The Breakups

The first time was a few months in, not long after the ‘toilet seat’ conversation. I can’t even remember what it was about. That is shocking to me because I know it was big. At least in my mind it was big at the time. It was like I had woken up, come out of the fog. I was sitting on his couch and he was arguing with me from the kitchen. I looked around and realized, I don’t have to stay in this. We don’t have any commitments together. No house to split. No children together. I could just walk away. I can still picture myself, siting on his couch, looking around at the four walls and seeing so clearly. I remember feeling like I had just come back to myself. Feeling like a weight was lifted off and I was instantly happy again.  I was me again and I couldn’t believe I had been gone for those few months, for what? For nothing. For someone to piece by piece start making me feel like I was less, smaller, in a place where I needed to earn kindness and love. I knew better than to allow someone to treat me like that. Everyone deserves more than that. I wasn't going to stand for another person making me feel like I was not enough. I had friends and family who loved me. I loved me. I was genuinely a happy person and I was not going to stay in a relationship that drained my happiness. So I had tried a relationship for a few months and it didn't work. No big deal.

I lugged my giant folding dog crate out to the car. Thinking all the while that to the neighbors I must look ridiculous. Like everyone could see that I was failing. But I didn’t care. Nothing was as important as driving away from what I almost signed up for. I took my bags of clothes that had accumulated to the car. Took my dog and drove away feeling such relief and lightness. I knew I was never going back. I knew I had experienced something that was not ok. I had always had good people in my life. And he did not feel good. That is what I knew. And I drove.

It took 1 day for him to convince me to try again. I don’t know why it was so easy for him to reel me back in. Too trusting? Too forgiving? Too naïve for sure, to think I was the one person who could see the evil coming, but could change its course because this was different, he really liked me, we were falling for each other. It was not different. It never is. If it doesn’t feel good, believe that feeling. It’s not good. And it will not get better, it will get worse.

There were continued small break ups throughout the next 2 years, every few months. Each time I woke up enough to remember this was never meant to be my life. But the next significant one happened after we tried to move in together, almost 2 years later.

If I would have known at that first, few months in, break up that I was willingly, purposefully, walking back into 9 years of the same turmoil, I would have run screaming. I should have run screaming. But it didn't work out that way. I didn’t turn away, I walked towards that relationship.  And every time after, when I came back, it took longer for me to leave. It lengthened quickly from months, to years. Yes years. There were times I stayed years between the breakups. I shudder to think that had I gone back the final time, it may have lengthened from years to a lifetime before I ever had the strength, the clarity, the physical/emotional/mental ability to leave again. And I never would have made it to this life I have now. Never would have even imagined I could get here from there. Here was where I was always meant to be. And I almost missed it. Almost just let it go without even trying to find it.