inthemidstofthefire - Tumblr blog

inthemidstofthefire · 6 years

Text

Life is Crazy (and I’m only 20) My Breakup Story

Well man, let me tell ya life is crazy. Before I came to college I thought I had a pretty good idea of what life was, you have your routine, go to school, see friends, family, and eat. Maybe you take a vacation, fall in love but blah blah blah. But I had never been in love in high school. In fact, I never even liked anyone that much. Sure I kissed a few guys but things never went further and my crushes usually dissipated. Eventually, that small town life got boring, as it tends to when you grow up. So, I left. I applied to school in California, was luckily supported and allowed to go. So in 2015, I found myself here at an orientation meeting more new people than I had in my whole life! I loved it because, well, I’m a very social person. Freshman year was great, I had a fun group of friends, we went to fun parties and school wasn’t totally on my radar. My now ex, was. Matt and I first met as he brought another girl into his dorm, where I was hanging out. That girl was my friend and I was happy for her. I started hanging out with his roommates and alas we started a friendship. We ate a lot, smoked a lot, went to concerts. It was fun. Then it started to change, there was a lot of sexual tension, and one day before thanksgiving we made out. It progressed, we kept hooking up until, finally, we were kinda drunk in a stairwell and he said something like:

“Olivia, what are we doing here?”

To which I responded:

“Um, I don’t know”

“I think we should date.”

From there ensued a two hour conversation in which he convinced me to date him. Now l wasn’t being pressured, I just was unsure. He was part of my friend group at the time, and if it didn’t work out I’d be in an awkward position. But at the same time, I REALLY liked him. He was so cute, and fun, and nice. I had never liked anyone the way I liked him. So I went with it. Upon leaving I said

“This makes me very uncomfortable” in a joking tone, but I was pretty serious.

After we dated for a few weeks, Valentines day approached. It was weird, but luckily I was out of town. We continued dating and that awkwardness began to fade. One night I snuck him into my dorm room and I lost my virginity to him. I was really excited (although it was awkward because my roommates were sleeping in the room—he also made me go on top, when I had no idea what I was doing). From then the sexplosion started. We were fucking so many times a week, people got annoyed.

Around June I went home after finals for two weeks to spend time with friends and family before returning to Summer school. Now keep in mind my whole freshman year, I was in a weird place. I was done with my hometown and I thought with my friends. I didn’t really talk to my friends back home that year. When I returned home I was just so excited to get back to school. I remember the first red flag was when I was talking to my friends about going to a nude beach. Matt said that he didn’t want me to go because although he respected my bodily autonomy, others might not—so I should wait for him. I got into a huge argument, threatening to end the relationship. Which of course I didn’t want to do, but at that time I was still confident and not afraid to lose him. We worked through it, but he was still always weird about body things.

Then something shifted.

The summer of freshman year I did a summer program for architecture. Partly out of interest and partly out of a desire to get the fuck out of New Jersey. Right before it started though, Matt and I took our first vacation together. We went to a sleepy, meth town called Pismo Beach. The people were kinda weird, and the water was so cold, but the air was so hot. Definitely a weird beach weekend. When we first got there he began trying to have sex with me, he sort of just threw me on the bed and started fucking me. He never asked, but I thought that maybe our rough sex had given him a weird point of view. And I didn’t think it was all that bad because if I was horny I would have liked it. I cried a lot, and that’s when I had my first panic attack with him. He kept apologizing and said “I would never do anything to hurt you.” I accepted and we moved past it. The rest of the weekend was fun, we got good cinnamon rolls.

This was a weird time. I had class everyday 9am-5pm. I lived in an apartment with strangers. And let me tell you, it was so fucking hot and my apartment had no air conditioning. I had never cooked for myself before, so most of the time I was starving. My neck always hurt from staring at my computer. I also had no friends. It was tough—I loved the work, but the scenario was hard. During this time Matt was still working at a restaurant back home so he would come and visit me on the weekends. First weekend was fun, he slept over, we probably smoked weed, got dinner etc. But by the 2nd to 3rd week of the program I started to feel weird. Now I’ve had childhood anxiety, I couldn’t sleep at night due to panic attacks, forgot how to eat, couldn’t leave the house. But I thought that was behind me. I started feeling extremely lonely, as I had made not one friend during this program to hang out with. Matt was the only person who was there for me. I was lonely, sad, tired, and stressed. One night I just said that I wanted to go home after only spending a little time with him, and before I could leave I just broke down. I told him “something isn’t right,” and he listened. I explained how I was feeling, he probably said he would help and that he loved me. He gave me encouragement and went home. These feelings persisted. The next weekend, I wanted him to come down but he couldn’t. My friend Andrea came and we went out for drinks. We met some lawyer who kept buying us tequila shots and margaritas and before you know it I was trashed. Now I know tequila, and alcohol in general, makes people emotional, but this was a whole other level. We got home, Andrea stayed inside, and I went outside and called Matt sobbing. I was so upset and I thought the only relief would be if he came over. He said he couldn’t, obviously (he lived far away and had work the next morning). I don’t remember saying any of this but I started crying about how I wanted to kill myself and jump in front of a car. These were thoughts that I had never uttered out loud or really ever thought of sober. He texted Andrea frantically saying I was going to kill myself, she came to get me we went to bed. I apologized to her in the morning saying it was just the tequila, and felt so guilty.

I finished off my program and we went to Matt’s home for the night as I was flying out the next day. I was absolutely devastated to leave him. I worried that he would die, and that we would be separated forever. Well, whatever. I went home and unfortunately for me I arrived when all of my friends were leaving. I found myself in the exact same place that I was at school—alone. I felt pretty depressed, all I wanted to do was talk to Matt. I was jealous that he was busy and I was not. I could barely get out of bed in the morning. I would sleep till 3pm and most days do nothing. I was more than ready to get the fuck out of New Jersey again.

My sophomore year began and I was so excited. I was living in a single and Matt met me to help move my room around. He didn’t really want to help, he mostly just wanted to have sex. He actually made me feel bad about making him do so much labor because I knew what he really wanted. But I loved the guy, and my year began. I went to Spain for a week and missed out on meeting my floor and joining new clubs. That was hard because when I returned I had no new friends. While my closest buds were in singles next to me we never really talked like I imagined we would. Abby was in distress for the first two quarters over her breakup. Roslyn just seemed anti-social and/or depressed, and Tiffany was always with Nick (like every night). So there weren’t that many group hangouts or dinners. So, I spent most of my time with Matt. We had sleepovers multiple times a week and we had a great time together. It was so fun just getting to cuddle with someone for hours. We started a new routine where we’d go on these nice walks. It was nice. But he was still being weird about sex, I remember crying after being with him one time to Tiffany and Roslyn because I felt like he had pressured me or something. I tried to explain my boundaries to him but it turned into a debate about my bodily autonomy again. It was around this time that I wrote in one notebook that I felt “diluted, and had given too much of myself”, but of course these were just passing thoughts and most of my time was consumed with being in blissful innocent love. Some weird things happened too. When I was very drunk one night laying on the floor, Matt pulled my pants down and began eating me out. I told him to stop and I think someone walked into my room. There were other times when I would test him and pretend to sleep, he would still continue to fuck me anyway until I told him to stop. This continued and at one point I expressed that I didn’t know if I was what he wanted. He assured me that I was. That year was out first serious relationship talk, and it was a lot of me trying to validate my feelings. We hadn’t been going on as many dates anymore, which I wasn’t against because I don’t need a nice dinner to feel appreciated but I still missed him putting in effort to make me feel special.

Towards the end of the year Tiffany took us to her Ventura house. We got really drunk, and Matt told me about his sexual fantasies. Apparently he would go online and pretend to be some female anime character and talk to people online. He said he hasn’t done it in a while though. Then on his computer I asked him to show me the porn he liked. This was one of the times (other than learning about his Dad) that I felt like he was opening up. But, the porn he watched was shitty. Really fake. We tried fucking while watching it but I just felt like I was being used by a sex toy. One night I was so drunk and apparently I said to him “please don’t have sex with me” which he told me the next day. He said of course he wouldn’t do something like that. At this point our sex life was getting weird, we had begun falling into this routine. He’d use the vibrator on me and just hold it there, it became boring. He wouldn’t talk dirty and when we did have really rough sex sometimes it became way too much. One time he made me cry it was so intense (this year). Our sex dropped off, we didn’t fuck at Mammoth, we didn’t fuck over Easter. Meanwhile I was still having panic attacks, being anxious and a bit suicidal.

That summer we were both taking classes. It was hard to see each other but we made it work. However, it started to become boring to hang out together. We had good conversation about what he liked. We watched new shows, and cooked. Went to the occasional party. But something was getting weird. I felt like I was never really spending time with him. Our sleepovers dropped off. Cuddling sort of stopped too. He was always saying he was ready to go home and just seemed like he didn’t want to spend that much time with me. I mentioned this and he said everything was fine. Then on my birthday something happened, and I don’t completely remember it because I was so drunk. But we went to my room to have sex, I started to get tired and tried to sleep and I’m pretty sure he just tried to have sex with me anyway. We went through two weird drunk breakups where he said he didn’t think we would be together forever. I immediately thought to kill myself. He immediately apologized and we made up. The rest of the summer continued. We went camping which was fun, but only fucked once (couldn’t finish). I took mushrooms for the first time and it was nice. He got annoyed with my when I asked for too many things, like can I have the milk, and the eggs. That was probably a bit princessy of me. But hey. We went to his grandfather’s celebration. We went to nocturnal, and I said that I felt like he was going to break up with me after (it was the last thing we planned together). My mom asked if I would want to fly him home with me and I said no, part of me knew I think. We went to nocturnal, he was there for me when I got really anxious I told him how lucky I felt to be with him.

The school year began, it was nice to have school again. I was excited. September happened and then around Abby’s birthday we were both drunk. He admitted he didn’t think we would have a family together, and broke up with me. It was a long weird conversation, I told him I didn’t want that. He didn’t either fully. He texted me the next day, we hung out. He came over drunk and slept on my couch with me. We reconciled three days later. The rest of the month I was on edge. I didn’t know if he really wanted to be with me and I couldn’t really trust him. He told me to trust him because “that’s obviously what i wanted” but he gave me no reason to trust him. I kept calling when I was drunk and alone talking about suicide. During our breakup I started cutting myself. He just told me “don’t do that,” he said we would talk about ways to help me but he never brought it up. We were barely having sex at this point and I told him when we reconciled that things would be different. We would each make a list about what we wanted, go on more dates etc. However, he never made the list, we went on one date that I planned (like usual). I asked why we didn’t and he said “maybe we just don’t want to” all the signs were there but I loved this guy. This was my little Matt, the guy whose tiny butt I loved. The guy who made me laugh, the guy who was my best friend. On November 6th, I talked to him saying I wanted to have sex this week (something you shouldn’t really have to plan). He said that he hasn’t really wanted to have sex with me recently. This was something we had discussed previously, and I said is it just with me? Or everyone. And he said that he would maybe want to have sex with other people. It wasn’t that he didn’t find me attractive he just didn’t know. I asked if we should breakup? He said he didn’t know. He never knew. Never knew why he was feeling that way, never knew how to fix his feelings. I said, well, we don’t have to make a decision right now. And he agreed. Part of him was scared to say it.

But then, I sat there. I looked at him, and I listened to my inner voice. I had a surge of power. There was something within me and it just screamed “you deserve better.” It felt wrong to feel, I thought, “but I love him.” But part of me knew that the love had changed. I had become dependent on him for my emotional wellbeing, I felt alone even in a relationship. I felt terrible about myself. He wasn’t helping me, he was hurting me. His indecision killed me. It gave me hope that things would turn the other way. But they weren’t because he stopped trying and kept me at bay in this limbo. So finally I said:

“I deserve better. I’m done trying, I want to breakup, if you truly want to be with me you’ll make that happen.”

To which he hesitated and said “well maybe, but you’re right. I think you said what I was to afraid to say”

We probably said some other things, we said I love you, I went back to my studio. Then my heart started pounding and something inside me said GO BACK. So I waited 15, and speed walked back to him. I sat down and said “hi” it was still so weird, so I wasn’t super upset because I couldn’t really believe everything. I’m sure I was holding back some tears though. I said:

“I feel weird about what just happened, I don’t think I should go back on what I decided but I don’t think either of us wanted to break up” and he agreed. So we started calling it a break, I said I wanted to actually not see him because our last breakup was ineffective considering we still saw and talked to each other.

The next day we met to give each other’s stuff back, I looked damn good. I saw him and we talked, we both said we had written our feelings. He said his could turn into a research paper. He said “it’s ok”, and I said “no it’s not” to which he asked me why. I forget what I said, we mostly talked about logistics. he told me to not be afraid to contact him as I am still his friend, but I said that I can’t do that right now. What was I supposed to say? “Hi I’m really sad about you”? NO. He agreed that could be weird, I told him to text me. He said he didn’t have much to say (haha, we dated for 1 1/2 years you’ve got SOMETHING TO SAY). He tried to buy me candy to bribe me, but i had no appetite. We began parting ways, he said he loved me. That was one month ago to this day.

For some reason writing all of my feelings really helps me process them. Now, there are countless little details that could be added to this, but in my mind a lot of the bad really sticks out to me. God I miss him, but I don’t miss what we had last month. I miss the love we had right when we first met. We were devoted to each other problems and all. I don’t know if I wore him down with my anxiety or he just stopped being into me. But I do know that he isn’t emotionally mature enough to be in a relationship. He really played with my heart due to his inability to process his feelings. He was probably feeling weird about the relationship for a long time, but never really thought it through enough to come to a conclusion.

Regardless, let me tell you how I’m feeling now. Firstly, breakups suck. They hurt like a motherfucker. To be honest my life has been pretty chill up until this point so this is by far the worst thing to happen to me in my life. I have never felt so sad. But, that sadness is lifting and GIRL it’s lifting faster than I thought. Whenever you ask someone about a breakup you just wanna know “HOW LONG AM I GONNA FEEL LIKE THIS” I have a feeling I’m still gonna be dealing with this for at least half a year, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be miserable, or not date anyone else. I’m just gonna have to do A LOT of processing.

When this first happened all I wanted to do was text this motherfucker. He told my friend that he was doing good after out breakup because there was less drama. Drunk me found this out, called this boy, cursed him out. Then I got suicidal and he told me he needed to go to bed and that I wasn’t actually going to kill myself. Talked to the suicide hotline and called the next day to apologize for cursing. I let him know that my talk with my mom about getting help went well, he said he was glad. Later in the month he invited me to his house for thanksgiving which I declined (my og plan was to go to his place, and he thought I would be alone). But since then we haven’t talked. It’s hard because I talked to him everyday for like 2 years. It’s hard to not see him, because I miss our friendship. I felt like he was the closest friend I had ever made, and the reason I burdened him with my anxiety was because I didn’t want to open up to anyone else about my issues.

But now, I feel free! When this breakup started I felt trapped and lonely because I hadn’t processed the weight and damage of this relationship. Now, I don’t have to worry about this boy stressing me, worrying about if I’m making him happy—I can just make myself happy. I no longer have to try in a one sided thing, I can get a tight ass, good skin, and meet new people. I’m doing so much better because I’ve let the bad emotions in, and have been letting go of the guilt that I felt for the failure of my relationship. I hate knowing that we failed, he was such an integral part of me—but that was the problem. I stopped doing everything I liked when I dated him, stopped listening to the music I liked, cared less about makeup, went shopping less. Things that I thought were good because I felt maybe I was maturing. But the things I like aren’t bad, and it makes no sense that I stopped doing them. Recently, I’ve been connecting more with estranged friends, working out and seeing the world as brand freaking new. I’ve been dancing, and just finding happiness in things that I thought were bad. I thought my friends here were bad, but to be honest I placed so much importance and value on my ex that I thought no one was as interesting as him. But bitch...that isn’t true at all! Sure there are a few friends here that I am excited to leave behind, but the majority of my friends here are kind people who truly care about me. That’s something I didn’t realize and I am happy to discover. I’m also discovering myself. I lost myself somewhere along this relationship and I lost hold of what I want from my life. I’ve been working on my goals and improving myself.

I’m just one month out, although I haven’t really cried too much about my ex recently, I still feel down. And I’m sure that my healing will go up and down and up and down. It’s hard to feel good when you know bad is coming, but I’m trying to embrace all of the positivity and dedicate my energy to me, great friends and an interesting life. Love is great, and I really miss it. But I know that my ex was not right for me, and I deserve so much more. I hope reading this has helped you reflect on your own experience. I also wanted to share a resource that really has helped me: breakuprecoveryguide.com. They helped me so much and have a great guide for what to do following a breakup. The most important being “no contact” which you can learn about on their site.

I mostly write this blog for myself so if you’ve made it this far, wow! Thank you, I hope I helped you in some way.

#breakup #breakup recovery #healing #relationships #ex #boyfriend

0 notes

inthemidstofthefire · 6 years

Text

What I Wished I Had Known About Breakups

Hi Everyone! I’m Olivia. I’m 20. And I just broke up with my first “love”, boyfriend, sexual partner ever of 1 1/2 years. We have known each other through all of our college experience so far. I have met his family many times, I go on vacation with them, and I brought him to my hometown in NJ. Our parents have met, and he was truly my best friend. However, our relationship started to lull, something was not rights and we tried to go along with things for a long time. Unfortunately on November 6th, 2017. I broke up with him. He was hurting me so much with his indecisiveness about the relationship that I would feel better alone. It’s been hard. I’m a month out. I’ve been dealing with anxiety, depression, insomnia, panic attacks etc. Since this relationship ( but also during it). Breakups are horrible, so I hope that by sharing my story I can make you feel a bit better and show you what I wish other blogs had told me.

1. If you want to get better quickly—you can’t. It takes time.

The first step is to accept your feelings and don’t try to fight the pain and sadness. You have to let it all out, if you don’t process your feelings, you WILL NOT HEAL. Every time I would feel awful and overwhelmed with loss I would think “I don’t want to feel this way” and fight it. But at the end of the day someone shared with me that:

“if you try to fight the pain, you will only make it it worse. Either way you will feel pain.”

When I realized that no matter what I did I was gonna feel like shit—I accepted it. I realized, yeah, I was sad and lonely and that sucked. Even thought that didn’t make me feel better in the moment, it’s the first step to healing. Everyone needs to validate and accept their own feelings to grow.

2. Do things that make you happy (Cheesy but I’m gonna explain why)

Because, when you do things YOU like they make YOU happy (DUH). For some reason this took me a while to grasp because at first all I wanted to do was wallow in pain, I didn’t think that the activities I enjoyed would work to boost my mood. I didn’t think anything would work, and I had no motivation to try. But once I realized that doing things you like inherently makes you feel better I was able to start self healing and finding REAL RELIEF.

Things That Undoubtedly Helped Me (Keep in mind that what worked for me might not work for you):

-Working Out (Releases the Feel Good Chemical)

-Dancing to music

-Smoking a lil weed

-Looking good

-Being organized

-Not looking at photos/social media/ of my ex)

-Looking at healthy relationships to remind me that mine was not good for me.

-Thinking about troubling details

-Meditating

-Writing my feelings in a journal

-Going into nature

-Watching parks and rec

-Hanging out with friends, laughing.

-Doing intense work for school that took a lot of concentration

3. Don’t Contact That MOFO

For the longest time it was so hard for me to resist the urge to contact my ex. But it has helped tremendously. Unfortunately,the only way to heal is to completely void them from your life. No talking, texting, meeting up. Even though we have agreed we want to be friends, I know I need to be totally over it to do that. Regardless of if that friendship happens I want to heal and move forward into better relationships. Contacting them only makes you look weak and it won’t change anything. Ignore them, for your sake. Don’t do it to make them jealous, do it for you. The less contact the better, no matter how painful it is at first. The first three weeks were gut wrenching. After that I had a break through and realized that I didn’t need to talk to them to be happy because my happiness does not depend on anyone other than myself.

4. The Good News- You’re going to be totally fine

It’s fucking hard. I feel you. But once you realize that you deserve better, you can live in the present. Your energy will stop being consumed with their absence. You will find peace, happiness, and strength in yourself. During a lot of relationships people lose themselves—I know I did. I stopped doing things I really liked, and I stopped thinking about myself. While it’s good to be giving and open, you always need to maintain your sense of self in a relationship. Breakups make us confront the very person we’ve been ignoring—ourselves. Once we can detach a bit from the emotional pain we are feeling more objective non-romantic thoughts will arrive. At this point it will become easier and easier to work through your feelings, thoughts and bring your mind out of it’s emotional fog.

In conclusion, feel what you gotta feel but realize that your happiness depends on you—not someone else. Happiness within the self is the most important happiness of all. Do not let someone rob you of your energy, it belongs to you and should be devoted to you.

0 notes