Relationships and Moving on

[OraCLesofFire]

I generally don't speak much about my past relationship with the people here, mostly because I've been struggling with some things that happened during it. But I'm confident that I'm moving on and putting that in the past, and as such I want to try to write up some of my feelings about it. I'm going to write this story in two different sections, one will be about the relationship itself, and I will tell a few of the things that happened, and the other will be about how it has affected me, and how I've come to terms with what happened during the relationship.

 

The events

 

I don't really want to talk too much about her, and because of certain events that have occurred I'm even afraid to say her name out loud. When we started dating, I was still rather immature and not sure where I was going in life, and I really didn't know how to deal with my anxiety. I was a senior in high school, and she was a year below me. She became really really attached to me and during the relationship she was the only one who initiated any kind of action between us, whether it be going on dates, or even just conversations. That being said, it wasn't that I didn't like her, and didn't support her, I was just too afraid to put myself out there. She had rather bad mental health issues as well, and frequently was depressed and had frequent thoughts of suicide. I felt like it was my place to support her and make sure she was happy, and I took it very personally every time she did get depressed. I felt like I had failed her, and would get extremely upset with myself.

 

Our relationship went on like this for a while, it really wasn't the healthiest of situations, but it worked for her. Eventually I graduated high school, and was going to go off to college in Minnesota. By this time she was thoroughly in love with me, and she decided that we could maintain a serious relationship across the distance, even though I could barely communicate with her when she was this close to me. Obviously things didn't work out so well, and our relationship experienced a rapid decline as we started communicating even less and seeing each other very infrequently.

 

I mentioned "certain events" and that is something I should talk about. I got to meet her parents early on, and I learned that her mother had just recently gotten remarried. It was all good and fine at first, she seemed ok with the guy, and her mother seemed happy. But after a while, especially right after I left for college, things started happening. He started getting abusive, and it got worse and worse, until eventually she and her mother were forced to run away. They changed their names, moved to a different state, and had no money to support themselves and ended up in a homeless shelter for a while.

 

I feel very guilty about this part, because when I was in college I started getting very depressed. I'm sure in part it had to do with what was going on in her life, but there were plenty of other factors as well. The depression only worsened our communication, and at times I would ignore her for days. It hurt her a lot, and it hurt me as well. I needed to support her during this frightening period of her life, but I only crawled further into my shell of depression, Isolating myself from her. Looking back it hurts a lot. I'm a very self-critical person, and I have felt so much pain and self-hatred over what happened next.

 

It was nearing the end of the Spring semester, and I was failing all my classes because I hadn't been in to any of them in months. I had become completely reclusive, and refused to communicate with her nearly at all. She decided that the her life wasn't worth living, and attempted suicide. I was scared, I still cared about her, even if I wasn't sure if I felt like I wanted to be in the relationship anymore, and I felt like the decision she made was my fault. Maybe if I had been a better companion, she wouldn't have felt like she needed to take that route. After that, and some counsel from a friend, I decided to break things off with her, and not too long after, I ended communication with her altogether.

 

 

 

 

My feelings

 

Looking back, I haven't had the most positive view of our relationship. I told myself a lot of lies about how I felt, and I tried to ignore and forget what happened. I told myself that I never really liked her, and that what I did in the relationship I only did to keep her from hurting herself. I went on with this lie for a long time, I tell others that I wasn't really in a relationship with her, and that it was just that she was in a relationship with me, but that wasn't true.

 

I had a memory come back to me from this relationship several days ago. It was a memory of how I communicated with her. Because while I was afraid and rather incapable of talking about anything moderately serious with her (or anyone really) in person, I could still write to her. I frequently use writing as a way of expressing my feelings, and the majority of the communication I do have nowadays is text based. And so what I did was I would stay up at night after she brought up something she wished to discuss with me, or there was something I wished to discuss with her, and I would write it out in a very long text and send it to her overnight, and that was how I communicated with her. It stopped a bit after I went to college and as our relationship declined, and maybe that's why I forgot. But what that memory made me realize, is that I did care about her. I made a conscious effort to communicate, I cared, and I was involved in that relationship, maybe not to the extent that she was, but I was still there. And rejecting those feelings wasn't a healthy way of going about things.

 

When I went to college, I should have stopped the relationship, but I didn't. And that was my fault. I still may feel like it was somewhat my fault that she chose the road she did at the end of our relationship, but I can't blame myself for her choices. It isn't my responsibility to make sure she is always happy. I was out of the relationship long before she was, and I was afraid to end it, and that was the biggest mistake I made.

--

 

I wanted to write that story down and think about and express my feelings in words. It's been very therapeutic for me, and I think it's helped me move on from what happened. I hope that in posting this somebody else can benefit from my experiences or revelations.

 

 

 

 

also check out the story of my surgeries here if you haven't already ->http://www.rebornevo.com/forum/index.php?/topic/27965-about-my-surgeries/

 

 

[Candy]

If it helps to think this way: she may have also wanted to make you happy, which served as a distraction to her own depression / suicidal thoughts.

The problem is that depressive disorders are unforgiving. Even if you want to be happy, or just feel like yourself since nothing out of ordinary has happened, you may succumb to depression. I'm sure you've experienced it, so no need for me, a mere observer, to talk about it.

What I'm trying to get at, is that you should never feel guilty because you think what you did wasn't enough to make her happy - she was happy while talking to you and thinking about you (for you were the person she loved). Whether she can fight off her own depression, enough to wake up the next day, is only in her hands.