Saturday, 10.19.2013 - 1:42 pm.
A few days ago, it dawned on me that yesterday's date was approaching. I'm vaguely aware of how one can become vulnerable as the anniversary of a meaningful event approaches. In my case, vulnerable may not be the case, but it did ring a bell or two.
It's funny to think that it was five years ago. Five. It sounds like nothing and it sounds like a lifetime. It feels mostly like a lifetime. It was the day I graduated and the day Joseph dumped me calling it a break, which I took at such because hey, it's him and he's honest and he loves me; and he failed to tell me there was somebody else living with him (maybe she wasn't living with him yet? I'm not sure).
So I've been thinking about him these past days. Not a lot because who has the time. But he pops in here and there and now I'm taking the time to, once again, get these things off my chest. When I think of him, he's not doing anything in particular, I'm at that point in which I'd rather not remember the things he did after he said "let's take a break", and even if I do, it doesn't stir a shitload of emotion like it used to.
I don't wonder how he is, I don't care to know. Wait, I do wonder about the divorce with the woman he overlapped me with, how it went down, custody matters and if they ever got back together. I wonder, but I don't want the answer. Also, I do wish he kept me in his thoughts and realized he hurt me. And while we're at it, that he regretted pulling all that stupid crap of dumping me and parading his new relationship like he'd been single forever and getting married months later as I was still realizing a part of me was gone forever. Whew. But it's not happening. Who has the time for that, right?
Life has a funny way to shove his perspective in my face and to make me take his side. I've heard a couple of stories, one coming from Andrew's brother, of people who break up with a long-time girlfriend saying, "it's not working, I don't see myself with her on the long run". That's entirely understandble, nothing to argue there. You choose who you want to be with and you'd better choose someone you're comfortable with. So he got tired of me, he got tired of us not being compatible and he didn't think we'd make a good match when it came to spending the rest of our lives together.
I understand that, but it doesn't stop hurting. I realize I was scared too, that he may not contribute to sustain the home I was planning to build with him. Good old CR once said I'd have ended up being the only breadwinner and having to support him. I worried he wasn't employable and didn't care to be, and I worried about his child-rearing skills, mostly because he didn't give a fuck about many things. And when I say I wonder about how his divorce went down, I think of these things, if that would have been me at some point. But on the other hand, maybe he changed all that for her. He seemed on the path to do so.
But I digress. I understand that, simply put, we didn't trust each other to come through when it came to our expectations about the other. And maybe we were right. But I still think I wasn't good enough for him, and what still kills me was the way I had to find out. I had to wander through a sea of crap for nearly six months, from his shady "let's take a break" on october 18th to his disgusting "I thought you were my friend" on may 23rd, when he was a happy newlywed grinding his teeth because I didn't tell him I got a tattoo.
I am amazed by the way this pain lingers, and also by the long way I've come. Deep down, the feelings that made me be with him in the first place are intact. But I don't suffer over that. Chances are, I'm in love with someone who doesn't exist anymore. And even if he did, there's nothing in the world that would make me act upon those feelings. First, because of how he chose to send me off, and second, because I'm in love with someone who does exist and makes me happy in ways Joseph couldn't.
Well, shit, I digress again. I was talking about the perspective that life shoves in my face. My friend Angie is separating. She lives in the US but she's one of the friends that knew very well what happened between Joseph and me. She was visiting for a week (Fer, a common friend of Joseph's, hers and mine had passed away) and was with me in the car the one fucking time I saw Joseph and his then bride on the street, we drove right past them. Had I been alone, I would have probably crashed my car a few feet away just to make the pain go away. But she was with me and we laughed and laughed for no specific reason.
I wasn't very happy when she got married. The guy seemed really nice but something felt off for me, and I remember not being so supportive of her decision at one time. But then I stood by her like a friend should. She got married, had a kid. She never sounded happy, although everything was ok. Even in her pictures, it's like she wasn't there. I talked to her yesterday and yes, things aren't well at all and she decided, after a phone call where he was an asshole to her over a recurring them, that she was done.
Now, things haven't been well for some time. And it just so happens that, on the side, there is an old flame of hers (the one I was rooting for) and they're getting back in touch. I do think they both made the encounter happen to some extent, but it's one of those cases in which the person is thinking of leaving her partner for legitimate reasons, not because someone else showed up. But this someone else is an incentive to carry out the decision (although, in her case, cautiously; she now has a daughter and she hasn't seen this guy in many years).
And so I think of Joseph. I think he'd been plotting how to break up with me for a while but hadn't found a way and perhaps didn't have the heart. Then this girl shows up at his doorstep asking for a place to stay and yay, someone better to run to. And it just looks like he overlapped me but breaking up is something he wanted for a while. That's how I think the story goes. I wish he had just realized he wanted me out the picture when this amazing girl showed up, because then it wouldn't feel like I had that many merits to be dumped.
And now we return to our regular schedule, in which I am happy and grateful for the life I'm living.
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