The Breakup That Made Us Possible

We sat with ease, like we always did. Both watching a horror movie, me swaddled in his comforter; him leaning forward on the couch to munch on some crumbly snacks. We’d sneak looks at each other, while both staying intent on the movie, and occasionally share that knowing side smile meant for only us.

No one watching would know we were almost two months outside of a brutal breakup.

Our relationship had gotten heavy; heavy in the sense that we were both feeling pressured to play by a script we thought was being dictated by the other. Pressure to hit the milestones at the right time. He was without patience, I was full of intense reactions. I left my job, which pushed me into an emotional tailspin and pushed him over the edge.

“I am unhappy with you,” he said. “I don’t think I love you.”

The rage burned inside of me until it erupted out of me with vitriol for which I am still ashamed. I hurled insults his way as my belly churned knowing I was simply covering the truth of my own unhappiness. But I needed him to be the bad guy and I needed to be Scarlett O’Hara and he became a six-foot-two pillar of fear and I became a five-foot-ten histrionic.

This display of fireworks and firestorms went on for several more weeks, during which time I made the decision to move back home to New York. He had been the only reason to stay where I was and despite attempts to try to reconcile, he was not open to it, and dare I say I do not blame him because every no was met with more histrionics.

The idiocy in all of this was that I had not been happy either but I wanted to give us another chance on a lighter, less intense scale, while displaying the intensity and darkness that had scared him in the first place.

If I were to summarize our relationship simply I would say he quickly built the foundation of the relationship according to a blueprint of straws, sticks and bricks that he thought was right despite it not being true to him. Meanwhile I huffed and puffed and blew his boundaries down according to a timeline that I thought we were supposed to be on. This left him shivering and afraid (of me) and me breathless and angry (at him).

Our love, however, was left standing strong. We both entered into different phases about it yet never at the same time: denial, bargaining, anger, etcetera. Neither of us, to this day, can deny that it’s still there. He, for his own reasons, has had trouble relating how he feels about me — his safe person, the person he wants to share everything with, the person who makes him feel good, the person he always thinks about — as love because he’d never really felt non-familial love before. He also, due to having had very few relationships, now associates “relationship” with all the bad between us, rather than all of the good.

I personally don’t care if we call it Jigglypuff or fish stick or coriander; I simply want light, happy, safe, honest, committed togetherness with no heavy milestones set by us or anyone else.

I shut him out for my own “no contact period” of healing but reached out to him during a time I was worried he needed me; he did. He felt better, I felt more like myself, and the reconvening of our contact took on a light, fun, healthy level that it should have been before the breakup. We had both stepped back from our unrealistic expectations (him, seeing me every single day, e.g. pressure) and me (expecting this societal checklist of milestones I didn’t even want, e.g. marriage). We just are.

It’s too soon to know what will become of our Gorilla-glue bond but to let our love fade into the darkness would be like leaving a table puzzle with a few pieces left undone only to shove it all back in the box unfinished.

I’m proud of how gentle we are now with each other; holding sometimes uncomfortable spaces for us to determine what we can both handle. For him, he again equates a “relationship” with the bad things and I hope he sees we can make it the good things. He also wants to see other people, and even though it breaks me in half, to figure out for himself there is no other me. I know that I can’t handle that much longer so I am trying to give him a small bit of space rather than immediately running away. That would mean I’d be shoving that puzzle into a box, some parts connected and some parts broken, maybe to be found dusty by later generations through pictures and letters left behind. But, damn, it fucking hurts.

We needed to have that ugly breakup in order to find our way back to our love. I don’t know what we need to find our way back to togetherness; I know the word “relationship” is tainted. I personally don’t care if we call it Jigglypuff or fish stick or coriander; I simply want light, happy, safe, honest, committed togetherness with no heavy milestones set by us or anyone else.

Can we do it? Yes. Will we do it? I don’t know. I have to trust time. Two months ago I would’ve said we will never see each other again, and now here we are, spending time together in the most inconvenient way. Time allowed our love to come back. Now I have to see what else time can do.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.