This Is My Current Single Status/My Declaration of Independence

This past weekend is the first weekend I’ve spent in London in 15 months without seeing BN2 at all. Our first date 15 months ago was a Friday night, and our pattern at the beginning was Saturday nights.

Being alone – with acres of time to fill, now that I don’t even have a regular job to go to – is scary. And yet I feel like someone has removed his heel from my stomach so I can breathe again. I did exactly what I wanted to do this weekend, without checking my watch and worrying that he was going to get annoyed. I think it’s going to be a few months before I feel completely like myself again – even in my dealings with him via text and email, I can feel my stomach clenching the way it always did when I feared I was going to say something that would make him angry (which was often).

It is over, really and truly, and I’m more OK with it than I thought. The other times we broke up I think I hoped we would work it out, and there’s been a slow (very very slow, for I am a slow learner) dawning that not only can’t we work it out, but that we shouldn’t. Or I shouldn’t. I have not been myself for months, so busy have I been twisting myself every which way to try to make things work. I often speak in a waterfall of words, all of them tumbling over each other when I’m excited. I don’t speak that way with him, because I have to choose my words so carefully. And then he would get annoyed with how long it was taking me to express myself.

He’s not a monster, and there are some very real gifts I’ll take away from this relationship. Were they worth the extortionate price I think I paid? I’m not sure, but there’s no refund on time, alas. Over the past few weeks I’ve come across various writings of mine from the past year, and they all have the same theme about him. I remember a friend visiting this past summer telling me I had to get out, and I couldn’t, or wouldn’t. I always was a slow learner, and I always did have to wait until things were unbearable to do anything about a problem. (As a side note, I think that is related to binge eating. It takes so much energy and effort to be a binger, and you’re so damn tired from it, that you can only muster the strength to solve a problem when you’re absolutely forced.)

While downloading my 900 (!) photos of Cambodia and Laos, I came across some photos I took with BN2 in France last August, and our trip to Venice, when he tagged along for my work. I was sad and nostalgic, awash in rosy memories, until I remembered the thorns in both of those trips, and indeed, in just about every happy memory I have of our relationship. Let me remember that when I’m tempted to go back.

Yes, sometimes I am tempted to go back, and I expect those cravings may get worse as time goes by – get worse before they get better, anyway. He rang the other day to ask me how I was, and I suddenly got choked up. I’d been fine until he’d asked.

I told him that earlier I’d been looking at the France photos, and wondered if he had copies of them.

“Neither one of us has died,” he said, almost sharply.

He’s right, neither one of us has died, but something else has: our relationship. I think it’s going to take some time to grieve.

* * *

When I look back, perhaps I will attribute the dissolution of our relationship not to the fact that I didn’t invite the Bertrams to dinner, but to the fact that I didn’t buy him dinner.

I had agreed to do him a favor last Wednesday evening and look after his daughter while he did a shoot. It was a pretty damn big favor if you ask me, considering how he behaved while I was away (sleeping with all of the women we used to fight about, which is somehow more painful than if he’d just gone out and found himself some random women). I raced around town in order to get to nursery in time to pick her up, and as he wouldn’t be home until 9ish/10ish, I had to get myself some dinner.

I didn’t pick up any for him.

Yes, it was selfish and not particularly thoughtful, and if I am totally honest, I didn’t even think about him when I picked it up (I bought a double portion of what I was having for lunch that day). Maybe it’s justifying it in retrospect, but I figured he’d have eaten some pork pie/trifle/Cornish pasty/general rubbish before the shoot and probably some more rubbish during it. (I shouldn’t judge, but I do. I’ve written before about how his eating habits – and what he feeds his daughter, and when – really push my buttons.)

That night he wouldn’t let the dinner thing go. I admitted to him I hadn’t thought of it, and apologized. But when I told him I thought he’d have eaten already, he accused me of bullshitting him. And it went on and on. And I was annoyed – very annoyed. I’d just done him a huge favor – could he not for once express his point (that he was hurt, if that’s indeed what he was) and let it go, for heaven’s sake?

We went to sleep and the next day we went to see a counselor, a last-ditch attempt to save our relationship. We’d already argued about what the rules might be while we were sorting things out – he, of course, wanted the right to sleep around. I refused to give in on that point, telling him he was either in or out. You either decide a relationship is worth saving and you put everything into that, or you go off and find someone else – but you don’t have one foot on one side and one on the other.

Of course, that issue still was unresolved when we went to the counselor.

We left the counselor’s after an hour and a half with nothing concrete. (She did immediately pick up on how controlling he was, which I found interesting.) On the way home I started to suggest time apart, since he needs to decide whether he wants to be in a relationship at all, let alone one with me. We got back to his place and again started arguing about the dinner, this time because I was using it as an example of him never letting anything go. (He was telling me how I needed to accept his dealings with other women, which I cannot.) He called me a bullshitter and told me I was being a bitch. I told him he was being an asshole, something I’ve never called him. He told me I needed to leave. And so I did. I didn’t cry, I didn’t rage. I just said I was sorry, and goodbye, and I walked out his front door and ate an apple pie Larabar (it was 4 pm) and thought that for once I was not going to call him to apologize. I thought about how I was free, and how I would not be climbing back into the cage again.

I got an appallingly bad upper lip wax (there are still marks, and it still hurts) and headed home. A couple of hours later I received an email from him telling me I was “the most wonderful woman” he’d ever met, and saying he wanted to be friends.

Which is what I’ve always wanted – for this to end nicely. Is it possible I’m going to get what I want? I guess we’ll see. I still feel like he’s trying to manipulate me from his texts…

* * *

Oh yeah, so I went to Cambodia and Laos. And Hong Kong, where at a bar (and after several hours of chatting) I snogged the most gorgeous English expat, which was fantastic for my ego. (Then he didn’t text, which was not so great for my ego.) Can I just say I have never ever ever been the girl who ends up with the hottest guy in the bar and it was really fun?

As for the weight: I struggled with food and exercise out there. It was insanely hot and I didn’t have loads of control over what I ate and whether I could get any exercise. I also was having some, erm, digestive system issues, which made me feel huge and bloated in the heat. All of this made me rather panicky, to the point where I wanted to jump on the luggage scale at the airport in Luang Prabang, just to check. (I didn’t.) And despite my request for new batteries (granted), I still couldn’t get the scale in my hotel room in Hong Kong to work.

But I’ve been 10 stone 6/10 stone 7 (146/147 lbs) for the past couple of days, so apparently I lost a couple of pounds out there. I had some cake with icing Saturday night, and some drinks here and there so I’m not sure how long I’ll stay here, or if it’s possible to stay here, especially with my sister and aunt arriving for four days on Friday. My goal is not to obsess – to eat the way I have been eating, and to just let the scale land wherever it does.