A few weeks ago, I met my ex fiancé after work. The night before, I told him I was dating my roommate.
Killer opening line, right?
“Wheyo Linds, where
ya been?”
Then, BAM: open with a doozy one-liner.
Actually, more of like a “wait WTF. Didn’t she JUST get
engaged? Didn’t I recently like that picture on Instagram? Who is this chick –
a bachelorette contestant?”
To confirm: yes, there was an engagement in March. It ended in
May. I’m now dating my roommate.
And no, I will not apply for The Bachelor.
More of that later.
Anyway. I meet him; outside on a restaurant patio near our
old place (in retrospect: why do exes always seem to meet at the places that
are sure to pay homage to their past?)
As I approach him, my shoulders corner.
Hey, he says, wearing that straw hat that used to hang on
the coat rack beside our front door.
I feel something akin to betrayal when I notice it. There he
is: wearing the same hat.
Every day, waking up on the left side of the bed – still choosing clothes I detest.
Being so… him.
The familiarity of the hat pinches me, and I want it to feel
personal, even if it’s not.
Hi, I say. But the way it comes out matches my stance.
What’s with the slinking? He smiles. You don’t have to slink.
I nod. And we hug.
When we sit, across from one another, I comment on his
braid: new look?
A little girl from his nonprofit showed him how to French
braid, he says. I grin, mostly because that seems like an answer I could’ve concluded
on my own.
You don’t stop knowing someone because you leave them, do you? So, I suppose I’m destined to forever ask: what do you do when you know the moles of another – and it’s no longer relevant?
What do you do with all the seemingly useless information of
a human?
I can’t forget the intricacies of this person – and yet we
are meant to carry on, like we didn’t invest all of that time. As though knowing
him is a past hobby, like the Christmas toboggan I (shit) knitted once, and
discarded later – with the Thursday Recycling.
When, forever, I’ll know that this man – one of billions – twirls his hair, in specific patterns, when he’s idle.
Sleeps with his left hand under the pillow.
Sobbed into my shoulder & left tear marks down my favorite
silk shirt.
Howled at the moon, alongside me one night, on the side of a
Colorado highway.
And continues to wear Calvin Klein boxer underwear, with holes, from 2004.
I digress.
At some point, when the pleasantries grow painfully superficial (how are your parents? He asks. Do you really care? I smirk. No, he says. But I do care how you are with them.) and the waiter takes our order (IPA, he says. That triple X one. Before your frisbee game? I question. What are you my mom? He says) he asks the inevitable:
Are you giving yourself the space to grow from all
this? Are you eating well?
To the first question, I scoff. “Knew that was coming.”
To the second: “I wish you didn’t feel you have to ask.”
He moves back to the first:
Of course you knew it was coming, he deadpans. You gave
yourself – what – 8 minutes before doing exactly what you said you ‘always’ do?
He mocks with his fingers, and I glare.
Seriously Linds, you started dating him not even two… – he puts his hand up. Actually, I don’t want to know.
I look away.
I’ve found over the years: there’s a difference between
ignorantly proclaiming to ‘not give a shit about what people think’ – and
valuing perspective of the peoples who have taken great strides to know you.
And despite our engagement ending, and the mecca of reasons
that led to that, it doesn’t negate that this human knows me. At least some
version of me, as he will always know me, then.
I value his perspective.
I just scoff because I’m defensive, and, ego.
When I don’t say anything, he can’t help but push:
How did it happen? Was he just waiting for us to end, lurking in the shadows?
I ask him “Do you really want to know all of that?”
No, he says, agreeably. I don’t. I can connect the dots.
It happened, I offer. Neither of us looking for it.
But, of course, that is textbook response.
And nothing is actually that effort-less.
He doesn’t even have to look at me before I throw up my
hands in defeat.
I have a tendency to date without pause.
If you’ve read my blog, you may already know – or have picked up on that. I used to take some twisted pride in it. Now, it seems predictable.
So when I have nothing left to offer the conversation, he
looks at me:
“All I care about: are you just giving yourself the respect to not know what you want? Because it’s OK to not know. I wish, in retrospect, I had said that to you more often. I fucked up not seeing you for who you are right now.”
This was an overlying issue in our relationship: knowing what I wanted. And it stings me, as he says it – in that way that people can bite, and all you can do is grimace.
My ex is a calculating man. He is as sure of himself as he
is of his day. When he wants something, he goes for it, and he doesn’t bother
to wonder if the other path would’ve been better.
For someone like me, rarely sure of what I want for breakfast, our dynamic made communicating hard. I found his decision-making off putting, if not arrogant at times (OH YOU THINK YOUR WAY IS THE BEST WAY. WELL LOOK OVER THERE YOU ARROGANT ASS, THERE’S A MILLION OTHER WAYS TO BE!)
I also found it comforting. When we met a couple years ago I
had no idea what the hell I wanted out of a partnership – or my future – but
wracked with guilt and late 20s pressure, I dismissed the feelings and forged
ahead.
My friends were marrying. Some were having kids. We had ‘calmed down’ in the sense that we were all moving towards something, this big ole Millennial crockpot American dream with the two kids and a driveway. Careers with a window office. Start ups that were finally lucrative. My ‘travel’ friends were starting to seed routes again if not for the occasional Instagram photography trip and my Facebook feed flooded with pictures of couples standing in front of “SOLD” house signs.
I was attending bachelorette parties every month.
In retrospect, the truth is I don’t think my ex nor I were sure of all that commitment and future when we met – but I certainly didn’t mention it, and on we forged ahead towards some version of this millennial ‘settling down’.
In retrospect, I’ve asked him why I appear to be the one
choice he made that didn’t make absolute sense.
I wanted you, and I decided that. So whatever you wanted – I wanted, he said blankly. If you wanted the kids, I wanted the kids.
How easy for you, I mused.
In the final months, every choice we made felt like cement, engagement, house-hunting (I broke down one day: I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE BOULDER JUST TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD A PERMANENT MORTGAGE. I WANT TO KEEP RENTING), joint bank statements, and in turn I unraveled – ping ponging between freedom and the commitment I’d kept projecting I wanted:
Van life one day, a kid the next, a kid in a van the next, a
bigger career the next week –a home with a garden the next. A 6-month trek to
El Camino de Santiago. WAIT. I HAVEN’T LIVED IN ASIA YET. WAIT. MY EGGS ARE
DYING.
I wanted a partner that “made the dough” but not “too much”
because then they’d be an asshole. Or, like, a Koch brother. And I didn’t want
that. But, while Jack on Titanic was exhilarating in the 90s, I also now firmly
believe that Rose would’ve made it like 10 minutes off that ship before her
privileged ass wondered what the fuck she was doing.
Money was a huge issue. I’d be trying to sugarcoat myself if I said otherwise. I was worried that I’d be locked into paying a significant amount more for the two of us forever – and in turn it would strangle us from doing anything, or strangle me from writing because I’d be too wrapped up in climbing a 9-5 corporate ladder to make more money. He (idealistically, in my opinion) always believed we’d have all we needed. But, how easy I thought, to not worry about needing – when you had a partner who made enough for both.
I never told him these things directly. Instead, I left my feelings in the shadows of every argument, in the disagreements on almond or soy milk, and this restaurant or that. (Can’t we go somewhere different? I’d bemoan.)
In response, my ex dug his heels into his decisions, possibly
out of spite, and more likely out of confusion.
And in my inability to communicate I resented the shit out of him, and it began to spill.
I wanted him to be different, to be more financially stable, less rigid, less so fucking sure of himself, to be less… him. All of the qualities I once admired – his giving spirit, his passion for his work, his steadfastness – grew to feel like anchors. And when he proposed, I couldn’t look the other way.
What were you expecting, he yelled one night. I have been
who I am since you met me.
I don’t know, I whispered. And I still don’t.
Maybe you can have it all – but that is something I’m still very
unclear about, and not sure, it seems, I’d want even if I had it.
Nick Hornby said it best in High Fidelity:
“Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as mere consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.”
^ Truer words never spoken about you, my best friend mused, when reading this post draft.
I look at my ex the night we meet up, sitting across from me, and predictably my eyes soften, as they do.
In his earnestness I can’t help but question:
Why is it that I seem to glorify and appreciate everything – and everyone – once its gone?
It seems, still, that I’m very good at the past. And it’s
the present I have trouble understanding.
“And your food,” he asks, when we agree that we don’t want
to talk about the dating anymore.
It’s better, I say. I recorrected, for lack of better
wording.
He nods. I was probably too critical of you about that, too.
You were, I agree. But some things you had a right to be critical about – and this is one.
I lost weight initially when we split. To this day, it still
feels like the most desirable thing to do, and I fall into it easily.
Something uncomfortable happens? Don’t talk about it. Starve.
How do I express pain? Bones.
How do I show that I care, or that I’m hurting? Self-destruct.
It’s an interesting pattern.
And by interesting, I mean not at all interesting and
monotonously routine.
I started down that path, when we split, as I do.
I don’t know what it is I’m trying to prove when I do it
either.
All that therapy, and I still don’t really know what I’m
trying to get out of all of it.
Do I somehow equate self-destruction to caring?
Did I watch too many Rom Coms where someone let their life go to shit when their partner left? And this is my like movie scene destructive breakdown scene?
Do I rely on it when my life changes, because I’m trying to
control what I can? Or is that just cliché?
I don’t really know.
But it’s the ‘known’ choice in my patterns. To react,
instead of speak.
And at the end of the day, often we are just patterns of
behavior. Easily profiled, it seems, by a Criminal Minds behavioral analyst.
So, there I am, losing weight when we split. Rejecting food
while we still lived together (because of course we continued to live together
for a month or so. Bc #leases…. And also, I have a tendency to draw out days,
when I see them reaching their end because #indecisive.)
It was amicable– the ‘final days’ we’ll call them.
Everything came out, over itself, and it never could’ve happened without his
impossible directness and unwavering, steadfast ability to take emotion out of
conversation and dissect how point A got to point B.
It was a casual dose of heartache and healing that makes you
wonder how different things had been had we just tried all of this disclosure
earlier.
And as I sat there, losing weight, late in the evenings in a
house that no longer felt like a home – but a stage for us to air our monologue
grievances:
I recognized that so many things might have been different,
had I allowed my uncertainty – my indecisiveness -to surface. Mostly, had I
allowed myself to exist in it instead of pushing it away as feelings that I
“shouldn’t have” at my age.
How different things might’ve been – had I had the voice to
own the discomfort of those feelings.
How tired I’ve grown – of airing out feelings online, but so
indirectly in real life.
There came a point in the whole thing – as the month went on
– and my awareness heightened.
And it surely surprises me still, as I write this.
I made a different choice:
And I stopped starving.
Shortly after we ended
Maybe there’s a secret key to recovery: wear yourself out
with your own bullshit long enough, and you’ll do something different.
(I’m joking.)
I used to think–and given the way my ex and I ended up,
maybe I still really do–that all relationships need the kind of ferocious push
that infatuation brings, just to get you started and to push you over the humps
of self-denial, anxiety, past pain, and Instagram-stalking obsession. And then,
when the energy from that push has gone and you realize that once again you’re back
in a relationship, flawed and endlessly (sometimes disappointingly) human, you
have to look around and see what you’ve got. And weigh whether it fits in with
the life you have now.
Sometimes it feels like it does, and sometimes you realize
it’s nothing more than a booty call bandaid – masking the same pain that you
know you’re gonna feel again at some point anyway.
Perhaps, in some far out way – anorexia isn’t all that
different. infatuating in the beginning every time, but inevitably you have to
look around and see what you’ve got. And weigh whether it fits in with the life
you have now.
Whatever it is, for the first time in my life, I can claim the smug entitlement that I left anorexia, and left her faster than I have in the past.
It seems, with eating, I learn still how easy it may always be to return to anorexia.
She is my boring, but familiar, coping mechanism.
I go to her, when I don’t want to speak.
I glorify her, when I’m uncomfortable and I don’t know how else
to be.
Perhaps I learn, this time around, that I rely on her – to
help voice unpleasant feelings I don’t have the words to say.
And I return to her, for instant gratification, when I don’t
know how to feel about myself, or where my life is going.
How interesting is that?
I still learn about myself – breaking up with her again.
As humans, one of our most difficult feats is choosing to be
conscious of the patterns we create that make us fundamentally fucked – and
then enduring the long, monotonous road of recreating said patterns.
I wish I could gloat that I’ve taken these newfound perspectives and implemented them as a new way of life.
That I’ve magically become an assertive woman, who embraces
her indecisiveness with grace and will never again use starvation as a tool.
But, what a phony way to wrap a big bow around this post and
call it reality.
I am still me, indecisive and scared of that indecisiveness.
I still live with anorexia, and feel antsy for her on the
days recovery seems like a boring task – with little way out.
I am in love with my new partner – in that easy way that new
love brings.
In the beginning, I glorified him, only to be reminded,
crushingly so, that he is human. And that all relationships, past their initial
jolt of ecstasy, bring as much happiness as the work you are willing to put
into them.
He is – laughably – equally a man of decisiveness. Wholly aware of who he is – and what he envisions for his path:
And of course I find that a partner with that quality still evokes
panic.
But I suppose, this time around, the only choice I have – is to tell him.
And though it’s uncomfortable, and squirmy, and instigates
difficult “are we doing the right thing?” conversations:
There is a comfort that settles in, amidst the disclosure.
A feeling that we are pushing ahead, into the waves of the
unknown – on the same lifeboat.
“You certainly have no problem being direct in this relationship,” he joked the other night.
And in a way, I feel pride as he says it.
I notice, with each disclosure and difficult conversation:
The feeling of panic – the compulsion to run:
It subsides, for however long.
And I can breathe again.
My best friend said to me once: buy the van if you want to,
Lindsey.
Buy the f*cking van and go on the road and travel around to every state and landmark you see –
But I promise, she whispered.
I promise you will still be no more free than you are right now until you own who you are, and what you want to be, regardless of what you think we all want for you:
How right I think she is. And how much I continue to learn
it.
I imagine we only ever really recover – when we choose the
discomfort of doing it differently, and speaking the ugly truths we bury so
deep.
Never knowing, of course, what it’ll all bring:
But willing to try all the same, if only to allow a new perspective to seed –
A bigger purpose to unfold –
And a chance to stay rooted to this fleeting, and so terribly confusing, yet bittersweet, life.
June Van Trip
