The First Draft

The last nine months have been interesting for me, and not in a fun way.

I have been reflecting a lot on how I managed to get myself into such a bad place. As with most things, I think writing my way through it might be the answer for me.

On July 26, 2022, my boyfriend of three years broke up with me. Things hadn’t been good for a while, but I never saw it coming- specifically, the part where he said he didn’t want kids… and had been thinking that since the previous summer.

There were only two “ultimatums” I gave in our relationship. The first one, which I don’t even think really counts, was “I want kids, so if you don’t, we need to break up now.” This was in the first 6 months of our relationship, and he took a week to think about it and decided he did want them, just not yet. That was fine with me- I don’t want kids until I’m closer to thirty- so we continued to date.

The second ultimatum was “It’s me or the vape,” which sounds drastic, but we’ll get to that story later.

Throughout our relationship, I didn’t really talk to any of my friends about our issues. At the time, that felt like the right move because I wanted to protect him. Looking back, I know that was a stupid mistake. I know for a fact if I had told them half of the shit that I was going through, they would’ve dragged my ass out of there and set me straight. So if y’all are reading this… I’m sorry and I love you.

Most things were okay at the beginning. He was sweet to me, and we got along really well. He took care of me and my puppy when we were both sick.

Overall, the only thing I can remember being a big issue for us before we moved in together was his anger. We’d had to have discussions about how to treat Oliver, and about how it wasn’t okay to get angry with someone over something small and tell me that he was leaving with or without me.

Everything changed when we moved into our house, though.

If I had to guess, I would say my love languages are touch and quality time. However, as soon as we moved in together, suddenly sleeping in the same bed was the only time we needed to spend around each other. Needless to say, it didn’t work for me.

This should have been easy to communicate, but I was living with a volatile person. If I told him how I felt about something and he didn’t like it, he took it as an attack against him and yelled at me, usually about how “I’m the only one sacrificing anything for this relationship”. I’m definitely the person who cries when people yell at her, so it effectively ended any conversation I was trying to have.

Then I switched careers… I was a teacher, and he worked opposite hours to mine. One day I asked: IF I am still awake when you get home, can we spend 30 minutes together just talking about our days? Naturally, he said no because that would eat into his video game time.

There were about two days a week when I would get to see him conscious. One would be a weeknight, which was eventually dedicated to a group activity- an online DnD campaign- when he literally refused to be in the same room as me because of “the echo”, and the other would usually be spread across two days- one morning and one evening every weekend- depending on his work schedule.

If I told him that wasn’t enough (which I did), we went back to the previous argument. He yelled at me, he said he was the only one sacrificing anything, he wouldn’t compromise on anything, etc. He wasn’t ever physically violent with me, but we had to have some conversations about how you can’t break things just because you’re mad.

At some point, I told him that it felt like I was playing for the team and he was playing for himself. I told him that his priority list felt a bit like this:

1. His needs

2. His wants

3. Work

4. Video games

5. The dogs

And my wants and needs were somewhere near the bottom. For me, it was the opposite. Whenever I made any decision that would affect both of us, I tried to take his wants and needs into account. It didn’t go well for me because it wasn’t reciprocated.

And then there was the lying… I still remember the first time he lied to me about vaping. He’d told me he quit when we first started dating, which is… whatever. I don’t want vape fumes in my house because my family has a bad history of lung cancer, and my dog is wheezy enough without breathing in chemicals.

We’d gone out to eat at a restaurant he used to work at. We sat at the bar, and I put my hand on his thigh and felt a JUUL in his pocket. I asked him what it was, to give him the chance to tell me, but he stared into my eyes and said, with a straight face), “A gel pen.”

After that, we had a great conversation about how I asked because I already knew the answer. He told me he wouldn’t lie to me about it again.

However, quite possibly the worst case of lying in our relationship was also about the vape. He said he’d quit again, and I trusted him. At the time that seemed like the right move, because why would I stay with someone I couldn’t trust? But then I broke a nail.

I needed the nail clippers, which he always kept on his desk. I went in to get them, and there was a vape cartridge in plain sight next to his keyboard.

The lying about vaping may seem bad enough by itself, but this time was more complicated. I had smelled it on him a month and a half earlier, and many times after that, and every single time he had some excuse for why it couldn’t be from a vape.

I was starting to think that I was crazy, and he knew it. I talked to him about how my dad had a benign cyst on his brain, and the first symptom of it was smelling things that weren’t there. I talked to him about how I guess I needed to talk to my mom about an MRI because we don’t know if it was a random thing or genetic.

He let it happen. All of it. If I hadn’t found the vape cartridge, he would’ve let me continue to think I was crazy, he would’ve let me waste time and money on an MRI.

I asked him what his plan had been since he’d been lying for nearly two months already. He said he was going to wait a couple of weeks and then tell me that he had just started vaping a week before. A lie to continue another lie.

At that point, I told him I would not tolerate it. We could’ve had a discussion and agreed on a way that I could feel safe in my home and he could still vape, but since he’d opted to lie to me about it and convince me I was crazy, it would be me or the vape. I’m a reasonable person, so I said he could take time to quit. He said he was working on it after that, but he was still vaping regularly when we broke up.

Now if you’ve made it this far, you are probably thinking, “What the fuck”. Trust me, dude, same. Unfortunately, that is arguably not the worst thing that ever happened between us. He was never physically violent with me. But that doesn’t mean he never physically hurt me.

He didn’t intend to, but one time, in between the two instances of lying about vapes, he did physically hurt me. I wouldn’t hold it against him if it had been entirely an accident. And at first, it was. But that line was crossed when he realized he was hurting me and continued to do it.

I was in a vulnerable place at the time, and there wasn’t a lot I could do to stop it. I was already crying, and very obviously in pain, but that hadn’t seemed to make any sort of difference.

When he finally stopped, he apologized, took about five minutes to help me pull everything back together, and then ran off to play video games.

To top it off, he would get irritated with me after that if I flinched away from him. He never stopped to think, and realize that I was flinching because I was scared.

This is pretty high up on the list of things that I should’ve told someone, but I didn’t know how. I was struggling with my mental health by this point- I was anxious and depressed and as a “high achieving” kid turned adult, asking for help seemed like admitting I’d failed.

I can see now that was a dumb decision, but at the time, my options seemed to be staying and surviving or giving up completely.

He doubted that he’d made the right decision after we broke up, and I told him that if he hadn’t done it, the relationship probably would’ve killed us both.

People always look at me funny when I say I don’t have any negative feelings toward him. We get along fine as friends when we happen to run into each other.

This isn’t an all-inclusive list of all of the things that happened, and I know I was far from perfect, too.

We couldn’t give each other what we needed, but we were both too stubborn or scared to leave. So we stayed.

It fucking sucked, but when he broke up with me, he saved my life. And I’ve told him that. He knows that I want him to be happy and that I hope he’s learned and grown. I hope he treats the next person better, and that she can be what he needs.

And as for me… everyone seems to want to know if I’m dating, and the answer to that is yes, and no.

I have dated since the breakup. I actually dated first. I hadn’t intended to date anyone for a while, but I had come to terms with the fact that we weren’t right for each other, never would be, and I’d kind of known that for a while. I think in my heart, the breakup had started much sooner.

By November, I felt great. I felt like myself again. And someone had come into my life at an unexpected time in an unexpected way, and he made me laugh. And he made me feel seen and heard, even though we were just talking on Snapchat.

I didn’t see him for long, but he treated me so so well. The first time I saw him, we talked until the place we were at closed, and then went back to my place and talked some more. We talked and cuddled until 6 am. He was kind and gentle and even my dog liked him- and he’s usually pretty skittish around men at first.

On a bad day, he brought me my favorite cookies and a rose and cuddled me, and then stayed with me and scratched my back while I did homework.

He asked for some space to figure some stuff out, and I did really bad at respecting that. That’s when I realized that I needed to take as many steps back as possible to get my mental health under control, but I tried to make it clear that if he ever wanted to be in my life in any capacity, all he has to do is reach out.

He was truly at the other end of the spectrum from the last three years of my life. He helped me in a way I won’t ever forget, and even though we aren’t talking anymore, I still think of him often. I don’t think I ever thanked him, and I doubt he’ll ever see this, but if he does… Thank you. I’ll always care about you.

I hadn’t really thought much of it until I was talking to a friend from college the other day. She asked if I was dating and I said, once again, yes and no. I’m not looking for anything, but I am open to dating. However, I have been spoiled. I want to be treated in a very specific way, and I’m not going to settle for less.

As a person with anxiety, I don’t love waiting for things to work out on their own. I’m an over-thinker, and I want to know where and why, and who, all the time. But I’m working on it.

That’s the light at the end of my tunnel.