The last time I went to sleep secure in my knowledge of a future with Derek Wang was a Tuesday.
On Wednesday, I found evidence of his infidelity and I went to sleep scared and confused.
On Thursday, I confronted him about it and I slept uneasily, knowing it was over.
On Friday, I succumbed to the uncertainty of a future without him and I figured out a way I could be okay with staying with him. He seemed to agree to my terms.
But by the end of the following week (or thereabouts), he'd changed his mind, and it was over.
* * *
The last time I went to sleep secure in the prospect of a future with Derek James was a Tuesday.
On Wednesday, he picked yet another fight via text message and I went to sleep scared and confused.
On Thursday, I broke down into tears after my workout because I knew that I had to protect myself by letting him go.
We didn't speak for two days.
By Sunday evening, he was angry and throwing out all kinds of accusations about me that were completely untrue.
Another basic fact:
I didn't ever feel physically unwell from anxiety when I was with Wang. I certainly felt that way when I found out about his cheating, when he cut me off financially, when his family stole from me, and whenever I had to speak with him after all of it. That period of time lasted approximately three weeks. There was a brief repetition of the uneasy feeling when I sold the couch that had been ours, and when I met with a background check agent on his behalf.
I felt physically unwell from anxiety, on and off, for the last two months of my relationship with Derek. The thought of losing him scared me so much that I felt unwell. Trying to figure out why he was mad at me, what I could do or say (or not do or not say) to make it all better, made my heart race and my breathing difficult.
Six and a half years of being with Wang, and I only felt physically unwell for roughly three weeks after I knew it was over. Seven months of being with Derek, and I felt physically unwell throughout two months before things ended. But then? after they did end? A weight off my chest. It felt literal. My breathing became less labored because the anxiety lifted.
Of course, if we're being factual, it wasn't immediate and permanent. The first week post-breakup was hard as hell.
Let's look at why.
I kept asking myself, Why does this hurt so bad after only seven months, when two of those months were bad?
I finally figured out why:
Before breaking up with Wang, I thought - I knew - that we had a future together. We were talking about buying a house in the next year; about getting a domestic partnership before my birthday so I could jump onto his health insurance; about getting married after that, when it made financial sense to throw the wedding that I wanted. There was no period of not knowing if it was going to work out, of questioning our future together. I could see it and I wanted it.
Then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone.
And before I could get used to the idea of being alone, before I could look forward to a future with myself, before the dust had even settled, along came Derek. And he was wonderful. He knew the pain I was going through, having been cheated on before (I later learned that his girlfriend cheated on him when he was 18, they'd only been together for a few weeks; sorry, sweetie, but you absolutely didn't know the depth of the loss I experienced); he was kind; he made me laugh; he gave me something to look forward to.
Probably too much to look forward to.
I latched on to the possibility of a future with him so quickly. Too quickly. I was blinded by the excitement. "If I learned anything in my last relationship, it's that time is meaningless in a relationship. There are no minimum or maximum time limits in love. There's no magic number of months or years that suddenly mean you're ready for the next level. So... why deny it?" I actually wrote that in my journal in December. We had been dating for just over four months at this point. And we were already thinking about moving in together. Just a week later, I would experience a moment of "clarity" in which I knew I was going to marry him.
I haven't really told anyone about that. The context no longer matters - suffice it to say that just shy of five months together, I thought to myself "that's it, I'm gonna marry him."
FIVE. MONTHS.
The problem here, I can now see, is that everything happened way too quickly. Before the dust from my last relationship could settle and before I could feel content in romantic solitude, someone wanted me. Someone who made me feel like I was ready to date again.
So that's why it hurt so much when it ended. I was experiencing not just the pain of losing Derek, but of knowing that I was still without a life partner. That after everything I'd been through, everything he promised himself to be, I still didn't get to look forward to a future with someone.
I'm not trying to be dramatic here - I still have confidence that I will find someone who will be a good fit for me, and that I will grow old with him. But, I'm acknowledging that for now, that person isn't visible. That person is not in my life yet, and so for now, I have no promise of permanent companionship.
Let me tell you what, realizing that hurts like hell. It makes you queasy, it kills your appetite, it makes you tired, it makes you want to do nothing but sleep because sleep is a reprieve from feeling or thinking.
It's slowly getting better. Some day, the pain and the anxiety will be a distant memory and I'll be able to say, "the way things ended was really bad and I hated feeling that way, but all in all, I'm glad it ended. I'm much better off without him."
After all, I already feel that way about my relationship with Wang.
