something abt realizing you're listening to someone sing for the last time really hits in an awful way

Post J call (19/05) [diary sub.]

  4 days of no sleep  has meant  unblocking+subsequently spending a lot of time thinking about or talking to J the past couple days.   but damage done  & now that I know that this man has stopped doing all the things he was supposed to do continue doing once we were completely over; ensuring that he does those things again feels like my responsibility!! 

-SO! An attempt at digesting some of the most jarring things he said since instantaneous reflection/clarity was impossible !! -

“when you first wanted to end things there was no doubt that you’d be coming back out here”

like there’s a pandemic and i have no reason i need to go back to the bay as it’s alll online now ??

“see I’m not even in LA!! I chose not to be for you!!”

We’ve had no contact for months and I had no idea he still mainly lived in Oakland?? So that cannot be put on me?? ALSO literally one of the last things I had said to him was about how at least now he can live in LA & something to the effect of how he should try + actually enjoy the lifestyle now?? LA bitches always made me feel a way & a lot of the LA guys he worked with or just at different events were just a lot???

“How can you act like this is the way its supposed to be with us?? If you just decided that there’s not even a chance anymore than that’s fucked up that you gave me false hope”

WHAT THE FUCK. It’s certainly not healthy to entertain possibility of reconciliation, for plenty of reasons but especially as he’s not risen to the occasion of doing what he needs to do! I didnt leave him high and dry as he has the blueprints, tools, and resources now. Literally last night he was texting acknowledging how we’re both not “whole” and it seemed he got that we must be separate but I guess not?? I didn’t give him false hope???

Damn like I was still balancing my own academic + professional + personal obligations and mental health ?? I will do basically anything for someone I love and as his gf ended up taking on quite a bit . But I was 21/22 w. a rigorous course+research load,demanding job, & my own traumas & mental illness to manage??? I loved tf out of him but I am too young & too shaky myself for the dynamic we had to have been sustainable?? I don’t regret putting him onto therapy+psychiatry & the business/financial resources/techniques but being his buffer for the industry stuff in LA was exhausting & fucked w me. I hate almost everything about LA& I get that he’s more introverted than me + has wild imposter syndrome but he was the one who had a right to be there I’m not even remotely connected to that field and again I despise most of the LA bitches- I’m in my early 20’s obviously I would still have wild self esteem issues etc?? I would literally be crying for a good portion of the drive or flight down there almost every time after the first one. But as he would literally run every single business decision or interaction by me & even once the money started coming + he had validation regarding his skill set, for awhile he still would be  second guessing the creative aspect of it;   and he only really trusts & is out of his shell completely with his Oakland friends, people in LA/anyone he works with he views strictly as clients/collaborators - he wouldn’t go to anything he needed to  in LA if I wouldn’t come with him. Okkk yes he was ode loyal/ attentive to me as well as supportive + invested in my stuff & we really protected/looked out for one another in different ways, so it’s not that he was undeserving.. I just can’t be or do everything for someone!!! I also would not even have chance of being close to happy if I stayed in states now that I am completely disillusioned with medicine ??

“That’s insane that you’ve been able to move on like this that’s so fucking ode [my name redacted]. I bet you were fucking other people when were together”

What. the . fuck. I WAS NOTHING BUT LOYAL WHEN WE WERE TOGETHER AND UNLESS I WAS IN CLASSES OR WORKING WE WERE TOGETHER!! I actually  have never spent so much time with one person (and didn’t even mind it) before or after him. He knows I never cheated on him smfh he hurled this same accusation back in the winter after I started hooking up with someone again. So I don’t really get why he’s even acting like this is brand new information because the inciting incident for me to cut him off completely a few months ago was how he was handling me hooking up with someone. Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to tbh??

Also if it wasn’t for pandemic or if he was IN LA as a single man, I’m sure he would’ve ended up with at least someone ?? Yeah he’s not a hookup kinda guy but if he was taking the same drgz  but Im not there than Im sure he’d have plenty of bodies, he’s objectively gorgeous to the point that people are wild confused by his personality & mannerisms.

ALSO we’ve been broken up technically since the fall!! I’ve hooked up with TWO people, which is my prerogative?? I could hookup with a ton of people and it would still be well within my rights as in no way are he and I together ?? It doesn’t mean I don’t care or love him at all but it’s literally mid- May?? I get that he’s mainly upset that the person I most recently was with is the guy from Feb. What I didn’t count on or realize was that I had given J enough info that combined with his naturally sharp memory he’d piece together that the Feb/recent guy is the last person I was in love with before the relationship w J. Once he figured that out he was pressing for more info but I never give out names from situations anyways & I actually had to aggressively ask him if he enjoyed being hurt or something because there’s no reason he needs to fixate on this ??

“this is so fucked up youre not gonna give us a chance to say goodbye for real?? you promised me that it wouldn’t be the last time we saw each other , was this your plan all along ? i can’t believe i really thought you were gonna come back . i’m so fucking stupid. when i heard about schools, even graduations, going online i convinced myself that you still had to come back here or that you’d find a reason. what the fuck rachel! what am i supposed to do?”

Ok he started off yelling (for him) there but once it was just crying i got that his abandonment issues are triggered & that’s definitely valid but he can’t guilt me into coming out to Oakland & based off the past couple days he is not in a place that I can trust myself around. We’d definitely end up fucking & probably doing drgz & there would be no closure we’d just have intense /cinematic experiences that will make separation that much harder AGAIN. We can bring out the best in one another but we also bring out the absolute worst!! We can’t forget the truly fucking horrible parts of our relationship and how out of control it was. Love is not enough!!! The way we loved one another was all consuming & that doesn’t work when there’s soooo much individual healing+ growth that needs to happen.

of course i still love him as well , but i can’t even remind him of that as it’ll then be “so you’ll come back?” fuck like people can love people and know not to be with them!! if i was in a better place maybe i’d think about it; but i’m so far from where I need to be. ofc I miss a lot about him and the relationship but it’s more detrimental than it is beneficial!! it’s not like he didn’t have his grievances too he just doesn’t keep them in perspective in this type of situation . like yeah we coexisted extraordinarily well & never had little arguments over dumb shit/ needed a break from one another; but when we would fight it would be a massive aggressive blowout. ok great we didn’t find one another annoying but also we were respectively v fucking triggered by some deep rooted behavior (i.e our respective parents +trust issues, ptsd and psychosis manifested completely differently; bc of our constant proximity to one another - my BP was on full display multiple times; i accepted he was set on carrying but it was ultimately more like stockpiling ; we both at times did reckless things which made us obsess over the other’s safety [mine mainly in mixed or manic states] ; different attitudes/approaches to drgz) . the codependency was in some lights eventually p unhealthy , especially as eventually down the road itd be impossible to accommodate that degree of attachment to one another!!

ok in some way it’s romantic or w/e that we literally couldn’t be w/o one another at night but also we made it way harder on ourselves when we’d focus on making sure we could be with the other at their obligation instead of our respective responsibilities(i.e me always in LA with him, he ended up coming overseas 3x (EU&Middle East) when I was there for work/conference( for countries he wouldn’t be able to get into he waited at w/e neighboring one would be safe for him),  based his UK work trip around my exams schedule so he could bring me, brought me to PFW, etc. )  even considering taking space at any point was never a real conversation..  we were genuinely best friends but just bounced back from w/e dysfunctional argument we had vs solving it and we’re both mad paranoid people & we need someone to physically be there to feel reassured;on the surface and in actuality in some ways the dynamic was ideal- (regardless tho having someone be your primary safety is hardly fail-safe ).

Both of us are insomniacs & deal w night terrors; but from v. early on we figured out how to handle these things in each other to the point that both of us stopped our respective nighttime vices & could sleep naturally; in the case of night terrors the other person would soothe them back. His overwhelming need to protect found a match with my overwhelming longing for safety even before we knew a ton about one another&the respective back stories. Because of Chantel Miller’s assault case that had gone viral(re:the SU Swimmer case) years before, J was convince su at night was dangerous & always picked me up+ put pepper spray canister in my bag literally a week after we first met. When he learned my history/some of the traumas (mainly nyc r**** & parts i shared re:tr********* abroad) etc he was especially ode about my overall safety. (Tbf he has seen a lot in his life but he mistook my taking risks at times as being completely oblivious when most of the times it was because I had assessed the situation and compared to other experiences and I knew I could handle it; ofc for some of the episodic instances it was way more precarious of a situation. )When it was clear that it wasn’t just some over controlling maneuver, it was just easier to try and listen to him about which areas and times to avoid tbh& spared the details of my ~pickups~. He didn’t need protection in the same way; besides the support/‘protection’ for LA/industry stuff, he needed emotional support/validation, reassurance, and to be nurtured & encouraged.