, out of the blue, and traumatized me again, for what? You got the immediate relief and attention from messaging me, so you threw me away again. You treated me like trash. Twice. I should have known that if you were actually interested in making amends, you would have asked me about my life. How I was doing. You knew I had a daughter because you wrote about how shocked you were to see my Facebook, see me happy with someone else, with a child.
But you never congratulated me, never asked her name. Never asked one thing about her. Because you didn’t care about me at all. This was a wholly selfish act on your part. It always is.
I was so shocked and beyond hurt. I spiraled. The more you ignored me, the more I felt the need to say the right thing and get you back somehow. I told you I still loved you; I sent you angry e-mails, I tried everything. I didn’t even actually feel any love, but when you have BPD and are triggered by an acute abandonment (and at the time my disorder was undiagnosed and untreated), you will do anything to avoid the other person leaving. I messaged your girlfriend finally; told her she was better off without you. Not because I didn’t want you to be happy, but because if I were her, I would want to know. She seemed nice and actually kind of awesome. She was friendly. She actually talked to me about my trauma YOU caused. It seems you two are no longer together, and I’m glad for her. She did deserve better.
This was a couple years ago. Back then, I didn’t have anyone to emotionally hold me up through this. My friends are exceedingly supportive, but this time they didn’t know what to do or say. And that’s ok. But I felt so invalidated because I was trying to explain how badly I was hurting from this, and most of the advice I got was to just move on. To not let you get to me. But how? I do experience feelings much more intensely than others. I can’t turn that part of me off. It's how I'm able to write so openly and freely now.
I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best
I don't keep track of each fallen robin
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
That's all, my little darling
I don't even think of you that often
I needed someone to tell me, objectively, what you did was wrong. I still do. I needed to know I didn’t deserve what you did. I don’t think you ever felt bad, the first time or now. I am only writing this because of happenstance. While looking on my Facebook roll for a headshot to use for work a picture you took of me and “liked” popped up. I foolishly wandered to your profile, mostly barren, but with a few pictures of a new girl. Blonde, which surprised me, but hey-get it! A ring was placed on her left finger.
I had to write this because I need to let this go. I have let you haunt me for too long. Too many years you took from me from only a 6-month relationship.
I truly don’t know if I can ever be in a normal, healthy relationship again. Because I don’t trust anyone anymore. You did that. In part, you did that.
You seem quite fine. Although, I know you deep down inside. You are not happy. People who so cruelly cast others aside, toss them out like a dull crayon that can no longer be sharpened, are not happy. And you were the one that dulled me. I hope you never do that to anyone else.
I’m glad I am no longer part of your story and you mine. But that does not make the pain dissipate. I’ve been in abusive relationships since you, I’ve had much crazier things happen to me romantically. I’ve had my heart broken and stomped on so maliciously, I’ve retreated into nothingness.
And yet, still, no one has ever hurt me like you. And no one ever will.
But here I am, as the rain falls down again. Both literally against my windowpane, and in the chaotic and dark storm crashing inside me. I suspect I am like those Christmas decorations. Maybe you've tucked a part of me away deep in your memories; but even that I doubt.
I haven’t written in years. After seeing you again, smiling in pixels on my screen, reminding me of your cruelty, I sat down and wrote this in under an hour. You have given me back a form of expression I haven’t had in so long. That is what I will take with me. I know the pain might never go away, but I do hope I can press on, forging another new version of me, that can be an example of a strong women for my daughter. So thank you for that.
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