C'Mon, Would It Really Be So Bad?

The Break

We dated a little over 6 months. It was really good. Then it went bad. 

I guess it started going badly very gradually. But it was sneaky - so sneaky that I didn't even really realize what was happening until it was too late. We were both traveling a lot for work, which wasn't really unexpected. We knew it would be like that going in. But our daily calls, texts and Skype's slowly got less and less frequent. 

I don't really know why. We hadn't ever had a huge fight or anything. We would butt heads every now and then about small stuff, but what couple didn't? The biggest "fight" we got in was about me not wanting to cancel an assignment in order to go to one of his friend's weddings. I didn't think it was that big of a deal, but apparently I was wrong.

I'll be blunt - I did not like this friend of his at all. I never have. He hadn't ever done anything to me personally, but from the first time I met him he just rubbed me the wrong way. I thought he was rude and obnoxious. I thought he was sneaky and I didn't trust him. It seemed like he always had some ulterior motive and always made up elaborate stories. Although I never had any proof, I believed that he fucked around on his fiance while he was on the road. Even if he didn't actually do anything, he acted like a player. He acted like he was a single player. So I thought it was bullshit that he was getting married. I didn't understand why he didn't just stay single instead of (probably) fucking Brittany's life up. 

Ed was the best man at this wedding. Besides Ed, Brittany and The Asshole, I didn't know anyone that was going to be there. Since I didn't like The Asshole I had never hung around any of his friends. Me going with Ed to the wedding would pretty much be the same as me going by myself because since he was the best man, I wouldn't have been able to sit with him or anything. So I told him that I thought it was stupid to miss out on a work assignment to go to something I didn't want to go to anyway. 

He was a little ticked off about it, but told me that he understood and I didn't have to go if I didn't want to. So he ended up going without me and I went out of town for work. When I got back and we sat down to talk, I told him that I wasn't happy with how things had been lately. I meant the lack of communication when he was out of town. He said that he wasn't happy with how things had been lately either and told me we should take a "break."

He said he needed space and asked me not to contact him. He would contact me. I had no idea when. But I respected his wish and restrained myself from contacting him. We didn't talk for almost two weeks. He finally texted me and asked how I was doing. When I replied and then asked the same question of him, he never responded. I was dumbfounded. I had assumed that by giving him the space he wanted he would appreciate me doing what he asked and basically come back thanking me. 

But then I ran into one of our mutual friends. She said she had heard about our "breakup" and heard that Ed was already serious with someone else. What the fuck?? First of all, I wasn't aware that we had ever actually broken up. I thought this was just a break, us getting space from each other. Second, why had Ed been talking about it to anyone? Third, someone else!? I flipped out. 

I almost confronted him about it right then and there. If it was anybody else, I would have. But I couldn't. I was too scared to hear him confirm it all. I was too scared to actually hear him say to me that it was over and he had moved on. I didn't want to believe it.

Wasn't I afraid of this exact thing happening? I should have known better. As soon as he broke up with Rebecca he was out in clubs making out and grinding up on girls every night. As soon as I "rejected" him after the Jimmy Eat World concert he went out and got a fuck buddy. Why was I even surprised? 

I was surprised because he had made me believe that what we had was serious. Different. More powerful than anything else. He had asked me to show him what types of rings I liked. We had randomly tossed out pet and kid names that we liked. We had looked up the most pretty places in the world that would be awesome for a wedding. Granted, it was mostly just fairy tale talk. It's not like we had planned anything. But still.

Did he wake up one day feeling differently about me? About us? Maybe he got to that stupid wedding and realized that he couldn't picture that ever being us. Maybe he really wanted that sooner rather than later and didn't see it happening that way with me. Maybe whenever he pictured getting married himself, it wasn't me that he imagined coming down the aisle. 

I couldn't deal with the break up. I couldn't sleep at all. I couldn't even be by myself for long or else I would just start thinking about it and work myself up into a panic. I felt like I was always on the verge of a panic attack. My heart would start racing and my stomach would drop at the thought of him. I had to keep myself distracted. I couldn't just cope with it like everyone else seemed to be able to do after a break up. I wasn't functioning. I mean, I really, REALLY loved him. That was the first time I had ever felt heartbreak like that. 

I started getting high several times a day. I started going out with "friends" I barely knew any time I could. It didn't matter who it was, it didn't matter what bar it was. I just had to keep moving, keep my mind off of Ed. The thought of hooking up with anyone else made me sick, but that's not what I was partying for. I just wanted to be around people and numb my feelings so I wouldn't feel lonely and depressed. 

I was by no means an alcoholic and I never did any drugs other than pot, but I was still going out of control...at least for me. Sometimes I would work until midnight, go out all night and then show up an hour late and majorly hungover the next morning in Adam's studio running on 3 hours of sleep. For a while I didn't care about how I looked, how my pictures looked or really anything else. It was not a cute look on me.