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Of
all the terrible things I saw as possibilities in my future, being cheated on
was never one of them. I always figured I wasn't attractive enough to have to
worry about cads who couldn't keep it in their pants – anyone who wanted to be
with me would, by necessity, be too good a person to cheat. He would be with me because he truly loved
who I was, and he would never want to (or be able to) do anything to hurt me
that badly.
Obviously,
I was wrong. Either about the caliber of
man who would seriously date me or about how people’s intentions control their
actions, or both. Whichever I was so
incorrect about, the facts are now clear: I’m not immune. And it’s partly the shock of learning this
that has made it so hard for me to face what’s happened and move on.
I
have whole weeks (like last week) where I’m mostly okay. I go on dates, act whole and human, then come
home and text with my ex and get sad, but then I go to bed and I’m still mostly
okay. And then there are weeks like this
one – weeks where I wake up with a heaviness in my chest, and the minute I try
to pretend it’s not there (usually when my awkward/brusque/emotionally stunted
parents start talking to me as if my life hasn’t been shattered and I should be
interested in the same mundane logistics that run their lives) I fall
apart. Then I go and cry in my bedroom,
into a pillow (see above under emotionally stunted housemates), until I can’t
breathe anymore, then I write the same broken-record pain in my journal, get
dressed, and head off to my part-time job, where again I have to pretend to be
normal. When I get back from that I cry
again in my room, and usually send texts and emails to the man who broke my
heart, in some misguided attempt to gain clarity or understanding or some sense
that he ‘gets’ what he’s done to me.
That usually fails. I have
dinner, with friends if I’m lucky, and act human for another couple of hours,
then it’s bed, more tears, more journaling, and hopefully at least a little
sleep (not much, and not great quality if my TMJ is any indication).
Then
I wake up and do it all over again.
This
week has been absolutely brutal. I’ve
spent much of every day doubled over, wracked with sobs. I’ve lost all interest in dating, which was
kind of what kept me going and gave me a purpose last week, and I’m starting to
feel certain that living with my parents is actually making me more depressed. I’ve tried everything: reaching out to
friends, getting angry instead of sad, making up errands to get me out of the
house – but none of it has worked for long. I even bit the bullet and contacted a
therapist, but after a brief email exchange she never got back to me and now I just
feel rejected by her as well! Oh, and I’ve
been doing a bit of book promo, which if course means I’m being harassed for
photos, which meant I spent an hour this morning combing through photos of the
past year of my life – our engagement weekend in Paris, the trip I took us
on to York to reconnect when I felt him pulling away, the dinner I took him out
to as a celebration of him finally becoming a doctor after seven years of study
– and I still didn’t come up with the ‘right’ kind of pics for the
magazine so now I have to do a fucking photo shoot this weekend with one of my
friends behind the camera.
I
feel like everything good in my life has completely dissolved – my
relationship, my career plans, my support system, my family life – and now
I’m adrift, with no idea which way to swim even if I could muster up the
courage. Some days I can almost believe
it’ll be okay, if only because it has to be or else it has to end, but this
week especially I’m convinced I’ll never feel normal again, much less happy,
and I’ll never find a job and move out and regain my independence, much less
find someone new to date who will make me half as happy as my ex did for so
long before he became a selfish monster and destroyed everything he’d taught me
to rely on.
I just
hope things start to get better soon, because another week like this might do
me in.
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