Advice from the last four months is finally starting to sink in. The pain I'm in is exactly the pain that I've been trying to avoid. I never wanted to lose E as a person, but I have to lose him if we're going to be friends again. The future friendship will be different from what we ever had, but I still very much want him to be my friend. He's a really really great person.
This all feels so different from my breakup with D, probably because it *is* different in a lot of ways. Especially in that I didn't want this to end. The end of my relationship with D was a strain. We had so many problems and we were trying really hard to work them out. My relationship with E felt like it was still growing. No, we weren't as close and togethery as I wanted to be, but we were getting there. In the end it turned out that that was because E doesn't want that kind of relationship. Realizing that hurts so much and feels so personal. It feels like a rejection of me rather than a mismatch in what we want and how we relate. It just felt so perfect. I thought about it all the time; I processed it endlessly with everyone. But it wasn't perfect and it didn't get there. And it's ok to be sad about that. It's ok to mourn that loss. I have to be sad about that. I just...I wish there was some assurance that I wouldn't always be sad.
When I think about other awful times in my life, they all seem to lead towards getting happy, and happy was when I was with E. It didn't exactly feel like a roller coaster, more like a ski lift. You get on it and it's weird and bumpy, but then you get to the top of the mountain and it's beautiful. I don't know if the metaphor is that the relationship was the beautiful mountaintop, or if the relationship was the fun downhill. Right now, it feels like it was the mountaintop, and since I was never good at skiing, the downhill is terrifying. If I think that the relationship was the downhill, then of course it had to end because it wasn't structured to last forever. Someday maybe I'll see it as the latter, or I'll stop with the metaphors.
I think I'm trying to force a breakdown. It's a familiar cycle now -- ok to edgy to breakdown to recovery to ok. Today is going to be a long, isolating day. The calm moments are scary because they bring up scary thoughts. Or at least sad ones.
But today can be boring, and it can be lonely. It doesn't have to be sad. And if it's sad, that's ok. I never stay sad forever. My best friend is coming tonight, and I'll have a whole new awkward situation to deal with when I visit my dad tomorrow. Sleeping has been scary since I was 10. I've defeated that exact panic both of the last two nights, but it's harder in an unfamiliar place. In the next few weeks, I'll be sleeping in a lot of unfamiliar places.
There is is. I'm getting a little shaky. Time to cool down and get to work.
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