I write a lot about anniversaries, specifically when things hit the one year (or yearly in general) mark, and trust that this little habit it isn't lost on me. I think I've always been a fan of being able to look at the past and observe what has changed. Me, the proponent of changes, big shocker I'd want to see how I have bettered... or worsened... with the passage of time. The funny thing is that it can be easy to get lost in the past, right? Lamenting on how things were instead of how they are?
Maybe that's the mark of someone that hasn't processed grief or trauma or whatever you want to call it; they still look back with a certain fondness to how it was, or maybe how it was supposed to be. So with today being June 6th, I look back to a year ago, and my first date with Andrew. I also write this, knowing that finally, it is the last time I will ever write about him.
I suppose it's fitting to write this now and round out a year of my life with a certain flourish that three months ago I didn't think would be possible. I have to admit that thinking about our first date... his crisp white button down and nervous smile so permanently engrained in my mind... it did take my breath away. You build an illusion and persona so completely in your mind that seeing it fleshed out, in so many ways better than you could have possibly imagined, it was just... something. We hugged, and then sat down, and not for one second did it cross my mind that I'd be sitting here writing about it in this regard.
That could be because I didn't think it would reach the point of hearts being broken... or it could be because I was so certain it would just work. But here I am, alone in bed (save for Sophia staring out the window), and I'm writing.
I think for me, the hardest part of a relationship ending is letting go of the idea of what it was supposed to be. Dropping the notion or idea of your "person" feels nearly impossible, because you know them, right? You know how they like their coffee, what foods to cheer them up, what jokes will get a bigger laugh. You know the right things to say and the right way to kiss, and when the mood strikes, you know the... other things as well. But then all of a sudden you don't. And if you're like me in this particular instance, at least, it is shoved so hard in your face that you never knew them that it just freezes you.
How could you have not? You took the verbal and visual and physical cues, you took them for their word... but then to have them point blank say "the version of me I showed you wasn't me, it was a lie," well... what do you do?
How do you let that go? Yet somehow, as time passes... you just drop it.
I look back to my blog in April, where I quoted Charlotte in Sex & the City and her theory of duration to get over an ex. And really, I doubted it very much. By mid July I was supposed to be over him? That felt like a hot shot from a cold hell. A few days after posting the blog, I was at a low enough point (quarantine, breakup, it was Easter, it was snowing, and I was out of wine) that I reached out to him. Not a boo-hoo text, but just a, I don't know, a hello? How are you?
I think about you always. I hope you're well.
It was me reaching for a lifeline... it was me being weak and vulnerable, still struggling after a month and a half to wrap my head around what the hell had happened. And he did respond, courteously within the hour. And I suppose courteously as well, he answered the couple questions I had in a vague manner. But there was no warmth or care, there was no love that had once been there. A friend described it as "clinical." I thought it was cold, and it was certainly empty.
It would be remiss of me not to say that the switch inside of me was finally flipped. And though it took one or two days to fully engage, that switch hit the mental lights over the words "Hey! He doesn't care about you anymore, Sean!" Neat.
I've never really been one to grovel. Call it being a stubborn Capricorn so set in my ways that I refuse to acknowledge my shortcomings, I don't care. But I don't grovel. I've written before how appreciated it was to have such an outpouring of support from friends and family, but the real person I needed support from was myself. I needed to be the one to say "enough," turn away, and start walking. And I did.
I spent the next month and a half working on the yard, and getting back into the groove with what we were doing at work (in a limited capacity, of course). Focusing on the book and finishing not only the written edit but the edit to the hard-copy as well. And with a little bit of this and that, I gradually found myself healing. Or healed, as it were.
So imagine my surprise when Andrew reached out the other week (after said month and a half of radio silence), and also imagine my surprise in that I did not take this communication too well. Not in an "I broke down in tears and cried all day" kind of way... more that I was initially just shocked to hear from him, and then when his intention became clear (clearing his guilty conscience), I was angry. I was furious, actually, at the nerve. That he would come to me for some absolution for how he was feeling, and (how I looked at it, at least) that I would owe it to him. And I hadn't felt that anger through this whole thing, so that was the true surprise.
I could've told him to fuck off. That he's a narcissist hell bent on destroying anyone that could possibly try loving him. That he's a selfish asshole with only his best interests in mind.
But I didn't.
I pulled a classic Sean Parker, in a way a few of you have maybe been privy to over the years, and I put my cold, calm, and calculated intellect into words. I didn't swear, I didn't threaten, I just let it out in two short paragraphs. Did the tone come through? I imagine it did, because he never replied, and the radio silence has resumed. Did I feel better afterward? No, not especially, because there were a million things that spanned a spectrum from love to hate that I wanted to convey and couldn't/wouldn't.
Did I feel worse? Absolutely not.
You see, Katie reached out that night to see how I was doing, she having known what was going on during the day. I told her I was fine, because I was. I wasn't even phased. The whole THING didn't phase me, apart from being caught off guard on the day I was opening my store back up for business after two months of the doors being locked. But truly... I was fine, and that was when it hit me that I was fine.
I was fine with all of it. I'd taken quarantine on my own in Minneapolis, and I used it to heal. To face myself, my truths, the ugly sides and the good, and come out from it. I'll never again be the person I was before I met Andrew, and that makes me sad. It makes me sad because it was a person that had not been jilted thrice by men he loved. But it also means that I know a little more about myself, that I know on a deeper level who I am, who I had been, and what I allowed to happen to me in the name of love. I changed for him and not necessarily in positive ways, so to look back at those changes now and be able to not only recognize them, but to shake my head and think "won't be doing that again for a guy," that's a wonderful thing.
Introspection leads to realization which leads to balance and then growth. It leads us to change.
I saw this photo the other night on instagram and I saved it, and since then I've seen it a dozen more times so clearly it's making the rounds and HOPEFULLY that means it's catching on. I think we all get so caught up on the negatives of life lately and 2020 and all that it has brought us, but maybe we should be looking to the positive.
So much has happened in such a short time this year, and it's really an incredible thing to look around and see how it has changed us. Not all positives, of course, but not all negatives. We've been forced to slow down, look around, and realize what exactly our world is and has become. Outside as well as in.
But still, I'm here, writing. I suppose that's the gift Andrew gave me? He pushed the magnitude of my blogs so high up in the sky that I realized I needed to get back to writing them? I dunno. You've gotta take something good from all the bad, and if it was my desire to write again... I won't complain.
Still, I miss him. For all the anger I had in that flash of a moment, it's subsided. I'll always look back at that first date with fondness over how perfect it was and the hope in my heart for how perfect it could've been. A man that held my hand on a busy street in the fading daylight, who gave me our first kiss surrounded by people on a corner, and who pulled back from that kiss with all of the wonder and excitement on his face that I felt in my heart. But it wasn't mean to be, and that's okay too.
Now I'll lock Andrew away in my heart with the great loves that came before him, and that's where he can stay. Always there, never forgotten, because it's the burden that I choose to carry. Albeit with a lighter step now. I do love an anniversary <3
Toodles gang.
