new day, old thoughts

I forgot to eat dinner today, and it's now 11:45pm.

I never forget to eat. I only ever forget when I'm not well, when I'm in a bad state of mind. In a series of very frustrating but unrelated events, I had to revive an old email account this afternoon. With it came a whole set of folders with emails from a different place, different time. One of the folders was labeled with the Ex's name. I found that folder around 4pm. I've now been dysfunctional for close to 8 hours.

The emails span from 11/4/2005 to 12/11/2005, right after the Ex and I broke up on my birthday that year. I guess the same feelings that I feel now, I actually said in those emails. I hadn't remembered. I blamed him then for our breaking up, citing that he was the one who made religion THE issue. We would be okay without the religious thorn, I said then (and I said yesterday). He admitted that the breakup was one-sided, but said that there were lots of other little issues too. Religion was so BIG that it overshadowed the rest, but without religion, all that the other stuff would have probably themselves become breaking points for our relationship.

So in that sense, he did eventually come to tell me that I wasn't the one.

I wrote:

About why we broke up ... i guess i never saw any issue that was so big that we wouldn't be able to work through them, including religion. It goes back to what i was saying before: I see marriage as a reason to work through these differences/problems, whereas you don't think marriage should even be considered before these problems are worked out. just a difference in perspective.

Pretty naive, and honestly, marriage probably shouldn't be considered before these problems are worked out, but I was trying so hard to hold on. I didn't want to believe that the our problems were insurmountable. I wanted to believe that we would, and should, be together.

He replied:

I was thinking about the one-sided break-up versus the mutual break-up, and think you're right that I was the person who saw our problems as too difficult for us to work through (at least right now). And yeah, we definitely disagreed about when it's appropriate to ge married, and I still think marraige shouldn't even be considered before working out fundamental problems.

That just made me sad. That was why we didn't work, because we had what he thought were fundamental problems. These fundamental problems obviously don't exist with his current relationship. It's just as Daisy said--the "He wasn't right for me, either" part is almost irrelevant. I dwell so much more on the fact that I wasn't right for him. I can't see past that.

In another email, he wrote:

The more I look at other people's relationships, and think about our own, I realize that sometimes people just aren't in the same place at the same time. And yeah that's horrible, and it causes a lot of hurt. But that doesn't mean that people can't figure things out, can't change, and can't get back together some day.

I talked to my parents about us breaking up, and they felt bad, and my mom said that she didn't want us to make the same mistake she did, which was getting married too young. And I explained to her that every couple is different, and her being too young doesn't mean we are. And I think it's really strange, and there really seem to be two groups of people on the age issue. Some people think you have to be around thirty years old to get married, and other people just focus on being over twenty-one.

The correct answer is probably just that you're ready to get married when you meet the right person. With him, I felt that I had met the right person, but he didn't feel the same way. With the new girl, it didn't take him long to realize that she was the right person. Three years after these emails about us, he is ready to marry someone he hadn't even met then. His mom doesn't think he's too young anymore now (she used to say no marriage under 30). Or maybe she still thinks the same, but he loves the girl so much that he doesn't care, that he'll fight for her. I never got to experience that love from him. It was all uphill for me.

And what of that part about figuring things out, changing, and getting back together? False hope, all of it. But what can I do? It's never easy to break up with someone when there are no obvious reasons. When the only reason is that s/he just isn't the one, it's always easier to approach the end like maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be final.

So where does that leave me? I think about how I used to feel about the Ex, how sure I was that he was THE ONE. I never believed that stuff until 2-3 months after we started dating, and I just FELT it. He was the one, and that was the feeling I ought to have (maybe I was just young and too naive and too much of a romantic).

But honestly, I think the only reason I am glad he and I didn't work out is the religion. But that's the most heartbreaking part ... without the religion, I would still want to be with him. Even today.

And that made me cry all over again. I haven't cried in a long time about the Ex. There was always something there in the back of my mind, but I guess I always suppressed it. Of course, I had wanted to write it all down here, tell the whole story of how I was wronged and jilted, but it never seemed to be worth the time to rehash everything. To much to explain; too much hassle; too much story.

But knowing that he proposed recently, I guess I couldn't hold it in anymore. Here I am, crying the same cry three years later. I'm listening to the same song on repeat, thinking of the same memories that made that song come full circle three years ago. Just like three years ago, I am unable to stop myself from reminescing. I deliberately run through good times in my mind, places we went together, things we did together, the future we planned together ... knowing full well that it will all just make the tears come harder.

I'm in no shape to face Broadway right now. I don't have room in all of my emotions to make space for him, to see him and to love him and to adore him like he deserves. Yet what do I say to him?

"I really need some time alone because my ex got engaged"?

"These tears and emotions have nothing to do with you and are things I need to work out on my own"?

Broadway won't see it that way, and how can I possibly expect him to? Whatever hurt he would feel would be justified and reasonable. I would feel hurt, too. And really, can I honestly say that these tears have nothing to do with him? Maybe I'm crying because I don't feel it with him.