tonight i planned to get good & drunk (2 shots & a beer and i was far more gone than i'd anticipated i'd be), write and sketch the outline for my zine while listening to music, and watch mulholland drive & ink some of my sketches while i sobered up. ("write drunk, edit sober" ...i'd never tried it & thought it might help stimulate flow of words i was hesitant to put down)
right as i sat down with my sketchbook, i got a notification that tj had tweeted something & it was about how he was crying on the train & didn't know what to do. so i pulled on some clothes and walked my drunk ass to the train station to meet him for coffee.
it turns out his big ex, his dylan, had texted him out of nowhere asking if he was happy and it was just too much for him to handle. the kid who listens to death metal and mercilessly destroys all life in halo every time we play, and he was sitting with an empty cup and eyes full of tears when i got there.
i don't know what i'm getting at here. i just hated seeing him broken. and it's not like i havent seen him break down before, but it just hurts. it's something ive been thinking about a lot lately in the making of this zine, how this city has done so much for me, how i blossom here and am driven by what surrounds me, and how he wakes up every morning wishing he were somewhere else.
i like to think that i'm the type of person who fixes things. i always have been. even if i'm sheepish about it, i do what i can to help. the other day i listened to an HRC rep on the phone for 15 full minutes before telling her that i really have no spare change at this moment in my life but to please call me back this summer. today i gave my uneaten snacks to a man on the train with a teardrop tattoo and dirt-caked fingernails who was apologizing to strangers as he asked for charity. i couldn't make eye contact with him or speak while i did it, but i listened. and i'm the only person on the train who acknowledged his humanness.
so maybe that's why everything with dylan has affected me so much. why it's been fucking forever and there are still tiny pieces of me shattered on the floor, why i can't let myself get close to any of the boys who have taken me out to dinner, bought me sweet wine, and opened themselves up to me. i have always been a guilt internalizer and i feel bad for what i did to dylan. even though he could be so dismissive and emotionally abusive. i still feel bad for leaving him when he was at a low point because ive seen what that does to people.
this semester i've built a shell around myself that surprises even me sometimes. daniella has tried at least 3 times to talk to me about how tj is leaving school and i straight up closed the bathroom door & told her to stop talking to me last time. lately when i'm down, i don't call anyone. i pretend i'm not down to everyone but me. i don't let myself even write down half of what im feeling because i don't want to admit it's happening. but i'm a little bit tired of that. it's hard to be like that all the time.
so this is an open apology to dylan because right now i need to get it out of me:
i am sorry for leaving you when you were at your worst. i am sorry for helping break you. i am sorry that i wasn't there to put you back together. when i broke us, it was my intention that we would get to know ourselves better & after that, things would be ok for us to be together again. and then things got too hard. but know that it was never my intention to leave you broken--i wanted to be there for you again.
i am not sorry that we are apart, i am not sorry i called your mom when you told me you tried to kill yourself, i am not sorry that i lashed out when we worked together last summer, i am not sorry that i texted you saying sorry so many fucking times. i'm still fucking pissed at how you and your friends treated/treat me. the way you publicly demonized me multiple times on facebook was inappropriate, cruel, and immature. but even then, i am training myself to look to the future without picturing you somehow back in my life, and it's fucking hard. i debate with myself all the time about whether i should give a shit or not, and maybe i'll never know what's right. but im sorry for leaving you when you were low. i'm sorry for being the type of person who walked away when someone needed me.
I'm glad you wrote this. Holding things in and ignoring them will make you feel stronger and like you can handle more, but it isn't a very good plan long-term.
ReplyDeleteMichael, my mom's boyfriend, is clinically depressed. He's miserable in his life but terrified of dying. It's really hard for her to stay with him because he just gets so low. And she isn't even really the type of person to want to fix things. At least, not like you are.
My only experiences really with people who are that seriously depressed are not people I've dated. Jonathan is the closest. And even though he seems to be on solid ground now, I still feel guilty for the fact that our relationship is basically nonexistent. I still feel ashamed that I don't talk to him because I didn't like who he turned out to be.
But that's different. Don't forget that Dylan was hurting you during a great deal of your relationship. That he was holding you back. That he couldn't stand that you had your own ideas and you were moving forward. He made you feel like a horrible person for drinking alcohol, he put his own life and his band (which didn't get him anywhere) before your success in art school and couldn't commit to changing any aspect of his life to accommodate you.
I'm not saying that he was a bad person or that he deserved anything or anything like that. All I am saying is that yes, I understand why you feel bad about breaking up with him when he was so low. But, he was keeping you from growing. He was just short of emotionally abusive. He couldn't handle being in a long-term relationship with you, and instead of realizing that and working on himself he lashed out at you.
Dylan needed help, but he didn't know how to accept it. Even though I totally 100% understand that you wanted to help him, you may not have been able to. And saving yourself from all of that was one of the best things you could have done.
-H