Heartbroken a letting go process

22 Feb 2021

So, here we are, I haven’t started this blog project yet and life hits me hard by now. How am I supposed to have inner peace? To have strength in my thoughts? How am I supposed to concentrate by now? I have so much to do, my to-do list keeps growing and my tasks must be put aside from me.

Yesterday, 21st of February, a sunny Sunday, my almost 5 years long relationship came to an end. It was not my movement, it was my boyfriend’s decision. Did it hurt? Well, since I’ve many problems with my feelings I would say: it came like waves. The first wave was like a frozen reaction. No tears, no expression, no feelings at all. The second wave came when I was all alone, it started as euphoria and ended me up almost dehydrated due to the ocean tear I flooded myself in. Then came in the third wave, it came today, and despite knowing it before, this time … oh boy, this time it hit me hard.

This third wave came as a seismic shock of loneliness, an understanding of the solitude, no more kisses, no more coffees in the morning waiting for me to wake up. No more of his laugh, no more of his deep voice all around, neither our conversations about our work, our lives and so on…

All this came not as a surprise all of a sudden, but it did come in time. The right time to remove me from my orbit, the right time to take me away to another dimension of reality, the one I hadn’t faced those years, the reality of sorrow and somehow fear and confusion.

I was happy with him, and sure we have had our difficulties as many other couples have, but there was one that was enough for him. So, let me put this straight, I am not trying to find an excuse here, neither figuring out who made it wrong. No. I’m just trying to exercise my emotional intelligence - which seems to be very dumb - and finding meaning in things that I could learn for the future me.

So here we are, almost 5 years of a very peaceful relationship, through conversation and rational arguments by measuring our options we found a way out for most of our hardships. I have never had this kind of relationship with anybody else before, hence it was all new and great for me too.

Somehow, we all know how important it is to keep a healthy conversation in our relationship, but we also know how hard it can be to find someone capable of doing so, and it might vary a lot depending on the culture and time, even amongst different generations.

For me, living in a Latin country with very heated blood, a strong culture and constant hate for homosexuals - one of the countries that have the highest murder rate of homosexual and trans people - finding a partner is somehow difficult and can be overwhelmingly hard to keep the relationship afloat, thanks to all kinds of hardships one can face.

But for us everything was different, everything seemed to be like magic. My family is fine with my sexual orientation, as much as his family was very welcoming and protective of him when he came out to his parents. It sparkled that joy inside me to know he was accepted by his family, and I said to myself he was the one. His family was great, respectful, protective and welcoming.

Then over time we stayed together, living under the same roof, dreamed together about many things, much of which would never come true, but hey it was allowed to dream. After his undergrad graduation, I encouraged him to find a job in his area and he did it. He not only found one job, but he also found three! What a great guy he is, I thought proudly.

Work after work, he made his way to a good position in the university where I’m currently taking my Ph.D. Was it a dream? Well, it was plain perfect, it was wonderful. My life couldn’t be better.

Having him on my side was like a dream coming true. He was sweet, respectful, careful, gentle, humble, thoughtful, and always helped me with anything I needed. I could never forget how sweet and supportive he was with me when my father passed away, how he took care of my belongings when I was out due to my family problems.

Well, along the way we had many surprises, ups, downs, turns and we stood all of them. What would you do if your partner was this guy? Wouldn’t you consider marrying him? Getting engaged or moving together? Well, I tried many of those options.

But before we talk about my approaches let me tell you another side of this story. I haven’t said a word about my side, I just said how wonderful this guy was. But how about me? Was I as wonderful as him? Well, since I’m going to talk about myself, I hope not to be too biased. So, here we go.

I found this guy in his third undergrad year, age 20, just five years younger than me, feeling lonely and depressed. He was not confident at all, in fact, every time I complimented him he cried. Could you imagine that? He was sure he was the worst thing on earth. I tried my best to cheer him up because I saw his virtues and potential. At the time we met, we worked together in the lab where I was doing my Master’s, and it was a great experience. It was great to found love in such a harsh place (we all were in a very nocive environment with very toxic people around).

Well, everything started quietly. I didn’t know it before but he confessed to me he already felt something towards me - I came to know it much later on. Anyway, we started dating just two months after we first laid our eyes on each other. It was great, and at the same time scary. I was always uncomfortable with how he couldn’t believe in himself but thankful for finding him.

Thus I thought it would take time and could be a risk to persevere on him, but I decided to invest everything I knew to make him know himself better. I couldn’t offer much, but out of my love, I thought it would help to support him in his decisions, trying to make him aware of his virtues.

So I went with that plan, and we did come to some results. He started to grow, he found the courage and strength to make his moves in his life in a more confident way, suffering less and less about his phobia of not being enough, being incapable of anything. He came to realize he had his strengths, what he liked and what he could do with his skills.

You know when you give a flower some water, sun and nutrients, then the flower suddenly blooms? That was it. He was blooming, he even discovered his manly part of himself. I couldn’t be happier, because for sure I was seeing all of these wonders happening before my eyes. Boy, how I liked the blossoming of his manhood - what a gay thing to say, isn’t it? Let me be gay…

It was really great for me, I tried to support him in every aspect, even though he denied it many times. I invest my money in him, gave him a bicycle, helped him in his beginning, bought our furniture and started to nourish our relationship. I rarely say ‘I love you’ to anyone, I rarely say ‘I miss you’, either rarely show any emotion about my feelings towards anyone, but for him, I did it, like melted butter. And I don’t regret anything at all.

But over time he showed me signals that I refused to accept. He was not prepared for our relationship, he was not ok. He thought he was too young to be in a relationship, a partnership that evolved in that solid way. But I was in love, how could I see it? How could I understand it? No, I couldn’t. I believed time would make him understand our relationship as something worthwhile. Was he thankful for it anyway? Yes, for sure. He made it clear every day.

We once talked about using an engagement ring, but he solidly refused that giving me many excuses. Most of them I still believe was valid, but overall all excuses worked as an escape to do not take our relationship to another level. I was very upset about it for a while, but I thought out of my love that it could be a matter of time until the day he would accept that ring. We were in the third year of our relationship already.

The next year everything collapsed in a way I was not expecting. Our fourth year ended with the worst Christmas ever. Everybody knows I’m atheist, I don’t believe in God or anything else. I once was a strong believer of spiritual stuff, but somehow I came to disbelieve and I’m still not sure what caused this (perhaps I got tired of meeting religious people being a jerk). But that’s fine. We still live in a country that has the Catholic church as its major faith. Thus, we all take part in family reunions over Christmas to pray and have some delicious food - the part that I like the most for sure.

So, as usual, I was invited to his family gathering to celebrate Christmas, which I happily accepted. Then, the time for praying came and I was not called, I was set aside and somehow I was surprised why my boyfriend didn’t call me? I was just upstairs trying to help my boyfriend’s little cousins to put on their new shoes. I heard everybody gathering for the praying time, but I was not asked to take part in it. Why? Have I done something wrong? I may not be a believer, but I do respect the traditions, and I’m very happy to be included, to be accepted, to be welcomed, after all, I’m a human that needs to be accepted too.

Well, I had just a few seconds to think about what to do. Should I go downstairs and surprise everybody, causing a huge embarrassment? Should I be quiet and wait? What should I do? I came to realize the family was not mine, and what could I lose if I showed myself with the words “have you all forgotten me” on my face? Worst, what about the words “are you all Christian that follow the love words of Jesus?”. With what words should I show myself. Well, I hadn’t any idea. But, I painted my face with the words “oh, sorry, I was distracted” and showed up to the praying gathering.

That was it, I was devasted by this, and the next day I had a long and crying conversation with my boyfriend. We thought about finishing our relationship, but I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t wishing for it, not even willing to see our relationship ending.

Well, the weeks after this episode were hurtful. They all seemed strange for me, and slowly I watched our relationship fading away. We even used to think about our relationship as a dying patient in the unity of intense care of the hospital. Wasn’t it terrible? Who on earth would like to be in this relationship right now? I bet nobody would.

But we were in this way, in a stand-by situation, trying to figure out a way to make things work out for us. But they didn’t work out. So, yesterday, the 21st of February, he decided to make the move. He ended our relationship once and for all. Was I prepared for it? No, I wasn’t, but simply because I wasn’t willing to see an end to it. I would happily give up many of my dreams to be with him. And that sounds a lot scary right now. How could I give up myself to be with somebody else? How could I love somebody else this way? Now, I don’t think this was too healthy for me.

So here we are, all alone, without him next to me, reading the book I bought him. Or learning the wonders of HTML/CSS/JavaScript and things that still make me proud of him and his strength in learning things from scratch. Well, now came the fourth wave. The one that hits like a freezing cold of sorrow and tears. This fourth wave melts us inside out, removes from us our ability to think clearly and shakes our inner peace, it drains our life. I feel like death is next to the door, waiting for nobody, but watching closely to see what I’m up next.

And that’s it, folks. This is my process right now. I told you this blog would be about everything, and I told you this would be about colours. All the colours of our lives. The bright ones and the not-so-bright ones. After all, we are all humans and we have our up and downs. Doesn’t it?