The Heartbreak Chronicles

So here we are....My most recent breakup. I guess we pick up where we left off.

The rest of 2020 was spent with me thinking I would be alone the rest of my life and also taking care of my dying grandmother. My second dying grandmother in under a year at this point. As we rang in 2021, I didn't really let myself believe things were going to get better and some ways I wasn't wrong.

Right away, I had been asked to start the year by helping a theatre acquaintance and a group of his friends who were also writers craft a fiction-based podcast. I joined the group and we began having writers' room meetings over Zoom. The second meeting we had a new member joining the group. He was one of the theatre acquaintance's old friends and I immediately broke out in a sweat when he turned his camera on...like a panicy/nervous sweat. I don't really believe in anything at first site but I felt a punch to the gut upon interacting with this human for the first time.

However, as I've already mentioned, I struggle with self-worth issues and was too scared to make a move so I kept myself to myself and tried to look as hot as I could for all future Zoom meetings. For a while, all I had was this weird hour long Zoom chat. He would mention Series of Unfortunate Events or make a literary trope reference from the Bible and send my weird little heart aflutter. Whenever I'd get quiet during a conversation, he'd ask what I thought about the issue at hand. Eventually, I summoned the courage to follow him on Insta & he did the same. I commented on his story when he posted a pic of an Entertainment Weekly article about Karen Gillan and we started chatting a little bit here and there...commenting on how our writing for the podcast was going.

In April, he sort of disappeared from the writing group without much of an explanation AND it this point getting to see him every week was preeetty much the only reason I enjoyed it. My family was also getting the sense that we weren't going to have my grandmother for much longer so I left the group too. However, before I completely cut ties, I sent him one of those vague/slightly-admitting-I-like-him-but-could-also-be-construed-as-me- trying-to-develop-a-writing-partner-type messages. It took him like a week to respond but he finally did and we continued chatting. He eventually asked for my number and we started FaceTiming. We would watch really stupid horror movies together and laugh a lot and talk about our childhoods. We were both from really repressive, intense religious backgrounds, you see! Lots to go over there. We'd send each other scripts that we were working on and give each other feedback.

It was the middle of the summer when he asked how I'd feel about him coming to where I live for a visit. (He lived out of town, btw.) I attempted to play it cool but obviously, gave an emphatic yes. He planned it the weekend of my birthday and being with him in person for the first time basically felt like magic.

I picked him up from the airport and we walked around in town we didn't know, asking each other questions about our lives and both trying to summon the courage to hold the other's hand. I let him drive us home and talking to him, listening to music in the passenger's seat felt like coming home from a really long journey.

The next four days were everything I'd hoped they'd be. We had a long brunch and then went to my favorite museum. We had our first kiss right after I showed him my favorite piece of art and why it meant so much to me. We watched more stupid horror movies and heckled them. We kissed some more, explored the city, ate Chinese food and bought records. We had some in depth conversations about how we've both not had a lot of experience in serious dating because of our super-conservative backgrounds but that we both really wanted to try with each other because we liked each other so much. I introduced him to Gilmore Girls and he loved it. It was perfect.

I drove him back to the airport at the end of his stay and cried the whole way. Even though, I never let anyone see me cry but he sent audio messages his whole trip home...ones where we both admitted how crazy we both were about each other. For the next few months, we FaceTimed and watched more movies together when we could. We texted every day and I started flying up to him whenever I could. We saw Bleachers in concert. We went to a Renaissance Festival with his friends. I was so happy.

I suggested coming up for Halloween because it's his favorite holiday but his parents had decided last minute to come into town. I felt uneasy the whole time they were there. You see, this lovely gentleman and I had very similar religious upbringings but came from very different types of religions and had his parents known we were dating, they probably would never speak to him again so I had some reason to be worried. I was scheduled to come see him the next weekend and I was so scared that he was going to call me and tell me not to bother but he didn't.

The Monday after they left we FaceTimed, giddy from not having seen each other at all or talked that much while his parents were in town. He told me he couldn't wait to see me. Everything was back on track...

or so I thought.

I flew in to see him late on a Friday night and he greeted me with a box of plain lo mien and a hand ready to hold mine. We had another amazing brunch at a French café and went to the movies. We ate sushi and watched more Gilmore Girls. We ate more breakfast foods and he got me the pastry that I'd been dreaming about since the last time I was up there and he sketched out a cover idea for the book I'd been writing. Being with him always felt like being taken care of and wrapped in big fluffy blanket that you also like to kiss all the time. I was genuinely incandescently happy with him...like I wanted to have a long life with him. We'd been planning on a London trip for his friend's wedding. He was going to come down and meet my parents for Christmas. It all felt like things were clicking into place for me.

Then, the night before I was set to go home, I asked him how everything was going with his parents and the religious stuff. He said, "Bad. Really bad." Obviously, that struck pretty immediate fear in my heart and made me realize that my worry about their visit had been well-founded but he wouldn't open up to me about the specifics. He started to say that he wouldn't be able to leave the religious group he was from or tell his parents about me any time in the near future...not a year from now, not two years from now, not even five.

We went back and forth with him saying that he'd let our relationship get too far and that he wasn't being fair to me and me telling him that I wanted to be with him no matter what because he made me feel happy and safe, but it felt like his mind was already made up. I made him promise that we wouldn't make any decisions that night and he agreed we could just think about it some more, but the ride to the airport the next morning felt like an ending. We both rode in silence, with tears streaming down both of our faces.

At the gate, we hugged and I asked if he was going to call me so we could talk some more and he said yes...

but that's been over three months ago and the only conversation we've had was him checking on me after I first got home from openly weeping on my two morning flights back to my house.

The first week afterwards, I just did my best to exist. I ate, worked, and slept. It's taken awhile to feel like a normal human again and even still I have my days (like today, as it is unfortunately Valentine's day) where I just wish things hadn't gone the way they did and I have to hold back tears.

I'm back to feeling like love will never be for me or that I'm going to have to settle for someone who really loves and wants to care for me and hope that I'll develop feelings for them over time.

I'm hoping to do some journal/shadow work to figure out why I feel this way so stay tuned for that in Part 3.

Thanks, friend.