JFK finally made his exit from my life a few weeks ago. There had been this tug-o-war between us for months. Me trying to pull him back into our relationship and him protesting and warning that we were better as "just friends." This all came to a head the night we celebrated his birthday with my best friends.
I had recently turned 30 and my birthday marks the first time in 2013 we decided we could be friends who like to see each other naked. I have been all for this plan but his fear of living in the grey and ruining our friendship kept us pretty strictly in the friend zone. A few weeks later we seem to be doing fine and I am all happy with the prospect that we might actually figure out this whole thing.
His birthday celebration ends in too many cocktails and one giant conversation about his feelings that he initiated maybe for the first time ever. I am not sure I will ever forget the moment when the most unaffectionate man I have ever known pulled me towards him, ran his fingers through my hair, deeply gazing at me and said, "do you have any idea how amazing you are?" In true girl fashion, I drop eye contact and am awed by his words. So, he raises my chin, says look at me and begins to describe everything he loves about me. This started as one of the most romantic conversations of my life.
JFK in all seriousness said something I had known for almost a year but had never heard him say of his own accord, he told me he loved me. He said it more than once and then he said that one thing every person who has ever been open, vulnerable, and completely in love dreads to hear... "I love you and if I thought we would make it, that we could do this and it last long term, I would be ALL in, I would be all in but I don't FEEL IT. Do you know what 'it' is?"
That's right, I have been in this heartbreaking romantic comedy of a life for a year and a half and now, in this moment, for the first time, it isn't because you aren't ready or you don't want to date anyone and have this need to be selfish. It's because YOU DON"T FEEL IT.
I think I physically had to catch my breath at this revelation. I knew I had allowed him to slowly chip away at me and that I was loosing all of the strength I loved about myself. I knew I had begun sacrificing my own happiness in an effort to keep him in just about any capacity in my life. I knew I was slowly breaking, again. But in that moment, he finally broke me.
That was the end of us. The other selfish moments of that conversation with him were icing on the cake. The parts that gave me enough anger to be comfortable walking away. A few days later, our final sober conversation ended with, "the one thing that has become painfully clear, is that if I stop trying. If I stop putting effort into maintaining this relationship, it will cease to exist. That is heartbreaking."
He actually had the nerve to disagree with that statement. So, I just said that we shall see and with that we got off the phone. I haven't heard from him since. A year and a half of falling in love with the man that encompassed quite literally everything I have ever wanted in a partner had finally ended.
I fight for what I want, I hold on to things and people well past the point of no return. I give until there is nothing left to take BUT when I am done, I am really done. He flits in and out of my mind on occasion but it is nothing like it was. I have moments like this morning where processing the end causes me to want to get it out and get it over with but for the most part he is just gone.
