missinghalf

[missinghalf]

I'm so tired. I've run out of hope, I think. Maybe I'm wrong and I'll feel better, but it doesn't feel like it, and I don't think it's fair that everyone always feels like I will. I am drained. I am broken. I feel foolish writing it down because of how cliche it seems. I know I'm just one of many people to suffer. I'm not the first and I won't be the last. But I wonder if anyone has ever felt this particular pain before. There's no way to know, I guess.

I dared to believe I could drag myself out of the hole. I didn't expect it, but when the opportunity came I embraced it. I had help. I can't remember what I did or how it worked, I wasn't taking notes. I was afraid it wouldn't last. For a long long time I was afraid. But life lulled me into contentment with kindness and lifted my anxieties for a while. I thought that meant I was wrong to be worried and that I was safe. I thought I'd already made the home run. Everyone said so, everyone and everything was saying so. It wasn't true, though.

I don't know if I was foolish to believe I could stay up there with my head above the water. But now, sunken back into the lonely and somber rooms I used to suffer in, I can feel it mocking me. It feels just like it used to. It reminds me that this is the default. That I was allowed a break, a brief respite from the emptiness. It didn't feel brief while it was happening. I am lost again on the edge. No one comes here. It is quiet. It feels like summer, but it isn't comforting. It only serves to remind me of how beautiful that respite was. It nags and gnaws and pesters at me, demanding I remember. The essence of everything is replaced with a vague copy. The goodness inside is gone. My brain cannot replicate it. It's a sketch of a nice day with all the faces missing.

I don't understand how I withstood the crippling weight of it before. I didn't feel lonely. It was quiet, but I was content to live in the silence. Now it is crushing. It is unbearable. It makes me want to tear my hair out and scream and beg to be let free. They don't do it justice when they write how much it hurts. It's not their fault. I don't think it's something that can be imagined. They'll write that it feels like a hole in their chest or claws scraping on the inside. It always read like overdramatization to me. But they're right, they're all right. It will disembowel you. It grips you by the soul and it rips and rips and rips and rips. It waits for you to remember it, then it strikes again. You're never free. The more you crave freedom, the more you cry out for it, the harder it scrapes. The deeper the grooves inside you get.

It is unfathomable. Unknowable without experience. You'll think you understand. Maybe you briefly picture in your mind's eye and feel a twinge of the pain. But when it comes for you it is an insurmountable beast. Its strength comes from how happy you were. Why don't we say something? Why don't we tell anyone? It seems silly to discourage being happy, but at least we ought to inform them of what comes if it doesn't last. No? It makes people angry and cruel. It twists you until you have no options left. You are forced to decide between the pain or convincing yourself that none of it mattered. To decide between the pain and death.

It will transform people into uncaring shadows of themselves. They will shrug off your pain. They will turn their gaze away from you when you struggle. If you're unlucky, their empathy will get the best of them sometimes. You'll see the pain in their eyes and they'll sob and they'll hold you. They'll try to save you from drowning. And then when you trust it, when you trust the cracks in their apathy, the holes will seal. Their shell will harden. They'll let go of your hand as you dangle over the cliff face and they'll frown at you as they do it.

The pain will eat away at you until you beg it to stop and then it will go faster. I don't know what to say to someone teetering on the edge of it. Do not love? Do not feel? Avoid caring? No. I do not regret the love. It is the best I've ever felt. To truly love someone, and to be truly loved in return, is as good as you can ever feel I think. However, the cost of departure from that love is grave. It only takes one side becoming unwilling. You need not agree to be dropped off the cliff face, only to be there as they release you. And yet I cannot advocate against following them there, because if they do not drop you, it will be the most beautiful thing you've ever felt. Everything in the universe will pale in comparison. Everything you've felt or seen or done will seem tiny from the top. You'll gain the perspective the cliff offers, the bigger picture, and you won't be able to forget it.

Once you've seen it, there's no going back. The box is open. It will be beautiful, but you have to hold it tight. If you fall, the memory of how you slipped will torture you forever. The memory of their face as they let you drop. So love. Love as hard as you can. Give it your all and hold it dearly. But pray you found someone sure-footed. Remember the emptiness waiting at the bottom of the ravine.

[missinghalf]

I want to go home.

I want to go home to her.

To our little apartment with the good sunlight.

To our black cat laying by the window.

To our warm loft bed where we held each other.

To the room full of her green, lush plants.

To her clothes hung everywhere, to her books on the shelves, to her makeup in the bathroom, to her jewelry on the dresser, to the sound of her music.

I wish I could still see it. I wish I could still hear it. I wish I could still smell it.

I want to go home.

[missinghalf]

I keep checking to see if you're online. Or when you were last. I miss you, obviously.

But I also worry if you're safe or not. It's not that I think you can't handle yourself, you can.

I just promised I'd always be there. And I want you to be safe.

So I keep checking.

[missinghalf]

I've been doing a lot of thinking about promises lately. My ex and I always promised we'd be together forever. Cliche, I know, but I meant it. Eight years is a long time to be together. I really thought we were in it for the long run.

I wasn't the one that broke my promise. My ex was. They insist that there was some fine print to that promise. The primary reason they cited for leaving was that I hadn't been helping out much around the apartment. Which is true, I hadn't been. I was trying, but I've got severe depression, and it was difficult. My ex had recently started a full time job and had very little energy left at the end of the day to be doing that sort of thing. They were struggling and they tried to communicate this to me, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't make myself help that much more.

Eventually, my partner broke down and explained how much it was hurting our relationship. I guess that phrasing, or something else they said during that conversation, kicked me in to high gear. I started working as hard as possible. I learned that my depression liked to lie to me and tell me I "couldn't" do something, when really I did have the energy. I started doing a lot, really putting everything I had into it.

This wasn't enough for my ex though. It became clearer over time that they had already sort of checked out of the relationship. It took several more months of my working as hard as I could and my partner still being unsatisfied before they just gave up and left. I tried to fix things as best I could, but they told me it wasn't just having to do chores by themself that made us incompatible somehow. They also told me my interests put their brain to sleep. That the things that I was passionate about inherently made them unhappy. I love technology and they had grown this new found hatred for it, but that appeared to be a selective hatred just for things I liked. They continued to spend large amounts of time on the internet and almost all their friends were online, but that didn't count as technology somehow. They told me repeatedly that we just weren't compatible, without really explaining any further.

Whenever I had questions or was confused about why they decided to leave me, they would start to get angry. They started lashing out at me when I didn't understand right away. Then they started stonewalling me, cutting off conversations soon after they started. At first after the breakup they felt terrible for having done it. They spent a lot of time crying and apologizing. But soon the anger replaced that. I think that the guilt of breaking their promise, the one we made so long ago, was too much for them. So they decided to try and cover that guilt with anger toward me. One day things wouldn't be my fault, the next day they would be. One second they'd be empathetic, the next they'd be cold. Over the last few months before the breakup they had gotten cold and unaffectionate. They didn't want to be touched or to touch me.

When I was hit by that car I had to start sleeping on the couch. We had a loft bed and I couldn't climb the ladder into it. I asked them to sleep on the couch with me or blow up the air mattress we had and out it next to the couch, but they refused. They've always been a bad sleeper and they've got chronic insomnia, but that had never stopped them from supporting me before. I basically begged them to sleep next to me, because I was in so much pain abd I was so lonely. I could barely sleep because of how fucked up my shoulder was and I was trying to take as little of the opioids the hospital had given me as possible, to reduce the risk of addiction. But they always refused.

For a month it was like that. Then they dumped me. And all of a sudden they wanted to sleep next to me every night. They felt horrible and didn't want me to sleep alone anymore. All of a sudden they wanted to lay on top of me or hold me or hug me. I went on a walk to clear my head one day and they were in tears when I got back. They said all they could think of was how I might be out there crying by myself somewhere. But none of this changed the fact that they didn't want to be with me.

In a way my ex taught me a really important lesson. People can and will say whatever they want and they don't have to hold to it. They can say one thing and do another and no matter how much you love or trust them, they can still do that to you. No matter how many years you spend with them, being vulnerable and taking care of each other, they can still stab you in the back when you least expect it.

That isn't to say that all people will, probably modt won't. I think people are inherently good at heart. But promises won't mean nearly enough to me anymore. Because to my ex, the promise of staying together forever had a disclaimer afterwards that read "unless your mental illness gets really bad, or I start to dislike your interests, or I start to resent you for things I didn't say anything about."

So I'll believe people are good. I still think my ex is a good person. I love them very much. But I don't think I'll ever trust someone like that again. How could I? I would have bet my life they'd never do the things they've done now. And I would've lost that bet.

[missinghalf]

This is a space where I write about the disaster my life has become.

I'm not going to mention details about myself here, so you won't find my age, gender, or orientation anywhere. I don't intend to follow anyone from this blog at all, so I don't think it will be a problem.

TL;DR: In the last few months I was hit by a car, my partner of 8 years left me unexpectedly, I lost my job, and I lost my apartment. This has been deeply traumatic and I still don't really know what to do with myself about it.

I'm living with my parents in the same house that my partner and I spent the pandemic living together in. It's also my childhood home. It's been very painful.

My injury has had lasting ramifications. My shoulder was destroyed and had to be put back together with a bunch of screws and plates. I can use the arm, but I can't use it well, and it'll likely need to be replaced a few decades from now. I consider myself pretty lucky.

My ex and I had been having some difficulties, but none that indicated to me that they'd leave. We had extended conversations where they were very clear that they had no intention of doing so, but this wasn't the case as it turns out. We talk rarely, mostly for logistical reasons, as some of my stuff is still at the apartment and we share custody of a cat.

We had been sharing an apartment and had chosen to move prior to the breakup due to rent increases. We ended up choosing to live together after the breakup anyways as it was more affordable, but my ex-partner wanted to break contact for a month and I just never ended up moving in to the new place. Now that I have close to no income, I can't afford to pay rent anyways.

I have debilitating mental illnesses which, for obvious reazons, have gotten much worse. I don't have access to the medication I need due to shortages, so the problems persist. I've spent a lot of time wishing that car had just killed me. It'd have made things a lot easier and I could've gone the rest of my life not knowing my partner didn't love me. Sadly I remain alive and deep in unreciprocated love.

Now, the big question I'm sure you're asking yourself: "Why are you telling me all of this?"

Because I've been talking to a journal for months and it's driving me insane. I don't know why it's helpful to send my thoughts out into the void like this, but it is. So here we are.

"I think I know you"

You probably don't. Plenty of my, and my ex's, friends are on here so it's possible. You can ask, but I may not reply. If you're my ex, I promise I'm not adding the comma splices on purpose to piss you off. I just suck at noticing them.

Buckle in and read on if that's what you want to do. I have no goals for this blog and I'll be sharing pretty minimal details. Bear in mind that my point of view is a biased one.