Three Years

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the break up.  I know we're kind of at a point where it's weird that I remember it but: A) it was kind of a major event so of course it sticks in my head, and B) I have a tendency to remember dates anyway, and this is definitely not the weirdest one I remember.  Plus the day of the break up was also Ex-Fiance's last day of school, so we were actually counting down to it anyway back then.

Anyway, it makes me feel reflective to think that three years have passed between then--which was absolutely one of the lowest and most awful points of my life--and now, when I'm probably the best I've ever been.  The change never ceases to amaze me.  I remember telling myself that night, "Give it 6 months.  Survive the next 6 months and go from there."  (Six months because at the time, it was both the longest amount of time I could fathom thinking about and the amount of time I thought it would take for us to get back together).  Back then six months seemed like this crazy, daunting amount of time--and now I've survived 3 years, which is 6 times that original goal.  It makes me so fucking proud I can't even tell you.  There really are no words.

The past three years have probably been the most transformative of my adult life.  I've changed more than I ever thought possible.  I think when you suffer from a mental illness for as long as I did, you kind of become convinced that it's the only way you'll ever be able to function, that you're just going to stay sick until it finally kills you.  I thought that whatever level of mental health I reached, it would be perfunctory.  I thought I'd make it to a point where I could function.  To where I could hold down a job and exert a little control over my thoughts and not spend all day every day feeling like I wanted to rip my skin off of my body (legit something I used to feel, btw).  I never expected to thrive.

But I am thriving.  I'm not just holding down a job, I've got a job I truly enjoy at a company whose work I really believe in.  I'm pursuing a career in an area that interests me.  And I've got a whole other job on top of that one!  I'm financially stable and independent.  I'm genuinely happy to be alive and and looking forward to whatever comes next.  I'm not anxious about time passing or what my future's going to be.  (OK, that's not 100% true, because my 30th birthday caused a bit of a quarter life crisis, but now is not the time to talk about it).

I'm not perfect.  There are still things I'm working on and still things I struggle with.  I need to lose weight and I need to manage my money better, but I'm still ahead of where I was in both those areas.  And I definitely, definitely need to find more time to devote to writing and creative pursuits.  Sometimes I get lonely, not necessarily for a significant other, but just for friends.  It sucks to have all my closest friends in other cities or states.  And yes, I know the obvious solution is to make more friends here in Flagstaff, but I have no idea how to make friends as an adult.  Through work is the big one, I'm sure, but my co-workers are all either married moms or hard partying 20-somethings, and I don't fit into either of those groups.  (Seriously, I never would have thought that 30 would have been more awkward than junior high as far as fitting in).

One really weird thing about being three years out from the break up is that I tend to not realize how much stuff I've done since it happened.  A lot of it is small things.  Like sometimes, I'll be re-watching something on Netflix (because let's be real, I pretty much watch the same 5 or 6 shows over and over), and I'll randomly catch myself trying to remember what my ex thought of it, and then I'll remember that I didn't start watching it until after I moved back to Flagstaff.  And it's just kind of trippy how much life has happened since then, from the small stuff like TV shows to the big stuff like mental health.  Honestly, sometimes it seems like everything with him never even happened, and it breaks my heart to feel that way, because I did genuinely love him.  So many things have come after, though, that that time is kind of buried under all of it.  Even a lot of the happier memories are starting to fade, and when they spring to mind (because they do from time to time), I find myself questioning the details instead of smiling.  It makes me so damn sad to think that how I felt about him has faded away like other memories do.  I genuinely didn't think that would happen, and I don't like that it has, because it just feels wrong somehow.

It's hard to put into words how I feel about my ex and the whole situation three years later.  It's not a consistent feeling.  Most days I don't think about him, but there are times when I inexplicably miss him.  Sometimes there's a trigger, like a song that comes on or something someone says or whatever, sometimes it's just totally out of nowhere.

I can tell you that I'm still not 100% over it.  To be honest, some of that is because I won't let myself let it go.  I can tell you that I'm not angry at him for breaking up with me anymore.  I am angry that he never came back.  More precisely, I'm angry that after I left, and then after he saw that I was getting better, he was never curious about whether it might work between us then.  I'm angry that he never made an effort to get to know the real me.

I wonder, all the time, about that.  I have for three years now.  I wonder what it would be like to be around another now.  If we'd still get along.  If that spark that was there on our first date would still be there, if all those old feelings would come rushing back.  I wonder about him, too, sometimes.  About what he's been up to since we broke up, about what his life's been like, about this experience from his perspective.  Aside from him moving back to his hometown a year after we broke up, I don't know anything about his life now.

I know, for sure, that I still regret screwing up and letting him go.  That hasn't changed, nor will it anytime soon.  I had an amazing man, we were so in love, and I completely fucked that up.  I wish so much that I had done things differently back then.  I may end up completely over my ex someday, I may end up married and spend my life with somebody else, but that regret will never go away.  I'm OK with that.  Corey will always be my one that got away, period, and I'll always wonder what might have been.

I fell in love with him on our first date, and I do still love him.  I would love to just talk to him, about us and everything that happened and where we are now and just see if there's anything still there, because I still feel like I haven't completely gotten closure where we're concerned.  If the opportunity for a conversation ever came up, if he were to contact me, I'd absolutely listen.  As much as I'm sure that'll never happen, I'm always going to hold out a little hope, because that's just who I am.  I'm not sorry for it.

But that hope, and the fact that I would still like another chance with him, doesn't rule my life and it absolutely won't stop me from living my life.  I want that to be clear: I'm not just hanging around hoping/wishing/praying for my ex to walk back into my life.  I've got my own plans and I intend to follow them.

So that's that, I suppose.  Three years behind me and my whole life ahead of me.  I am so excited for whatever the future holds, whether my ex is involved or not.  And I am truly grateful for these past three years, because even though they started with this awful heartbreak, they have been amazing.  I love who I am now and where I am now, and I've loved being able to figure out who I am as a person and embrace that.  I'm happy to be healthy, and I'm happy to be happy!

Just An Update

1.  This week I finished one of my special projects at MHC.  Hallefreakinglujah.  It's like a weight lifted off my shoulders.  It took up pretty much my whole Tuesday but that's OK.

2.  Diet wise I did super well the first part of the week.  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I just killed it.  Then Thursday, I kinda screwed up, and then Friday, Saturday, and today I went completely off the rails.  Like . . . I don't even want to think about how many calories I ate.  Tomorrow is a new day, though, and I'm feeling confident.

3.  I started doing Couch to 5k this week.  I started last Sunday and I'll finish week one tomorrow (I was supposed to either today or yesterday but just didn't feel much like running).  At any rate, I really like it and I think it's going to be a good thing for me.  And a bonus is that I take Hollie running with me and it wears her the hell out, which is nice.

4.  I am very close to being finished with the August billing cycle at SHF.  I think I'll be able to wrap it up tomorrow and then my work there will go back to being all light and sporadic and no big deal.  I'm looking forward to that.

5.  I called a potential new psychiatrist on Thursday.  No one answered, but they have a special voicemail line for people wanting to make new patient appointments, so I left a message.  That office is closed on Fridays so I'm hoping to hear back tomorrow.  Supposedly their average wait time for new patients is 1-3 weeks, so I could potentially get in by the end of the month.  I'm really hoping this one works out because I'm sick of looking.  This one is in Phoenix but . . . I mean, it's a necessity.  I called 5 people in Sedona and Cottonwood last week: 2 phone numbers were disconnected, 2 weren't taking new patients, and 1 was cash pay only.  So I called my old doctor's office here in town and left a message basically kissing their ass and asking what I would need to do to make an appointment with the doctor I was supposed to start seeing there after Dr. Wright left . . . and yeah, they never called me back, so I'm going to go ahead and just assume that ship has sailed.

5.  Last Sunday, I saw my ex at WalMart.  As in my ex fiance who doesn't even live in Flagstaff.  It was the most random thing.  The most absolute random thing.  And of course, since it was Sunday, which is chore and errand day, I hadn't showered or shaved my legs and I was wearing sweats and an old t-shirt.  And I know it really doesn't matter but I hadn't seen him for more than a year and of course it couldn't have happened on a day I looked more put together.  Sigh.

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.

Dear Ex-Fiance

Dear Ex-Fiance,

Today Jerbs and I went out together.  It was kind of overcast and really beautiful outside, and we wandered around downtown, and I just thought of how much I wished I was with you.  Not that I don't love Jerbs but . . . I miss things like just walking around holding hands.

I'm surprised at how now, when I think back on our relationship, it's the little things I remember most and that I miss the most.  And it's the little things that make me think, God, if I could just have that back I would appreciate all of those little moments so much.  I would never take any of it for granted.

I really am working on myself and trying to get better.  I've been taking my medicine consistently and I found a counselor that should work for me.  I'm going to give her a call as soon as I have some money.  And today I bought a book on borderline so that I can learn more about it and figure out how to really get it under control.

So even if you and I never get back together, I'll at least be normal for the next guy.

But I don't want there to be a next guy.  I just . . . I still want it to be you.

I miss you.  I love you.

Please don't ignore me anymore.  I want to hear from you, I want us to talk.  I can't stand you just being . . . gone from my life.

Love,
Jessica