When you left I started sleeping on your side of the bed; not because I missed you, but because I wanted to reclaim the space as mine.
When you left I felt worse about the sheer relief of not having to worry about where you were than I did of the space you left behind. The waiting up for a phone call to come and collect you from some unknown train station or a call from an Uber driver that 'a very drunk man had left his phone in my cab' (I thought you were in London for a 'business meeting'?).
I felt worse about relishing in the feeling of calm that replaced the fear of who you were with when you disappeared for days on end. It took you two years to become my friend on Facebook and even more time to declare to the world that I was your girlfriend; the unfriending after I changed my number didn't even touch the sides because of this. The voicemails that you refused to open in front of me or the messages from women that you tried to hide. A sexual harassment case in your new job; if you weren't any part of it, then why were you involved in the case? I started to have anxiety and panic attacks for the first time in my life; IBS and a stomach Ulcer soon came after. My own body seemed to be sending up SOS messages that I was resolute on ignoring.
I felt worse about feeling content in the silence than not missing moving through the day like a game of Grandmother's footsteps to avoid the constant nit-picking and the impossible hoops that you wanted me to jump through. The pace slowed down but ironically, more got done. The constant need for escalation where the smallest things became a life or death situation, the discord that hung in the air like mustard gas and the moaning that was more regular and predictable than a call to prayer.
I felt worse that I was glad that I didn’t have to worry about how many teeth you would loose from this drunken binge, if I’d have to scrub your sick from the interior of the car or pander to you after a marathon that you'd not trained for and hurt your legs, whilst you laid in bed as I did your washing and cooked for you from food that I’d bought. I no longer had to stomach being told that I had to let you do what you wanted in order to keep you.
I felt worse about the excitement of to going to events for the first time without leaving in tears than I did not having you there with me. Walking in front of me into weddings, disappearing and being found chatting up other women and other people's wives staying with me because you had vanished into thin air. Calling my aunt up from the middle of the Amazon jungle after you insisted on going out drinking with the tour guide and left myself and the hotel staff, one of whom slept on the rug in the lobby, up all night worrying about your safety. Going to festivals together and your older friends and their girlfriends having to look after me after you vanished into the night to do drugs and party with a little known band at age 36.
All the while you were sure to tell everyone how important and dynamic you were, making 'business deals' but never keeping a job. Having many friends but only when the mood suited you - a different hat for every occasion. Having a loving family but having to be prompted or reminded of their important days, and turning up to see them after months or even years, and only talking about how tired you were or how long a drive it was before you even began to ask them how they were. Never asking anyone questions. Banging on and on about 'building for our future' but loosing $35,000 on Bitcoin and not saving a single penny of any wage from the 4 jobs you had in two years . Even until the last day that I saw you, there was never any 'building foundations for a future'; just a lie that you told yourself to justify a means to an ends.
A world of contradictions, instability and clandestine acts.
Never judge a book by its dust cover, it hides a multitude of sins; be sure to check the reviews before you commit yourself to its’ chapters.
I made the mistake of telling you my own financial situation in an attempt to abate the never ending anger,
feeling hard done by and grass is greener syndrome; to find some stability and try to display my intent. By then I felt so small, useless and anxious, committed to being a lighthouse in your internal storm, that I couldn't loose you because who else would want me.
I wanted to give you everything, but the truth is that I needed to give that to myself.
We found a house that you liked, and then I found out that I was pregnant.
When I told you without missing a beat you went straight on your phone to find the nearest abortion clinic and asked how fast it could be sorted. 3 years of my life devoted to you building a world and companionship together, and yet all you cared about was bricks and mortar and the relentless pursuit for unattainable ‘freedom’.
The fact that whilst I was laid surrounded by strangers having an invasive probe scan, you were more interested in the deposit being transferred and were sure to bring your satchel full of important documents to ensure that it was. I remember looking at it leaning against the wall as a reminder of intent and the impending heated conversations that I was too tired to fight against. That should've been the moment that I realised, it wasn't me. It was never me.
The answer should've been: 'forget the house, there's plenty more in the sea..you take your time to heal and we'll start again together'.
In fact we should never have got to that point.
You later justified this as 'Pragmatism', after laughing at me for telling you how much it hurt.
An ugly word that covers up even uglier crimes.
When I had the abortion and was laid in our bed screaming in pain, you went out and got a haircut; and of corse, had a business call. Got to keep up appearances.
I remember the nurse said to me ‘You don’t have to do this’, my response was ‘There’s no other choice’.
Two days later you left on yet another course that could've been rearranged, and when you returned you told me that you hadn't wanted to come home because 'I made it a horrible environment'. As I laid in our bed in a house that I had rented for us, miles away from anyone I knew because it was convenient for your work, bleeding more than I’d ever done in my life and trying to get my head around the fact that the man I loved would rather me go through terrible physical and emotional pain than have the responsibility of 'a child screaming at the bottom of the bed', doubt started to grow like dry rot.
In the wake of a breakup memories tend to present themselves like leaves falling off a tree; tiny moments that were overlooked at the time but perhaps were warning from a higher power. On the 4th date you asked if I wanted to get a house together and when I expressed concern that this was too soon and what would happen if we broke up, your response was that it would be ‘no hard feelings and we’d go our separate ways’, presumably with half each of anything that we’d created together.
You took volatile job after volatile job, insisting that you had to be abroad in order to 'reach your potential' and it was 'the only way you could make money'. I grew tired and worn with the constant need for change; i’m all for progression and momentum, but sometimes you need to stop and dig your toes into the earth beneath you to feel satisfaction in the moment, and ask yourself what you are trying to prove and to whom.
There wasn’t one area within the relationship that I felt satisfied or safe; the physical side was probably the most crushing of all, displaying very early on an inkling that your mind was elsewhere – and one that didn’t improve as the years turned.
Another traumatic event brought us back together and again, I opened myself up to you and a future. I started to look to lay down roots, and suddenly for the first time in 4 years you flirted with the idea of marriage. I should've handled this better, I know I should, but no matter how much you buttered my burnt edges with your soft charm and promises, the internal doubt and fear couldn’t be silenced.
The question remains; did you want me for me, or what I could give you?
If you read this back, is it a surprise that I stopped everything going forward in its tracks?
Why would I give anything to a man who wouldn't even let me eat at the same table as him; content to watch me hoover his crumbs off the floor whilst gazing up at him doe -eyed, as he sat on his gilded pedestal made from the broken backbones of the people he’d steamrolled to get there.
It took a full mental breakdown for me to finally start living, and not just existing.
Ironic because by that point I didn’t want to live as I was; but perhaps you need to look that square in the eyes before you can be reborn as the person you are meant to be.
This was coupled with a year of torture from you; not being able to get your head around the fact that I had been so sick the doctor had drugged me up to repair my brain to avoid any more periods of physcosis or amnesia. The post-abortion scenario all over again.
You'd wake me up in the middle of the night to remind me how worthless I was and to devalue my progress. I didn’t recognise myself, a walking husk with eyebags like moon craters. All I wanted was to sleep in peace and regrow. When I saw my doctor recently, to get the all clear on my mental health, she told me that the only times that i'd rung the mental health helpline during the recovery period had been because of discord within my relationship and the pressure that I felt I was under to push myself into things.
During this time, whilst being very unwell, I organized a holiday to Cornwall, a weekend trip to a high-end safari park, multiple meals out, day trips and yet, in your eyes it wasn't enough - but you never matched it, not even once.
By your own admission, you wanted ‘tangible assets’; another ugly turn of phrase that drips with metallic coldness.
I wonder now as I think back to that fourth date, if I had relented and provided you with those 'tangible assets' and we had got married - how long would it have been before you divorced me and asked for half? The spoils of war. I'll never forget that you asked me to show you my bank account and for the first time in our relationship, I put down a boundary. In your break-up speech you also brought up my lack of transparency with money. Money had never been a driver or a push point for me, but like many other things you projected your fixation onto me like a yoke weighed down with rocks. How can you demand transparency in one area, but not be willing to match it in another?
It’s also funny how many older women told me throughout the relationship that every woman should have a ‘running away fund’; when women stand together and share their knowledge it scares men, because it’s a powerful all seeing force like being in the eye of a tornado. There’s a reason why ‘troublemaking women’ were rounded up in the 1900’s and burnt at the stake, or made to wear ‘silencing devices’; because they can smell bullshit at a hundred yards.
I remember asking you, or rather begging you, to see me as I was and understand why I was carrying such pain. I was a great girlfriend, until I couldn’t be anymore.
I’m glad you couldn’t see me as I was again, because I couldn’t be that person anymore.
Instead of holding space for me, instead of trying to understand and instead of seeing that it could be a cornerstone to build something much stronger, you saw my illness as an inconvenience and something which could be minimized by comparing it to other people as proof that it was fictitious; people who would’ve broken much sooner, with much less.
When I think back to the proverbial ‘water under the bridge’ within the relationship, the starkest difference was that any hurt or discord that I caused had been during and after I was clinically diagnosed, and for which I took full accountability for as and when I was mentally able to; I spent months working my arse off to try to rebuild trust and give you space to do things that would feed your soul (and ego).
The pain you caused, you did it all whilst you were normal.
It seems almost bittersweet to write that part of the reason that I got so sick was undoubtedly because of you, yet you insisted that you were the catalyst for me getting better. I’d disagree wholeheartedly with that. What made me get better was a complete combustion of the person that I was and a determination to then claw myself out of the ashes of that.
When I started to focus on my career for the first time in four years, a whole new world opened up to me.
I received praise for my work from strangers and our start up was nominated for awards, this led to other projects and I started to really shine; I became the person who 13 year old me needed.The vines of jealousy and disgust that you projected on to me still ensured that my own pedestal never quite reached the same height as yours.
You also expressed your disgust at how many hours I was working on this start up and not giving to the relationship; a statement that is undoubtedly hypocrisy in the highest order, given how you would disappear for two weeks at a time for your own work and return, expecting me to have a clear schedule. Something that I never complained about.
At the launch of my project I remember you took every opportunity to belittle and nullify the product. During my speech in front of hundreds of people you stood with your arms folded in the corner.
A few days later I remember overhearing your conversation with a family member, again nullifying my achievements to elevate your own. You spent the next few weeks badgering me to quit the project.
The narrative that you told to people during the last six months of our relationship was a web that was spun to villainize me and glorify you; it missed out all the important parts to our story together and was shouted out to any ear that was willing to listen like a poor-man's town Cryer.
I laugh now when I catch snippets of it and imagine you creating a whole new persona for yourself; the prince who rescued the damsel from the tower that he built for her, making sure that everyone is watching the whole time.
I learnt a long time ago that history isn't just written by the victors, but those with the loudest voices and most time on their hands. I'm happy to be the villain in your story if it helps you sleep at night.
Even on the day you broke up with me, I still would've followed you to the moon if you had asked; not because it was right or that I even really wanted to, but because I was so well trained that i'd still be scrubbing off your skid marks in Timbuktu if yo had insisted it.
But thankfully you didn’t; because you already had someone new lined up to have that honourable job.
During your self - righteous and self - serving breakup speech about how you were 'so driven and designed to travel the world' and three days of disappearing for phone calls late at night whilst still sleeping in our bed and eating meals that I'd cooked, the mask had completely slipped; your eyes were as black as your insides when you told me that you didn't love me and we'd not been in a relationship for a year, despite telling me the complete opposite only two weeks earlier.
You insisted on waiting for an hour after you broke up with me for the post to arrive; you also took three days to do it, presumably waiting for your safety net to reach full tension before you jumped. Torturing me until the very last minute and determined to cause as much damage as possible on your way out.
My well trained mouth offered up platitudes and reasons to stay together, but my head and heart knew full well by then that I could exist without you; in fact not just exist, but thrive.
I'm fairly certain that in the aftermath you will have put on a show about how wonderful and free you felt without me hanging from you like a ball and chain to anyone who would listen; I’m sure it was met with masculine bravado and knowing looks from the people who had seen us together and knew even the tiny snippets of our life.
There was nothing to loose, because you never gave me anything in the first place. You were never met with any resistance from me whatsoever whenever you wanted to go abroad, do yet another course or follow a new whim; not because I had no choice (as you suggested) but because I wanted to see you thrive.
You were, are and I'm sure will continue to be, as free and unchanged as you were on the first day that we met. I however, should thankyou, because you gave me back my freedom and forced me to love myself in the process.
Now my dogs and I run bare foot along the beaches that your berated me on, cover ourselves in sand and fill our pockets with the rocks and driftwood that you couldn't stand to have in the car. We swim in the seas that you made us wear life jackets in and have picnics on the shoreline without time limits, staying long enough to watch the sunset and walk back in the dark without head torches. We visit the coffee shops that you insisted the dogs sat in for hours on end to 'learn to behave' and we get free puppicinos from the owners whilst eating pastries and getting covered in the crumbs. We walk round the farmer's markets and share stories with normal people who have nothing to offer us except their time. We travel to the places that I was scared to go to in case you told me that it was proof that I was well enough to re-join the triathlon of demands that you had prepared for me. I see my books in bookshops and writing in magazines and feel no shame in following my dreams.
And finally, on the first night I spent with someone else, I realised very quickly and many times over that it's never been me that's the problem; it's 100% you.
Just like that space in the bed, I am reclaiming all of these as mine.