About the breakup.

When did I become so boring? 

I recently started doing those surveys of questions on my other blog as something to post so that I don't have to come up with my own material.  But I fill them out and the answers are so bland.  I used to be a smart ass.  I used to be witty.  What the hell happened to me?

I attribute a lot of this to the breakup-the split 2 years ago from my kid's father.  We had lived together for 8 years and much of those 8 years we were mostly just people who lived together and raised a kid together.  We weren't really in love.  Or at least it didn't feel like it at the time.  The split was mutual.  And it was amicable.  But about a month after I moved out, I found out that he had been seeing someone for a few months and I had a breakdown that almost ended me back in the psych ward.  I don't know why I reacted like that.  But it was bad.  I was not okay.  My doctor changed up the medications I was on and that brought me back from the edge.  But I was changed by that. 

I never doubted him.  I never thought for a minute that he would cheat on me.  I considered him honorable and good and honest.  I had total faith in him.  I was completely blindsided by the idea that he might be seeing someone else during the time that we both knew it was over but before it was completely and totally over.  I wished I had known.  I would have liked to have set up a rebound thing too.  It would have been nice to have someone to talk to and to go to in those last few months when he slept on the couch and I avoided him.  But in my mind we were still technically together.  Not so in his.  In his mind as soon as we talked about splitting it was over.  A done deal.

In that month after I moved out, I was still hopeful.  I spoke with him regularly because we were navigating this split with our daughter and it was important that she know we were still her parents.  I sat down with him for lunch.  We got along.  And I was hopeful that this was just some space that we needed until we each (read: ME) could sort some things out and that we would reconcile and get back together.  It never occurred to me that he had already moved on. 

Finding out that he was seeing someone broke something inside of me.  Yes, I had been cheated on in the past.  I had been lied to and betrayed.  I had been treated truly horribly by some of my ex boyfriends.  But this was something different.  I never trusted them.  I never believed that we would work it out.  I always knew that those guys couldn't truly be trusted.  There were always plenty of red flags for me to ignore.  Not so here.  Ben was a good guy.  We spent 8 years together.  I never doubted his love for me.

And then, just like that, I was face to face with the realization that he perhaps didn't love  me anymore.  And he said that to me.  He was moving on without me.  I didn't get another chance to be better.  He was done waiting for me to get over this depression and he was moving forward with his life without me.

This was a turning point for me.  I looked back at our relationship and all I could see was all that I did wrong.  I saw the way I needed to escape from my life almost daily by taking to bed most afternoons.  I saw the way I avoided doing things with him.  I saw the times I was unfaithful and lied.  Everything was magnified.  Part of this I can blame on this awful depression but the rest was squarely on my own shoulders.  I wasn't a good partner.  I wasn't present most of the time.  I did everything to make him feel like he wasn't valued and in the end I was the one who had to convince him that it was never going to get better.  I did this. 

I am not someone who has regrets.  I lived through my teens and most of my twenties doing all sorts of things that some people would regret.  But I always felt regretting things was a waste of time.  YOLO, right?  But with Ben I have some deep and permanent regrets.  I don't know if I will ever get to a point where I accept what I did and move past it. 

It's been nearly 2 years and Ben and I have a good relationship for Lila's sake.  We are friendly and have no drama.  It really baffles me when I hear about situations (which are most situations) where people split up and can't agree on simple things for the sake of the kids.  There have been some stumbling blocks like when he first started bringing his new girlfriend around Lila but all in all we've gotten past that.  I still don't like the girlfriend though.  I don't know if that will ever change. 

I would say that I am over the split.  I think that it was for the best.  I wasn't the person I wanted to be when I was with him and I don't think I could be.  But regardless of whatever lessons I have learned from this, I am in a much more introspective and self-aware place.  My self esteem sucks.  I am something of a homebody. 

I tried internet dating and at first I met a few guys but none of them seemed like a good match.  I questioned if I was ready to be dating.  A part of me wants desperately to meet someone new but the other part of me-the damaged part of me- says that no one in their right mind would want me right now.  I am not whole.  I do not feel like I am in a place that is conducive to being in a relationship.  I am not depressed exactly.  I don't have that hopeless feeling that I am so familiar with.  The medication seems to help that.  I am just not feeling like me.  I guess I don't even know who I am right now.  And that makes me boring.

I have started blogging again here and at my other blog to try to discover some of who I was and see if she is still there under all this seriousness.  But I re-read my blog posts and they just feel so lifeless.  And I worry that it is a reflection of me right now.  Am I lifeless?  Or did this just seriously knock the wind out of me?  I worry that this bump in the road was more than just a bump and that perhaps it has seriously altered the person that I am. 

I feel like only time will tell.