Reflections on a Break-up

I decided to start this blog last year when I had a lot of life happening, and a lot running through my head.  I felt like I had no solid ground under my feet.  Hence the title that’s been sitting unused for a year.  I had so much going on up there, I wasn’t sure where to start this blog.  The first post kind of sets the tone, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted this to be.  

Well.  Here we go…

June 2016, my best friend walked across the room, took the ring off of my finger, and said he was leaving.  While the relationship hadn’t been good for months, I was still taken by surprise.  I was still devastated.  I spent months in mourning and in solitude.  September 3, 2017 would have been my first wedding aniversary.  It passed me by without much thought.  A week later, when I realized the date had passed, I was elated that I hadn’t remembered and that I’d had no feelings about it.  The realization of forgetting the date made me reflect on the relationship, and on the break-up.  

There are three things I learned about myself.  I don’t need another baby.  I don’t need to get married again.  I do need space.

My fiance and I not only had a wedding date set, we had plans for when we’d try for a baby.  We talked about the baby as often as we talked about the wedding.  For years, I’d been anti-more babies.  I have two children.  I have two awesome children.  I AM HAPPY WITH MY TWO CHILDREN.  But a few years ago, my doctor started discussing removing my ovaries because of endometriosis.  Suddenly, I was very protective over the possibility of having another baby, and no doctor was going to take away that hypothetical baby.  And then, I was with F.  He wanted to be a dad.  

My first marriage was to a man who left me alone at the hospital with our first child to meet a side chick at a party.  I’d moved out before I knew I was pregnant with my second.  He wasn’t there through any of it.  He refused to meet his daughter because I wouldn’t allow the side chick to come into my hospital room.

Suddenly, I saw the possibility of having a baby with a supportive partner.  I wanted to know what it was like to be happy to be pregnant.  I wanted to understand what it felt like to be excited and looking forward to a new life.  I wanted to know what it was like to give birth with the father of my child holding my hand through it.  It wasn’t actual excitement to start all over again with parenting.  I was hoping to fix all the things I’d wanted and never got.  It’s a terrible burden to put on a partner, or a baby.  

I let that hypothetical baby go, and I am happy.

After my divorce, I also spent years being anti-marriage.  After ten years of being a single parent, I was exhausted by the constant aloneness.  Marriage became a very important step that I needed to take in my life.  I never stopped to examine why until I watched my chance at marriage drive away.

I am not the woman men choose to be with.  They love me.  They love me deeply.  But in the end I have always been a little too much… something.  I’ve heard the “You’re amazing, but…” speech so many times “amazing” is now a bad word in my world.  I see the women they leave me for, and they are always a little more plain, laugh a little less, don’t speak up quite as much.  The women have needed these men a little more.  

I realized I’d become needy.  I needed desparately for a man to choose me; a man who was so proud to be with me that he would stand up in front of our family and friends and say he was choosing me for the rest of his life.

I’m grateful that the man who said he would choose me forever didn’t do it.  I don’t need a man.  I don’t want a man who needs me.  I want a man who wants to be in my life, and who works for a place in my life.  As long as we both want a place in each other’s lives, we will wake up each day and choose to love each other.  Marriage makes it easy to stop making an active choice to love, and I want to actively make that choice together with someone.  I still want a partnership, but it doesn’t have to be marriage.

So, I let the idea of marriage go, and I am content.

The last thing I realized was that I need space.  I need my own air.  I’ve spent fifteen years now as a single parent.  When I was married, all I wanted was for him to be home; something he never gave me.  I was just not important to him.  When I was engaged to F, he was never away from me.  We had no exclusive activities.  It got to the point that he would be upset if I wanted to go to bed earlier than he did.  I became depressed and couldn’t function.  

When he left, it took some time for me to get used to being alone again.  It was hard to sleep.  I wandered around the house like I was lost.  I still didn’t go out, and it took me a long time to pick up my hobbies and interests again.  I’ve been finding little pieces of my former self as I’ve gone along.

I’ve continued to observe the process of regaining myself.  I’ve discovered that I love being around people, but they wear me out.  I need recovery time after being social.  I need time to reflect on the happenings of the day or week or month.  I need silence.  I love to be held when I have a problem, but I need to fix it myself.  I love having someone to talk to, but I also need time to think. I love having someone sleep beside me, but I also love stretching my body full across the bed and wrapping all of the blankets around me.  

I let go of wanting a traditional relationship.

In the end, I need someone who is sure of himself.  Who will choose me everyday, but who doesn’t need to be with me everyday to be reminded of that choice.  Who will give me solitude, and the chance to rediscover him when we come together again.

I am grateful to my former partner for helping me to discover these things, and for realizing he was not the person I wanted.  I look forward to making choices with someone in mutual wanting.