Holding On And Letting Go

This post kind of goes hand in hand with my last one, but I feel like these thoughts deserve their own space.

This entire blog is a testament to the fact that the end of my engagement is very much a part of my journey to mental health. In a lot of ways I think that if the break up hadn't happened I wouldn’t have achieved all the things I did. Apparently I needed to be on my own to really get better, and while I used to hate that fact, I'm more or less OK with it now. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that a lot of the good in my life came out of a really horrible experience—so, understandably, my feelings towards my ex are complicated. On the one hand, he broke my heart; on the other, he put me definitively onto the path to being truly well.

I still have a lot of regrets where he and everything that happened with us is concerned. I don't think that will ever totally go away, because no matter how much I improve, I was still horrible to him. I hate thinking that I had something so amazing and that I sat back and watched it fall apart. It seems so stupid now. I'm at a point where I've mostly forgiven myself but that doesn't mean I wouldn't go back and change things if I could.

I don't blame him for ending it, I really don't. As I've gotten better I think I've been able to look back and see our relationship from something closer to his perspective and I get it. Maybe I take issue with the method and the harshness but I get it.

One of the strangest things about being mentally healthy is that it's both helped me to get over the break up and, at the same time, made it even harder to let go. Obviously getting better has shown me that I absolutely don't need my ex in my life, that I'm completely fine on my own. There was a point where I felt like my happiness really depended on whether or not I had him, and now I know how untrue (and idiotic) that is. At the same time, getting better has made me very aware of the fact that now I could be in a relationship, if that makes sense. It's one thing to want something but know you're not capable of having it, but it's another to want something, know you could do it, and just not be able to have it. I look back on our relationship now and realize how amazing it could have been if I was like this then.

Sometimes I still feel surprised at how absolute the break has been. It's no secret that I assumed we'd get back together at some point, and I guess I always thought that, even if that didn't happen, we'd at least end up as friends. I expected him to stay in my life somehow, not disappear from it completely. But we really haven't kept in touch. I've reached out and been ignored, and the last time I spoke to him was last July when he randomly showed up at my apartment. It makes me sad—really, really sad—that such strong feelings can end up being nothing.

Sometimes I wonder why we've never found our way back to each other.

At one point during the break up—like the actual process of the relationship ending, when my emotions were off the charts and I was a total mess—I told him that I had cheated on him. Specifically, I told him that I had cheated on him 5 times, with Jerbs. It wasn't even remotely true, I just wanted to hurt him, and in that moment infidelity was the most hurtful thing I could think of. As soon as I said it I regretted it and confessed that it was a lie, but I've wondered if he believed me and if that's what's prevented him from pursuing any kind of relationship with me.

I remember my ex telling me once about a girl he was close to in high school; she had mental health problems, he helped her through it, and once she was better she basically stopped being friends with him. He ended up feeling like she'd only needed him to get better and then stopped, and I wonder if he thinks the same of me: that now that I'm better he would be pointless in my life.

I've wondered if maybe seeing me last July, doing so much better without him, made him think that he had, in some way, been keeping me sick and that his absence is necessary for me to stay healthy. And I've wondered if maybe he just needs more time to work on himself and his own issues.

I've wondered if maybe he just doesn't want to deal with the long distance thing, because it was such a disaster last time.

And I've wondered the obvious: maybe there is just too much bad in the past that there's no possibility f or a good future between us. That maybe he's never had any intention of even attempting to be my friend or anything else. That maybe he hates me.

I know it really doesn't matter, but I still wonder.

One thing I do know is that it would work between us now. That if he got to know me again, that if he got to know this real version of me, he would fall in love with me all over again. I don't doubt that for a second. All the things that made him believe I was his soul mate are still there, and now there's nothing hiding them. I know that his feelings for me were real (I mean, he asked me to marry him after he'd known me for six months, so there was definitely something there). I've talked before about how my mental illness symptoms improved drastically in the first two months I knew him, how for those first couple months I was normal and happy. That me he saw is who I really am, and who I am now.

I've held on, and held out hope, for two years. And I think it's time to let go. The truth is that I don't think of my ex all that much anymore; he crosses my mind from time to time but not like he used to. He'll always have a piece of my heart, and a part of me will always love him. And I think I'll always wonder, no matter where my life goes from here and how far away from him I get, what it would have been like if things had worked out. There's a box of mementos and keepsakes from our relationship in my hall closet; I know I don't need anything in it, and I know I should just toss it, but I can't bring myself to do it. There are still songs I can't listen to, that I haven't been able to listen to since we broke up, that I skip past when they pop up on my iPod. I think of him whenever I hear jazz music (which is rarely). I'd still like to talk to him, if only for my own sense of closure. But by and large, I think I'm over him.