So when I wrote the second blog six years later, I still believed it wouldn't happen again.
Then here we are an additional five years on with the third go-around.
Things with Andrew were always so different to the other relationships I'd been in, from day one through day final (I'm not gonna count them (okay it was 263)). Before him, relationships were just smooth sailing from the start. Attraction, get along famously, long long honeymoon period, settle into normalcy, watch it gradually crumble, get cheated on, call it quits, insert all the sad faces and emojis here and press send to complete. I can hardly remember anymore what my life with Derek felt like aside from what the blogs and photos tell me... and Ken? Even less so. It feels not only like it was a lifetime ago, but as if it happened to someone else entirely.
With Andrew, it all still seems to exist right before my eyes. You can argue that that's for a multitude of reasons. First being that it was only a year ago, so of course it's still fresh, and second because of the different nature of relationship we had.
I was infatuated from day one. Utterly and completely. Then we met, and that infatuation grew. It compounded on itself, it quadrupled in strength, and then it multiplied indefinitely. We had some epically awesome fights and epically awesome... you know what. And while our honeymoon phase got bitch slapped into reality maybe two months in, after that it settled into this beautiful normalcy. For the short time we'd been together, it felt like we'd really gone through something and come out stronger on the other side of. Then on a sunny Monday in February, one year ago from... I guess an hour from now, actually, I came home and he had packed his belongings.
After twenty minutes of talking Andrew was gone. I'm not sure I've ever cried like that in my life. I don't think I could pinpoint a moment in my life where I'd felt so low, so hurt, and so utterly and completely devastated by something that was so clearly out of my control. As a control freak, try to imagine how challenging that was, not having a say in the direction you thought your life was headed.
Enduring a couple weeks of shell-shock and misery led to the great quarantine of 2020. And as it was with most of you reading this, what Covid brought was hard in its own right. I don't mean to say my time in quarantine was harder than any of yours, because I can certainly guarantee it wasn't. I was paid fully through my job, I didn't have any problems covering bills or buying food or any issues with insurance, etc. I was just lonely to a point that it was exhausting to me. I was constantly exhausted, and it's interesting how that happens, isn't it? Where you feel like the life has been sucked out of you on a daily basis despite not having done anything to warrant it? You're just drained from thinking. From running things on a cycle over and over and over again behind your eyes, wondering what you could have done better. What you shouldn't have done at all.
I don't look back on this relationship with pure fondness... that would be a lie. There are plenty of things I hated about our relationship, plenty of things that were simply "wrong." There were things I bent my will away from, or towards, or whatever direction you like. I changed myself. I transformed into a person I never thought I could be, trading in on some of my more stubborn traits for more co-dependent ones, and the painful result was where I landed in doing so.
Spring moved on though and right now when I glance backward, the summer was actually great, all things considered. I worked in the yard and got a great tan, I spent more time outside in general than I had in YEARS, and I strengthened a few more of my Minnesota friendships. Summer was gone in a blip, of course, and then I sold the Manor and bought the Ranch. I got sick in December with my giant kidney stone and that misery carried me all the way to juuuuust last week when my stent was finally removed after two surgeries. It didn't feel like as much time passed as it had.
You can wallow in your own self-pity as much as you want, but eventually, ultimately, you have to lift your head up. It's amazing how much can change in so short of a time. You're so far from where you were a year earlier, both literally and figuratively, and since you turned a blind eye to most things you can only speculate on how this happened.
Was I wronged by Andrew as I had been by the others? That's a difficult question to quantify a response to, as it's both a yes and a no. No, in the sense that he didn't really lie to me (he did, but not in a betrayal or malicious way). Yes, in that I had something pulled away from me without my a) approval, b) acceptance, c) consent, or d) all of the above. That's the very nature of a breakup though, right? One party (or both) doesn't want to be in it anymore? Boo-fucking-hoo, move on? Problem being that I don't operate that way. Never have, never will. I can say I've moved on and continue to split infinitives in blogs and all that crap, but I don't really move on.
Call me stubborn, call me a Capricorn, but ultimately... call me single at 35 and writing for a third god damn time about being a full year stronger.
So all that being said, with a relationship unlike anything I'd ever experienced and subsequently a breakup unlike anything I'd ever been through... why would I expect it to dissolve into familiar territory a year later? A year can do a lot to a person, after all. Because you think you're done with things. People... events... maybe even places. Then all of a sudden you're not done. Mot truly. The people and events and maybe even the places that meant so much at one point, sometimes they have a way of coming back into your life.
Deleting Facebook in November was a great thing but it also stopped me from sharing errants thoughts all the time. Such as the fact that Andrew and I began speaking on a regular basis in mid-November. It's admittedly not something I would have made a status update about... "Hey all! Just a heads up, the guy that flipped my world upside down before quarantine and destroyed my heart? Well huzzah, we're speaking again! We play Fortnite together five times a week and chat for hours, wa-hoo!"
Not likely.
But that's how it happened... we started playing the video game that was weirdly a big part of our evenings during the cold weather for months on end. And we started talking over headsets while playing, some nights for 45 minutes, some nights for several hours, and we texted in between. Not in the manic way we used to, but we were still communicating. I think at first I was confused as to what this was. Should I be getting feelings? Should I be stopping this completely? Should I be setting up all sorts of flaming hoops and high-bars for him to catapult through and over in some sort of mental olympics to prove himself as worthy of my attention? Short answers are no, no, and no.
Sometimes people deserve a chance., and you can look at it as a second chance, or third/fourth/fifth, whatever... but sometimes they just deserve a chance. I think if we open ourselves up to offering that to people in our past and maybe some in our present, so many wonderful things are possible. Over the last few months I've gotten to know Andrew as he really is, not the person he tried so hard to be when we were dating. Not that the two wildly differ, but there are subtle things that set them apart. Getting to know someone as they really are, with no pre-conceived notions of trying to impress the other or fit a mold for them, it can be an eye opener.
We've spoken at length about what our relationship was and how it just wouldn't have worked out back then. Not in that original form. There were so many paranoias and notions of what the other was expecting. We both sort of established "personas," if you will, at the inception of our relationship, Andrew more so than me. But the pressure to live up to that persona, so terrified of letting the facade fall away and what the repercussions might be? That's a lot. Even if Andrew hadn't left when he did... it wouldn't have lasted too awful long beyond that. In my heart I knew it just wasn't right how things were... and ultimately he was the stronger one to make that call and walk away. I can't say with certainty I would have been able to do the same.
It's hard inviting an ex back into your life though, and I think that goes for any sort of ex. While I have mostly positive relationships with all of mine, it was a gamble doing so. Sometimes it pays off in a great way (my friendship with Jonathan being a prime example), and sometimes it's just nice to know you aren't hanging on to any sort of hate. Maybe not the MOST fondness for some of them, but definitely no anger malice.
Making the decision is hard because you're opening yourself back up to someone that has the ability to hurt you. They know you and they know what makes you tick, often more than anyone else, and it's a risk to trust yourself enough to not let that happen. It has happened to me... I've reached out to start a friendship and realized all too quickly that "oh, you jumped the shark on this one!" Time truly does heal all wounds, first numbing them down and then eventually allowing them to seal shut. But time is hard to be friends with because it moves too fast when you don't want it to and it slows to molasses when you need anything but.
Where it goes from here, I don't know? What I do know is this: for as much as I said I wasn't waiting for him to change his mind or come back, there was a huge part of me that has been since that day in February when he walked out of my life. I wanted Andrew to walk back in, and he has. There's vindication in that for me, somehow, and there's also sadness in it. The sadness comes because this is isn't what it was and I doubt it ever will be again. Is that bad? Not really. Could it be something else though? Absolutely.
Could it evolve into something even better? Yes it could.
There are days I full-tilt want that, to be swept up and away and feel light and free once more. Then there are days where I simply just don't, because I was the one left behind and I was the one that had to scrape myself up from the pavement and figure it all out once more. It's an overwhelming feeling to look back on the past year and see how much work it took to feel like a human again. I can downplay it all I want, but I know the desperation I felt inside of me. I know how far into the year I would randomly cry at a song or a memory. I also know if it didn't kill you, it only makes you stronger. And I know that for now, Andrew is my friend; he's a friend I shared something very deep and very real with for a period of time, and I am thankful for that. I know he is too.
So that's where I'm at a full year later. Stronger in some respects, weaker in others, but making paces forward all the same and navigating this unfamiliar terrain. Covid still ensures there is no rush in my life for anything to happen, slowing me down to the crawl I've been at for a long while now. But that's okay, right? I've said it before in this last year, but slowing down is a good thing. It allows you to take stock and look around, and make the best decision for you. There are no rules to this game... start and stop the current level any time you want.
That being said, I'll leave you with Trixie Mattel's cover of Lana Del Rey's "Video Games." I hope you're all doing well, that you're finding happiness as much as you can in 2021, and that you're looking forward to spring as much as I am.
Ciao for now (c:
