I was having a conversation with a friend tonight, and we were discussing how quickly things can change. It was more along the lines of I was talking and she was agreeing. I just started thinking about how bizarre it is how we can go from telling someone how much we care about them, sharing so much with them. Showing them a side of us we haven’t shared before… then one day we can just shut it all off. Move on in the blink of an eye. Have nothing left with the person except for the memory that remains in our mind. Whether we remember good times, bad times, or a combination of both, it really comes down to seeming as though we never cared about the person as we said we did, or vice versa.
It really is a shame, especially when, if you’re anything like me, you believe everything happens for a reason. You have a certain sense of hope, and faith in that belief system and try to convince yourself that that is the case, and that even though it could take you weeks, months, or years to figure out the reason – eventually you would realize it. I believe that people come in to our lives whether it is to benefit us, teach us a lesson, or for us to do one of those two things for them.
But why is it that it seems so difficult to find someone and for us to benefit each other? Sincerely compliment each other, care for each other, mean what we say about each other, and stay true to it. Commit to each other, and not wake up one day completely over one another.
It makes it very difficult to hold hope into thinking there is love that lasts for everyone. To judge based on experience, age, etc. is useless. Age has nothing to do with experience, and experience has nothing to do with capability to maintain a satisfactory relationship when you can do everything in your power to show someone you’re the one for them, tell them they deserve the world, compliment and support them, yet you can’t control how they feel, or ultimately influence their overall decision.
To say you care about someone is to say if things don’t work out, you haven’t moved on in a week. To care about someone is to say you know things aren’t always perfect, but if you care about them, you realize sometimes some people take longer than others to see the beauty there is in something that was right in front of them the entire time. To care about someone and truly wish to commit to a relationship with someone is to compromise – to understand and respect things that may make the other uncomfortable, and to respect and care about them enough to honor their wishes and feelings and know that if you care for them like you say you do, you wouldn’t put them in harms way or make them hurt over your actions and decisions.
I was always the one who ended things. But I saw it coming. I warned my partner that something was changing and that if we couldn’t take the time and do something, it would dissolve until there were no feelings left to hold onto. Nothing left to rebuild. That we were breaking down to the foundation and it wasn’t something we could rebuild. I’m a firm believer that communication is key, and that if you care for someone enough, then you just know you can’t allow it to be over. I didn’t do my best at expressing my feelings in the past. I wrote poetry, and sent flowers, and expressed my feelings through actions, and not always blunt words that would have been all that was necessary. I went above and beyond to prove how I felt without just allowing the words to come out. Ultimately I have found that tactic has done nothing but burn me in the end. Perhaps it is too late before I am able to bring myself to just say the words to explain how I feel. But for the first time I was broken up with and I still don’t really know why it hurt so much. It was a long distance relationship and I knew it was falling to pieces, but it hadn’t been talked about. It was just sudden. Simply… this isn’t going to work. After six months, not even the decency to tell me a reason or anything at all. That’s that. From that point I realized I didn’t always have the control I thought I held in the past. I realized how I had made other people feel, and I decided it was going to be my decision to do what I could to make myself as vulnerable, but to make sure it was someone deserving. Someone who would appreciate me showing them a side I had been hesitant to revealing before.
My next relationship started off different in other aspects. For the first time since my first girlfriend, I was interested in someone who lived less than an hour away. It was amazing. We could see each other whenever we wanted, it was a normal relationship. The only thing that wasn’t was the fact that we were everything a relationship is – without the title. I didn’t care. I thought as long as we were on the same page, and open about it, a monogamous relationship was fine to me without a title. I didn’t see what I was doing to myself though. For awhile it really didn’t matter to me. It didn’t matter to me until one day, after two months I got a phone call. I had been distant so she had backed off. That was the last thing I wanted. I cared about her so much and here I was, getting another one of those calls. I could feel my heart-break. I didn’t understand, I didn’t push the title, I was going with the flow, but deep down it was bothering me. I didn’t understand why a title was out of the question, but more than that, I didn’t understand why I cared as much as I did, but was too afraid to voice it. She told me we had turned into a relationship, and she told me from the beginning that wasn’t what she was looking for.
I don’t think you look for relationships, I think sometimes they just happen. About a month later one just happened… between her and someone else. This blew my mind even more. What was it that possibly made her ready for a relationship? Had I helped to get her past not being ready? In Sex and the City, Carrie says you have to get under someone to get over someone else. Is that what I had been? Is that what I needed to do? Because oh man, was I not over her. Two months went by and it was the holiday season (Don’t ever break up with someone a week before Christmas. Just stick it out. It’s painful) I spent the holiday’s with family and friends but something was missing. For the first time, I was unable to just jump back in the game. I wanted to. I wanted to move on and be happy, and have someone who treated me the way I treated them. I just couldn’t bring myself to get over her. We had shared so much, and despite what she had said, I couldn’t help but remember what she asked me when we first started talking: we were texting and she said ‘are you a fight or a flight?’ I sent back ‘if you’re a flight, I’m a fight. No questions asked.’ I held true to that, even though I typically would just bounce back and be myself. My friends could tell I was miserable. I wanted to get past it. We decided we should be friends, because ultimately, we did have great communication. So she would call me, whenever her girlfriend would fuck up and I would be there for her. The things she would tell me would make me want to track this girl down and shake her so she would realize what she had. I would do everything I could to stay strong so she wouldn’t know it affected me as much as it did. But overall I told her if she wasn’t happy, she needed to do what would make her happy. If I couldn’t make her happy, she at least needed to be with someone who treated her with respect, and was there for her like I wanted to be. This girl didn’t deserve her. Even though she broke my heart, she still deserved the World. And she still does. We went from just talking on the phone about her girlfriend to deciding to hang out. As friends. And one night, as we stood in her kitchen and whispered so her roommate wouldn’t know I was there, because she hated me for some reason I still don’t understand, I pulled her into me and I told her she deserved the World. I told her if this girl couldn’t make her feel the way she deserved to feel inside and out, then she didn’t deserve her. She was completely blind to what an amazing person she had in her life. And I had been blind not to see that I needed to do something, anything not to let it go. But it was that point, in her kitchen, when our lips met for the first time in two months that I realized this girl who had blown her chance was really what both of us needed to see what we had had.
She left that girl and she told me she was ready to be with me, she was sorry for the pain she had caused me and that over the holiday’s I was on her mind and after we reinvented what we had over the next month, I officially asked her to be my girlfriend. I’m not one to go for round two, I’m actually a believer that if it doesn’t work the first time, there’s a reason, and chances are it won’t work the second time. But I could feel how much I cared about her, and I knew if I didn’t take this chance, I would wonder what may have happened had we been together again. It was amazing. Things were completely different, and I was ridiculously happy, and knew what I had, and what I felt was love. And she confessed to me she loved me but hadn’t wanted to tell me because she didn’t want me to feel like just because she said it I needed to say it back. I don’t really think either of us were good at expressing our feelings and just being completely vulnerable, after what we’d been through in the past. As our relationship went forward, we started to fall back where we were. There wasn’t anything left that I could do. I think we knew more about each other than anyone else. In fact, I don’t know if I’ll ever drive past a Tim Horton’s without thinking in the back of my mind ‘Medium coffee with two creams, three equals, and a shot of mint, with two plain TimBit’s (breakfast for the dog).’ Early May she told me I hadn’t been supportive of her recent accomplishment, but the truth is, I had no idea it meant as much as it did to her. Maybe I didn’t need to be told, maybe I should have just known, but when I found out after why the event was so important to her, all I wanted to do was turn the clock back 72 hours to be nothing but supportive and be waiting for her when she completed her goal to share the moment with her. Things ended that day, because I wasn’t. Because she needed someone more supportive. I don’t know if I will ever be able to believe that was the real reason, I think she’s a flight and I’m a fight and she wasn’t letting me fight anymore. I know after that we tried to have a friendship but it didn’t work out. She’s in a relationship with someone else now, and I can’t seem to find anyone who I care about as much as I think I should to enter into a relationship with them. I’m afraid I’ll just hurt them, and that I’m really just poisonous to relationships when it comes down to it.
I found a girl, we were spending everyday together. It was so weird to me to have someone who wanted to spend that much time with me, I was so used to fighting for time, and not at all used to being with someone who had every night to come over if I said the word, and I handled it like an idiot. It took me too long to realized how much I cared for her and how much she was what I wanted and when I came to the realization, she had moved past it and entered into a relationship with someone who didn’t pass her affection up.
The problem is; if you care like you say you do, if you’re as interested and committed as you say you are, how can you give up that easily. I didn’t. I fought. Relationship, after relationship, after relationship. Right now, there’s not much fight left in me. I know when I find the one worth fighting for, I’ll fight until I can’t anymore, and then I’ll give it one last push. And it’s going to be so worth the wait.
It’s the worst feeling in the world to feel your heart-break and not be able to do anything to stop it from cracking, to hear the words come out of someone who said they loved you tell you they can’t do it anymore.
But in the end, without the risk and the vulnerability, you never are opening up to the chance of finding the one who is worth it all.
