by janine | Dec 31, 2016 | Blog
Part 6.. the finale, forever.
We spent months apart once again despite his attempts at having me believe that perhaps he was just overthinking things. I know that there can be many barriers that would halt someone from being able to surrender themselves in a relationship, fear, trust and uncertainty being some of them but I knew that the person who was meant to love me would not have to think about it. In fact I insisted upon it.
But he never really went away, as was the case for years before us.
That same year he asked to take me out for my birthday, 4 months after basically telling me he could not love me. Because we had a history of finding common ground, enjoying our time together and creating a friendship, I agreed. Plus I love my birthday and I’m pretty much down for every chance to celebrate.
That night at dinner he laid a lot of things out on the table including the fact that he wanted us to try, yet again. This time telling me to move in.
5 years of ups and downs and a recent 4 month hiatus and suddenly he thinks moving in is the answer? I know in his heart he wanted so badly for something to make sense between us, as did I, so he took it off the rails.
I told him I wasn’t ready to move in with anyone let alone someone who a few months prior told me they couldn’t love me. A reminder that I brought up frequently in conversations regarding the status of our relationship because I just couldn’t let it go.
He then told me he thinks that love is learned, that there is something to be said about familiarity and that in time, he could learn to love me.
Ayecarumba.
I saw some truth to this, I believe that in time you can learn and grow to love people, but had we not had enough time for this learning? How much more was it going to take and to be perfectly honest I know I have a lot to offer but this to me felt like he was settling and I wasn’t going to be settled for.
You see at this point I was a lot more sure of my self, I knew I didnt need to settle for “love is learned”, I also knew that his inadequacies had little to do with me and everything to do with him.
Once again, I declined.
Fast forward to December I was going through a rough patch and he once again became my saving grace, my great escape.
We spent the entirety of the month together with him even inviting me to his folks for Christmas, a huge step for us. I was unable to go and deep inside I knew I did not want to. I take these things seriously especially with someone who I am serious about and I knew that going to his parents wasnt the right answer.
We had NYE plans but suddenly on the day before I had a change of heart.
I blame, happily, my intuition for knowing that I did not want to bring in the new year with someone I had no plans of spending the upcoming year with.
I was opening my eyes to understanding how much of a crutch he was to me, being a soft place to land where no words needed to be said, no questions asked and no plans made when I just needed a reprieve.
The night before NYE I sent him a message saying I was cancelling, I’d rather stay in. He accepted and that ended us again.. for another 4 months.
What is the point of me telling this back and forth story? The biggest lesson here is trust. Trusting ourselves, our gut, our intuition and what another person is telling us either with their words or actions.
I knew far too many times that he was not the one and yet I kept going back, just to make sure.
It’s like the same habit of making sure your flat iron is unplugged before you leave the house or double checking that you locked the door, I was a obsessive compulsive about making sure that we definitely did not fit together.
The next time he came back with more intensity.
I know he had been searching for the one, I know he wanted so badly to settle down and make a life with someone and when nothing else worked out, he came back to me.
He came on strong this time and we spent the next few months being off and on.
As he became more serious about us I felt my doubts, uncertainties and just plain gut feeling telling me no. Run. Leave. Let him go. He isn’t the one. This is not your life. You will be miserable. You will resent him. There is no love here for you. You will break his heart if you let him open it up to you.
But I stayed and I tried. I stayed because he tried and him trying was all I ever wanted, even if it was 6 years too late.
I stayed because I wanted to rewrite our story, because I wanted to unscratch the record that had been permanently damaged and make our song stop skipping. Because I wanted so badly in my heart to believe that this could be it, this could be the moment I had been wanting for years, that this home feeling I felt with him finally served a purpose. That his ideas of building his dream home and incorporating my dreams were enough. I wanted to believe that he did love me and that there could be a happily ever after for us. I wanted to believe in the dream, not the nightmare we kept living.
And finally, he told me he loved me. He said the words. He said them to my face and he didn’t just say them, he showed them.
He showed up for me.
He made the effort.
He went out of his way.
He asked how he could bring me joy.
He told me I was perfect.
He made me food.
He was everything I had wanted for years.
He participated in my birthday celebrations, even buying me a beautiful tennis bracelet as another token of his love and affection.
But in spite of all of that, it was never enough.
During a conversation one night he tied his very first text message together with our eventual demise by saying “I’m looking for perfect”.
Perfectionism is a way for people to avoid criticism, it is a way for people to continue to strive for more yet never be content and this was him. Always the criticizer, never the criticized.
I wasn’t offended this time, I knew he had work to do on himself and I knew I wasn’t about to be his saving grace and I was tired of being his vision of imperfection. I saw the way he looked at me, like he was reaching for more but could not find it. But unlike the beginning, I didn’t take it personally anymore. I finally knew myself, loved my self and accepted myself.
Deep down I knew I had to go and I believe he knew I was going too and he wasn’t about to stop me so it was finally safe to let go of the reigns a little. To say what needed to be said, to undo what had been done and to make one last ditch effort before we said goodbye, forever.
We knew the end was near.
But in all of our years, our ups and downs and our offs and on’s I didn’t expect us to go out so cold.
I didn’t expect him to cut communication when we were near our final days.
But that’s the thing about expectations, they will disappoint you every time.
We had been spending entire weeks together at his home without a break but the final communication we had was after I had gone home for a few days planning to come back only to not hear from him for an entire 3 days, and when I did it was lacking. There was no concern, there was not even a greeting, it was just a matter of fact message.
His phone had broken, he had a replacement and if I didn’t respond he would drive to my house, is what he said.
This time I was so grateful he went out like that, I told him I wasn’t interested in communicating or seeing him and that was it, I was finally free.
No more fairytale, no more romanticizing something that had been dead in the water for years, no more wondering, hoping, wishing and dreaming. This was reality. It was over.
I moved.
It had been almost 2 months when he sent me a picture that would normally restart our cycle.
Him and his daughter, like clockwork, a sure way to tug at my heart strings.
Perhaps he wanted to make sure I was really gone, and I was.
Physically and emotionally I had packed up and left and drove myself to live 2600km away from him and the life I was once was way too comfortable in.
I left my comfort zone and I left my crutch behind.
But imagine my surprise when he dropped the final bomb that concludes our story and allows us both to move forward knowing we did our best and happiness is at last possible.
“I am in a serious relationship, I plan to be with her for a long time, I know exactly what I want for a change, I am finally happy and am committed to putting my entire heart into this relationship and it is no longer appropriate for me to be texting with you, GoodBye”
Of course my instant reaction, and you are probably thinking it too, was to think that after 6 years a commitment, love or happiness with me was impossible but within a 60 day span he has somehow found it all.
But this is the beauty of fate, of knowing, of letting go and trusting.
Everything we want is possible
I had told him this in the past when he was trying so hard for me, that it is possible to have everything you want in someone AND be happy, that he didn’t have to settle for mediocre. That just because we love so many qualities about each other doesn’t mean we are meant to be with each other.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe it before we see it but if we want the fairytale ending we must believe it before we will ever see it.
I share that last message with you because we all know too well how it feels when we aren’t chosen. Even if we know we don’t want to be. Even if we chose someone else or just our own selves finally. There is a natural human (ego) reaction to the knowing that someone else has taken up space that we could never even access. That someone else is soaking up the love that we so desperately wanted but could not for the life of us attain. That someone is essentially right where we wanted to be all along, but never felt good enough for.
I share this all from a place of continual healing. Of knowing that this story was over long before it started and everything my heart, and your heart desires is so possible for us but first we have to release our grip of what we once thought we wanted and open our hands to receive what is available to us, usually bigger and better than we could have ever imagined, cliche as it might sound. Its true for a reason.
Did I ever love him? Of course, my heart is built to love that is no question.
Was I ever in love with him, defintely no.
He was my story, my eventual happily ever after in the making, my perfect illusion, My reason to stay small, to stay stuck, to not step into my own greatness.
That is mostly what our lives are here.
Made up stories about who we are, where we come from and what we deserve.
Whatever we tell ourselves will remain true.
For us our story was that we would always come back to each other, that no matter who we date or where we go we will end up together.
But that story stopped serving us long ago.
If we want a different outcome, we have to change our stories.
I am grateful for this fable, but now I am ready to live in full reality knowing that what hasn’t killed me has strengthened me and that happiness is a choice. That people cannot be used as crutches or sedatives for the pain in our lives. We must own and face what we fear the most, shine our own light on our darkness and accept ourselves as we are completely. All of our perfect imperfections.
I am ready for a fairytale that sweeps me off my feet, instead of bringing me to my knees. With someone who will have me wondering how I ever lived without them (in a non co-dependant way) not constantly wondering how I am going to.
This next step in my journey has begun with me fully loving myself. With releasing the need to be loved and wanted by a man.
With letting go of illusions of the past and stepping into right now so I can revel in the love this universe pours out to me instead of drilling at a well that has long since run dry.
Thank you for taking your time to read this and I hope some of it can bring peace or answers to your heart feel free to reach out if you need to chat XO
PS. My E-Book “Don’t F**k Him- Your Dignified Guide to Getting Over Him With Pride” Is going to be launching SOON!! Stay tuned!
by janine | Dec 30, 2016 | Blog
[This is part 4 of a 6 part story I am sharing about the rise & fall of an on and off again relationship I had every hope & dream of being in for the rest of my life if we could just get it together, that ultimately -physically ended 60 days before I left the province and country for an undetermined amount of time.]
The interesting part here is that when we let go of what we think we want and we stop trying to control things and just be completely honest with ourselves and the people in our lives, something magical happens.
While I was seeing someone else and was being completely honest with *him* about it, as the natural laws work, it only made him want to try harder. This was not in my plan by any means in fact I wanted him to stop trying, to stop texting, to stop confusing me.
We remained in loose contact and when everything came crashing down with the “great catch” he was there to talk me through it, oddly enough.
In this moment I found in him a friend, something I had never quite felt before. He felt safer to me than ever, as I am sure anyone would in a moment where you find your boyfriend looking at transvestites online.
Once again (you’re probably so tired of this roller coaster by now) I gave in to seeing him. Lots of time had passed since I last saw him and his daughter. I agreed to meet them both for dinner and had no idea how doomed I was for doing so.
She was a little person now, not just a babbling 1 year old. She could eat sushi with chop sticks and carry a conversation and the two of them together were so ridiculously cute my heart melted into a puddle of surrender and I was once again consumed.
We spent a good part of the following months together but this was during the time my dog was dying and I was half chained to my home and my heart was not open for the kind of love and attention I wanted to offer him and he did not have the capacity for dealing with such a fragile situation.
There was also a part of me that always longed for us to be as we were in the beginning. To receive his morning texts like clockwork, to hear from him regularly not just every once in awhile, for dates and phone calls and effort, oh how much I craved that effort. So much so that when someone else came along and started to show the effort I so badly had wanted, I ate it up.
I once again let him know that I was dating someone else and had to let him go.
You may be thinking this isn’t “love” if I could keep moving on, and you’re probably right but I’ll get to that later.
The thing was, I was starting to realize that the dream I had created for us, the vision, the story, the idea was just that – an illusion. It was not real and no matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t becoming real. We were consistently at a stand still. But what was real was my desire for it, so much so that I attracted it into my life often, just not with him.
This is the thing about universal laws. We can attract everything we want and desire but we cannot, no matter how bad we want to, control another person . The outcome of our situations depend on us, and us alone. We can desire and request love from the universe, but we cannot determine whether the specific person we have in mind will want or desire the same things.
Typically as I resolved to let him go, again, he pushed forward asking for another chance, to try harder and as I had begun to let him, he let me down again. I wish I could say for the last time, but not yet.
Sometimes no matter how much you love someone, you get to a point where you have had enough, where you have to be cliche af and say “I love you, but I love me more”.
I was starting to believe in and create the life I wanted for myself and that included healthy love and he was not embodying that so I started to finally believe that I could let him go, for good. Because I knew what I deserved.
Once again 3 months passed, and so did my dog and it turns out he was the first place I wanted to be.
This is what is was that kept me going back. A feeling, a refuge, comfort and hope. He was an escape for me, being with him felt like home. A feeling I cant describe because logically it makes absolutely no sense.
I never truly felt like I could be my complete self with him. We didn’t do family or friends things together, it was just us in our own little world and perhaps that is all it was ever meant to be. But it felt good when we were together.
This time I felt like I could finally give him and our relationship my all, one last time and he resolved to do so too.
We started spending real quality time together, him, his daughter and I. I felt myself falling again. Letting my guard down, opening up to the possibility of this being my life, of spending a life together, of having a family and a home.
There is no doubt that I loved what we shared, our wit, our humour our unrelenting chemistry that seemed to defy all odds. Oh the chemistry, there is nothing like it. Maybe it is this chemical bond that makes letting go so damn hard.
Despite all of that and all I believed we were conquering and accomplishing , deep down I guess he wasn’t on the same wavelength.
After a particularly difficult evening together and an open conversation about how I felt, with no reciprocation from him I went home feeling uneasy and yet unaware of the unrest in his heart.
That night he sent me a message about his concern for our relationship and my needs and my inability to accept his busy lifestyle and while his concerns in that moment may have been valid they were not encompassing the big picture, my efforts felt lost.
The truth was, he was having doubts far beyond anything I could have ever done to change them including jumping off of a bridge into hot burning lava, spikes and alligators just to prove my devotion to him, his lifestyle and his child.
And that is when he said the words I would never come back from.
There is a lot you can fight for in a relationship, there are broken things you can fix all the time, there are differences you can reconcile, there are habits you can change, dislikes you can live with, sex you can spice up, schedules you can work around, distance you can conquer but none of this, NONE of it will ever matter or work if you are missing a key ingredient.
He sent a text that perhaps felt worse than the very first one he did or did not mean to send to me. Yes, we had all of our serious conversations over text because he was unable to have real life conversations about feelings. Yes, we were certainly opposites.
The words went like this:
“In our recent time together I found myself trying to love you…”trying“, I mean, shouldn’t I just know?”
*deep breath*
The response in my mind went like this:
“I have hopelessly loved you since the first moment I met you. I have traded in months and years of my life to see if this could work with you, I have said NO to other men who were willing and ready to LOVE me, I am surrounded by people who don’t need to “try” to love me, I have come back to you time and time again because I never once doubted my love for you, it has been 4 years and 7 moths since our first date and we have come a LONG way since so, YES, YES, you should have an idea of whether or not you love me, without trying.. and I am lovable, damn it! ”
Instead I graciously said
“I do believe that it is a feeling you would be more sure of by now, yes”
And then I dismissed myself.
Not before feeling the heavy blow of years of trying to make something work with someone who would ultimately tell me in so many words, they cannot love me. Not without him trying to explain him self or ask for more time. He told me he needed time to think, I assured him that thinking was not what he needed, feeling was
In that moment our very first date came flooding back to me. Since we met perhaps he had been “trying” to love what he deemed not perfect and never was I ever going to be enough for him no matter what I did.
(The conclusion to all of this will ultimately confirm this truth.)
There is no fighting feelings. If someone does not love you, you cannot make them and doing so will only further dim your own light and kill your spirit. I know because I tried it once.
I am believer in love. Real, true, deep, mad love. I believe that love can overcome, I believe that when you love someone you do whatever it takes, I believe that love overrules logic sometimes, I believe that living in love is far better than living in practicalility. I believe that life gets in the way and that there are compromises we can make, but love can never be one of them, not for me.
I couldn’t come back from that. I could no longer allow myself to remain seated at a table where love was not being served. There is not much that is more soul crushing than loving someone who admittedly cannot love you. Although it is ultimately through no fault of our own it weighs heavy on our self esteem.
So I walked away, this time certain there was no going back, our fate had been sealed, I cannot make him love me therefore I must move on.
And yet, there is one more chapter..
To be continued tomorrow.. what brought us back together and ultimately apart, forever.
Plus, I have exciting news!
by janine | Dec 29, 2016 | Blog
[This is part 5 of a 6 part story I am sharing about the rise & fall of an on and off again relationship I had every hope & dream of being in for the rest of my life if we could just get it together, that ultimately -physically ended 60 days before I left the province and country for an undetermined amount of time.]
I have come to understand that more of us than not are quite intimate with that sinking, gross, breathtaking feeling that comes in a moment where you don’t quite know what’s going on but you know it isn’t good news.
This post is going to be in large part about intuition, the paragraph above describes, in part, what people mean when they say. “Gut feeling”.
He was already at work at the point I found my shoes tucked under his sweater and, as I always did with him and him only, I let it simmer for a bit.
I have been known to be a reactive person. It is a part of my sensitive nature, I feel fast and I react faster. This is not always the best way to approach delicate situations and not a quality I promote but nonetheless it is something I have worked on and perhaps he was a catalyst for this.
I questioned myself first. Was I being crazy? Where did this sweater come from? Why on earth would he hide my shoes inside the front door when my car isn’t even parked in the driveway? I messaged some of my girl friends asking for advice, insight and secretly hoping for an answer that was different than the sad conclusion I had already come to in my mind and heart.
It was like a kick in the gut, an “I told you so” from the universe.
You see, once things started to feel off between us the idea of visiting him became less exciting. He would always have to ask more than once and usually present a good offer for me to make the hour drive to see him. An hour drive gives you a lot of time to think, contemplate, imagine, dream and ultimately feel into my gut and be overcome with severe uncertainty.
Just about every time I would drive to his house I continuously asked myself “what the fuck am I doing?”. If you are one of my closest friends you were definitely thinking the same thing.
But then the moment I stepped into his home it was like being sucked into a vortex. I was enamoured with him. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the way he said “hey beautiful”, the way he passionately kissed me as soon as he saw me and embraced me into the body that I felt my heartbeat plug into and I was swallowed by infatuation and comfort.
So after some contemplation I sent him a message asking about the shoe situation. It may or may not be a surprise to find out he completely brushed it off. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about and if anything the sweater probably fell off the boxes beside the shoes. The thing is I did not recall seeing a sweater there the night before, not to mention if it fell off and physics….never mind it just made no fucking sense but that’s the thing about gas lighting, you will always be made out to be the crazy one.
Subconsciously I was still in a state of trying to correct this imperfect vision he had of me. Sure I had more self esteem than our first go round but that doesn’t take away words that were imprinted into my psyche forever.
I know that I did not take to his denial right away but over time I let it slide but things were just a little too complicated for us at this time and we decided it would be best for us to take some time apart, again.
We remained in contact with each other every once in awhile. But would go months without seeing each other. 3 months was usually the cycle before I felt safe enough to see him again.
Following another hiatus from each other I finally allowed myself to get close to him again and then like clockwork he would drop another bomb ” I just don’t think there’s enough room for you and [his daughter] in my life right now”.
Sadly I tried to fight this. I tried to shrink myself to fit. Writing this hurts, it hurts my heart and soul to know my big huge heart, my big love, my big magic was squashed because one person, ONE guy couldn’t expand enough to fit me in. But no matter how much I tried, I didn’t fit.
So, I moved on…..
I started dating other people, I let myself forget him.
I told myself I deserved better and I wanted so badly to believe it,.
After not hearing from him for awhile I started to seriously date someone I thought was perfect for me, he got me, he let me be big I didn’t have to shrink and he thought I was perfect.
Of course that energetic vibe was sent out into the universe and my past caught wind of my happiness and re appeared in my life in an attempt to intercept this great catch I thought I had. He wanted to try, again. I have lost count at this point what number this was, but it was about the time I just about had enough. It was the first time I was ever able to tell him NO. I remember the nauseating feeling as I hit send. This felt like the end of everything I wanted. He was finally here saying “I want this, I want you, this can work” and I was respectfully declining.
I was honest about everything with him. I had committed to someone else and I was going to see it through.
Well Mr. Great Catch turned out to be a bit more of a catcher, as it turns out he preferred men, dressed as women. (This could be it’s own blog series, I’ll contemplate that). He also was very dishonest about just about everything and I once again felt the crash and burn of new found hope and ultimately the serious neglect of yet another gut feeling that said this wasn’t right. How much more was my heart willing to take before it gave up indefinitely?
To be continued tomorrow, with the words that ultimately sealed our fate…..
by janine | Dec 28, 2016 | Blog
[This is part 3 of a 6 part story I am sharing about the rise & fall of an on and off again relationship I had every hope & dream of being in for the rest of my life, if we could just get it together..that ultimately, physically ended 60 days before I left the province and country for an undetermined amount of time.]
Since we still had not seen each other again up until this point all of our conversing happened over a little known app called “BBM”.. you may or may not know it (lol).
So as he put it, over one of our conversations
“there is no easy way to say this so I am just going to say a ‘picture tells a thousand words'” and then he hit send.
What I then received was a picture of him holding a little girl that looked exactly like him.
No amount of guessing, speculating or knowing could have prepared me for that moment where perhaps if the ground could have come and swallowed me up I may have been less blindsided & dumbfounded in complete shock.
I love children and there is no doubt my heart loved him, but a child that was his.. after me, but not with me, who was his mini twin… still the thought alone makes my head spin. She was adorable, he was everything I had once wanted more than anything and my heart broke with the complete loss of hope for how things would be again.
The investigator within me had a million questions, the kind compassionate side of me congratulated him, and then I began with the interrogating.
She was exactly 1 year old when we started talking again. If I did my math correctly this child was conceived at pretty much the exact time I too had begun having sex with him.
It felt like I was living in another dimension for a little while. Like in a parallel universe someone else was living the exact life I wanted, felt, planned.
Because, in the spirit of being really fucking real here, after he left I didn’t get my period for an entire month. Stress clearly played a role, but as someone who is highly intuitive and an empath I feel there were other forces at play here that started to bind the entire last year and a half together, but not without many holes in the fabric that was our lives. I knew there was a baby, she just wasn’t mine.
Was he committed to me at that time? Verbally no, but in all other aspects I would give it a big yes. So was he being dishonest? Was everything we ever shared just a lie? Was everything I felt, once again not real?
How do I say yes to seeing this guy again who now has a daughter with a woman he told me he had lost romantic interest in? How do I see a guy who had a child with someone while my heart was still aching in his absence? How do I even believe him when he said he wanted to stay with me but had to do the right thing?
The right thing.. that’s where the story gets tricky again.
His story went like this: She reappeared in his life after an apparent summer away and told him she was pregnant. I am not going to get into math, timelines or other details here but if you were me in that moment you would probably be thinking ‘this doesn’t even make fucking sense.’ Between alleged conception and birth the dates did not line up.
Of course I asked a million questions and of course he soothed my doubts and fears with answers that I can only say made perfect sense to a heart that so badly wanted to believe.
This is just another part of this story where I could have opted out. I had spent 1.5 years away from him, I was doing great, on my path, loving my life and truly had begun to resolve to a life without him, and his life just got way more complicated than ever. The wise thing to do would be to decline further invitation to reconcile.
But my fairytale wanting heart kicked in and thoughts of how divine intervention brought us back together and how he was now single and his story of being torn between doing the right thing or staying with me had plagued him but he knew what he had to do, tugged at my heart strings.
So slowly I eased my way into the idea of seeing him again, this time immersing myself in the knowing that he was no longer just him. That he not only had a child now but he had a year and a half of life changing love, growth and heartbreak on his slate too.
He told me I would love his daughter, that she was sensitive and he knew I would appreciate that. This coming from a guy who I am sure had not shed a tear in probably 15 years and wasn’t the most attentive. It was moments like that where I knew he had been paying attention and I fed into it ravenously.
I cautiously agreed to see him again.
Our first day back together again consisted of a walk on the beach.. with a stroller, a BBQ dinner that we ate cold because Daddy duty called every 5 minutes, and a very (hourly) interrupted sleep.
Yes I slept there, because It was 1.5 hours away from home and the night went way later than planned and the bottom line is it really did feel like no time had passed between us. Despite my guarded heart he still gave me those butterflies I had been missing for so long and he still smiled in a way that made me weak in the knees and he still made me laugh like he was a comedian and I was his most devoted fan – a truth that to this day would never cease, some people are just born funny I suppose.
But as for the rest of it, nothing would ever be the same again. As is to be expected with a 1 year old in the mix. A 1 year old who was the spitting image of him and a constant reminder of the day my heart broke when he walked away for someone else, and multiplied. A 1 year old that would grow up to be her own little person and find a way into my heart but never, ever, without the aching reminder of what was forever lost between her Dad and I.
Even with all of his relentless effort to talk to me, see me and somehow create space for me in his life, he was still doubtful and uncertain in so many areas that made moving forward nearly impossible.
We didn’t talk about us, we didn’t talk about a future, we just sat in limbo and remained there for the next 4 years as I hopelessly devoted myself to him, our story and what I had dreamed would be our eventual happily ever after. Because most fairytales have a rocky start anyways right?
Visiting him became questionable when one night he asked me to park my car in a parking lot down the road. He was concerned about the repercussions he would face from his daughters momma if she knew he was dating again while their child was still so young. I can’t say I could put myself in his shoes, but I can say that the shoes I was in felt like they were sinking in deep, dirty shit.
Speaking of shoes, as I obliged and parked my car down the road one night to avoid any possible drama and of course appease the man who knew how to make me weak in the knees more than anyone or anything else in the world and who made all of my cares disappear the moment I was in his arms, I left my unquestionably girly pink shoes at his front door as we went to bed. Only to come out the next morning almost unable to find them, until I did some further digging and found them tucked snugly under a sweater near the front door.
To be continued….
by janine | Dec 27, 2016 | Blog
[This is part 2 of a 6 part story I am sharing about the rise & fall of an on and off again relationship I had every hope & dream of being in for the rest of my life, if we could just get it together..that ultimately, physically ended 60 days before I left the province and country for an undetermined amount of time.]
…
For the following month things went well, ridiculously well. Ridiculous was his word for anything that was better than good.
We went on many dates. Movie dates, dinner dates, getting lost in the woods hiking dates, zip lining dates, half vegan/half not pizza dates, pumpkin carving dates and cuddling…so much cuddling.
He had all these qualities I had never had in a partner before.
I was in awe of him.
He was so career driven and dedicated, and had a passion for coaching soccer that was so admirable.
He seemed so sure of himself, his sarcasm and humour could make me laugh like no one else. He had his own home and well when you add it all up I just felt downright unworthy of him.
I was living at home with my parents, working in a call center with no clue what I was doing with my life and no real passion or drive besides drinking with my friends on weekends and occasionally going hiking and of course, loving my dog.
I played it cool. Really cool, I even read a book on it so I could make sure to keep him interested because I liked him so much I didn’t want to scare him away or do anything “wrong”.
I was hardly my truest self with him, and yet I hoped he would somehow like me for me.
By playing it way too cool he didn’t know how to get close to me and I couldn’t figure out how to let him. He told me I was hard to read and although I thought being mysterious would make me more attractive to him, it was stifling all I was, all I wanted to say and do and be with him.
Slowly… I felt him slipping away.
The text messages dwindled, his responses were few and far between and in my heart of hearts I knew I was losing him and I was too “tough” and “proud” to even try to address it, I just waited for it.
When I feel someone is not that into me I won’t fight it, you cant argue with feelings. Although, I had no idea what his feelings really were and I’d never really find out.
So the text came. Call me crazy but I remember every single detail of every moment with, and without him perhaps that is what makes telling this story so necessary.
“Hey, it’s been really fun spending time together but….I just don’t see this working out right now.”
I responded with “ok, I understand if you feel that way, but may I ask why?”
He was kind in conversing with me and helping me to come to terms with this inevitable undoing.
His honesty blew me away, in a good way as honesty is hard to come by these days, but also in a gut wrenching, unexpected response kind of way.
“I think I want to get back with my ex..”
[Enter shock]
Oh? The haven’t been together in 6 months ex? The ex I had nothing to worry about? The ex who became more like a friend and the romance was dead? The ex I hadn’t heard about in 3 months?
Ok, how can one argue with this?
I let him go graciously, God knows I’ve done the break up and make up game many times. I wished him well and deleted his everything and told him to donate the scarf I left behind. I wonder what became of that scarf?
Months passed and I didn’t stop thinking about him. I prayed everyday and sent love his way and every once in awhile I would cry out of sheer frustration.
I kept replaying in my head where I went wrong. How did I not see this coming? Was it my fault that I didn’t fully open myself up to him? Was it my not feeling worthy of him that caused the universe to respond this way proving me right? Was it the sex? I held out, I waited until we had like 6 dates and a bunch of pg sleepovers and months of conversations out of the way before it felt like a good time to connect on that level. It must have been the sex, it must have been too soon was my continual my thought process.
Perhaps she just was the “perfect”, not cute, that he was looking for.
I imagined I would never find someone like him again. Someone who knew exactly how to kiss me and give me those 15 year old girl butterflies every single time. Someone who made me laugh more than anyone else ever could. Someone who despite me feeling so guarded still felt so much like “home” to me.
For the first 9 months I tried to date, but no one could compare and the sad truth is that I compared. At that point when I realized I wasn’t going to shake him anytime soon I sent him a quick message just to say Hi, but I didn’t hear back…
Until a year later.
I had pretty much given up on hearing from him. I had dated and knew the bar had been set higher and allowed myself to feel gratitude for all I had learned from knowing him.
The details of where I was and what I was doing in the very moment his name popped up on my phone are still as vivid as if the moment were right now.
We began to talk.
This time things were different.
Wildly different.
I was on a better path, living my dreams, going to school, working and truly enjoying my life. I felt worthy this time. I felt ready for someone like him.
He was somewhat single again, complicated he called it, but asked if he could see me again. I joked and said he would have to wait another 10 or so years. Of course I wasn’t jumping right back in with him. My heart remembered the ache that losing him once had brought I wasn’t about to take that risk again, at the same time I wanted to get in my car and drive right over there and pick up where we left off… but nothing would ever be as it was in the beginning again.
He started to put the same effort back in that he originally met me with, the effort that made falling so easy the first time.
But this effort did not come before dropping the bomb that would tie together the last year and a half, the “complicated” status and bring some answers but only a million more questions.
He explained so heartfully that he truly wanted things to work out with me and that he had really been separated from his ex for some time, but when she showed back up he had a decision to make that tore him apart…
To be continued ………
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