We End Up Together

the worst feeling in the world is waking up alone, to a quiet house, going about your day trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy, when inside you are screaming—someone please, someone help me, please get me out of this fucked up, miserable hell hole that has become my life. when you’re with someone in a committed relationship for a very long time & then suddenly lose them, you have to learn how to become an entirely different person. because that person you were for the past 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years… that person was a part of someone else. when you are in a long term relationship with someone, and you live with them, and you spend every day with them… it is really earth shattering when you suddenly are thrown out into the world alone, with no life support. no one there to help you. no one to tell you things will be okay. no one to look forward to at the end of a long day. no point in time or amount of waiting that will lead to a happy ending.

simple things like going to the store, seem almost unbearable to do alone. and i know everyone in this town will probably think i am crazy, wandering around the isles of a grocery store with tears in my eyes, wondering what i am even doing there as i have lost all desire and will to eat or sustain my life. it literally physically pains me just to breathe. every breath i take sends a sharp pain through my chest. everything reminds me of the life that once was, the life that could have been. everything reminds me of the fact that i am completely and utterly alone in this world. the fact that i could kill myself right this minute, and no one would know for days, weeks even. the fact that i could kill myself and no one would care with the exception of my mother and brother, who are 1400 miles away and living just fine without me there. i’m having such a hard time grasping the concept of life right now.

as early as i can remember, all i have felt inside is pain. all i have felt was alone, and like there is something missing in me that makes it impossible for me to connect with other people, impossible to appear normal so that people will want to be around me. i’m not normal, i am the farthest thing from it. but with him, i could pretend. we pretended to be this happy family for so long, even though we made each other miserable. somehow it was still okay, because he was my anchor. even though i literally hated him, despised all the things he did without taking a second to think how it would effect me, even still i loved him and he was my family, he was my everything, he was all i had. it scares me to death now to realize that i will never have that again. where am i going to find someone else who wants to be in a committed relationship with someone with as much depression and anxiety as me? i often meet people, and they always put on this front like it’s okay, and they understand, and they still want to be with me anyways… but ultimately i find that those people, most people, are fakes. no one ACTUALLY wants to be there for you when you feel like shit, no one ACTUALLY just wants to hold you and listen to you cry until it gets a little easier, no one ACTUALLY will deal with the fact that you worry about everything, constantly. because that is a burden to them, and they don’t HAVE to deal with it. it’s easier to walk away and say ‘fuck it, i don’t need this in my life.’

but do you know how badly i wish that i could just walk away? do you know that i would give anything to not feel this way anymore? i would give everything i own and be homeless the rest of my life, if it meant i could be happy. things don’t mean anything. having a job doesn’t mean anything. having a place to live doesn’t mean anything, when you don’t want to live.

but ultimately, it does not matter. it doesn’t matter to anyone, and no one will ever comprehend what it is like inside my head. and i really wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

i should have never gone out to lunch with jonathan on saturday. i was doing so well with hating his guts and despising everything he did. but being with him made me remember what it was like. that all though we hated each other most of the 4 years we were dating, we could always make each other laugh.

i spent 4 miserable years with him, because i was afraid of how i would feel without him around. like i feel now. completely alone. in a lot of ways, he was my only support system, and my only source of comfort (even though he was the one making me miserable most of the time). every day i debated whether or not i should stay in this relationship another week, month, year… but ultimately i always did, because i loved him, and i wanted to believe it would get better. that one day he would wake up and be willing to compromise on things or sacrifice things, the way i did for him. the way i gave up my entire life to move here and be with him and wait on him hand and foot and revolve my life around trying to make him happy (when ultimately i never could, no matter how hard i tried).

it is weird how you can feel like you need someone so badly when they are so completely terrible for you. i mean, our relationship was going nowhere. we had no sex life, he didn’t ever want to get married, he didn’t ever want to have kids. if he could have it his way, he would stay living in this apartment forever, working at an unstable job, and doing nothing but playing video games on his days off. how i could ever find that attractive, i don’t know. that does not appeal to me at all—living in that in between childhood and adulthood forever thing he has got going on, is not something i wanted to be caught in forever. he is 6 years older than me, but i always felt like i was his mother, because he always acted like a child.

but still, i find myself heartbroken. still i find myself crying at the smallest things. still i find myself waking up to an empty space in my bed that he used to fill, and wonder if that void will ever disappear. wonder if there is anything that can replace the emptiness he left me with. i have accepted the fact that we will never be together again, and i wouldn’t want to be. i wouldn’t want to be with someone again who never loved me and never wanted a future with me. but how do i get over the empty spaces he has left in my life?? how do i stop crying every morning when i wake up alone and realize it’s gonna be that way for a very long time? how do i find my way out of this dark hole i am in, when i can’t even tell which way is up???

i just don’t know how to get over that. i gave everything i had to him. i moved 1300 miles, away from all my family and friends, to be with him. i gave him my virginity. i gave him so many of my “firsts.” i gave him unconditional love and understanding, something that was never returned to me. how do i get it back?? how do i get my life back? how do i feel normal again when all i feel is completely isolated and broken?

This morning I had a little chat with my ex.  i’ve had a lot of time to think about this, so i thought it was a good time to tell him exactly what i know to be the truth.  in a very calm and reasonable voice, without getting upset (which is something that has taken me awhile to get to), i told him exactly what i thought about him.  

i told him that over the past month i have realized that he had never really loved me and that the only reason he wanted to be with me was so that he wouldn’t be alone.  i realized that for four years as he told me “i love you” every day, it was not so much of a caring gesture as it was him trying to convince himself to love me, because he didn’t think anyone else would love him.  i told him he had been doing this to girls his whole life.  his ex before me, who was my friend, and who he treated exactly the same as he treated me.  and i am sure the ex’s before that, though i did not know them so i can’t say.  i am willing to bet that with each one of us, he treated us exactly the same, and he never loved any of us.  because it is impossible to love someone, if you don’t even know who you are as a person.  

it is impossible to love someone when you can’t even make simple goals for yourself like graduating high school, getting a job that means something to you, planning for the future, wanting to have a family someday.  when you don’t want those things and don’t even want to think about them, it is impossible to love someone, because you don’t even know who YOU are as a person.  you can’t say that you know you want to be with a person forever when you don’t even know what forever means to you.  i have always known what i’ve wanted to do and what i have wanted to accomplish with my life. i have always been focused and determined, and what has kept me going through 22 years of depression, is knowing that i have a goal in mind.  knowing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

people often use the cliche “no one will love you until you can love yourself.” my brother has told me this countless times, and i believed it for much of my life. i’ve dated a lot of jerks, a lot of people who i knew in my heart were no good for me, but i didn’t think i deserved better than how they treated me.  i have struggled with the concept of “loving myself” for my whole life.  and i have come to the conclusion that i think everyone falls victim to self-loathing and self-consciousness.  we all have things about ourselves that we wish we could change.  but i think loving yourself is knowing what you need in life to survive, and not ignoring it.  

for me, it was pursuing my education, and working towards my goal of becoming a counselor. and it was being with a man i loved for four years, because i thought it would lead to the future i wanted—2 kids, a house with a yard, a 401k, happily ever after shit.  when he left me, i thought that this meant i could no longer have my future. here i have invested four years of my life with this man, because i thought he was the answer to getting me towards my goals.  i thought we would share our lives together, and when he ended things, i thought that was the end of me.  but it wasn’t, and it’s not. 

it’s not the end for me, because i realized that no one can take away my dreams.  sure, we will never be married now. we will never have kids, the house with a yard, the 401k, happily ever after.  but just because it couldn’t happen with him, doesn’t mean it can’t happen with someone else.  i thought that if i couldn’t be with him that i couldn’t be.  but i just have to keep working towards my goals.  i just have to keep remembering that there IS a light at the end of the tunnel.  i have to keep reminding myself every single day that there will always be people out there trying to get in the way of my dreams, but it is my duty to work around them.

that’s not to say that i won’t still have my bad days.  that’s not to say that there won’t be days when i cry myself to sleep thinking of the life we could have had.  that’s not to say that it isn’t going to hurt me when i see him with other women.  that’s not to say that i wont still wish i was dead whenever i think about the four years i spent loving someone who never loved me back.

but i love myself enough now to remember what i want in life, and to know that all the things i’ve dreamed of can still happen, even without him.  when someone you love very much tells you they don’t want to be with you anymore, it is earth shattering.  but there is nothing you can do to keep the world from spinning.  the world will keep moving with or without you.  no one else can tell you what to do with your life.  no one else can decide what your goals should be.  it is something that you need to figure out on your own.  

it’s something you should figure out before you enter a serious relationship with someone again.

in the night it gets darker
than i ever thought it could
because you left me all alone
and i never thought you would

out of all the people in the world
i picked you out of the stack
i guess it was just foolishness
to think you loved me back

and somedays i wake up
and wonder why i am even here
when you feel nothing for me
after so many years

and somedays i wake up
and can’t get out of bed
thinking of all the forever plans
you put into my head

one day i won’t wake up
and i’ll be much happier dead
the only thing that is forever
is nothing that you said

the only thing i think about
is the pain that i feel now
i can’t apologize for who i am
i wouldn’t even know how

go on with your alligator tears
and play the victim of this game
you’ll find some other woman
and treat her exactly the same

you’ll never be happy
because you push real love away
we could have been happy
but you didn’t want to stay

one day you’ll wake up
and want to take it all back
but right now, regret
is something that you lack

i promise you this
you’ll never find a love like me
who will put up with your games
and still love you unconditionally

i promise you that
i am giving up on you now
i really am trying my best
i just don’t know how.

My peace and quiet was stolen from me
When I was looking with calm affection
You were searching out my imperfections

What wasted unconditional love
On somebody who doesn’t believe in the stuff.

Nobody sees when you are lying in your bed
And I wanna crawl in with you
But I cry instead
I want your warm, but it will only make
Me colder when it’s over,
So I can’t tonight, baby
No, not “baby” anymore - if I need you
I’ll just use your simple name
Only kisses on the cheek from now on
And in a little while, we’ll only have to wave.

drowsybears:

Why do people throw around the word forever (and love) when in the end it means nothing