know when to let go | november 2016

Letting go of someone you love is one of the hardest things you'll ever do. 

But, I promise you it's not as hard as holding on to someone who will never love you back.

At the beginning of this year, I met someone. He was charming, sweet, funny, kind and had the most gorgeous big blue eyes. We’d stay up talking until it was almost physically impossible to keep our eyes open, usually around 7am we’d bid each other goodnight and gush over how wished we could continue speaking. Anyone who knows me, knows how quickly I fall for someone and I fell. I fell so hard that I didn’t know if I was ever going to get back up. We just clicked, we completely got each other, it was like meeting the male version of myself. It was pretty obvious to us both that we had to meet and so at the next chance we both got, it happened. I hopped on a train and he jumped in his car. The first few months were perfect, for me at least. There are moments that have been completely engrained in my memory like the first time he touched me, even though it was in his car and accidentally. His hand touched mine and I don’t know how to explain it other than a surge of electricity. I don’t know if he felt it too, but thats when I knew I was in trouble. Or when we went for a walk through the woods, and he took my hand and didn’t let go. I stopped in the middle of what felt like an eternity of trees, he looked at me like no-one has ever looked at me before. I’m pretty sure my heart stopped for a second. To me, he was perfect. He was everything I was looking for and everything I needed. At some point in April, he spoke to me about moving to Bristol and of course, that’s what I wanted. We spent a week and a half in numerous different hotels while we tried to find him somewhere to live and work. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world waking up to him every morning. Writing this has made me realise how quickly this started going south. As soon as he got the job he’s in now, he started changing.

Slowly but surely, gone was the man who wanted to cuddle me to sleep, gone was the man who held my hand while we walked round the shops, gone was the man who would call me just to hear my voice but I clung to the hope that he would show his face again. He didn’t. For months, it’s been like we’ve been just friends with the occasional benefit. He forgot my birthday, wouldn’t touch me, would rarely be seen with me in public, never kissed me, wouldn’t speak to me for days at a time, refused to tell anyone I even existed - which in itself was enough to make me feel like I wasn’t good enough. I recently moved from Bristol to be closer to him (de ja vu, anyone?), but he hadn't bothered to speak to me since the end of October. I’m not going to say that everything that happened since he moved here has been awful because it hasn’t. Like anyone, we’ve had good times, theres been some days where I just would have given anything to do over. I thought he was it. I thought that I would be with him forever. I was willing to accept all of the bad things, and things he kept from me (you wouldn’t even believe it if I told you) in the hopes that the person I fell so god damn hard for, would come back to me. I would have taken the months of feeling like a burden, or not good enough, or the nights of insecurity for just a glimpse of that person again, but enough was enough. 

 Last week, I was driven to make a decision that I didn’t want to make.

I broke up with him over the phone as he refused to see me due to people saying I had said loads of things about him, which I absolutely haven’t. I couldn’t cope anymore. I couldn’t cope with the fact he would decide I was guilty without even coming to me first. I was flooded with emotions that were frustrating for me because I wasn’t ready to give up on him yet. I wasn’t ready to let go of that perfect person I had met at the start of the year. I’m a firm believer in putting in work, putting in effort to fix something before letting go of it but something clicked in me that day. It became increasingly obvious that this was an impossible task and at the expense of my mental health, self worth and esteem, it wasn’t worth it. Putting 110% of yourself into someone and getting absolutely nothing back is soul destroying. The person I fell in love with didn’t exist anymore, and he’s readily admitted to me that person never existed, it was all an act. I know I’m not perfect. I know I can be difficult, irrational and jealous. I’m not going to say I never did anything wrong, but I definitely didn’t deserve to be treated the way I was in the end. I did nothing but love him completely and loving him ended up being the most exquisite form of self destruction.

I suppose I’m writing this as some form of therapy. Regardless of how much I hurt right now and how I wish things cold have been different, I know I made the right decision. I wish nothing but the best for him and I hope that one day we can be friends because despite what he thinks, he does deserve to be happy. I only wish I could have been the one to give him that, but sometimes you have to take a step back; realise when you need more, when someone can’t give that to you and when giving up is the best option for you both. 

note to charley: you are stronger than you thought.