Dealing With The Pain
For months now, too much of my life has been spoken over, summarized, distorted, softened where it mattered, and sharpened where it hurt me. It has been turned into something smaller and uglier than the truth.
The decision you made was not one mistake, one argument, or one bad decision. It was the collapse of context over time. It was a year of reality being flattened into a version of events that cut out everything that made my life make sense. It was my relationship, my intentions, my efforts, my past, and my pain all being stripped of continuity until what remained was a story that no longer looked like my life. I did not just lose freedom. I lost the right to stand inside my history while other people told it for me.
Our relationship was care, support, conflict, repair, hope, confusion, and emotional dependence. It was not always clean, but it was real. And then I watched that entire reality get reduced to an image of me as a stranger, an intruder, an obsessed ex, a convict, someone returning from nowhere. That was not the truth. That was a frame. And once that frame took hold, everything else got bent around it.
What hurts the most is not only that you did this. It’s that the parts which would have made the truth visible were missing, ignored, or treated as if they did not matter. The mutual nature of the conflict mattered. The isolation of the conflict mattered. The ways we both escalated mattered. The planning mattered. The financial support mattered. The fact that this was not a dead relationship mattered. Those things were not side notes. They were the difference between one reality and another. They were the baseline, and when it was erased, everything downstream became easier to twist.
One of the cruelest parts is that once you put a lens over me, everything I said became easier to dismiss before it was even heard. My memory became suspect. My explanations became self-serving. My attempts to add context became manipulative. My pain became instability. My efforts to defend myself became more evidence that I was the problem.
I have lost more than I know how to measure. I have lost time, peace, trust, health, pets, property, stability, and safety. But underneath it, there is something I have not lost. I know that continuity matters. I know that omission is not neutral. I know what happened to me was not fair or whole.
There were things happening around the relationship that made all of this even more poisonous. The relationship was not always allowed to exist openly. There were ambushes of pressure. There was concealment. There was interference. There were third parties that did not have or give the full truth. That matters. It matters because it shows how something real could continue privately without being publicly minimized, denied, or recast. It matters because it shows how a baseline could feel believable on the outside while being false on the inside. It matters because it shows how a person can be cut off from the truth of his own relationship by a system that prefers a simpler story.
I know what I did. I know what I lived. I know what was left out. I know what was hardened. I know how much of the outcome relied on generalizations and what was ignored. I also know I was not weak. I was cornered by pressure, by omission, by distorted context, by fear. That does not make me cowardly. It makes me human. I made decisions under strain, under grief, under exhaustion, under a narrative I could not overcome. I hate that I made them, but I understand why I made them.
As I’ve spent time trying to clear my conscious, I sometimes forget there is a human being underneath. A person who loves deeply. A person who tries to help. A person who believes facts matter. A person who has been carrying pain far beyond what that legal document will ever capture. A person who is tired. A person who is still here.
What happened to me mattered. The distortion mattered. The omissions mattered. The pressure mattered. The fear mattered. The grief mattered. The loss mattered. I am not the summary that you made. I am not the flattened version of events that erased the year we spent together and my life that came before it. I am not the easiest interpretation of the worst moment of my life. I am the one who felt where the cuts were made. I am the one who has put reality back together. I refuse to surrender, and that’s what remains of me.
I forgave you months ago for everything. I loved you most for your sensitivity and playful devotion. I always felt safe to be vulnerable. I failed us by not giving you the same in return. I neglected the fact that my behavior scared you. I made it worse by placing my confidence in your emotions. I didn’t fully trust your feelings, so I don’t blame you for not trusting mine in return. I stopped noticing you were upset. I defended myself instead of protecting us. I lost you in pieces. Through defensiveness and distraction. Through choosing comfort over connection. Through moments where you needed my presence. You were hurting, but I thought love would wait.
The most abusive person in my life is my mother. Her chronic hoarding illness, the pain from her divorce, and my own stubborn personality resulted in verbal abuse throughout my childhood. I’m sorry I hid that from you because it felt inconvenient. I had mostly forgotten not feeling safe or heard in her home. Being forced to watch her act now has been like looking in an oversized mirror. It has been a constant reminder of the ways I mistreated you, how I made you feel, and my blindness to it. I developed fearful avoidant tendencies from her, and also from being abandoned in serious relationships. I’m sorry I dissociated from the truth of my trauma. I’m sorry I could not understand it or explain it to you well. I’m sorry I denied therapy or the help you were offering to me.
I’m accountable for my actions and doing everything I can to be better. I escalate conflict and withdraw. I’m working on listening and being present. I didn’t comfort you when you were upset with me. I’m working on building confidence and empathy. I made you feel scared and inadequate. I crossed your boundaries. I’m working on being patient and understanding. I let my fear turn to shame. I’m working on speaking to my emotions kindly and sharing them with others.
I also acknowledge that my insecurity was not the only to blame. Your anxious personality scared and hurt me during our relationship, especially how you ended things. Sudden displacement from my home, the legal consequences, and your abandonment were the most painful and traumatizing experiences of my life.
Our brains have been wired to have feelings of threat from one another when they shouldn’t. They’ve been wired to respond to those feelings in unhealthy ways. They’ve been wired to think the grass is greener on the other side. They’ve been wired to think a love like we shared is easy to find. I’ve been learning to better recognize when my brain is lying to me and stealing my energy. I’ve been learning to better recognize when the right choice isn’t the easiest one.
I’m sorry for breaking up with you when you needed me most. I’m sorry for my insecurity and harmful actions. I’m sorry for leaving you to pick up a multitude of pieces in my wake. I never intended to hurt or lose you. I loved you more than I was able to show. I still love you. I miss the family we were making. I miss hearing your voice and feeling your closeness. I miss being silly and going on dates. I miss your good ideas and the things you did to surprise me.
I miss the most when it felt like you loved me too. My last image of you celebrating as I scraped my life up in boxes has haunted me. I have fought through so much confusion and pain. And now I want an answer. Unfortunately, that answer can be silence. I will have no problem respecting it even if I struggle to understand it.
I still believe the love we share is invincible. That it’s deeper than the insecurity our relationship became stained by. That what happened is a speck on the glass of something infinitely clear. I don’t care that it’s hard to imagine us being together again. I don’t care that it feels like I don’t know you anymore. I don’t care that it feels like you don’t want anything from me. I cling to the wish that you'll honor the love and moments we shared. I pray the warmth of us is stronger than the storm. I'm willing to listen, to understand, and to traverse our feelings together. I want to find each other again.
I want us to be happy. I would be tired to continue trying to understand our relationship if you don’t care. I am able to walk my own path. I’m not sure how I will fare in my future with all that I’ve experienced and learned. I know being fully healed isn’t realistic. But I believe that I am ready to be present again. I am hopeful and excited for the future. I’m prepared for what I want most. I will always love you.