All My Exes Hate Me Part 5 - The One Who Changed Everything

Sometimes I wish I was “normal” so we could've worked out.

Spoiler: We wouldn’t have.

I would’ve felt so lonely. Not because he’s a bad person. Not because he didn’t love me. But because even though I was a mess, he wasn’t able to give me the type of love I crave. Instead of avoiding and shutting down my feelings, I need communication and to be heard. If not, I WILL go to the internet. Just kidding.

Kind of.

We fell very fast, we fell very hard. He told me he loved me before he even asked me to be his girlfriend. And that’s all I needed to hear.

That probably should have been the first sign.

It always starts off the same. You meet someone. You flirt, you laugh, you share your first kiss. You fall into a little love bubble and nobody can break it.

Leave it to me to do so.

I fought so hard for it not to end. But I’m grateful it did.

If there was one thing we did well together (besides sex) - was laugh. Nobody made me laugh the way he did. He was never my “type” - but one day my eyes just opened. I finally saw him as the handsome, smart and outgoing person he was.

And then I fell for him.

We got along so well at first. The chemistry was off the charts. Funny how drastically things can change. Turns out fighting your demons and trying to be in a relationship at the same time is a recipe for disaster.

Here comes the hard part.

He hated that I drank. Hate is an understatement. It was the worst part of our relationship. That took me a very long time to admit, even to myself.

I acted like a damn fool. I still get sick to my stomach thinking about it.

The things I’ve said. The things I’ve done.

It was like the more he said he hated it, the more I felt he wanted to control me, the more I wanted to do it.

I was very unhappy in other aspects of my life during this time. But it didn’t make sense to me. I had everything I wanted and worked for, and I still couldn’t feel joy. So I based my happiness on the love I had from another. I held onto him so tightly that he slipped right through my fingers.

Putting him through hell didn’t help me escape the one I was in.

So I lived in my insecurities and took on one of my favorite coping mechanisms - self-sabotage.

It didn’t help that I figured out that he gave me the most attention when I was acting out. I learned the hard way that that wasn’t okay.

Remember what I said about thinking that “chaos equals passion”? This is where I learned it the most. The chaos never, ever equaled passion. It just created more pain.

Outside of the drunken chaos, he never let me all the way in. And that bothered me so much. I felt like I knew him better than anyone and yet I still felt so far away at times.

There was a time when I voiced my concerns and insecurities in the relationship. And he told me those feelings weren’t his responsibility. And I hated him for that.

I told my therapist as such and she agreed with him.

I never spoke to her again.

So much time has passed and I finally agree with them both.

Yes - your partner should care about what you’re feeling, and not do things that could harm the relationship. But it is not on them to heal what they didn’t break. They can listen and be cognizant of your past - but it is not their responsibility to fix those parts of you. That is on you.

I hate it when men are right.

We would fight, and he would try to leave. And I somehow would convince him to stay.

I would tell him that I would quit (I didn’t). That I was getting better (I wasn’t).

I told him what he wanted to hear so he wouldn’t give up. Because the only thing worse than him actually leaving me was the idea of being left.

I really did believe that love was enough to make it through anything. That love conquers all. And he was right to tell me it wasn’t true.

Because if he truly loved me, why wasn’t it enough to stay and fight? Why wouldn’t he want to try if he really thought I needed help?

I’ll tell you why - I didn’t want to help myself. I wanted to drown in my misery and didn’t care if I brought him down with me. I pushed the limits as much as I could and it got very ugly. Things were said, and I felt like I deserved every bit of it.

I know now that I didn't.

It was not all bad. We had really amazing times together. We were goofy. And we definitely explored.

But we also shared our dreams and secrets with each other. The love was there. But as we know now, it would never be enough.

It was never a clean break. That’s what made it all the more confusing.

People move on. And when he did, I had already known - it was like I felt it in my bones.

I cried that night.

I wrote down what I felt in that moment, allowing myself to feel what I needed to. I let it bring me back to darker times - just not to the point where I wanted to fall back into my old ways.

I finally felt free.

I felt free, because he was free of me. Free of the burden of my chaos, and I was free of the guilt I carried for so long.

He once told me he didn’t feel like he could find peace, that he would just be alone - and that hurt me more than anything.

It killed me to think that I ruined not only my chance at happiness, but his too. I would never be able to give him the peace he wished for. Not as the person I was.

He held on as long as he possibly could. And I can at least give him that.

Without knowing, he somehow broke my heart and put the pieces back together at the same time. The greatest gift he ever gave me was walking away.

I loved him very much, to the best of my ability at that time. But other things proved to be more important to me.

It just so happened that the best of me during that time was the worst version of myself in my life.

I don’t even know who that girl is.

The one who changed everything might be a stretch. Twenty years of bad habits don’t go away after one heartbreak. Nothing changed overnight, and plenty of the same mistakes and behaviors continued after he was long gone.

Maybe we weren't meant to be together. Maybe we gave it more power than we needed to.

I hope he’s happy.

Cause I’m definitely on my way there.