One Broken Blackbird, Coming Right Up.

I'm writing this here because I have to write it somewhere, in the hopes that getting it out will serve as some kind of catharsis, and also because the fact that nobody reads this blog means that I won't have to answer a bunch of stupid questions like "are you OK?" or listen to an unending stream of worthless platitudes like the sort that I tend to get from my mom that are usually along the lines of "it's going to be alright." No, I'm not OK, and I don't care how it's going to be, because I'm dealing with right now.

I haven't updated this thing since June, at which time I mentioned a girl who I was referring to as RAWR. A lot has happened in the past four months. I fell in love with her, and it seemed that the feelings were mutual. And then, two days ago, she blew up my universe, breaking up me via text message with the reason "our relationship just isn't working out." At first I was completely confused; she was supposed to be coming out to SF this weekend for her birthday, we had tickets to the Depeche Mode concert, and we had just seen each other about three weeks ago. There was no indication of trouble in paradise^{[1] [2]}, so to speak, so this whole thing just made no sense to me whatsoever.

Blackbirds don't do well with situations that they can't make sense of, so Friday morning I wrote her a message which basically said that I was really confused and didn't believe her statement that "things just weren't working out" was the whole truth. That's the reason you give people when you don't want to tell them the real reason, and I would never have expected her to behave in that way, so I asked her to tell me what was really going on. They (they meaning me, but other people say this, too) say you should never ask a question that you aren't prepared to get the answer to; maybe I should have just left it at confusion, because I've replaced my 'WTF?' with a giant ball of heartbreak. I'm going to paste some excerpts here from our last conversation along with some comments. The text in italics is from her.

I have a tendency to do this thing where I try very hard to do what I think people want from me instead of prioritizing myself. I told you I struggle with anxiety, and a lot of that has gotten wrapped up in my perception of myself in relation to you. You came into my life, this confident, assured, intelligent man, and I got it into my head that if I showed you weakness that you'd think I wasn't worth your time. Which, you're perfectly allowed to do, of course, but I wanted to be impressive to you. I haven't been able to open up to you and allow myself to be vulnerable around you.

This makes me really sad. I remember back when she and I first started talking, she said something about thinking that I was out of her league or wondering how it was that someone like me (whatever that means) would be interested in someone like her (again, whatever that means). I don't remember the exact phrase. And at the time I told her that she shouldn't ever think that way. I liked her because I liked her. She was smart and funny and cute and she made me happy, and there was never a question in my mind of anyone needing to be anything other than who they were. I had no idea that she thought that she ever had to be anything different, or that she couldn't even talk to me about any of this.

It also started feeling like I needed more from you than maybe you wanted to give. You speak often about needing space, and I fully respect that and tried to give that to you. But I need assurance, and to feel wanted. Texting daily and video chatting once a week(ish) between visits wasn't enough, and I didn't know how to tell you without coming across as desperate or needy or whatever.

It is true that I like my alone time and my personal space, but if I don't know that something is wrong, I can't do anything about it. Maybe in the end it wouldn't have mattered, and the long-distance aspect of our relationship would have ultimately gotten us to this point anyway, but as with the first paragraph, it seems like her inability to say anything to me - ANYTHING - is what got us to this point.

Sometimes when a relationship ends, you find yourself wondering what you could have done differently, or what you did wrong, or any of a number of other self-blaming thought processes. I don't find myself doing that here. I don't feel like there's anything I could have done differently, because I didn't know that all of this was going on inside her head, and as hard as I've tried, I have not perfected my mind-reading powers. I just wish she had said something before deciding that the only available option was to exit stage left.

I also had a really difficult time talking to you about how your interactions with my friends while you were here last made me feel. I was upset, and didn't know how to bring it up once I'd had a chance to process it. It's not about the fact that I was upset. That happens in every relationship. It was more about the fact that I had wrapped myself up so tight I couldn't say anything about it.

This was indeed something of a dumpster fire. Last time I was visiting, her friends invited us out to the bar that they play trivia at. The first time I met some of them, we all got along pretty well; it was the night of the McGregor-Mayweather fight, and we were all watching it at the same aforementioned bar. People were cool to me, I was cool to them, we all got along and had a good time. This most recent time was very different. One of her friends was a little rude when I mentioned taking a Xanax to sleep on the airplane (don't criticize someone for "self-medicating" when you're at a bar drinking alcohol), and then everybody else pretty much ignored me. They weren't hostile in any way, but they weren't welcoming, either. Add to that the fact that I'm not an outgoing person by nature, so I'm not going to typically just insert myself into a conversation with people I don't really know about topics that I have no connection to. So I just sat there, bored off my ass and wondering why they would go to the trouble of inviting us out and making a big deal of it but then making me feel like I shouldn't be there. There was definitely some tension in the air between RAWR and I afterwards, and we talked about it a little when we got back to her apartment, but I guess there were still some unresolved issues.

I spent four years with someone that I loved with everything I had, feeling like I was completely unwanted. This was the first person I ever had sex with, and I didn't feel desirable or attractive to him at all. In New York, I felt that same feeling of being unwanted again. I know that you didn't feel that way. It was never anything you did, rather some shit that I'm apparently still dealing with. When you told me later that you did still want me, I cried for a good while. It's something else that I should have tried harder to open up about and didn't.

This was something else that we did talk about a little bit, and again, I thought whatever outstanding issues that may have existed as a result of this had been talked through, but I guess I was wrong again. I don't know how I could have known this, though, unless she had said something. Our sexual relationship was odd; for all the fireworks and the RAWR and the physical chemistry, we never actually got around to the full-on tab A-slot B activities. It wasn't for lack of trying, but we always seemed to have some equipment issues.... she had never put a condom on another person, and I had never put one on myself (it had always been my partner that put it on), so the first time we attempted this, it didn't go so well, and after a bit of fumbling on her part and a bit of fumbling on my part... let's just say that what goes up must come down - but not necessarily when you want it to.

I'm not sure what hurts more - the fact that our relationship is over or the reasons why it's over and the feeling that this all could have been prevented if she had just spoken up and told me that something was wrong. Or if she had just been able to make it out here this weekend, maybe things would have gone in a better direction, because I was going to talk to her about the state of our relationship^[1:1] and maybe at that point all of this would have come out and we could have worked on it. I briefly entertained the idea of just getting on a plane and flying out there, because it seems like this is just not the way that this story is supposed to end - at least we could have said goodbye in person - but I don't think doing that would make any of this any easier.

She mentioned a hope that there was still a possibility of us being friends at some point, but while I would not consider it completely impossible, I don't think it's likely. I wish that didn't have to be the case; I'm not angry, and I don't wish any ill towards her, but it's not good for either of us to be a part of each other's lives if we cannot be ourselves. I loved her, apparently more than she realized, and I will miss her a great deal.

I guess now I just have to do what I always do when things go wrong: take a day or two to wallow in my sadness and then suck it up and get on with life. I will say, though, that it becomes harder and harder to do each time, and this one was particularly painful because I had no idea it was coming. It's not like going to the gym, where the more you beat yourself up, the stronger you get. It's more like falling off a jet ski and getting back on again; each time your arms are that much more exhausted than before, and eventually you just say "fuck it" and swim back to shore (you don't drown, because they make you wear a life jacket). I will eat my sorrow and shit out a rainbow. Eventually.

It's ironic that I took time off from the day job because I hadn't had a real vacation since January and was feeling burned out, but now I'm going to be heading back to work feeling worse than when I left. I'm entertaining the idea of going back to work on Monday and cutting my "vacation" short, because I might need the databases and the servers to take my mind off of all of this. I need a distraction from my distraction from my distraction. The other irony here is that while I she felt like she couldn't talk to me about the things that were bothering her, for me it was exactly the opposite; I wasn't afraid of telling her anything, and I didn't feel like I needed to hold back or keep the armor on to protect myself from getting hurt. I also remember saying back in the beginning that I wasn't afraid of what was going to happen and that I was just going to jump into this fully; I guess it's easier to say that when things are going well, but I don't regret falling for her.

A friend of mine posted an insightful article on his FB feed the same day that all of this went down. It was talking about loneliness in America in the context of the Las Vegas shooter, and by the time I got done reading it, I started wondering if I'm going to be Stephen Paddock in 20 years. That's pretty messed up, but when you consider that the highest rates of suicide are among people aged 45-64, and that right now there is a rather large void of disconnectedness (moreso than usual) in my soul, it isn't hard to see how someone in my shoes today could follow that kind of trajectory and eventually just lose his shit completely and go off the rails. I can't imagine shooting up a music festival, though; I'd be more likely to jump in front of Caltrain and ruin everyone's morning commute in one last act of middle-fingers-up defiance.

Fucked up, ain't it?