I’m Grieving an Unwanted Breakup

Those of us inclined towards relationships often have the bad habit of hanging on even when we shouldn’t, when things are bad and we know we should leave. This is even more exacerbated with people like myself, who  come from abusive homes, and have a skewed sense of self-worth.

I held on far longer than I should’ve. I knew two years prior to our break up that things weren’t right and that they weren’t going to be right. We were never on the same page and had different ideas about what our relationship should be. He wanted my unquestioning trust in his leadership and I have learned due to a very tumultuous upbringing that no one deserves my unquestioning faith. Trust is a foreign concept to me.

Needless to say, we were stressing each other out. The stress triggered my arthritis to come out of remission, and my health began to seriously decline, which caused my mental health to decline as well. However, none of that stopped me from being immensely and irrevocably in love with him. I convinced myself that I was the problem, that we could come to solid ground with just a bit more dedication, just a bit more hard work. That maybe if we lived alone we could rededicate ourselves to one another (our roommate was an opportunistic piece of work to say the least).

Truthfully, the thought of leaving him stopped my breath. I was his ride-or-die. I valued his happiness and the throes of being in love more than my own well-being. I stayed when he allowed his friends to be verbally abusive and disrespectful to me. One day while we were in our car, I told him I was in so much pain that I wanted to drive myself into a lake. He angrily tossed me the keys and left the car. I ended up driving myself to the E.R.

And yet, I foolishly stayed with him. I stayed after he showed me time and time again that he did not value me. I stayed after he gaslit me over and over, often blaming my mental illness for our arguments, and never owning up to or changing his toxic behavior. I stayed and stayed, convinced that if I kept pushing and improving we could somehow “get back to the good times.” Meanwhile my physical and mental health continued deteriorating. My body knew what my heart could not admit: that two people can’t work towards a goal when two people aren’t working towards a goal.

Ultimately it was my illnesses that drove him away. A person who suffers daily from depression and anxiety, and a physically debilitating illness like Rheumatoid Arthritis is admittedly lot to handle. He was caring for me physically a lot and was immensely unhappy about it.And I was no angel. Chronic pain and illness can truly bring out the ugly in you. I was listless and unhappy all the time as well as anxious and irritable due to feeling like a burden. My desire to even participate in hobbies I liked had vanished. When I began to indulge in self-destructive thoughts and behavior, he left me.

It was devastating, in a word. My mind sunk to low places til I was convinced I’d never again ascend. That dust and darkness were the only things present in the universe. The only time I can remember anyone experiencing anything close to this in the 1976 movie Sparkle when Stix returns after leaving Sparkle and she tells him, “When you first left, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to live without you. Yeah, I used to sit in this room and wondered if I would ever get through another second. Can you imagine a person so unhappy? To not know if they'd live through another second?” Indeed, with every breath I felt like my insides were roiling with the pain of it. Completely consumed by heartbreak, everyday I prayed for him to come to his senses. Every night I dreamed of him coming back to me. To know that I sacrificed my health and mental well-being to stay with him and that I would have sacrificed so much more, and that he could not, would not endure for me tore my heart open over and over. It's truly awful to realize that someone doesn't love you as much as you love them.

Today, it’s about four months in to our break up and things are better. We were making each other so unhappy and we’re both in much better places now that we’re apart. We function so much better as friends than we ever did as lovers. To be honest,  I think I never would have left him; so consumed was I in my love for him and so low was my own self-worth. I never would have realized how he didn’t know how to truly love and so could never properly love me. With every day as my love for myself grows, I find myself overcome with the realization of how much better I deserve.

And though I can’t lie and say I’m not still heartbroken, I find myself excited about the aspect of someday experiencing real love. I look forward to meeting the person not only willing to look past my illnesses and still love the real me, but who will also celebrate my uniqueness and unconventionality. But even more so, I’m excited to discover the talents and gifts that inevitably come forth when true self-love is applied. I may be broken right now, but I am still so beautiful. And there is yet more beauty to come.