An Ecosystem of My Emotions
I sat across from him and we joked clumsily and awkwardly, trying to figure out without communicating, how to speak to one another. After weeks of not speaking, we are across from one another. We speak in his language while he never learned mine.
We don’t speak about what once was: that abruptly I left, like leaving the dining room table before the meal had been cleared, and I departed before I had the opportunity to even let the thought of us not being one anymore sink in; we don’t speak about what would arise all at once in the aftershock of us not being a couple anymore.
We don’t speak about how he asked to walk me out to my car for the final time and tears ran down his cherub cheeks. Pink and rosy cheeks with his eyes shining bright with fear. Instead, we use our utensils to pick up our food and place it into our mouths, eating slowly, so we don’t have to talk about what we once were. We either talk around it or don’t speak at all. As we eat, we stare into each other’s eyes: speaking with our eyes. The only way I have spoken to him a myriad of times before.
I imagine his eyes telling me:
He’s sincerely sorry.
He still loves me.
He still wants to be with me.
He wants to do better for himself and for us.
I imagine my eyes tell him:
I hate his fucking guts and hope he gets in a car accident on his way home from dinner, leaving me for the final time.
I hope he is never as happy with anyone else like he once was with me.
I hope he never breaks someone again, especially after giving my all.
That my sadness and devastation are so deep, there’s no ending just like my love.
When I look at him, all I want to say is hateful things. And that is why I don’t speak or voice my anger. There is nothing I could do with my vast anger so I stare at him instead. When I look at him, I see a scared boy in an adult body. His mannerisms are childish: checking his phone, being unsympathetic towards my suffering, being inconsiderate towards others. When I look into his face, specifically his large, round eyes, I try to stay brave as they always have been my vulnerability. His beautiful blue eyes are an oasis with hidden sharks circling, waiting calmly to attack. His eyes make him appear to be open and willing to hear me out but they are a perfidious pair. I was thankful the table was between us to have some distance from how loud my heart was beating simultaneously with anger and sadness. My anger is surrounding me like a fierce unbreakable wall with his gorgeous eyes on me. His eyes always always look like they are wells of water ready to spill onto me at any given moment. He acts so nonchalantly while his knee is thumbing speedily under the table to hold his nerves together. Maybe to hold his nice act together. Maybe to keep the sharks from biting me.
Being with him in the same room, eating together, not as a couple, but as two individuals was heavy with dusty air. It was hard to break the thin air without coughing or spluttering. It made it difficult to eat. Being with him, in the same room, eating together, as two individuals, not as a couple mirrors the beginning just like this sad, sad, ending. The thought of us being our own individuals again, leaving separately instead of together, made me shudder and giggle nervously at the same time. Did he know my tells? Was he able to read me? What happened to us and why? If we were communicating earnestly, then I would ask him what happened and how did we get here? Why did this happen?
I have to find my identity again now that we aren’t together anymore. I’m a new version of myself that needs to be discovered. There is grief swirling between my curiosity and heavy disappointment about rediscovering who I am. I grieve becoming a woman he will never know. I may have ended our relationship but I was shoved into the darkest depths of my mind, him doing everything he could to demand me to break up with him.
Instead of talking about the game on TV or him asking how my friends are, I want to tell him my heartbreak stems from my abandonment issues: I have the belief I am not good enough for love, and his inconsistency was the only consistency to rely on because of how I was raised and who raised me. He made me feel small with the lack of communication and inability to have crucial conversations about everything and topics that were forbidden to discuss because he said so.
At dinner with weak smiles, we didn’t speak about our last morning, how I went around to his side of the bed, sat next to him, and held his hand for the last time. Evenly, I said, “It’s time for us to break up.” My voice surprised me: cold and collected. My anger protected me from his intention to hurt me. In the later days, weeks, and months, I have felt small, weak, tender, broken, appalled, ashamed, and ultimately, sadly, triumphantly, very relieved. In between those feelings, anger has pushed me along.
I felt 10 again sitting on the side of his bed. I became my 10-year-old self, trying to shake my parents awake, becoming more urgent but being completely ignored by them with their nonsensical sounds and groans due to their drug induced state. That’s how he made me feel the morning we broke up and that was the last time I wanted to feel 10 again with my fucking boyfriend. I didn’t want to be 10-year-old Corrin. I wanted to be a 25-year-old young adult in an equal relationship with a man I love.
I mourn who he once was in our relationship. I miss his kindness, his sweetness, his time, his empathy, and especially his love. I missed our loving moments together, in the car, laying together, making a joke with one another, the look of amusement on his face when I said something he found funny or surprising.
The entire relationship wasn’t a failure. After dinner, I tell him this as we sit in my car and he cracks a smile to himself as he stares at his hands. The entire relationship wasn’t a failure. I am confident of that.
I tell him:
I still love him, miss him and there are about a thousand and two little things that remind me of him every day.
I tell him I’m spending a lot of time alone.
I tell him I am not ready to let go but had to anyway because of his inactions.
He talks to his hands and replies:
He loves and misses me too but prefers to be alone. He repeats this new fact — he likes being alone.
He tells me he’s been drinking too much, under his breath, he whispers, “Maybe to forget you too.”
He tells me he’s been having a lot of fun with his friends, going out, drinking, and playing poker.
He’s not alone. He’s with friends every moment he gets and chooses while I sit alone in my pain and misery. I sit alone reflecting on the outcome of our devastation. I sit in my heartache to learn from my mistakes, to reflect, and ultimately to heal. Yet, I am angry with each statement he gives me. I am angry he seemingly moves on without any consequence for his behaviors. He says one thing but means a completely different sentiment. Was this our entire relationship communication style? Am I just now noticing? What took me so long to notice or is this a new development? Can I trust myself?
Who am I sitting next to is a question that slams into my head loud and painful. There are certain thoughts I don’t allow myself to think about with him. I wait until I am alone to allow the pitiful questions to be finally acknowledged: why am I alone and he isn’t? I am bitter that the person who almost lovingly tied an anchor around my waist, and pushed me into the ocean, is safely in his boat, sailing away as his sharks circle me. His ship sailed and I wasn’t even at the dock to say goodbye. I drown in my tears, wrath, desperation, and heartache. My anger is blended with the jealousy he gets to live a life I didn’t have growing up and still currently has the luxury of living. He doesn’t have to lift a single finger in his family but that comes with an undiscussed price that I have long ago discovered I had no interest in desiring anymore. I wanted him to understand my suffering. I wanted him to feel my suffering exactly like I have. I wanted him to spend a day in my shoes. I wanted him to be there for me. Ultimately, I wanted him to be somebody he cannot be.
I don’t want to allow myself to question if he ever sincerely knew me for who I was in our relationship because I truly believe he at one point knew me better than most men I’ve ever loved. I felt truly seen, even if it was just for a moment, even if it was only for a season of time we spent together. I felt his love deeply. Our love for one another was not a failure. The lack of communication was a failure. The lack of boundaries was a failure. The lack of consistency was a failure. Most importantly, the lack of his ability to help himself was our biggest failure as a couple.
Our downfall came from his inability to offer emotional support when I started to have some hard challenges in my life. Instead of offering me support, he gave me the cold shoulder. I was emotionally left behind. I felt so responsible for my ex-lover cutting me out of his life when he said he didn’t know how or wanted to know how to be emotionally supportive and be there for me. I was 10 years old Corrin, feeling small, listening to the hard truth, facing an adult situation, I didn’t want to but was forced to — like so many times before. I was abandoned long before I told him we could no longer be. As we continued to sit in my car, I didn’t share any of this though. What would be the point? I thought bitterly to myself. It would fall on deaf ears. As if he could hear my thoughts, he tells me he self-sabotaged our relationship and he is sorry. He. Is. Sorry. He apologizes for not being who I need. Somehow hearing that hurts most of all. He says he is sorry like it’s air. He was a master at apologizing. I was a master at forgiving.
Before he gets out of my car, his hand on the passenger door, ready to make a quick exit, he softly states, he loves me and that he will always love me but he couldn’t be there for me emotionally anymore. Something changed for him. He said he couldn’t match what I needed.
Nothing made sense to me regarding us: who we were, who we are as individuals, for weeks, and months after we ended. How could it? I kept thinking to myself everywhere I went, if he is so self-aware of all of this, isn’t it possible to change? Isn’t it possible to actually be there for me? Am I not enough?
Lesson 1:
When someone hurts you: know they’ll do it again. It won’t be too different from the way they hurt you the first time. When they hurt you the first time, it sets the precedent for what will come the next time they hurt you. They give you signs along the way: comments they make either subtly or causally; let the off-hand comments be your warning to exit the relationship. He made comments like, “I am not a good person,” or “I’m not a nice person.” Then came the actions: leaving me in the middle of the night, waking me up to tell me we are breaking up and in the morning he would call to apologize and tell me he still wanted to be with me. But the comment that put the final nail in our coffin, the morning of our relationship ending, he said flatly: “I don’t want to be there for you.” I was too graceful with all of the excuses, and well-meaning bullshit words he gave me in our 15-month relationship. My empathy for him was my self-destruction. I couldn’t do anything with his easy words, therefore, leading me to savagely cut my heartstrings from him, blood pouring out of my chest as I cut us apart, dividing us and driving the final wedge between us once and for all.
I allowed his inability to love me properly to go on for so long until 10-year-old Corrin got up from his bed and announced we were breaking up. 25-year-old Corrin didn’t do that; 10 years Corrin did. My younger version saved me. My exasperation saved me. Although I initiated the breakup, the abandonment by him at the end of us, felt like I had died but still forced me to feel all my sorrow in real time. I stayed in the relationship because although my needs weren’t being met, I loved him with every cell of my being. I tingled simply from his touch. I yearned for his ability to once calm me just by being in his presence. As I sank below the surface with the anchor around my waist, I didn’t even try to struggle or save myself but watched as he jetted away content with his decision. How could someone who said they loved me, not fight to save us? How could he hurt me over and over? His intention to not help himself be in a better mental health mindset murdered us.
Having someone leave again is very painful for me. My ex-lover had become such an important person for such a long time. My close friends say I’m strong for making the choice to end my relationship but I couldn’t disagree more. I want to tell them, that wasn’t me! That was my inner child! 25-year-old Corrin wouldn’t have made that choice! Instead, I faintly smile and say thank you.
I knew what really bothered me more than someone not being the right fit, was my abandonment issues and my sense of safety and security slashed into microscopic pieces. I demand to find peace within myself so that I am never so rocked again when someone leaves my life. I do not want my peace disturbed. Is that possible? To love deeply and accept peacefully if someone leaves? Is that humanly possible? Can you ever truly be ok with people leaving your life? A friend told me after we broke up, “Breaking up with him was showing yourself self-love.” Was it? It certainly didn’t feel like the right decision for a long time. Something no one tells you is how lonely self-respect is.
Lesson 2:
In our final weeks together, he started to avoid me. When people know they did you wrong, they avoid you. They come up with excuses for why they can’t be physically present. Let alone be emotionally present. He was telling me everything I wanted to hear but his words were shallow. I began to be fixated on knowing why we weren’t together anymore, why did he swiftly change, why did he leave me behind when I needed him the most I had ever needed. The more I focused on not knowing, the more it began to amplify my current experiences with myself and those around me. I felt skittish around new people. I was a shell of myself: exhausted and frightened of my present and future. How do you get your confidence back after a breakup? How do you learn to trust after leaving your love? I have had to remind myself several times throughout the day to remember the actual pain I felt during the relationship — not just during the breakup. My ex-lover was uninterested in doing a lot of things I wanted to do in the relationship like learning my favorite hobbies or going out and trying new experiences. I felt contained with what we were allowed to do and what we were allowed to share from our lives. He was only interested in doing what he wanted and I could tag along.
In the beginning, even before we became official, I told him as we lay in bed what I was looking for in a relationship. I told him how my partner before him never wanted to leave the house and if we did, it would only be what he had wanted to do. In the beginning, I shared what I was looking for: safety, love, trust, and an equal partnership. In the beginning, we had open communication. Something I still had yet to experience from someone I loved. He explained to me how much he wanted to change as a person and he felt ready to be taking the next steps with me and wanted to be working on himself. Looking back, those were just false statements. Looking back, I was with the same man I had been with before him but simply with a different name and in a different state.
Lesson 3:
When we started to date, I felt ready to be someone’s girlfriend again. I had spent the last year and a half working on myself to be the partner I hadn’t been before. I wanted to give and be graceful — to show off the hard work I had put into myself. The night we lay in bed and shared what we were looking for in a partner, I believed every word he was saying. The hooks for my desire for him were deeply embedded in my flesh. I was ensnared in his beauty. I was ensnared by those wide blue eyes. I was vain. I had recently lost 100 pounds and felt very proud to be living in a new, skinny body. The man laying next to me was everything the high school and college version Corrin had wanted. A beautiful man. His thick dirty blond hair, his height, his eyes. All of him. I wanted to be devoured and so, I was. I let myself be devoured. I was swallowed up. Being with him felt like I had proved to the world I was worthy of love. I felt like I had finally proven some invisible fact to myself, that I was desirable and by being together, it proved I was desirable to others too. He looked like the All-American-Guy. The popular kid. The frat guy. I had not shared with my friends prior about my desire to be with someone like him before, I actually had mocked guys like him. I was ashamed of my desire to want the “ideal” man I thought everyone wanted, when really, what the fuck even is the “All-American-Guy,”? Did I really want what everyone else was going for? Did people actually want that? Why was I falling for the stereotypes I had always prided myself on not falling for? How can I call him a hypocrite when I was eating my own words?
The All-American-Guy had an edge to him that I found sexy and powerful. The drugs. The inconsistency. The façade of being cool. The nonchalant behavior, as if he had a care in the world. I felt special to be one of the few he cared about.
I allowed his behavior because he was so beautiful. I seem to have a bad habit of choosing unsettling, dangerously beautiful men who followed in the footsteps of the nasty habits my parents had. Either with their emotionally abusive absence or their drug habits. I never noticed this behavior of mine until we broke up. It was like instant awareness. As if I was coming up from breaking free from the anchor that he had tied me to. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. I sometimes still see the fins of the sharks swirling, waiting to see if I will jump back in. I never will. I am breaking the cycle I have grown up thinking was normal; I will no longer allow myself to be absorbed by inconsistent, emotionally unavailable men who use their silence as a sick maneuver of holding power over someone else. Someone’s inconsistency is a sign they aren’t that interested or cannot be fully invested. I am not ashamed of my desire to want to be desired. I am disappointed I allowed myself to choose someone’s outside beauty rather than the beauty of who they are as a person.
The silent treatment drives me insane, I will go psychotic. Being ignored or the fear of being alone stems from my traumatic childhood experience. I was neglected as a little girl who needed the love of her parents. His way of holding power over me was to ignore what I was sharing and pretend I didn’t exist anymore. The silent treatment is abusive. I would ask him to please not ignore me but he claimed it was space and not ignoring me but the two were interchangeable phrases and actions for him. They meant the same thing to him. When he would apologize afterward, his eyes would gleam with sadness. I should’ve leaned into his embrace with my eyes wide open to see the distant sharks in his eyes. I believed every apology he ever gave me because I sincerely feel like he was and is sorry he can’t be who he wants to be, and who I needed him to be. But I can longer accept “sorry” if the actions do not change.
Did I take him for granted? Did I demand too much? Maybe I did. Advocating what I needed did not help me in this scenario because he could not provide it, no matter how much he tried. I learned we need to be with people more like ourselves, our differences are too wide to hold one another. It was a reminder I shouldn’t be upset at someone for what they are not possibly able to provide but I am still so angry for him giving up on us but staying by my side as if he was an accessory.
This is what heartbreak looks like: I want to scream his name at the top of every skyscraper in San Francisco until my voice is lost in the gusts of wind and I finally have no more anger towards him in my body. I want my anger to evaporate into thin air. I hope I was his greatest asset and greatest regret. Hate that once was love is quite powerful. The anger I still feel some days brings me closer to a place of healing. Am I allowed to be angry even after I forgive him?
The breakup felt like death. To cope, I’ve written my feelings in a hundred little ways. I’ve talked to friends. I’ve cried enough to drown entire cities. I’ve gotten high. I’ve screamed in my car, on walks, in my pillow. On car rides alone, I find beauty in mourning and singing sad songs as one last ballad of love to a lover I once knew. I can miss someone everyday and be glad they are no longer in my life. I don’t miss his avoidance in all the ways that ruined us; I just miss the relationship for what it was at one time.
When do you notice that first feeling is gone? The one you long for at the beginning of a relationship? When your heart is beating fast and you smile when they text you back immediately. When they pick you up on your second date, grinning from ear to ear. When they tell you they thought of you all week. As the months passed in our relationship, he would slowly stop putting effort in like making plans for us, scheduling when he would see me again, or going on adventures. I would ask him why he stopped and with a sad look on his face, he said, “Sometimes the effort goes away,” and I remember being shocked. I was complacent because I still wanted him.
He made me feel so confident in my body and sexually. A man never made me orgasm like him, it was a safe feeling of pleasure. He knew my body so intimately, all my kinks. I felt safe with his body and I’s molding into one. I shivered from his touch, leaving goosebumps behind in the path of where he touched me. Now, I am soothed to know he will never touch my body or heart again.
So much happened and nothing happened at the same time in our relationship. Time moved slowly while the seconds raced by. Part of my soul would’ve been in paradise staring at him in the car or laying in bed, doing absolutely nothing for the rest of eternity. I wished I could store the feeling of being held by him in a jar that I could keep in the darkest corners of my closet on the days I am completely alone. Yet, I will never forget those who distanced from me when I needed love and safety and it brings me back to the healthy choice I made.
Lessons find us when it’s time and although I chose to let go, I left without much choice.
Women are conditioned to feel responsible for men not wanting them. I will not take responsibility or accountability for his faults. His shit. His mental illness. He leaned so heavily on me, I practically died from giving him my all, with him the whole time saying, “I didn’t ask for this, I don’t need this,” when in fact, it is all he ever demanded from me. I resurrected myself but killed him in my mind to bring peace to my life. Once in a while, I stop by the gravesite to leave flowers, but he stays there, and I move on. Fiction imitates reality: he made his choice to not grow as a person so I said my farewell.
So far in this lifetime, he was the greatest partner I had ever had; I know I will do even better next time. I know even more of what I want. Specifically, I know what I do not want. Loving truly is the biggest risk that I think there will ever be in the journey of life. And I am grateful that I was able to feel all the range of emotions love creates and holds space for because, for a time, I was with the right man. Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of love, of hope, and I will risk it all again.
I am a lover at my core. In my soul. From the tips of my toes to the top of my skull, I radiate love. I love to love. I am a being of love that scorched myself and has been ignited to love again. Putting in effort, listening to a loved one, singing songs together, small compliments exchanged, taking pictures together, and respecting one another, make up a small portion of what love is to me and there is so much more left to experience.
Love is always worth it even with the threat of a deep, long, heartbreak after. And I have a profound gratitude for what this love has taught me.
