I had a different plan for today. I had a different blog post for today. And seriously, tune in next week on Sunday because it’s lovely – cute and uplifting and warm and happy and Stuart’s drawn a gorgeous image to go with it. I had a very different plan for today.
I came home from a weekend with friends to find my ex had packed up all his stuff. It’s cool, it was expected. I knew it was happening. What I didn’t know, until I walked in the door, was just how hard the realisation would hammer me: this is very very very much The End.
As I say, I had a different plan for today. Come home, check what was gone and therefore what I might need to replace, smash through some work that’s been itching at the back of my brain, go for a walk, cook dinner, watch some delightfully terrible film… then bed.
Instead bed came first, after coffee with the friends who’d dropped me off, who stayed just long enough to make sure I wouldn’t collapse. Then walk. Then bed again. Mostly sitting on the edge of the bed realising he’ll never come to it with me ever again. Then standing in the corner of a room filled with his boxes, wondering what he’ll do next with his life, and miserable that I likely will not know.
I don’t get to be beside him any more, not ever. I will not be the person he emails, or the one that he calls when he’s down. I will never again be the first person to hear his good news. He will never tell me how his day was, with the casual ease of someone who knows I know the backstory.
He took the cocktail shaker: he will never make me another margarita.
He took his clothes: I will never get to borrow his hoodies again. Bury my face in the shoulder of his t-shirts again. Send emails which tell him my vagina and I had a conference and decided those trousers were the sexiest ones that he owns.
He took the kitchen speaker – the one we blasted loudly as we danced like twats around the kitchen.
He will never ever dance with me again.
There are loads more things he did not take: the sunloungers he bought for us to use together, the TV we watched together, the sofa we so frequently fucked upon. And every single one of these things punches me in the gut with memories of everything we did and now – absurdly, urgently – the things we did not do. Every single day of the future I’d imagined, and hoped for, and looked forward to, has disappeared in a space of time so short it takes my breath away.
Roughly this time last year, when we were having problems, he went to stay somewhere else for a little while. Space, peace, calm: I was excited to have the house to myself. Before he left we sat and chatted, shared a hug. Told each other we loved each other, and we wanted to work this out. All the while, inside I was fizzing with desperation to be alone. I couldn’t wait to have those moments to myself – to breathe out, calmly, and remember who I was without him there.
The second he closed the front door, I crumbled.
It was like someone had knocked all the air out of my lungs. I sat on a bench in the garden and tried – and failed – to catch my breath. The weight and intensity and power of the sudden absence of him had me reeling like I’d fallen four stories and landed on my back.
I miss him so fucking much. But the ‘him’ that I miss isn’t the guy he is now. I don’t know this guy. He’s a weird absence of person, spiky emails and half-told-stories from conversations with mutual friends. The guy I loved exists on these pages and in my memory and somewhere back in the past. I can’t pinpoint the moment he left, but he did.
I think I need some time to mourn the loss of him. This guy I loved with my whole soul, for nearly a decade of my life. With whom I had such plans, such love, and so much fucking fun. He’s gone, that guy, and I don’t know where. But I need to mourn him now, I think, or I’ll end up chasing him forever.
I had a different plan for today. Instead I’m going to sit in the garden watching the sun go down, letting every atom that makes up who I am wish that the guy I loved so hard might walk back in the front door and just hold me.
Like I know he will never do again.
Please don’t ask if I’m OK – sadness makes good content, and although I’m not OK right now, I will be soon. I promise.
30 Comments
Sometimes a new plan turns out to be a better plan, although it’s hard to see it at the time.
Better to mourn the loss and get some of it out your system than have his spectre always there.
<3
Today would have been my 30th wedding anniversary and whilst I know how right it was/is that we aren’t together anymore not being so has meant I have had to recalibrate my whole world and what I believed loved was. This has taken time, energy, the kind of disbelief and grief that had me sitting on the side of the bed unable to do anything other than try to get up and when I couldn’t do that, refuse to lie down. And so you sit, rock, shake your head in disbelief, laugh at your own absurdity and then cry until you start yhat process over and over again. Nothing looks right, nothing feels right, there is no right in the world when you are in that place.
I write this to express solidarity and send love for your heavy heart and its totally appropriate pain x
Oh mate so much of this rings true – thank you so much for your kind words <3 xxx
“I miss him so fucking much. But the ‘him’ that I miss isn’t the guy he is now.” Such a succinct way of expressing the emotions.
Plans need to change when new needs become apparent, as clearly happened today. It sounds like you have a great handle on your feelings and sometimes that is all you need.
Thank you Valery <3
You articulate love and loss so well. Reading this made my stomach tie itself in knots. Amazing the power of words. Keep going Ace.
Even though it wasn’t what you planned, it aounds like this was a healthy, healing route for your mind to take you, even if it’s sore right now.
Hope you’re still staying strong and being supported.
Also I’m a dignua and wrote this as a response to someone’s comment, my bad
Haha don’t worry – comment system is way confusing here and I should totally make it easier at some point. Thank you for your kind words <3 xx
Yeah, go with this new plan. Let those feelings get messy cos it’s just the way things need to be. And hell, how could you not miss that guy and all you’d been through?
Responsible, consensual and physically distanced hugs from the other side of the fucking wierd world xxx
Thank you Mosscat. And yeah, it’s going to take a hell of a lot of getting over that’s for sure <3 xxx
Thank you Tim <3 xxx
You deserve some time to mourn. A breakup has its own grief.i hear you. Sending love.
Thank you Victoria, you are lovely <3xxx
You will know best. Keep up the forward momentum.
Thank you so much Phillip <3x
So all I can tell you is this sadness is something workable. A few years ago my wife died, many decades too young, and we never had the time to have the kind of sex you write about, but we did have the time to find the kind of love you write about.
There is life after loss, and life after this. One day, you will find it. The only thing that gets me through the days is the belief that things stop hurting this much, and month by month, loss hurts a little less.
Keep writing.
Thank you Someone, and I am so sorry for your loss, that sounds awful and I am grateful to you for your lovely words and advice. Hope things hurt less for you too <3 xxx
Gotn, I know the feeling you are having, I was devastated once with an old boyfriend. I would sing sad songs and wish he would come back. I will never forget the song ” one more night ” by Phil Collins. It’s still hard to listen to. But! I found someone so much better not too long after. Been together 34 years now.
Don’t fret you will find that someday when you least expect it.
Hang in there 😥
Thank you Beth, that is really kind of you to say, and I’m glad you found happiness. If I’m honest I’m not looking for someone else to replace him, and it’s possible I may never actually want the kind of relationship I had with him with anyone else again, but I am definitely looking to find my feet and find happiness- however that comes! xxx
So much love and hugs ♥️
Thank you <3 xxx
Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Thank you E – I am not 100% certain on this these days, but you are probably right xxx
If you’ll permit a bit of a sequitur.
When you first posted that your partner had left you, I told my girlfriend of 8 years how strange I felt that it’d affected me so much. I don’t know you, I may have set on the Central Line sometime and you’ve been on a different carriage and that’s about it. But I’ve been reading your blogs for years. And after reading a blog I’d normally have a thought to tell my girlfriend “Ever thought about fucking in jelly?”, but instead I had this weird knot I’d never felt. And she said I’d gotten attached and invested and it was completely understandable, only I didn’t understand. I couldn’t relate fully to what you were saying because I didn’t know those feelings myself. Selfish I’m sure, but that was it. I’d never split up with my girlfriend before, the sensations you were describing felt alien.
And then suddenly last Friday night at midnight, my Girlfriend said she wanted us to split up. We wanted different things out of life, she wasn’t happy here with me. And as I was listening and all my emotions were in a storm I had this stupid thought, “Is this what GotN felt like? Is one of her old blogs a survival guide for this?” I cried all night long, even as I helped her pack. Her brother was coming to pick her up and in a moment between the tears from both of us I held her and I told her how much I loved her and that I wanted this to last forever, and that honest to god I didn’t know how unhappy she’d been and how much she was hurting. It reached 3AM and I fell asleep covered in my tears and snot in the spare room, and I woke up and she was gone. I’ve not heard from her since then but I’ve missed her with every fibre of my being since.
But if she suddenly sent me a message saying “I made a huge mistake and we should be together”, I don’t know what I’d say. In my heart of hearts I’d think she’s being irrational, she’s just hurting. She said the things she said for a reason, a genuine reason. But by god do I want her to say that, because right now I know just how much you’re hurting. It’s a stupid thing to say, but I wish I didn’t. I wish it was a week ago and I was blissfully unaware because this sucks so much.
Wow, fucking hell Mark, I am so sorry. That sounds like a horrible shock, and I am so sorry to hear that you are going through so much pain. I can promise you that from what you say here, our situations aren’t the same – there are many things I have not told you all on these pages, and I know that the break-up did not come as a bolt from the blue to either my partner or I. That doesn’t mean it’s not painful, of course, but I think it was expected and he has told me now that it’s what he had wanted for a long time (which is a new and intriguing kind of pain to me). I hope that things can get better for you soon and you can find your happiness for yourself. I know exactly what you mean about contemplating ‘I made a mistake’ messages, and what they might and might not mean. Sending love, and thank you for your kind words. I’m always delighted and touched to learn that my blog has been important to people, although I’m sorry that you’re in a situation where these heartbreaking ones resonated along with the jelly-and-fucking ones. xxx
I’ll second what Mark wrote, and say that reading about you’re break-up had made me sad in a way that surprised me, for it “only” involved someone whose blog I read and admire, and with whom I have no personal connection beyond universal empathy. But of course it is not that surprising when you think about it: it is “just” one more demonstration of the power of your words.
In the same way, this post made me cry, so accurate is its description of the emotions one experiences in such a situation. This comment may not bring any comfort (nor should it, after all it’s only a few words from a complete stranger), but I simply wanted to state once again how beautiful andimpactful your wrinting is, and to thank you for it.
I wish you all the very best.
Thank you so much Chee <3 I really appreciate your kind words about my work, honestly it makes me cry a bit and now we have a cycle of crying going on =) I really appreciate you, and Mark, and all the kind commenters whose words are keeping me going right now!
Sorry about making you cry! I’ll break the circle and simply blush at my spelling mistakes. (*your, *writing, and a missing space :-)
Looking forward to reading part 2 of what you posted today.