Bach and Murakami

Today was the first day that I have, with any success at all, managed to spend time on my own without turning into a complete mess. It wasn't good as such, but I didn't get worse. I listened to:

• French Suites
• Goldberg Variations
• The Art of Fugue
• Italian Concerto
• A Musical Offering
• English Suites

and I read Kafka on the Shore. I don't know whether that's a win or not, but I guess it's something. I'm trying to think about what J said this morning, all those points I listed. I'm trying to believe that she's right.

Must remember

I always look forward to T coming for his violin lessons, partly because he's a great kid but also because his mother J is such a font of wisdom. Over the last 2 weeks she has come every week with bits of sage advice, stories from her life, reassurances and perspective that only comes with experience. This is what she had for me today:

• I am a fantastic person
• He is totally unsorted and he is much less than I deserve
• I deserve to be absolutely supported and to feel absolutely secure
• One day this will be just a blip
• I am a fantastic person
• This breakup is not about me, no matter what reasons he gives and no matter what he says, it is about him
  
• If it comes back one day, well and good, but I don't need it and now he needs to be gone
• All this contact is trash that I need to be rid of
  
• I am a fantastic person
• I need to get all this practical stuff sorted out and snap myself out of this because it is not worth all the sorrow
• Life isn't about the picture on the wall - it's about painting it (sounds cliched but didn't when she said it)
• The crucial thing, the key to it all, is learning to love myself
  

Is it really true that if you tell yourself something enough, you eventually believe it?

Temporary

Things to remember:

1. The darkness is temporary
2. This whole awful process is temporary - long, but it will pass
3. Things will get better - they will not be the same as before, but "new" does not equal "bad"

I spent most of yesterday with J (who is herself in the recovery process after ending her 8 1/2 year relationship) who was just wonderful. I was a wreck when she arrived - unable to talk/eat/function, crying every 5 minutes - and by the time she passed me on to R later in the afternoon I was much more together. R was great. She is much like me when I'm myself - brash, to the point, blunt - but she is also really empathic and understanding. We were talking about things, walking around the park, and at one point she grabbed me by the shoulders and almost yelled,

"Q, HE IS NOT RIGHT FOR YOU!!!"

This is what I need to try and believe - hopefully eventually I will.

I have to go around to the apartment later to get some stuff with a friend (couldn't do it by myself, too difficult) and I am dreading it. I'm worried I'll drop to rock bottom again and won't be able to get myself out of it. Perhaps I should think about that when and if the time comes, rather than freaking out in advance.

Dark

I didn't sleep last night. Things kept replaying in my head, over and over - memories from the last few months, times when I really thought we were happy, what he said on the phone on Monday, on and on it went. I've already cried twice and it's only 10 past 9.

Everything feels wrong. Why is this pain so unimaginably bad? It all feels completely incomprehensible.

How am I going to get through the day?

Trying

As expected, that feeling of empowerment hasn't lasted. It did give me a good 24 hours, though. I went to bed last night feeling kind of a bit - well, sad, and this morning I'm sort of somewhere in between.

I can't remember very clearly, but I think I might have had a dream about him last night.

This healing process is always going to be rational mind vs irrational mind, isn't it? Rationally nothing has changed, I still know that whatever changes have occurred in him have made him someone other than the person I love so much, but irrationally - I'm missing, missing, missing him. K said on the phone that he's probably wracked with guilt - it was this same irrational mind that replied that I didn't want him to be wracked with guilt, I wanted him to be plagued by regrets.

Today I'm going to spend the day with S and then G is coming around to take me out for dinner. I hope that I'm able to make myself better company than I currently feel I am.

M is coming down from Sydney on Friday and we're going to go around to the apartment and pick up some more stuff. I'm dreading it. I really just want all of that to be over and done with so that I never have to go there again.

Still kicking

I felt strangely empowered last night (see last post, entirely out of keeping with the rest of this blog to date). Today I feel less "I can do it!" but not too bad. I'm just at a bit of a loose end for things to do.

I think realising that he has changed and that he seems like someone else will be helpful for a while - just allows me to create distance between us that didn't exist before. I've no doubt that if we saw each other in person this distance would just crumble so I think that non-contact is important. I can see that the further I get from this, the further away I am from that initial, terrible shock, the more I'll be able to call on my rational mind rather than my "heart".

The way things are at the moment is pretty crap, but it's more bearable than the heartache and woundedness of last week. I know I'll still have days like that, but at least I have managed to prove to myself that I can be better, even if it's only for an hour or two at a time at this stage.

A first

Tonight is really the first night that I have felt properly positive about things. I think the clincher was his “pragmatism” (see earlier post), and talking to friends earlier.

What I can see tonight that I hadn’t been able to properly discern before is that he, as he is now with the issues he has now and the way he is thinking now, is not the person whose loss I am mourning. It’s as if he is standing in front of me now, the way he is now, and he casts a thousand shadows behind him from the last 3 years and 9 months, various shadows of various hims who were right for me; he casts all those shadows but the real three-dimensional person standing in front of me at the moment, with his confusion and uncertainty and new ideas, is not the one I want – is not enough for me.

It strikes me that if I met him for the first time now,I probably wouldn’t give him a chance.

I don’t think this positivity will be lasting – I’d be foolish if I thought it would be – but I hope that in the dark days that will undoubtedly follow at times over the next few months, I can somehow still find a flicker of the way I’m feeling at the moment. Tonight he is not right for me, and for the first time I see that arising from my own feelings, rather than basing it around his.

And as my sister was just saying to me, if he were still the person he was a year ago, then he would be the right person. And we would not be where we are now.

Maybe one day I will even – although admittedly this is stretching it – thank him for the conversation we had today.

5 things

My friend K told me to write down 5 things that are good about me and my life.

1. My family
2. I have amazing friends who are all stepping up to give me more love and support than I could have imagined
3. I love my work, more than most people I know
4. The plans that are slowly shaping up for the rest of the year
5. I am intelligent, have varied interests and am good company (well, not now - but generally)

I had a long, long talk with my friend J about things earlier this evening. She said some things that I think I should try to remember.

• Even if I never get more information, even if I never understand this situation more than I do now, it will inevitably get easier over time
• Even without "all the information", I have more than I need in order to draw the line in the sand and tell myself that that is enough, the relationship would never have been the right thing for me, and I will be better off for this having happened
• No matter what happens for him in his future relationships and how bad it might feel to me initially, it will not change that this wasn't the right relationship for me
  
• In even a couple of months, I will be at a point that is unimaginable right now
• I shouldn't think about wanting good things for him, or wanting him to be okay, or really anything about his life really, because when he gave me up, he gave up the care I had for him as well
  

K also said

• In the end, I will think of this as a favour that he has done me
  
• I deserve someone who thinks I am wonderful and is absolutely committed to me, without reservations
• It is hard because it is so raw and new, but I will get through this - grief has its own timeframe

I need to cut the ties.

Damn

Weakened again. Rang him to get the lease, furniture, utilities sorted out, ended up talking for 3 hours.

It wasn't bad, just hard. But then again, this is all hard.

I hate how much it hurts me to know that he is already looking ahead to his next relationship when this one has barely been over for a week. I know that it's not because he's a bad person - as he says, it was part of the point of ending this relationship that he needed to go and explore others. It just really stings that he's already being so "pragmatic", as he puts it. I guess it's because from where I am at the moment, I can't imagine being with anyone else or wanting to be with anyone else. I know he's a few steps ahead of me. It's just really difficult not to feel like he's cheapening what we had and everything that it meant, by wanting to move on to the next thing so swiftly.

I really need to get a grip on the fact that this is over. I'm not quite sure how - sometimes I feel like I just can't - but I know it needs to happen. As my friend A says, "Time is non-negotiable!" but sometimes I just want it to happen now now right NOW. I want to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I want to see where life will take me, I want to be over this, I want to enjoy things, I want to learn how to be on my own, I want to see what the future holds, I want it all.

And (to quote Freddie Mercury) I want it now.

I want to want good things for him, I want to want him to be happy and mean it, even if it's without me, I just want to know that this all has meaning without him.

So, life: I'm waiting.

Reality

Yesterday evening was a write-off so I bombed myself out at 8:30 and reluctantly got out of bed 12 hours later.

The reality just seems so harsh; I think it is only just beginning to sink in that he will not be part of my life, and that waking up is going to be like this every day for a while. This morning I woke up and found myself thinking about what today might have been like if none of this had happened.

Bad move.

I wonder whether the reality is sinking in for him yet? It must be different for him, partly because he made the decision but also because he is still living in the house we shared, bits of me and bits of us are still everywhere around him, the place probably still smells of me and there are visual reminders everywhere. I went out for a coffee with my friend M yesterday and he said that perhaps the reality was hitting me harder and more quickly because of all the physical changes in my environment - that is, being back at my parents', moving all my stuff, going home to a different place at the end of the day, living with my family again.

I wonder if this really feels like what he wants?

I've found the temptation to call increasingly difficult over the last couple of days. It just seems so simple - pick up the phone, hear his voice at the other end, talk. I suppose that would be followed by "cry, feel awful, end up back at square one".

I'm not sure whether it's a good or a bad thing that I'm not working at the moment. On the one hand, I'm not sure I could drag myself up to do it. On the other, it would be at least a partial distraction from all of this. I've been dreading this week a bit because I'm alone at home during the days, far too much time to think and obsess and wonder and muse and brood.

Answers?

I've spent a lot of time over the last couple of days obsessing over my flaws, wondering whether things would have turned out differently if I had done x, y or z.

Rationally I have come to realise that the crux of it is this: he simply couldn't commit. It explains why he couldn't even try to work things out, why he couldn't think of reasons to continue even after so many wonderful times over the last few years. For every reason he could find to end things, I could counter it with 10 other reasons why we should continue. Every negative for him seemed to clinch the decision he had already - consciously or not - made; I couldn't see that there was anything we couldn't work through if we really wanted it. I guess it's the "if we really wanted it" where we differed. It was like we were flipsides of the same coin but couldn't ever quite see each other, or see one another's point of view - or to stretch the metaphor, the coin could never land on both sides at once.

It would also explain why everything he has said and written is so confusing - why there's a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of this reason here, a bit of another (seemingly unrelated) reason there. I don't think he understands it himself. I guess all of this was stuff that I've been coming to for a few days - ever since I got that last email from him 3 days ago and realised that asking him for answers was futile because he wouldn't be able to give them to me but would attempt to nonetheless, in the process confusing and hurting me further.

Going along this line of thought then, the logical conclusion must be that there is nothing I could have done to change anything. As my friends and family have pointed out, the flaws I have and the niggly things between us couldn't have been dealbreakers in themselves. They came later, as justifications for something he knew he felt but couldn't quite explain.

My friend B thinks he has no idea about all of this now, and won't allow himself to work through it to this point for some time. I find myself wondering if he will ever reach it at all. My mind - or heart or whatever - is in a constant push-pull situation at the moment. Part of me, the part that is just so deeply hurt, wonders constantly about what he's doing, how he's feeling, whether he's sleeping, whether he has dreams about me (as I do about him), whether he ever has moments where he wonders just what he has done, whether he is as constantly and relentlessly followed by it wherever he goes and whatever he does. The part of me that can see things more clearly and rationally sees that there really was no alternative - not even for me. That part of me can see that in the end this never would have been enough and that I could never have been happy knowing all the while that he was unsure.

What I am grieving is the future that we used to have. That future died when he discovered that he couldn't commit to me or to our relationship. There could be no future together now that this has happened - not one I can see at the moment, anyway - in which I could ever be as happy, secure or fulfilled as in the future that used to exist.

One week

Today it is 1 week since it ended.

I'm not really sure what I should be taking out of this so far. Should I be feeling encouraged because today I am so much less distraught than 7 days ago? Should I be feeling down because I realise there is so much of me that I need to work on? I'm not sure.

The overwhelming thing that has happened is that my friends - people who were my best friends before, people I was friendly with but not really "friends" with, people who I hadn't seen or spoken to in a long time - have all stepped in to support, love and cry with me. I feel guilty at times because I know that there is a part of me that would trade all that wonderful, unconditional support in an instant; I also know, though, that they understand that and accept it.

After talking to my mother for quite a while this morning I am vaguely wondering if I will end up tortured down the track by the things that are my flaws, my foibles, my failings? It is hard to silence the little voice in my head that keeps wondering if things would be different had I been more disciplined, had I had more perspective on which battles to fight, if I'd been more responsible?

In the end I know that all I can do is pick up these lessons and work on them now, and that musing on the past and wishing I could change it will only leave me hung up and unable to live my life the way I should.

J - I know you are not reading this now, and I don't know that you ever will, but I know that I have to let you go. And I am trying to have faith that it is for the best, for both of us.

My day has ended better than it began.

I want to tell him that's not about hate, although if it simplifies things for him to think of it that way, then he can think it is. I also want to tell him that it is wrong to try and debase what we had now, in retrospect; the things he feels he "shouldn't have said" I am certain were sincere and heartfelt at the time. No matter how much things are changing or have changed, it is wrong to go back and try to retrospectively change the meaning of something that was clearly intended in a particular way at the time.

I spent a good amount of time tonight sitting on the couch at a friend's place, talking and thinking and talking. I don't know if it was useful - I don't know if any of this is - but I felt a bit better at the end of it.

I really do not want to let him destroy my life, rip my self-esteem to shreds, make me feel small. So I'm going to stop replying to his emails.

A backward step

I am really, really struggling today.

I slept fitfully - the first night I haven't taken a sedative - and woke up this morning confused and unsure of where I was. When it dawned that I wasn't in my bed with him by my side, I fell into a hole and haven't been able to pull myself out of it since.

I just can't understand how we "weren't good for each other". I can't understand how this can possibly feel right for him, or even just not wrong. Every minute feels wrong for me at the moment, and I feel a desperate urge to run away from myself, as if that would make the problem cease to exist and would allow me some escape from this relentless fog of pain and incomprehension.

Today it feels like nothing will ever be right again. I feel like in a month, a year, 2 years, 5 years, it will still feel wrong. I feel like I'll never reach equilibrium again and I'll never be able to do all the things I wanted to, or to have everything I've always wanted. I feel like I'll never be happy again and that I will end up twisted, obsessed, haunted by this always.

Will it ever be easier? I can't see it.

Beginning to recover, or just delusional?

I just had coffee with a friend. I am beginning to wonder if indeed the only reason why I feel better is that somewhere in my very muddled mind there is a little rogue corner that is telling me that we will get back together? I don't even know whether it is that, I'm just worried that it is. How ridiculous.

I really want to be able to rip off the bandaid, get through the stinging pain, recover, move on. If only it were that simple! N (the friend I had coffee with) told me it doesn't really matter why I feel better, and that I should just enjoy not feeling devastated. I told her I'm worried that I will crash and burn again and she said, "So what if you do? You'll pick yourself up again, especially now that you know you can."

We had some email contact today. I think we had too much and I think maybe it might be fuelling this possible delusional mind-bit (gee, I'm great for certainty at the moment, aren't I?). I know it needs to stop.

I can't believe it's only been 4 days. This is going to take such a long time.

Reaffirmation

I couldn't think of the word I wanted for the title of this post, so it's not exactly what I intended but the right word isn't coming to me.

Today I still feel semi-human. I'm a bit worried that I'm only feeling better because talking on the phone with him yesterday might have somehow convinced a sneaky little part of my brain that we haven't broken up, or something. Don't know if that makes sense. In any case I'm surprised to be sort of okay today, but to be honest I need all the good surprises I can get at the moment so I guess I'll just try to roll with it.

My taxi driver last night told me that the world would bring me good things and not to worry. Lots of older and wiser people are telling me that they understand how I feel from their own experiences and that as unbelievable as it seems, things really will be all right one day.

I haven't cried since yesterday afternoon - have come close, but not quite done it! - which is a bit amazing really. I talked to a friend of mine last night who went through a far worse break-up 2 years ago and never thought she would get through it, and I felt better after our long chat.

I've been thinking about it a lot (how surprising) and I'm trying to come to the realisation that no matter whether the problems were real or perceived, it doesn't change anything, and it doesn't change the fact that for whatever reasons, each of us was somehow unable to give the other what he/she needed. Eventually I have to accept that that's not good enough for me, I think. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm trying.

I also had a few moments of clarity (only a few, but it's a start) yesterday evening when I realised that not having contact with him is important; no matter how imperative and urgent it feels for me to tell him how I feel or even to "plead my case" or whatever, I am beginning to see that it won't change anything for the better, and if anything will hinder rather than help. I just need to try and remember that, and suppress the urge when it seems irresistible.

Despite that, I'm not sorry that I spoke to him yesterday. I managed to get lots of thoughts off my chest and it showed me exactly those things I was just talking about - that things will not be changed at the moment by anything I say. What I really wanted to tell him was that I miss him, and now it's said.

So I still don't know when I'll be happy again - and I'm not even sure that I believe I will, yet - but I hope my mind and my heart will start to have longer periods of calm amongst the hurt and angst, and I hope that these short periods of feeling not-quite-so-despairing augur well for the days and weeks to come.

A bit of respite

After my day of appalling self control - or lack thereof - I somehow managed to grab my first window of "okay time" tonight. That is, time not spent a) crying, b) wondering, c) crying, d) despairing or e) crying (amazingly). I may have even smiled a couple of times. I am not under any illusion that this will last, but it was sort of a pleasant surprise - that despite everything being pretty shit really, I can still feel semi-human for a while.

My friends and my sister (who is wise beyond her years) tell me that gradually the little pockets of time when I feel okay will lengthen, and it'll be easier to get through the days. It really can't get that much harder, surely?

In the fleeting moments that I feel optimistic (which is my natural state of being when unstressed, I think) I can kind of nearly see - through lots of fog - that eventually I will be all right, with or (more likely at the moment) without him. The rest of the time is doom and gloom. But still - it's a tiny flicker of hope, which I desperately need at the moment.

I truly don't understand what happened or how it happened or why, but I hope that eventually those things will cease to feel so vitally important and I will be able to accept whatever good life has to give me. At the moment, though, I do think (despite the optimistic tone of this post) that the struggle to understand, for answers, will consume a good deal of my thoughts.

Setback

Why am I so fucking weak??

Life goes on, seemingly without me

Today I'm back at work.

I feel like utter shit.

Over the last 24 hours or so I've had a lot more unhealthy thoughts enter my mind, mostly of the unproductive variety, such as:

Does he have any idea what he's doing?

Does he know what he's losing?

How the hell did he ever convince himself that there was anything fundamentally wrong with us?

Those things he said were wrong with us were actually completely untrue.

Will he regret this?

Why did he give in like that?

As I said, unproductive and unhelpful.

My friends have been wonderful and my mother an absolute godsend but it doesn't answer my stupid, rhetorical, unanswerable question: how the fuck do I get over this?

I went to the apartment last night with a friend to pick up some of my stuff.

Three hours later I got a text message.

This hurts so much. I'm so sorry.

Are you surprised it hurts? Did you think that erasing me from your life would be easy? This is what it is. This is what it means.

I'm sorry too. I'm sorry that you managed to convince yourself that we had problems much bigger than us, I'm sorry that you have given up everything we had and everything we could have, I'm sorry that we ever ended up here.

I admit that when that message arrived my first thoughts were of concern for you. You can't flick a switch and stop caring or stop thinking of things "together" rather than alone. But this grieving process isn't one we can go through together. You made this choice. I had no say.

I realise now that I could never have seen this coming, no matter how many times I try to tell myself that I should have.

One of my friends said, "When you decide that you have to get out, it's pretty easy to make up reasons why", and this is what you have done.

It strikes me that one of the saddest things is this: even if you discover that you were wrong, how can this not be tainted always?

Mess

There was a time that I had nothing to explain
Oh, this mess I had made
But then things got complicated
My innocence has all but faded
Oh, this mess I have made

And I don't believe in God
So I can't be saved
All alone as I've learned to be
In this mess I have made

All the untested virtue
The things I said I'd never do
Least of all to you

I know he's kind and true
I know that he is good to you
He'll never care for you more than I do

But I don't believe in love
And I can't be changed
All alone as I've learned to be
In this mess
I have made the same mistakes
Over and over again

There are rooms in this house that I don't open any more
Dusty books of pictures on the floor

That she will never see
She'll never see that part of me
I want to be for her
What I could never be for you

But I don't believe in God
So I can't be saved
All alone as I've learned to be
In this mess I have made

************

I don't know who this song applies to more. But we both loved it, and now it almost sounds like it's about us.

Que sera, sera?

I've been thinking of starting a blog for a while now, mostly in preparation for the exciting year ahead that has been slowly taking shape.

Pity then, that the catalyst for actually starting this is that I think I am as devastated as I have ever been.

I thought I had it all: career, home life, love of my life. Turns out that now it's just career. I think. The uncertainty is killing me.

How do you adjust from "when we do x" to "if we do x"? How do you cope with the things you have held so firmly in your grasp for so long, suddenly crumbling and slipping through your fingers?

Will I ever feel happy again? Right now I don't feel like I ever will. Rationally I know I will - and I have been asking others obsessively whether it's true. I will. But not this minute, or this hour. Not tomorrow, not the next day, not next week. I suppose this is just that cliche of "one day at a time".

Que sera, sera. Right?