The Last Goodbye

So, remember this post about the ending of my last relationship? Well, I finally got that goodbye. And it was nothing like what I expected, despite having given up on ever receiving it.

As it turns out, my ex was hospitalized and later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. My feelings are shock, frustration, and pain. I wish I had known. I wish he had told me. He knows he should have told me sooner.

He called because he wanted to give me peace. It's ironic because I'm feeling anything but right now. I'm feeling hurt and sad. In the end, he did not want to burden me with his disease. He wants a better life for me than dealing with a cranky man in a wheelchair.

He assured me that nothing was my fault, that he thinks I'm beautiful, gentle, kind, and deserve someone who treats  me well. All I ever wanted was love, but maybe he's right. And maybe he knows something I don't about how far love can carry a relationship.

So here I am, experiencing the final ending of our relationship. What's funny is that earlier this week, I said a little prayer asking to have my anger taken away. This phone call was honestly what I needed to remove the anger that I felt toward my ex. The trouble with an empathetic person is they understand why someone might make the poor choices that they do, and I can't blame my ex for being angry about his diagnosis and therefore not letting me know what was going on.

It is strange how complex my feelings become with age and experience. There is no black-and-white, there are no good guys and bad guys. We are all a bit of both, however much we crave the clear vision that movies provide. When I tell the people I care about of what transpired between my ex and me, they will surely gang up against him- he was bad, he was wrong. But he wasn't bad. His behavior may have been bad, but as a person, he was not bad. He was simply (complexly) human. As we all are.

I don't really know how to process this. I am still feeling hurt, and this time at the true ending and loss of a relationship that meant a great deal to me. I hope that I can truly be at peace about this relationship now, even though I am feeling hurt and fresh pain over the loss. It will all get better with time, right?

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The Ghost of Goodbyes

There are times in life when you simply do not get the goodbye that you expect. All you might want is the word itself, but it never comes. A person simply vanishes, as though they were never in your life to begin with.

Sometimes it is fate who robs you of goodbye. Death swoops in to take a loved one and all you are left with are ashes and unspoken words.

Sometimes it is inertia the inertia of two lives drifting apart, so that goodbye is irrelevant.

But sometimes there is an opportunity for goodbye. You open the door to say goodbye, but just as soon as you've ushered this person out, the door slams in your face and you are left with nothing but an empty room.

This is the goodbye I did not receive this past week.

I have never spoken of my romantic life on this blog, for a few reasons. I am still processing the why of this- the wanting to keep something personal to myself, the fear that things would not work out, the fear of discovery, but perhaps most of all, the fear of what I might uncover about this relationship if I wrote about it. Because when I write, I discover just who I am and what I feel.

To start out, I will say that I feel a certain amount of shame surrounding this relationship. Shame for being completely duped and choosing to continue with the relationship when most women would have jumped ship. He had been full of goodbyes, excuses, and false promises- promises I had believed.

In all honesty, it was as though I was never in a relationship all along. We never did the things most couples do- spending weekends together, going to parties together, meeting friends and family. All I had were dates. And then he moved away, and all I had were phone calls. I never even had a photograph of us together.

I wish I had seen the light much sooner, but I had always heard how relationships take work, and I believed I needed to have faith. I have since learned that someone must give you a reason to have faith in them, that they must follow through on their word.

And so last week, when he did not even call or text on Christmas, I said goodbye. In an email. I'm the kind of person who needs closure, and I would have preferred the finality of an in-person goodbye. Sadly, I was not allowed this luxury. When someone does not welcome you into their life, an electronic goodbye is all you can do. So I did. And I waited.

A week later, and I have not received a goodbye from him. He is gone, and like a ghost it is as though he was never there at all. Like I must have dreamed the whole thing.

Now I want to banish this ghost from my life, so that I can move forward into this year, unhaunted. Releasing this relationship in 2013 has created more space for me to love and respect myself in 2014. My wish for this year is that it will be full of hellos and empty of ghosts.

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