Go

“If he’s dumb enough to walk away, be smart enough to let him go….”  —person smarter than me who came up with that quote

Is there anything worse than the “stuff swap” after a breakup?  You know, the moment when the guy comes back to pick up all of the t-shirts and sunglasses and DVDs that he left at your house, and he drops off the earrings and hairspray and awesome cowgirl boots (that you forgot you bought) that you ditched at his.  It’s so incredibly awkward and awful.  You’re in the room with someone that you once could not get close enough to, who you could not wait to hug or hold hands with, and now you are both standing with your arms crossed, five feet away from one another.  It couldn’t end quickly enough for me.  

The breakup itself would not have been so awful if he hadn’t felt the need to keep replaying the reasons for it over and over and over, and if I hadn’t felt the need to keep allowing him to do so.  Every time he called, I would answer.  I would wait for him to text me.  I begged him to give me another chance, even though deep down I knew that the breakup really didn’t have anything to do with me at all.  I think that all of his reasons were only surface excuses, hiding something that is buried within him, demons that he has to deal with on his own.  I knew that they were there while we were dating, but like any normal girl, I decided that I could be the one person who could make everything okay, who could fix all of the wrongs in his life and make them better.  I knew that I could be his happy.  I have spent the past week beating myself up over saying the wrong thing and doing the wrong thing, when I know at the core of my being that it wasn’t entirely my fault.  I would allow myself to talk to him, only to have him say things like, “You know, just because I’m talking to you doesn’t change anything.  I just need a friend right now, and I really feel like you need one, too.”  What is it about me that always puts me in the friend category?  It was like being stabbed in the heart all over again.  Maybe I don’t want to be his friend.

I can never have a relationship with someone who can’t be there for me when things get tough.  Right now, things are tough.  Kylie is still in a rotten place, and I am running in circles trying to find the best people to help her.  Work is slowly getting better.  I am finding my footing there, just like I knew that I would.  At the moment, it is the only stability that I have.  It is keeping me from losing my mind.  Rob told me that it wasn’t fair for me to put my stress on him when he had his own to deal with, but isn’t that what relationships are?  I took on plenty of his and didn’t complain.  He told me last night that he thinks that he is better off alone, and I think that he is exactly right.  Throughout our entire relationship, he went on and on about all of the girls who have bruised him in the past, from his ex-wife to his previous girlfriends, and I felt as though I was being held responsible for all of their actions.  If they did it to him, then it must mean that eventually I would do the same to him.  It is really sad for him that he felt that way, because I truly loved him, and I would have done anything to make him happy.  

The girls at work are awesome.  A few days before the actual dumping took place, Rob met me at work for lunch.  Afterward, I came back into the store, and I was really bummed out because he had been a complete jackass, and I really knew that things were not looking good for us.  Demi, one of my coworkers, came up to me and asked what was wrong, and when I told her what had happened she said, “Girl, you don’t let anyone put out your light!”  It made me laugh, and it stuck in my mind, and I keep thinking about it because she is completely right.  One day last week, I was telling another coworker, Kay, about the actual dumping.  She is a little older than me, and she knows all about being a single mom with awful dating stories.  She told me, “I spent so much time thinking that I was never going to find anyone to love me the way that  I needed to be loved, who would love my kids the way that they needed to be loved because their dad wasn’t around.  And let me tell you, it is a miserable way to live.  It will happen….you just have to wait for it.”  And then there is my other coworker, Kylie, who simply suggested that we all go and kick Rob’s ass as a group.  I love them.

I am still in a weird place.  I still feel like I fell out of the sky and landed here in the middle of the tobacco fields, millions of miles away from anyone that I know.  Part of me thinks that I must have been crazy for picking up and moving here, and part of me knows that I made the right choice.  Part of me wants to pack up and follow my dad to Michigan next month, but the other part of me knows that I would regret it because I love my job and that the person I want most in Michigan is no longer there.  I truly believe that people come into our lives just when we need them to be there, and I really think that I had Rob when I did to get me through the death of my grandmother and my transition to Raleigh.  I don’t think that I would have come here if it wasn’t for him.  There was too much chaos and too much fear, and there was too much of a safety net in Winston-Salem where at least I knew people and had normalcy.  But having him gave me the courage to jump in feet first when I normally don’t even get in the water.  I have to be open to whatever is here for me now.  It is scary, and my heart is hurting because the past few months have been so incredibly tough, but I will get better.