The Break Up: When the soulmate shit doesn’t work

In a quiet corner on the ocean-view deck of the Crow’s Nest we started a conversation that lasted five years. We divulged stories and histories and the impacts of such that weights on us all year after year—the chains we drag around and rearrange. What can look trivial to an outsider had become known to us—we shared, analyzed, found blame and help each other forgive. Life was full, again.

It was an obsessive relationship—a gut reaction to the prior bad marriage. Jon was everything my ex wasn't. He was attentive, truly romantic, introspective and intelligent. We could talk about everything—great debates about religion and politics and science that went on for hours often in between the nightly marathon sexual events. And they were events; each one a mystical transcendence—an epic adventure that could be silently re-visited when friends inquired about the perpetual scabs on his knees or the blood stains on his pants. He blamed his basketball workouts but we smiled at each other, knowing the real story—the frequency and intensity of our lovemaking. It wasn't just sex and it was more than love; it was an energy exchange—chemical.

Day after day he left sweet messages on my phone, notes on my pillow and said that nothing was right before I came into his life.  But as good things do and time and circumstance swirl up the dirt at our feet, a thing happened. A weird thing.

Four and a half years into our relationship, when he had to face the depression of an odd and inconvenient, but far from debilitating, and certainly not fatal, illness he lost all sense of himself. The therapist said it was post-traumatic stress but the urologist called it peyronies. Whatever you want to call it he developed a sudden fear of our relationship and everything about us was called in to  question.

He would disappear for days only to return hung over from a variety of substances, apologetic and guilt-ridden. He begged, I understood, I forgave, I supported. We talked endlessly over a hundred midnight hours. Nothing I said made any difference I assured him it would not make any difference in our relationship but he didn't believe it. The hours crawled into months and then a year was nearly gone. More promises. More admissions. More acts of redemption, but nothing healed him because living comfortably numb is a state of preference for some. He chose it. He nurtured his weaknesses until he broke me of him.

Then slowly, after months of soul-bearing and apologizing and shared tears, I told him to go away for good. No more coming back with tempting words. No more proclaiming love where there could be no exposure. He was to be fully there with me or completely out. There had to be an ending. One just can’t go around and around like those useless fans pushing more dust than air.

My final journal entry about him started with a dream.

I had this dream of you. Again. You came to my door one night—late. Your eyes had that sparkle that I remember and your face had softened. The tenseness of the past year was gone. Your voice was quiet and deep and sensuous like I remember. You reach out and touch my face and say you miss me. We hold each other again and for a while all the pain in the world is gone, like it used to be or at least like it seemed it used to be. Was it all an illusion? We make love of course, like we would have—long and slow and the night slips away to small hours where it is so quiet outside even the wandering cats are silent—back inside curled up.

But all that didn’t matter. Sometimes love is not enough. I used to think I could save you. Ha! Don’t all women think that? I used to think you were this courageous, centered spirit. We are so fooled by words and romanticized visions, movies and tales of love stories we scarcely see our own reflections when in love.

The mirror is a madness itself delivering back the false frames—little stills of some fraction of ourselves without revealing any truth at all. Today I am angry. Yesterday I wasn’t. It has been a back road 4-wheel ride this past 6 months. Did you know I’ve lost 20 pounds? I stopped eating—all the stress tore open my gut. I guess you know I was only 118 pounds  to start which means I can’t sit down for long on hard surfaces. I have no ass fat. My breasts too have shrunk from 34DD to 32A. Have you seen the string bikini I’ve been wearing? I quite like the feeling of being a little thing now but I’ve had comments about my health from friends and work associates so I’m drinking Ensures—you know those canned multi-vitamin weight gain drinks for old people. Yeah, so I’ll be putting most of the weight back on.

More weight. Less you. That will work.

The last remains of Jon went with the cat. I couldn’t have a pet in my new place so I had to give up SweetTea. One more punch to the gut. The memories now were the cruel ones. He couldn’t face his own demons and used me to blame anyone but himself. So, he hid like a beat-down animal and retreated to the caves in his head. I scared him now.

He was fading from my memory—slowly, daily, like old photographs; sometimes  I couldn’t picture him at all. I could sense a day coming when thinking of him would not produce a jump in my breathing or a stab of pain in my side that often triggered a panic attack.

Leaving Jon was the end and the beginning—or maybe just a chasm I needed to cross to overwrite the space of him in my head. That never did work, though, but not for lack of trying. The more other men came in—the more Jon faded away.