breaking up is hard to do
I am so sad right now. I can’t stop crying. It’s weird because we broke up mutually, amicably, and without spite or tension. It’s still really sad. You can be in a relationship and know that it’s not working, and try so hard to make it work only to end up breaking up too late, after things get sour. For us, we were both mature and aware of small tensions that would later be divisive bitterness. I know it was the right thing to do–we both did–but it’s still really sad and painful. I feel like my heart is breaking, but I know that it wasn’t working and that had we continued down the path of our relationship, we would have had a bitter break up.
For whatever reason, we had both gotten into a place in our relationship that we weren’t comfortable in. He wasn’t himself and I wasn’t fully happy either. The sad thing is that he’s such an amazing person, quirky, fun, personable, smart, chatty. When I first met him he made me so happy and all I wanted to do was be with him.
What makes me really sad is remember our first blissful couple of dates. His smiling face and animated eyes. His happy attitude and crazy stories. We were so great together, passionate and physical. The possibility and potential was dizzying. He noticed little things about me, he seemed to understand my personality and he appreciated the little things, even the charm on my bag and the earrings I was wearing. He was so different, from a totally different perspective, and I thought that I would be learning a lot about where he’s coming from and the things he was interested in. How much fun did we have one random saturday when we got lost on the 495 and ended up at Silver Spring, only to end up making out in a parking structure while looking for a place to get lunch. How much fun did we have "watching" March of the Penguins in Georgetown and really just making out the entire time looking up at the screen at random intervals when kids and parents screamed because of how cute the baby penguins were.
Still, I can’t forget the tension and differences. Something happened down the line, we moved to fast, our circumstances, whatever, and now we’re just going to be friends and not end things with tension or on a sour note.
Deciding when to end a relationship reminds me of when a pulmonary hypertension patient decides on whether or not they want a transplant. PH patients can make the decision to have a transplant when they’re very sick, as a last resort for an extension on their life. However, some patients consider having risky life-threatening transplant surgeries when they’re healthy, because they have a better likelihood of surviving with a new set of lungs and heart if they transplant in better health. If you do it healthy, there’s still a great risk of organ failure and death. Ending a relationship when there’s a chance for reconciliatory communication and "working things out" is like taking a risk of transplanting when healthy, you’re not going to allow your relationship or body to degenerate as you can foresee it happening down the line, and instead, take a risk and try to find happiness elsewhere (a new heart?) Does that make sense?
I wish things hadn’t moved in the direction that they had. Maybe I spent too much time out of the dating scene. Well there’s no way I’m going to start dating until after I’ve thought enough about what happened and learn from it.
