13. heartbreaking

During this same month of love, I also had to extricate myself from my ex-relationship. Practically and emotionally.
Fortunately I’d never given up my own apartment, so I wasn’t stranded. I ran in to fetch my few belongings from Ex’s place while he was at work. It was a sad act filled with finality, but I rushed through it like someone possessed. When I realised that I’d packed up everything of mine and fit it into the boot of my car within 30 minutes, it confirmed just how separate our lives had actually been. I felt a huge sense of loss, but more for the barren years gone before than for this ending now.

I saw Ex-boyfriend a few times, it was always heartbreaking. He looked like a stranger to me. So stiff and formal, unsure and insecure. He wrote me a letter in which it seemed that he understood more of the why than I gave him credit for.
He was sorry and ready to change and wanted to try again. I felt completely numb. The nearest emotion I could identify towards him was regret. He was not a bad person; he had so much to offer. It was just too late and I’d left the building a long time ago.

I went to our last scheduled counselling session alone, and told the therapist everything. I started by saying that my head was all messy and confused, that I wasn’t thinking straight and needed some guidance. I thought he would urge caution; register surprise and distress at the break-up. But by the end of the hour he told me he’d never seen me so clear-headed and vibrant. That I should take this happy infatuation and run with it. He didn’t want to see me again, I was ‘cured’.

Now I still don’t know if the nature of that session confirms that we pay shrinks to tell us what we want to hear, or if this therapist had secretly been thinking that my relationship with Ex was doomed from the start and this was the best outcome for everyone. Maybe I’ll ask him one day.

1. in the beginning

A little more than a year ago, I had a boyfriend. For a very long time.
We'd been together since school and had spent more than ten years together.
He didn't always treat me with all the respect and affection I needed.
I'd cheated on him more than once.
We weren't in love anymore.
We were trying to keep it together.
(Why?)
We went for counselling.
I was needy and sad and sorry and he was cold and sad and untrusting. We lived very separate lives.

In my separate life I was happy and successful and had plenty of fabulous, interesting friends to do all kinds of fabulous, fun things with. One day at the end of summer, I met a Fashionista friend for sunset drinks at a beautiful hotel bar on the oceanfront. Fashionista brought another friend. An intelligent, optimistic, generous, charming, laughing, tall, beautiful boy.

I really liked this boy. But he lived far away and was only visiting on holidays. I was relieved to hear this. I wouldn't have to think about this beautiful boy or get to know him better or wonder what it would be like to have a boyfriend who is such a beautiful boy...

A month later, the naughty Beautiful Boy was in my hometown again. At Fashionista's birthday party, which I was attending with my boyfriend. Beautiful Boy was still laughing, still beautiful. I giggled with a single Careergirl friend about how cute he was and told her to pursue him. Then I spent the next couple of hours thinking about him and getting to know him a bit and almost wondering what it would be like...

Later in the evening he played a DVD of him skydiving. I stood in a small crowd, watching the visuals while the party music kept playing out loud. There he was on the screen: smiling nervously, looking vulnerable, acting brave, jumping, screaming, falling, laughing, laughing, laughing all the way.

By the end of it, I was in love.