Être attiré quasiment que par des femmes instables ou déviantes ça doit avoir un nom... Non !? Les jalouses maladives, possessives, hystériques, je sais pas pourquoi, mais elles m'attirent.
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Context: 2012, pt. 3
Reaping What We Sowed
With the summer came FWB's graduation from our college. There's a picture of his friends and him in their graduation caps and me tacked awkwardly onto the side, visibly out of place yet desperately trying to belong. I'm not going to share it because everything that happens next I have an incredible well of shame about, even ten years later, and so I don't want to tie any of their faces to it.
Following his graduation, FWB was listless--lost--and a depression that had always lurked around the edges got its claws in him and latched on. He took a job as a barback at an unremarkable bar in downtown Boston and proceeded to steadily run out of money. He often worked until the AM, and the cost of a cab ride home generally destroyed whatever his pay for the day had been; it was the restaurant industry in America, after all. He was making much less than minimum wage.
This escalated steadily and, at the same time, a tension grew between us that made me anxious and jumpy. There's a particular feeling that overtakes a relationship when its end is nearing, and it was that feeling but with an added layer of resolute, determined denial on my part.
I was desperately clinging to the idea that he and I would remain together forever. I'd been losing faith in my writing and capability at becoming a writer for a long while, and I was looking toward the publishing industry as the means by which I'd sustain myself; that was why I chose a major that involved a publishing focus, you see.
During the summer of 2012, I did an internship at a publisher that no longer exists which did hobbyist magazines. I was specifically a graphic design intern, making newsletters, ads, and other little materials under the direction of the designers putting together page layouts.
I hated it, but I'll explain why in another post. For now, it's enough to know that the internship turned me off of the entire "work in publishing" plan.... which meant I didn't have a plan as I entered my senior year of college.
I responded to that loss of direction by pinning all of my hopes on my relationship with FWB. I convinced myself that I could weather the publishing fate I'd set up for myself so long as we were together. By working in publishing, I could probably pull together enough money to sustain both of us, I reasoned, and that way he could pursue his dreams of being a writer, and I could keep being with him.
I didn't tell him about this. Ever. It was a life plan I'd invented, become fully invested in, and determined to see through entirely by myself. At the tender age of 21, I had become the archetypal Crazy Girlfriend without even noticing.
I became so convinced of this plan as an inevitable eventuality that I started to believe it was impossible for FWB and I to stop seeing each other. I began to act erratically and carelessly.
It was around this time that Boyfriend 2 messaged me out of the blue to make himself feel better after a breakup, and while I by no means gave him what he wanted, I did entertain the texts for a bit because I thought it was funny and it felt validating to be wanted after months of the tension I was pretending didn't exist in my then-current relationship. FWB was with me at the time that these texts were being exchanged--I laughingly shared them with him--and I entertained them a little too long. I remember him being displeased, but I likewise remember thinking the unhappiness I took for jealousy was silly and unnecessary: in my mind, it was obvious that there would never be anyone else for me than FWB.
The end came on a night at my apartment on which things were a bit odd between us. He was distant, and I was becoming impatient with our arrangement's lack of a name--because, in my deluded mind, our seeing other people was impossible, making the pretense that I myself had originally set up completely absurd.
I suggested we admit we were dating. He responded by ending our arrangement.
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