Broken

BN2 and I broke up yesterday. Yes, on Valentines’ Day. Well, it was at 1 am on Sunday, but…

I don’t really want to write about it because I don’t want to think about it, but all I’m doing is thinking about it. Nor do I want to write about it because I don’t want the sight of this entry to pain me every time I see it.

I know the mention of him will probably surprise you. I haven’t written about him at all in months – mostly out of shame. I know what I’ve settled for is not normal or right or even good for me, yet to date I haven’t been able to extricate myself from it. Partly it’s because I think I believe some of the horrible things he has said about me, and I fear he will be the only one willing to put up with me, and so I need to accept things on his terms.

How’s that for honesty after months of if not lying, at least committing some sin of omission (or feeling like I am)?

I can’t believe some of the things I have allowed to happen, I still can’t imagine life without him. I’ve seen or spoken to him every day since October, when we went exclusive. Before that he was a very constant presence in my life since December 2007, when we met at a Christmas party.

I’m terrified of life without him. And yet I’m terrified of life with him – of never even having the chance of having what I desperately want, which is someone who loves me.

I’ve been thinking for months about how to end things, but this wasn’t the ending I imagined. I’m not proud of how I behaved last night, and I must admit that alcohol was involved. (As was a mini-binge – 3 chocolate bars, which wouldn’t have been so terrible except that I lied to go off and buy them.) I feel terrible, especially after how sweet he was all day. We exchanged a handful of text messages today, and in one of them he told me how badly I’d hurt him.

Ugh.

We’re supposed to talk on Wednesday but I honestly don’t know if I can take hours of being berated, which is how he operates. In fact, the hours of recrimination were the catalyst for last night’s breakup. We were headed to the school disco with friends – me in the shortest miniskirt known to man – and I met a guy at the pub while I was getting drinks and BN2 was changing clothes. I introduced BN2 to him (yes, calling BN2 my boyfriend) – he was on his own waiting for friends going to the school disco – and his friends turned up and it was all fine and fun. Then at the disco itself at one point BN2 went to the bathroom and this guy – we’ll call him E. – offered to buy me a drink and asked me to help him carry his round. So far, so fine. Or so I thought. When BN2 came back he was furious with this. I apologized but told him he was overreacting (something I never do – I usually just apologize and the emotional beating still goes on for an age until he’s fully sure I “understand” him and have made appropriate amends and/or a plan so that it doesn’t happen in the future). I apologized several more times, but the thought of spending the whole night apologizing and having several pounds of flesh extracted made me want to lie down on the dance floor and die. I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but the next thing I knew I was suggesting we get a taxi back to his so I could get my keys and phone (I hadn’t brought them out – miniskirts are not known for storage space and my handbag didn’t look school disco-ish). We barely spoke in the taxi, and I got all of my things from his place. (There wasn’t much left after the fights of late.)

Sixty pounds later (eek), I was at my front door, the taxi driver telling me to take care of myself.

I couldn’t sleep last night. Today I couldn’t decide who to call, since I’ve been less than honest with so many of my friends about what’s going on with BN2 (whether we’re still seeing each other, what he does, etc). I ended up out with a friend from college who was there last night and who lives in the neighborhood.

I was almost ok -- if you define 'almost ok' as nearly everything making me tell some BN2 story -- until we stopped at Waitrose to do some food shopping. Waitrose is where BN2 shops. Where he does nearly all of the grocery shopping – and usually without me – because I have a hard time with it, and because I’m particular about when and how I do it. I’m not sure he does it totally willingly, and we’ve had fights about it, but he does do it.

I have a feeling this will be my life for several weeks or months and I dread it: Crying in the Waitrose over the fish pie he buys me because he knows I like it.

I want to jump out of my skin. I want to cut my head off and throw it across the room.

I want time to pass. I want this to all be wrapped up neatly in a bow without me having to do anything painful, or endure any more pain.

I can’t have any of these things.

I am exhausted and yet can’t sleep. I dread the next days of not even having an office to go to or a project that consumes enough mental energy for me to stop thinking about all of this for two seconds. I fear that I will crumple Wednesday when I see him, that I’ll agree to a peace treaty with impossible terms (as I did a few weeks ago), we’ll get back together and I’ll have to go through all this pain again down the line. At the same time, I fear that I’ll never see him or speak to him again. I fear him hating me. I fear that I am the selfish cold fish he tells me I am. I fear that our problems are what he believes they are – only problems because I don’t try hard enough. Because I am not good enough.

I couldn’t finish my dinner tonight.