The End

If you’re just now joining us, I’m telling a story… About a boy. If you want to catch up before jumping in, start here first.

When we got off the phone that night, I was sure it was the last I would hear from him.

So of course, it was only a few hours before I received a text.

Or rather, a series of texts. The contents of which need to be shared, if only so that you can see how truly drunk he must have been in sending them.

Text 1: “You’re right. I am an a”

Text 2: “I am truly sorry for treating u like shit. U were really good to me and I took that for granite. Yes, I am a fucking asshole.”

Text 3: “You didn’t deserve this. I am really really sorry.”

Text 4: “Goodbye.”

They came in one right after another. A little past 2 in the morning, when the bars must have kicked him out.

It was the last one that probably irked me the most.

“Goodbye.”

It just felt so dramatic.

I didn’t respond. I knew he was drunk, and I was sleeping when I got them anyway. And by the following morning, I had other things to worry about.

I figured if he really wanted to apologize, he would call me sober.

The funny thing was that not long after (or before?) he sent those texts, he also forwarded me an e-mail he had sent to his mom earlier in the week. It was full of pictures from a wedding he had just attended in Texas. We had discussed his going when he'd booked the ticket a few months before, so it wasn't something I was completely oblivious about. But the only message to me in the e-mail was “Thought you might like to see these.”

I couldn’t figure it out. Why was he sending me these photos now?

And what on earth made him suddenly think I wanted to see them?

OK, so I did... But that's not really the point.

The point is, it made no sense for him to send them to my whilst also apparently telling me "goodbye".

A snippet from the night before popped into my mind. A moment when (at the height of his defensiveness) he had said to me “You’re the one who chose to get involved with someone who was mentally unstable.”

It was one of those moments when I would have laughed, if I hadn’t already been so angry.

Was he seriously blaming me? For caring about him?

And did he honestly just call himself mentally unstable?

I mean, I couldn’t argue with him. The roller coaster he had put me on was a clear indication that things were not all right in his head. And he was correct; I had entered into this knowing full well that it wouldn’t be easy. That he was broken, and that I may not be enough to heal him.

Even though so many times it felt like he was depending on me to do just that.

I had entered this mess fully aware that it was exactly that - a mess.

But still… I cared about him, and tried to be there for him (to be a friend and support him as best I knew how) and he turns around and basically tells me that I deserved to get hurt because I made the stupid choice to trust him in the first place?

It reminded me a bit of that old fable. The one about the farmer who helps the snake, only to have the snake turn around and bite him as soon as it's gotten what it needs.

The moral of the story being – a snake is still just a snake in the end.

The thing was though; I had never before seen the boy as a snake.

I had seen him as broken, and wounded, and in need of time and patience; but never as a snake.

I had never believed, even for a second, that in the end he would take me and my feelings so monumentally for granted.

I had always believed that no matter what, we would find a way to at least be friends.

I thought he had believed that too.

I never responded to the e-mail either. I mean, what was I supposed to say in response to that? I couldn’t figure out why he had sent it in the first place.

Over the next few weeks though, I began agonizing over what had happened between us. I sifted through the details like an excavator. Searching for what went wrong.

Not because I wanted to fix things, but because... I needed to understand. I needed to know how it was possible that after everything, he could just so casually discard me and walk away.

I was determined to find the answers.

To figure out which man he had been. The one I’d loved and believed loved me back, or the one who had pummeled me with almost no concern for my well-being at all.

I rationalized, and defended.

I grew angry, and indignant.

I turned it all into a joke, poking fun at myself and embracing the fact that I really had only ever been a rebound to him.

(Oh yes, that happened)

But I still couldn’t figure it out.

And as hard as I tried, I still wasn’t over it.

Over what he’d done. How callously he had treated me. And how easily he had walked away.

I couldn’t get him out of my head. His birthday came and went, and I lamented the gift I’d intentionally put so much thought into getting him weeks before. The one that was now sitting in my closet with nowhere to go.

For a split second, I considered throwing it through the window of his truck.

But then I remembered that he drove a company vehicle. And that he wouldn’t suffer the consequences of my justifiable action on that one.

So instead it remained in my closet.

Now a blatant reminder that I had cared so much more for him than he had me.

The weeks continued passing though, and I found myself beginning to wonder if he’d ever actually cared at all.

Had I really just been a rebound?

Had it been so easy for him to fool me into thinking he cared?

So easy for him to leave me?

Which is when I received another e-mail from him. It was early November now, a little after 8 on a Sunday night.

He was forwarding me pictures of a friend’s baby. All the message said was “Thought you’d like these pics. You may have seen them already. Hope you’re doing well.”

The funny thing was, these were friends I had my own connection to. People I was friends with on Facebook and had seen fairly recently as well.

He knew this. Or at least, he knew I had ties to them. I couldn’t figure out why he had felt the need to forward this on to me at all.

Unless he had just been looking for an “in”. A way to see if those doors of communication were still closed.

Which had to mean he was at least thinking of me a little bit, right? That on some level, he had actually cared?

I can’t tell you how much that question haunted me. Not whether or not he had loved me, but whether or not he had cared. At all.

Thinking he hadn’t, tore me up inside.

It ate away at me.

Because at its root, it made me feel stupid.

Used, unwanted, and abandoned.

Still, while this e-mail allowed me a moment of thinking that maybe he had cared, I knew it wasn’t enough.

Not to open up those lines of communication.

Not to even respond back at all.

He couldn’t just sneak back into my life (even as only just a friend), without first giving me what I needed.

An explanation.

An apology.

A sober acknowledgement of what he’d done.

And even with that, I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to forgive.

Except… I knew I wanted to. I wanted this to be past us. I wanted for us to just be able to be friends.

Not because he deserved that from me, but because I hated feeling like I was feeling.

I didn’t want to be angry at him. I didn’t want to have so much confusion and hurt. I just wanted to be over it. To be done and be able to move on.

Partially because, even then I was slipping into moments of worrying about him.

Which I realize is pathetic to admit.

But as the holidays approached, I couldn’t help it. I was worried about how he would fare over the first holiday season without her. Worried about how he was doing. Worried about who he was reaching out to now that he didn’t have me.

I didn't want to keep beating myself up for... caring.

I just wanted it to be over.

I still couldn’t figure any of it out though.

And even as I maintained my distance and didn’t reach out to him in any way, he was constantly on my mind.

What he’d done to me.

And how it didn’t mesh at all with the man I believed him to be.

The whole situation was breaking me apart as I fought to understand it.

And it’s not like I was dealing with some unknown person here. Not like I had zero insight into who he was or what he was doing. His friends had become my friends. Those ties were still there. It was Jay and Mel I spent Halloween with. I get together with Dee and her husband at least a few times a month. His buddy’s girlfriend was just at my house this week borrowing a dress. I'm going to Pilates tomorrow with the wife of one of those core childhood friends of his.

I had insight.

But everyone else was just as confused as I was.

Not that they hadn’t seen the crash coming, because they had. As people who cared about him, they’d realized he was falling apart.

But I don’t think anyone ever anticipated he would end up disregarding me so completely.

In fact, I know most within his circle really thought we were going to work things out in the end.

I tried not to bring him up often. I tried to keep my friendships with these people separate from him. To not bring any further drama or awkwardness than there needed to be.

But everyone knew what happened.

And everyone understood where my hurt had come from.

Unfortunately, no one could give me any further explanation than what I already knew.

There had been no other girl. He hadn’t gone back to his wife (or even spoken to her at all since she’d popped up around the fourth of July). There was nothing from the outside that had come in and caused this.

He’d just gone from missing me and being so sure he was ready for "us", to determining that it wasn’t what he wanted.

Seemingly overnight.

And in making the break, he’d decided that my feelings weren’t worth even attempting to protect.

One thing was for sure though – I went from hearing from almost every one of these people at one time or another how much the boy cared about me, to now hearing that he was definitely over it.

I have no idea what's been said to make them all so sure, but… it’s been a long time since anyone in that group has reassured me of the boy’s feelings for me.

Even in the past tense.

It should be noted that these people are all still friends with the boy as well. Some of his friendships with the men in that group had endured for 20 years. I have never had any intention of destroying that, and don’t think I could even if I tried. My initial gut had been to pull away from everyone, but none of them allowed that to happen. I think they all knew what had gone down, and just hadn’t been as willing to toss me aside as he had. They’ve all been great about staying out of the middle of it, but still being friends to us both.

It really has been kind of incredible.

I still don’t think anyone gets it any more than I do though.

It just… doesn’t add up.

Which is why on New Year’s, after having far too much to drink and burning my list in the toilet (don’t ask), I found myself writing him an e-mail.

An e-mail that I began at 4 in the morning and didn’t stop until sometime after 7.

An e-mail that was over 7000 words and 15 pages long.

An e-mail that I somehow, by the grace of God, saved into my drafts instead of sending.

But when I woke the next day, I looked that e-mail over again.

Most of it didn’t make any sense. It was jumbled and repetitive and there were far more spelling and grammatical errors within than I care to own up to.

But… there was something there.

And I realized in reading it that I had not once taken the time to really let him know what he’d done to me. I’d yelled and screamed and severed ties, but I’d never explained it to him from my heart.

I’d been so concerned about being strong in the end, that I’d forgotten about being honest.

I needed that. That release. That moment where I could say to myself “Well… at least it’s out there.”

So I started writing again. This time keeping my words in check, and trying to get to the root of how he’d made me feel.

Before I sent it to him though, I sent it first to Dee.

I needed to know if I was crazy for contemplating this. Crazy for considering hitting send at all. Crazy for letting him know now, 3 months since we'd last spoken, that I was still hurting over what he'd done.

After Dee read it, she sent me a text. She said that her initial instinct had been to tell me not to send it. Not to contact him at all. But that after reading what I’d written, she thought I should. She thought he needed to hear it from me, to really realize what his actions had done. She said she knew that at his heart, he was a good person. And she hoped that he would take what I’d said and really reflect upon what he’d done. Maybe give me the explanation and apology I so desperately needed.

But she acknowledged that more important than anything else, it would give me some closure. If I never received any response from him at all, at least I would know I had said my part.

And I knew that’s why I needed to do it the most. So that I could wipe my hands of it. Walk away knowing that I’d been true to myself. True to what I was feeling.

I wound up hitting “send” not long after hearing from Dee.

Here are some of the highlights from that e-mail:

“I have to admit that I still find myself going over everything in my head; like it’s a puzzle with some of the pieces missing. I want to understand. I want to get where you were coming from. I really do. I want it to all make sense to me. I feel like we went to bed one night and things were fine, and then we woke up the next morning and you were distant and pulled away and… I couldn’t figure out what had happened. What I had done. And then, you were just gone. No phone call, no explanation, no apology for sucking me back in again when clearly you weren’t capable of fulfilling the promises you had made. Nothing. You were just gone. And I kept thinking I was being strong and keeping my head held high by not saying anything. By not demanding more from you, if only on a friendship level. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have held you more accountable for your own words. For a friendship that I really thought meant more to you than that.

You hurt me. More than I think you will ever realize. And the way you walked away from me still tears me up. Not because I want to be with you, because the truth is – you did a pretty good job of proving to me that you’re not the man I thought you were. But because I really believed that you cared about me, on even the most basic of levels. I really believed that at the end of the day you would have enough respect for me and our friendship, to not toss me away like it was the easiest thing you had ever done.

It kills me that I was so wrong”.

“I find myself now wondering what of it was real, and what was lies. Which guy was telling me the truth about how he felt about me – the one who told me how much he cared and swore he wanted a future with me, all while being so adamant that he wasn’t content with us simply being friends, or the one who walked away from me like I was nothing after proving to himself one last time that he could have me if he wanted me.

Was that really all it came down to? Was it a game to you? Because I can’t for the life of me figure out why you would fight so hard for another chance, if that’s how it was all going to end. You just disappeared. You didn’t think I deserved a sober phone call or explanation. At the end of the day, you treated me like some slut you had picked up in a bar for a one night stand. One who wasn’t even worthy of the extra effort to break it off. Not like someone who had been there for you for 6 months, and who had never been anything but open and honest and real with you.”

“I asked you to leave me alone. To let me go, so I could move on and get over everything and eventually – we could be friends. I asked you to care about me enough to give me some space. But instead, you came back begging for another chance. Claiming you couldn’t stop thinking about me. Pushing to see me when I told you I still needed time. You swore that I was what you wanted. That you were sure this time. Were you really so selfish that you would say those things, and act that way, if you weren't sure that you actually meant it? If you weren't sure that at the very least, you could do what you needed to do to protect me and my feelings? Did you never think about me at all in any of this?

I fully accept responsibility for my part. I knew better. I knew what you had been through, and I knew better than to believe the things you said to me. I was the one who should have been strong enough to keep those boundaries clear. But, I wasn’t. And for that, I do have regrets. For that, I truly am sorry. I never pursued you, but I never held you back when I should have either.

But now, I can’t help but find myself wondering – do you ever think about me? Do I ever cross your mind in even the most innocent of ways? Do you ever feel bad about what you did? About how you treated me? Does it ever occur to you that it didn’t have to be that way? Do you ever just miss having me in your life?

Or was it easy? To throw me away. Like I was nothing. Not even your friend.”

“I guess the point is, I’m not sure I’ll ever understand. But I hope you got whatever it was you needed out of us.

I just wish you had been able to get whatever that was, without treating me with so little care in the process.

Because at the end of the day, I really do wish we could have been friends. That you had cared about me enough to try even just a little to preserve that.”

I sent it to him almost 3 weeks ago. He still hasn’t responded. At this point, I don't believe he ever will.

But Dee was right. Sending it lifted a weight off my shoulders.

The weight of words left unsaid.

Sending it helped me to let go.

Well, sending it, and writing this.

I remember a few years ago, the devirginator was up here visiting me and we went to see 500 Days of Summer together.

We both walked out of that movie feeling like we had just been dumped.

It was awful. This sadness in the pit of my stomach that I couldn't even explain, because it wasn't real. It was a movie. And even if it had been real, it wasn't my reality.

Still, I couldn't figure out why anyone would ever make a movie like that. Why anyone would ever pay $10 to sit in a theater and be made to feel like that.

I wanted my happy ending damn-it!

So, I'm sorry if I just did that same thing to some of you.

I needed to write this story out. I needed to revisit the entire relationship from beginning to end. To stop shuffling through the pieces in my head, and instead look at it in its entirety.

I was beating myself up and tearing it apart and I still couldn't figure out what happened.

I needed to get it all out of me and onto my laptop.

Because that’s who I am. It’s how I process.

How I let go.

I never anticipated that it to would turn out so big. I never intended committing so much of my time to it.

It never even occurred to me that people would become as invested in our relationship as I had been.

But once I got started, I realized that there was so much there I needed to get out.

If only so that I could gain some perspective on it.

But if in doing so I made you feel as though it was happening to you as well; I’m sorry.

I'm sorry if you now have that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.

I'm sorry that there was no happy ending.

But, let's face it... in real life, there are no happy endings.

Not really anyway.

And I don't say that to be a cynic, I swear. I still believe in love and happiness and the whole big shebang.

It's just that, there's always something after the happy ending. It's not like a movie where the lights go up and you leave the theater believing that the couple on the screen moved forward in life never again having to face another hurtle. In real life, there is always another hurtle. Another kick in the gut. Another moment of sadness.

Because in real life, nothing ever works out quite the way you expect it to.

No matter how much you wanted the ending you wound up with.

Trust me, I really did want us to end up together.

I really did want him to be the one.

But as much as I wish I could fabricate a happy ending for you now, I can't.

This is what happened.

It's real life.

And real life doesn't work like that. People break up. Hearts get broken. And sometimes, the guy you thought had the potential to be your someone special, just ends up letting you down in the end.

I still have no idea what happened that morning. What caused the shift to occur so quickly. How it was even possible that he could go from fighting so hard for another chance to completely disappearing in the matter of a week.

I've gone over the entire thing in my head so many times. Come up with so many scenario's, without ever really feeling like I've found the answer.

I still don’t know which guy he was.

But I’m starting to think it’s not as simple as one or the other.

I saw a shrink years ago, during the period of time when my dad and I weren't speaking at all.

I was having a really hard time forgiving him for staying with my stepmother, after all she had done. I'd gone into therapy specifically because I knew I needed to let this go, but I couldn't wrap my head around how. I had these two visions in my head of who my dad was. One of him as the amazing father I knew him to be - the one who loved me and protected me and had always been there for me. The other of the man his staying with her had made me start to envision him as - the one who was weak, and flawed, and incapable of loving me enough.

The therapist pointed out then that these images of my father painted him as either my hero (perfect and infallible) or a failure (the broken man who had let me down the most). I couldn't reconcile the images of him in my head, because they were on such opposite ends of the spectrum. I couldn't figure out which man my dad was, because he was both. And he was neither. She said I needed to learn to see him as the man somewhere in the middle. The one with qualities from both men I was trying to paint him to be. And then I needed to determine if I could forgive that man. If I could forge a relationship with him.

I still remember feeling like she had just gifted me with some supreme knowledge that had somehow evaded me up to this point. She was right - my dad was both of those men I was painting him to be. Both, and neither. The man he was actually existed somewhere there in between.

And letting myself believe that, to accept it, was really the first step in us healing our relationship.

I know I've done the same thing with the boy. That in my eternal quest to figure this all out, I've painted two different pictures of him. One as the man who I loved and who loved me back - a man who was good and strong and loyal and true. And then the other as the man who broke me down - one who lied and manipulated and abandoned.

The truth is, I don't believe either image is entirely correct. I know the man he is resides somewhere in between.

What he did to me wasn’t right, but… I don’t believe it’s the definition of who he is.

Because none of us is exactly the same person we are at our best or our worst.

We all lie somewhere in between.

It's not always as black and white as we want it to be. People are more complicated than that.

And while the heart may always win, sometimes… it’s wrong.

But that doesn’t mean we should stop holding out for the day when it’s right.

I can say that from what I know, the boy is doing well. He's drinking a great deal less now, and has been spending more time working out and rebuilding his life. After months of us talking about it, he finally booked that trip to New Zealand and is leaving in two weeks. He and one of his best friends will be fishing and exploring and I'm sure having an amazing time.

By all accounts though, he's doing better every day.

I also know that for the last month or so, he's been seeing someone new.

I don't know how serious it is. How serious it will become.

Perhaps she's just the rebound chick he should have found himself from the beginning, and perhaps she's something more.

Perhaps she's the one.

I'm not sure it really matters at this point.

In fact, I've been shocked by how little the news has effected me.

I would be lying to say that there has been no jealousy there on my end, because of course there has been.

I have found myself wondering if she's prettier than me. Smarter than me. Funnier than me.

Wondering if they share the same connection I was so sure he and I had.

Even wondering if she's getting a better version of him than I did.

I'm ashamed to admit that in moments of liquid courage, I've actually asked some of these questions of those who have met her.

Mutual friends who have all assured me that - I win.

Which is such a petty thing to need to hear, but...

I win.

When everything is said and done though, I think I'm happy for him.

As strange as that may sound, I am.

I hate what he did to me.

What he did to us.

I hate him for hurting me as deeply as he did.

I hate him for taking me and my feelings so for granted.

I hate him for being so selfish. So recklessly and irrevocably selfish.

I hate him for still leaving me with no answers, explanations, or sober apologies.

But in both my head and heart, I know that he is not the villain I sometimes want to believe him to be.

He's just... damaged.

And aren't we all? To some extent?

After writing it all out, I know that there was good and bad to him.

That I never would have fallen so hard for someone who was all bad.

That I couldn't possibly have made the good all up.

I know it.

I know there is good there.

I wish that the good had won out. I wish that he had embraced it even just enough to prevent the fallout he caused.

To protect me, if only a little.

I wish he had cared about me enough to try to preserve some of the good between us.

If only on a friendship level.

But how little he did or did not care about me is irrelevant at this point.

Because it doesn't change how I felt about him.

It doesn't change the fact that I did love him.

And that even now, I hope for the best for him.

It’s still hard sometimes for me to not get caught up believing in the fate of it all. To not dwell on how we met, and how the pieces fell together after we started. There is still a part of me that wants to believe that it was all meant to be.

And the truth is, I guess it was. Just not for the same reasons I wanted it to be.

I do believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe that good can always come out of bad. And I believe that the boy and I were meant to be together.

Even if only for a short time.

I know I helped him. I know I supported him and was there for him and if nothing else - became one of his closest friends during a time when he was falling apart and needed all the help he could get. I know that, and I refuse to believe it wasn't true.

In so many ways though, I guess he helped me too. I was still struggling a lot with my own stuff when the boy and I met. I was making strides towards being better every day, but I had a lot of heartache built up. I was still at a point where just thinking about infertility would bring me to my knees. The boy helped me to shift my focus. To look outside myself. To turn my attention on someone else for a while.

Which, was kind of something I needed at the time.

Above and beyond that, I walked away with some amazing friends. Dee and I have said more than once that if the only thing to come out of my relationship with the boy was our friendship, it was worth it. I feel like I was meant to know that girl. The bond I share with both she and Lindsey is something I wouldn't trade for anything. To now have women in my day to day life who have such a real understanding of what I've experienced with endometriosis and infertility is priceless to me. But the fact that they are both also women I would have chosen as my friends without those shared experiences is truly incredible.

And I can't ever deny that I grew closer to them both, through my relationship with the boy. Dee more directly than Lindsey, but even with Lindsey... it was learning that we both had ties to this same group of people that really did initially drive our friendship forward.

There's a part of me that I suppose will always be a little bit grateful to him for being a catalyst to those relationships.

I think there were lessons I needed to learn here as well. With the ex, I left too quickly. I bailed too soon. And the lesson I learned there was that if I wasn't willing to fight for a relationship, I may end up losing someone I loved. With the boy, I know that thought was always in the back of my head; almost causing me to over-correct in some ways when it came to him. This relationship was so out of the realm of normal for me. I put up with so much more than I ever before would have. I made excuses, and I rationalized behavior, and I allowed myself to be hurt. Because I didn't want to be stuck thinking at the end of the day that I hadn't fought hard enough.

So now, the ex has taught me not to bail, but the boy has taught me that there comes a point when - you just have to.

I loved them both. I know that.

And they both taught me lessons I needed to learn.

As painful as learning them may have been.

I can only hope that those lessons stay with me the next time I find myself falling in love.

Which just for the record – will not be anytime soon.

Because I am doing myself a favor the boy probably could have benefited from as well.

Currently taking a dating hiatus.

Pursuing other adventures (more on that to come) until my heart feels healed enough to try again.

“Off the cock”, as I’ve been telling my nearest and dearest.

But when I’m ready, I’ll give it another go.

Give my heart another chance to win.

And hopefully this time, to be right.


The End

(the song that says in 4 minutes what it just took me 5000+ words to explain):