Three little words

I don't need him anymore.

That's the shift. And he sure as hell knows it.

I just don't think I can go back there. I don't want to deal with his big ideas and his long winded stories and his inability to be responsible for his actions. I don't want an unreliable partner, let me say it one more time.

But he said I love you and there is no stopping me now.

Someone Else

I woke up slowly this morning next to The Ex, pressed against him, listening to him breathe against me.

I ended my night kissing Someone Else.

I thought it was nothing but it's obviously something, what The Ex and I are doing, since some part of me felt excited and some part of me felt like I was betraying him.

An affair to remember

I don't have his real name saved in my phone. I got a new phone after our End and couldn't bear to see his name in my phone and so I gave him a nickname, a small thing I used to call him.

But now it feels even more clandestine. I can't tell my friends, I can't have his name on my phone. Every time someone asks me what I've been up to recently all I can think to say is, Having incredible sex with the man who ruined my life. It's shameful. I can't tell anyone.

I'm having some sort of affair with my ex-boyfriend. The man I lived with a thousand miles from here is now back in my bed, and we're having a great time pretending like we didn't have real problems back in that Windy City, he told me I love you and I said Why can't we make ourselves happy so that we can be happy together?

We're not getting back together (partly due to self respect) but we're something. We're dancing around something.

The right thing

This all coming from the woman who now will leave her cocoon of a bed and Sex and the City and run to him just so she can feel his lips on hers, have him kiss that spot on her neck that is his, fall asleep pressed against him even though she knows it isn't right and never will be.

The time has come

This closure thing. I like it.

He is not the right man for me.

I have enough distance to see that finally.

The life we had was not the life I wanted.

I have enough distance to see that finally.

The life I want is the life I have created for myself here in Smalltown. My overscheduled, busy, fun life is here.

It's time for me to stop refusing reality. This is it. I am happy here. All the people I love most in the world are here. Yes, he is still here. Yes, I still love him. Yes, it still hurts like hell to think about all those days nights years together in Chicago.

But I think it's time that I move on. It's time.

Love in a hopeless place

I'm hiding it from all my friends. I can't tell anyone that the man I allowed to run me out of Chicago is now frequenting my bed back in Smalltown.

Again.

It's just too shameful. I have my independence and my time now but still he gets to me. I have a million friends, a million hobbies, I have an overscheduled life but still he has found a way back in. Not in any official capacity but in a way that reminds me that sometimes it just feels different. It feels so different that I will hide it from my friends, play coy, pretend like I am okay when truth be told he was in my bed mere days ago, this man who made me a woman who leaves her life to escape the pain of losing him.

And now it's suddenly (yes, rather suddenly) been five years of us doing this dance.

I love him. I love him not.

The jealousy curve

So maybe this whole falling back into bed with The Ex wasn't the best idea.

Maybe I'm suddenly jealous over things that are none of my business.

I've really liked not feeling jealous.

The good fight

Another morning waking up pressed against him.

Another morning he kissed my neck in the place that is his.

Maybe I'm speaking too soon but what I thought would give him closure is in fact giving me closure. From this distance I can finally see the kind of person he is. I've spent the last months bettering myself and working through things and I know what kind of partner I want, whenever I choose to have a partner. I can envision the life I want and the people I want in it and it's true, I've never loved anyone the way I love him. It's true, we connect in a way in which I cannot put into words.

But he isn't the man I envision for my life.

It's hard to say that. I love him more than anything. But he leads an unstable, gypsy existence. I don't much like his friends. He is long winded and preachy. He exaggerates for effect and I begin to diminish while in his presence; there is only so much space for two big personalities.

Before I saw him he kept saying he wanted us to "be okay" and as of right this moment, I feel okay. It's always been complicated with us but somehow this week has created a new awareness in me. Not that it's not hard. All those moments, weeks, years living together in Chicago laughing at the same things, walking all over the city, holding his hand while the snow first fell our first winter, all of them add up and my heart breaks over it again because now I know, I know that we didn't stand a chance. I fought so hard.

Unsure of the possibilities

Call me an idiot.

But Pandora's Box has been opened, and now I'm considering all possibilities. Still being in love with him after all this time, doesn't that mean something? You get married to someone you'll love even when you hate him because you know it all Means More, and all I can think is is this true in our case? But then I remember how we were.

I've barely seen him Since Chicago and now all those Chicago memories I've fought so hard against are popping back up. All the small things we did together, all the ways we struggled, all the ugly fights we had and all the mornings I woke pressed against him.

I told him he took Chicago from me. I told him he was the only man I ever fully trusted. I told him I no longer trust. He told me he didn't realize he took it from me, that he didn't think about it like that. He told me he just knew that eventually we would rip each other apart. He told me he loved me but he wasn't sure we could be together.

Hasn't this always been our problem? How can you be in love with someone but unsure that you should be with him?

Big love

I'm sitting here tonight in my bed all alone and I knew this would happen, I knew I would feel this emptiness.

I woke up next to him this morning. I woke up pressed against him.

And now it's all those memories, all back at the surface, nothing important but everything that made our life: the Amish butter we would buy from the market down the street, the walks we took in any kind of weather, walking with him to go swimming every Thursday afternoon last summer. It's all there again and I know I am happier, I know I like my life better now, and I don't really see us getting back together. I can't figure it out.

I'm still in love with him. I miss my old life. But I do not miss the kind of relationship we had. The kind of partner I want is not the kind of partner he was. And he seems the same. More self aware. Trying. But he is the same. And I know that I do not want an unreliable partner.

But I'm so deeply in love with him still and now just confused. I love him. I love him. It's been this long and still I love him. Shouldn't it mean something, this Incredible Love?

One last hurrah

In a world overwhelmed with technology, with the virtual lives of everyone you never wanted to know, it has been a laborious task to avoid The Ex's whereabouts.

I don't get updates. I don't see his name in chats. I don't want to be tempted to scope out the virtual inner workings of the man I am no longer allowed to love.

But he might have beaten me into submission. He said he wasn't trying to get back together, but he still loves me. And suddenly all the things inside me say No but all the things inside me say Yes and suddenly I'm more conflicted than I have been in some time. It's no lie that I love him, I'm not pretending to be okay and moved on, but I've been handling it. I've been managing it.

I don't want to see him. Of course I want to see him.

I don't want to get back together. But I miss the way he would kiss my neck, the places we frequented, how we were so in tune that we didn't need to talk. I can move on. I can find someone else. But it's going to take time. It's going to be rare. And I guess it feels easier to fall back into love but not a relationship. Can I be in love with him but not in a relationship with him?

I've been stalking his online presence for the second time since he left me that day, I've been re-reading messages we sent each other before we dated. I've been doing this in an effort to hate him. In a last hurrah to not want to see him. I've been trying to remind myself the reasons I can't be with him. I remember why I can't be with him. But it hasn't had any effect on that whole love part.

He can't be my best friend anymore. He can't be The Person I Love Most. But it just feels so easy to call him that.

The path to enlightenment is filled with stumbling blocks

So I basically declared I am on the Path To Enlightenment and I am A Changed Woman and all that jazz.

But I might be falling into a purely physical relationship with Sexy HR Guy.

Oh, you stop your finger wagging.

Time to grow a pair

I never listen to Ted Talks. It's an unpopular stance but I just don't like them.

But I was sent one a few days ago and listened to it and it resonated with me. It's called Why 30 Is Not The New 20 and it put a lot of things into perspective for me. I started this blog as sort of a joke, as a way to laugh about it all, but I've changed a great deal since its beginning, and especially over the last eight months. 

Dr. Meg Jay delivered the talk and said, "Our 20s are the defining decade of adulthood. 80% of life's most defining moments take place by about age 35. 2/3 of lifetime wage growth happens during the first ten years of a career. More than half of Americans are married or are dating or living with their future partner by age 30. Personality can change more during our 20s than at any other decade in life. Female fertility peaks at 28. The brain caps off its last major growth spurt. When it comes to adult development, 30 is not the new 20.  Even if you do nothing, not making choices is a choice all the same. Don't be defined by what you didn't know or didn't do." 

Dr. Jay also said, 'The best time to work on your marriage is before you are married." Aha! That's it. Better myself now, so that in the future, in whatever relationship I choose, marriage or not, I will bring the best version of myself to the table.

I'm not trying to sound preachy. But I'm 26 and I've been living like my 20s don't count relationship-wise. I've ventured out and tried new things and am finding a career, have some direction, know that I can succeed, but I need to change how I view men. I am, I have been, and this talk has given me confirmation of its necessity. It's not a game. It's time to make intentional decisions, to make informed choices and stop crying over things that don't work out when I never thought they would.

The New Normal

I'm not constantly thinking about him. That has subsided. But any mention of him, any thought of him, it all still feels so tender, so breakable. I'm living without him but I'm so broken, I'm so scared of dating that I'm now spending all my time on craft projects and exercise and that's what I'm supposed to do, right? I'm filling my time with satisfying, healthy activities, but it just feels like its taking forever to feel better.

Since that day I have reminded myself that I've gotten over every other ex, that I could care less about all the other exes now, that eventually he will be lumped in with The Rest, but now I'm not so sure. I know I'm making good decisions and living the kind of life I want, but I'm just not sure that I am at all the same now. I am a better version of myself, a braver version, a more aware one.

But I can't imagine falling in love with someone else because I'm still in love with him. All this time. I know it's not right. I like my life a whole lot more than I did before. But it doesn't change the fact that after all this time and all this personal growth, I fear I'm still in love with him.