If there was a song for this post it'd be Break My Heart Again by FINNEAS
Here I am, staring at a blank page and having no idea what I'm going to write. I just know I need to write.
Several months ago I was given reason to come back here and see what I'd written so long ago. I felt a little ashamed because from the outside I seem boy crazy. It also seems that I go in phases of writing a little when things are good and then writing a lot when things are bad. If I really remember why I came to use this blog, it was in a diary sort of way. No hesitation and no worry of judgement on how I came across. Just..unapologetically me.
The reason I was given to come back and see what the younger version of me wrote back in the day was Mike came back into my life. 10 years ago we were in a small circle of friends and I developed a crush. I eventually acted on this crush and ended up in one of the happiest situations I've experienced. I also ended up in one of the most heartbreaking experiences. The ending of our relationship has had a lasting impact on my ability to trust every situation I've put myself in going forward. A little at first and as time has gone on, and more heartbreak has ensued, quite a bit more. I'm aware how messed up that can be and have always attempted to work with it, and past it.
I don't know what it's like for everyone else but I imagine there comes a time when you might feel really happy and in something good and when it ends, losing all you had stays with you quietly in the deepest part of your soul. Maybe it was because being with Mike was the last time I felt freely happy in a relationship and since then I've feared being hurt again.
Over the past 10 years Mike has reached out several times. Every time he apologized for how he treated me when we ended. Every time he would say we were something right at the wrong time. Every time I hoped he meant now was the right time. Sometimes we would talk a couple times, lasting just a few days, and other times we might chat a couple weeks to a couple months. But every time it would end with his silence. Each one of those times I felt happy and then hurt when he left. I never expected to hear from him again and started realizing it wouldn't last when he reached out.
Some time last year he messaged me to ask if being Facebook friends would be weird. I guess the app had been suggesting me as someone he would know. At this point, it had been 9 years since we ended and I really was fine. Little did he know but I thought about him around once a week since 2017 when I would travel past his old home on my way to a weekly appointment. Each time, I recognized my memory of him and smiled at my happier memories with him. I held no bad feelings toward him and figured there would be nothing wrong with being Facebook friends. This started daily long message exchanges that slowly became something embedded in my day, and I didn't let myself recognize how much I anticipated these exchanges.
Was I over the past? I felt sure of it. Did I think I could be real friends with Mike again? Absolutely.
Our message exchange felt so effortless. We fell back in step to what we had before we dated and it felt good. I'm a sentimental person and often nostalgic. It made me wildly happy to reconnect with someone who meant so much to me and I think I found myself grateful for the experience we had. It hurt like hell but I was so young and probably very immature. I liked the idea of him meeting me now, whoever I am now, compared to who I was then. I also liked being able to appreciate his growth, but even more, relearning the parts of him I knew back then. My heart felt delighted to know who I remembered was still there. After so long, I wondered if what I remembered was true and this was evidence that I didn't make up these memories. Here was Mike, back in my life.
We talked about everything. My pain from the past, his actions, my apology for not hearing him back then and how that might have led to any guilt he carried over the years, who we are, what we're interested in, how we may have been hurt by others over the years, what we dislike about the way people treat each other, what we feel our love languages are, how each others family is, what interactions with each others family might have been like after we ended, what we hope for the future, and eventually the idea of meeting back up in person.
We did meet in person. We finally figured out a plan and met up for lunch in March. I was so nervous and couldn't believe he was sitting across from me. I remember thinking if he was nervous I couldn't tell. I also recognized how it felt like 10 years hadn't passed at all. This is probably when my heart start to get wrapped up in his presence in my life but I pushed it aside. I downplayed my feelings because I didn't want to get hopeful for something that wouldn't..couldn't be.
Mike would say things about helping me make garlic bread in the fall since I always burn any bread I make. He bought tickets to the Marvel exhibit in June for us to visit and asked about seeing the exhibit and having dinner together in the city. He noted that our Thursday workday get togethers would eventually shift to days and times my siblings would be more aware of and how they would eventually become aware we had reconnected. He talked about how I should come out golfing with him and his friends sometime and how I would really like them. He told me he would teach me how to golf so I could show my dad my new skills. He told me he would likely want to do a Harry Potter marathon with me. He talked about looking forward to picking new places in our area to go to and visit together. He said any event I might want to go to I could mention it to him and he'd be there.
I don't think I was wrong in thinking he intended to be around but I still held back any feelings I had. I liked what we were and was afraid to ask if he meant it to be anything more. I felt that if we might head that direction then it would be okay to keep at the pace we were until it happened. The past few days I've found myself wondering if I had allowed myself to really feel my feelings, if I had asked him what his hope was, if I had told him I realized I still cared, would it have changed things.
Some time ago Mike explained he had a lot on his plate and he became distant. I didn't know what that all meant. I didn't know if he'd be distant for a while and come back. I feared if I stayed quiet too long he would just silently slip away. I feared that his silence had something to do with me and that I was losing what I'd come to want so much. I didn't know if he really just had a lot on his plate and was quiet without it having anything to do with me.
The silence and distance really showed me how attached to him I'd become. I couldn't deny that I cared for him. Actually, I couldn't deny that the feelings I had for him had always been there. Quiet and silent in the shadows of my soul. And now I was scared. I was scared because all my experiences with him, and all my experiences with people I have cared about, have ended with them leaving. What if he left me again?
It didn't get better after that. I got angry last weekend and pointed out how I'd been feeling. How he offered this friendship and expressed what it meant to him only to remove himself and how that isn't okay in a friendship. The silence wasn't normal silence, but I wouldn't let myself see that. I didn't want to believe it. I told him I deserved better and that if he wanted me around, in any way, he needed to do better.
He read that message and continued to say nothing to me.
I got home from a family dinner Tuesday evening and opened up Instagram to do some mindless scrolling. The first photo that popped up was from him. It was of a woman and his comment said she was his girlfriend. It's comedic but it actually took several seconds for my brain to understand what I was looking at. Mike's Instagram name and this woman...his girlfriend. Mike's Instagram is pretty bare so it almost seemed like he posted that photo knowing I would see it, know, and stop speaking to him. Is that what he did or is he just so happy that he's forgotten entirely about me? Does it matter..
I believed there was a reason why he reached out every year or so. I believed there was something important about this time, being 10 years later. I believed he wouldn't hurt me again. At the very least, I believed he would tell me he didn't want to talk to me anymore if he ever came to feel that way. Trust, as I mentioned, is not easy for me but I gave what I had to him. I trusted him.
I don't know why everything snapped and he felt I wasn't even worth an explanation. I've been really hard on myself the past several days. I'm angry at the thought that I gave him the opportunity to hurt me again. I'm angry to think I was fine and now I've reopened a wound from 10 years ago. Except it's worse now because I spun some romantic idea around us reconnecting and this time being "the right time". Sure, the idea of the one who got away has lingered recently.
With that, I fear if he had wanted more with me but I was too distant and he couldn't read how happy I was. I fear that if I had been more honest with myself, more honest with him, it might have changed the way things are.
And if I'm entirely wrong, why did he come back? Was I just some happy memory from his past and after he moved and changed his life around he needed some of that light again. So he sought me out and used me to fill himself while leaving me empty?
I am friends with not having answers. The past 10 years have given me many experiences with that. What makes me hurt the most is I think I would actually hurt a lot less, and be lot less damaged, if those experiences had come with even the smallest explanation. It's the unknown that leaves me running through all the bad possibilities and reasons. I'm haunted endlessly.
So Mike is gone again and I wasn't what he wanted. I've had to learn that twice. And still, I wish it were different.
I was grateful for his return and I wanted him to stay.
