It's really been an entire year since I broke up with him now, and I still struggle to word how I feel about it, and struggling to move on. I'm just a ball of frustration and confusion about the whole thing. So much I can't understand... all the things that I had to leave up in the air... I'll make an honest attempt at giving you a bit of an overview of how I think I feel about it now, 14 months later. It's not gonna be comprehensive or line up perfectly with how he probably or maybe sees it, cause it can not. Try to not see it in terms of some kind of objective truth, but see it as my subjective truth. I don't even understand my own feelings, they don't make sense to me. But I feel like I should at least try to put it into words, cause it's been kind of a long time, and that oozing cloud of fermenting feelings within me is only getting uglier and nastier. So here's my attempt:
At the same time as I'm trying to figure out ways to learn how to be a better boyfriend myself, for whomever awaits me in the future, I also expect for that future boyfriend to not put blame on me for simply being myself. I'll make it clear: if you say you love me for who I am, fucking show it. And don't give me that crap about "unconditional love" when your love has more vague rules, terms and conditions than bloody youtube has! I still feel anger towards him, that much I know. But it's not all that I feel. I feel remorse, sadness, protection and a deep wish to understand what I cannot. I do not hate him, and never did and I never have. I don't even dislike him.
As best as I can possibly wrap my overly confused head around that past relationship I was in, now over a year after the breakup, I think we both unintentionally abused each other to the point of tearing each other to pieces. He talked about how he thought that could likely happen between us, and I don't think either of us really understood how right he ended up being about that, by the end of it. We really did tear each other apart.
He said I had been abusive, I read some time after our breakup, on one of his social media accounts, and I kept thinking that he had been abusive towards me. Neither of us could agree. And I'm not quick on calling him abusive just because I've said it felt like he was. It was merely a theory I had, not by far a conclusion. In retrospect, I think we both had good intentions for both ourselves and for each other, but that we both misinterpreted the other. I guess it really didn't help that we had both memories and wounds from having been in abusive relationships before we got together. And I think now, that it's likely that warped our senses of what actually happened between us. He recognosed signs of me being manipulative from his experiences with his ex. And I recognised signs of him being manipulative from my experiences with my ex. But we were both wrong, we just had completely different perspectives that both looked distorted from the other side. We were both scared and could not communicate, despite both trying to, very hard.
I'm not just saying this to sound unbiased or objective. I say it cause I think we clashed because we had similar experiences but very different perspectives. And that it seems now that we both felt attacked and invalidated by the other, but it made us react differently. I became defensive and tried to push him away from me, while he tried to talk to me and get closer. Of course he had the better and more mature reaction, but at the same time I can't blame myself for increasing my defenses when I had as clearly as I could told him that I was not in a state in which I could explain myself or be open and intimate about it. I felt skinless and needed an overall, and getting him closer hurt. I needed distance which I tried to explain but he kept trying to talk to me. Eventually I reached my breaking point and metaphorically shoved him away very hard, with my words. It was very cruel of me, but I also cannot think what else I could have possibly done at that point. It was my last resort that I reached, and it was an act of panic.
But I think I can also understand how very frustrated and hurt he must have felt, like maybe he thought I was being cruel, selfish and unreasonable, or I don't know what he felt cause at that point I could neither explain myself to him, nor understand what he tried to explain to me. It was as though I was deaf and talking in sign language, and he was blind and talking verbally. I wanted to put my hands in his and show him my words instead, but I didn't know how. I don't know how to show words through actions, that is a flaw of mine that I've always had. It's likely the asperger, but who knows. I more or less have underdeveloped body language and can't understand others' body language well. I can not properly learn it, I never did learn it. So all I have is my words, and I freak out when they fail me. Cause I have nothing else to lean back on. Cause then I fall with nothing to catch me. And that happened with him. I fell and had nothing to catch me.
Our communication failed miserably even though I know we both tried very hard and desperately to understand each other. We just couldn't manage to understand each other, no matter how hard we tried to. Perhaps my failure to use use and properly understand body language rendered us both vulnerable to only having our words to rely on, and we both fell with nothing to catch us. And also of course, only being able to use what was the second language for both of us as we didn't speak each other's native language, didn't exactly help either. Eventualy I broke it off and broke contact cause I started to see that we were tumbling down an abyss and we just kept weighing each other down. It felt like the only way we could even possibly have a chance at recovering as people, individuals, which was ultimately more important than trying to save the relationship, was to let go and close the door between us. I did that for both of our sakes, but mostly for his. And he calls me abusive.
Fucking hell. I messed up, yes. I messed up massively and I still don't have the right words to describe any of it. It doesn't help that the memory is fading either. But I know I had good intentions mixed with massive amounts of fear and frustration. I never attacked to harm, and never physically attacked at all. Only verbally to protect myself, and I only attacked as little as I possibly could, because I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't want to see him hurt, I didn't want to make him cry. But it happened anyway. For that I am not abusive. Just like he was not abusive for saying and doing things that I didn't understand and felt were backwards, cause he had good intentions too. I was the one of us who made the biggest, most harmful mistakes, but at least I have the fucking heart to not call him abusive for the ways he hurt me. I do not forgive him cause there's nothing to forgive. Because the harm wasn't intentional, it was accidental, and I don't need to forgive him for that. He's good by me. I'm not looking for forgiveness or even a friendship from him. I think it's best if we continue to stay away from each other. Because I don't want to end up accidentally hurting him again. But I'd appreciate it if he didn't spread lies about me, painting me as some kind of monster.
I'm still struggling to mentally process and move on from that time of my life. It's still spinning in my head and sometimes knocks things over in there. It didn't leave me unaffected, nor did it make me completely cold-hearted. But yes, the experiences and how I felt at that time eventually did lead to a switch in my personality in which some traits of who or how I am changed drastically. Practically over night. I became more focused on logic than emotion, more fact and science focused when talking to people than talking about how we feel. I lost a bunch of friends who didn't like the new me, and gained a bunch of friends who did. I started feeling things differently, became harder on myself for feeling "weak" and more encouraging of myself for feeling "strong". I got a lower level of empathy and a higher sense of self and what I value in life. I started liking life and being alive more than ever before, yet also felt a lot more frustrated with life. Started feeling a genuine self love and acceptance that I never had before. I started appreciating darker and more rough humour, and more self deprecating humour too. Became rougher myself, more thorny and sharp, yet also more grounded and appreciative of the simpler things in life. I started being more selfish and self-reliant, and less scared of other people or of being hurt. Could handle failure slightly better cause of having this very different perspective. I started planning my future more and got an interest for politics. I guess in more simple terms, I unintentionally switched focus on a lot of things cause something had warped and re-wired itself in my brain. It wasn't a choice, but just happened somehow, and I went with it.
And although I've always seen it as a positive change, not in terms of the change itself being better or worse than my past state, but in terms of it being a strong force in driving me forward in life instead of just dwelling and spinning stuck on the spot like I had before. But I need a healthy mix of both dwelling and moving forward. But the dwelling hasn't been going well lately. I don't understand my emotions as they are foreign to me since that change. They're all new and I'm not sure what they're trying to tell me at all. How I feel fear now, or how I feel love, or any emotion, feels very different from I felt the same labels of emotions 1,5 year ago. That also makes it more difficult for me to understand my past now, cause I've never been able to remember my feelings how they felt, and they're even more unreachable to me now cause I feel differently now. I had a change of personality and almost became a different person from it. But since I still recognise the core of myself and feel like I'm still me, I'd say it was more like I just got through a huge server upgrade and re-installation. Like I upgraded an old Windows 95 computer to Windows 10. Still the same computer, but operates differently and takes some getting used to.
I can't help but wonder why I got such a drastic change to my software though, almost literally over night. One that also has stuck with me ever since. I don't mind it staying, I like it better this way, but I wonder... was it that traumatic? Cause that kind of drastic reaction typically only happens to people who've gone through some kind of trauma, whether it be physical or emotional. And no, I do not think a relationship has to be abusive for it to have a very traumatic effect on someone. Or in this case me. It just being incredibly stormy can be enough, or at least that's my belief. And stormy, it most certainly was. It was a hurricane.
I think there's a lot of truth to the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" and I really did pave a road to hell and dragged him through it. But then so did he with me. And it felt like us staying together and trying harder just dug us deeper into hell. I feel a lot of anger, sadness and confusion about what happened between us. But I'm adamant about not putting more or less blame on either of us, cause I really don't think it was that simple or that it can be explained that way. Nor do I think it's helpful in terms of moving on. I see it from a completely different perspective. Which is to point out both of our flaws and our strengths and try to see it for what it was: a messed up relationship that hurt us both. A perspective that I think I could never explain to him in an understandable way, nor do I think I ever could. I do not think of him as somehow stupid for not having understood me, but that communication is a two-way street and I failed on my part probably as much as he failed on his. But what's still nagging at me is that I know it was a wise decision for me to leave him, despite how very unwise, harmful and immaturely I had acted up until that point.
I tried to tell him that while never giving up is generally a good idea, sometimes knowing when it's time to give up is the only thing you can do. And I know I knew that giving up was the better act than to keep trying at that point. But he lashed out on me for that too, and called me selfish for what was an altruistic decision, and that hurt a lot. Cause it really wasn't an easy decision either. It was a very difficult one for me to make. Probably the most difficult one of my life at that point. What I can tell from the reaction he had, I don't think he could understand what it was like for me to let go completely of him that I once loved and cared for a lot, because I realised that I needed to protect him from myself. Cause being called selfish for such a thing... that really dug the knife in deep.
No comments:
Post a Comment