I am a complete mess today. About a week ago, I sent a text message to Justin asking if he wanted to still be with me- a text that I have come to deeply regret. At first he did the, “Where is this coming from? Of course I do.” thing, but he then decided that he really wanted some space to figure out what he wants.
Cue my picking: What does that mean? Are we together? Do you want to just break up? Isn’t this a breakup with training wheels? How do you not know what you want? Etc. Etc. Etc. So we ended it. And now I’ll never know if we were just having a rough patch and could have come out the other side or if I just ruined another relationship by pushing.
All I know is that I literally feel like a piece of me is missing. Yeah, the last couple of months haven’t been good. But when it was good it was great. He said he’d just stopped feeling a spark and that it just felt like hanging out with a friend. That’s me to a T: great at friendship, horrible at relationships. How do you wake up one day and just not love someone anymore? The answer is you don’t. You just never loved that person to begin with.
When I think about what I want in a relationship- I picture me and my person on a beach- trying to clear a trench that’s constantly being filled by a rising tide. I don’t know why we’re assigned this task...don’t ask silly questions, just go with it. Scratch that... we can go with building a sand castle too close to the tide if you’d rather. The castle is your life together, and the tide filling is up is the never-ending stuff that plagues your relationship: monotony, temptation, work, stress, change, friends, family, romance...all of it. When you first start dating, it’s easy to build your castle crisp and clear. Add a moat! Don’t forget a media room! I'mma need a man cave in here somewhere. It’s like the tide is at the lowest and there’s room for you to laugh and play and dump a bucket of sand on the other’s head. It’s like a scene out of a frickin' Disney movie. Cue the montage music! The qualities of the person you picture yourself with are what you specifically need to make that work seem worth it. For me, it’s:
· A hard worker- I don’t want to be the only one with a bucket, carving out and inventing new ways to build.
· A sharer- what did you always want to add to your castle? What have you tried before that you know just does not make sense?
· Someone who takes initiative- hmmm...this isn’t working well- why don’t we try to do it this way
· Someone who is patient- I know you’re over there pitching a fit about your broken handle, but I’m here with you and we’ll make this work- look, we’ll turn the kitchen into a bowling alley- who needs a kitchen anyway?
· Someone who makes me laugh- I mean, if you can’t laugh, you’d cry at how overwhelmed you can get, right?
· Someone who knows what they want- I have blueprints that I’ve been amending over the years, and I know what plans suck and what plans have pieces of what I need.
But as the tide rolls in, it is more important to work together to keep enough space for there to be room for you to continue to build and repair and expand. Otherwise what’s the point? Justin checked out after the holidays and I was building the castle myself. And the tide just kept pressing in and wearing down what we’d built. Since I was clinging to the possibility of a great castle- I was yelling at him to pick up his shovel and do something. “Shape, you bastard! Shape! Bring me a bucket!” But that just kept pushing him further and further down the beach, until eventually, all I had left was a shovel, some keys and a phone charger to return...and him walking out of my life forever.
I always tend to assign myself the lion’s share of the blame when one of my relationships end. I just want someone to love me and for it to be my turn to dance around my castle, celebrating all of the secret doorways and pennants that make it uniquely ours and make others wonder how we did it.
It just gets so hard to hear the same thing over and over. Everyone loves the highlight reel. Everyone loves being my friend. But why can’t I find someone who just loves me?
I’ll just be here kicking at sand for the next few weeks...
