I was engaged for 30 seconds. For 30 seconds, on New Year’s Eve 2012, I was going to marry the man of my dreams.
30 seconds was the exact amount of time it took my boyfriend of four-and-a-half years to go from saying, “Yes, let’s get married,” to have a complete and total panic attack. Tears, shivering, snot, hyperventilation. The total melt-down of a formerly stoic adult person. It’s hard to pin-point exactly what was so terrifying about the idea of spending a life in partnership with me, but, sufficed to say, it’s not exactly the proposal a girl dreams of. It became very clear after those 30 seconds that I was, in fact, not going to be married. At least not to this guy.
***
This is the story of finding my way back. Fresh out of a four-and-a-half year relationship that was, on the whole, pretty darn dreamy. Except for the part where apparently I was dreaming in thinking that he felt about me the way I did about him.
I probably should have known that he wasn’t going to be able to commit way back when, about a year into our relationship, he broke up with me for 6 weeks because I was allergic to cats. He just wasn’t sure if he could live a life in which he couldn’t have a cat, but it seemed likely that he could be perfectly happy living a life without me. 6 weeks seemed to teach him that wasn’t such a sure bet, but I suppose it wasn’t quite enough.
The two months immediately following my 30-second engagement were, to say the least, horrible. Me staying at my parents. Him moving out of our home. The very awkward time that I hopped out of the shower, wet and naked, to find some soap, only for him to pop back in to get something he left behind and neither of us knew how to handle him seeing me naked for the millionth, but also last, time. Remembering what it is like to live by myself. (Answer: simultaneously liberating and lonely.) Wondering where my friends were when I needed them most. Waiting in the cold, dark, rain for the bus after yoga class late on a Wednesday night, wishing that I could call him to pick me up like I had so many times before.
The truth of it is that the hardest part has been the feelings of betrayal and confusion, of not understanding how he could not want to spend his life with me when our times together had been so blissful, so full of laughter and love and support. Were all my memories false? Or was he simply the biggest idiot alive to walk out on us? I have spent a long time alone in a canyon of sorrow.
But there is only one way out of a canyon (aside from Medivac), and that is this: you put one foot in front of the other. You keep going. You only let yourself break down and cry in the shower for 30 seconds at a time. You date. And so this story begins...
30 seconds was the exact amount of time it took my boyfriend of four-and-a-half years to go from saying, “Yes, let’s get married,” to have a complete and total panic attack. Tears, shivering, snot, hyperventilation. The total melt-down of a formerly stoic adult person. It’s hard to pin-point exactly what was so terrifying about the idea of spending a life in partnership with me, but, sufficed to say, it’s not exactly the proposal a girl dreams of. It became very clear after those 30 seconds that I was, in fact, not going to be married. At least not to this guy.
***
This is the story of finding my way back. Fresh out of a four-and-a-half year relationship that was, on the whole, pretty darn dreamy. Except for the part where apparently I was dreaming in thinking that he felt about me the way I did about him.
I probably should have known that he wasn’t going to be able to commit way back when, about a year into our relationship, he broke up with me for 6 weeks because I was allergic to cats. He just wasn’t sure if he could live a life in which he couldn’t have a cat, but it seemed likely that he could be perfectly happy living a life without me. 6 weeks seemed to teach him that wasn’t such a sure bet, but I suppose it wasn’t quite enough.
The two months immediately following my 30-second engagement were, to say the least, horrible. Me staying at my parents. Him moving out of our home. The very awkward time that I hopped out of the shower, wet and naked, to find some soap, only for him to pop back in to get something he left behind and neither of us knew how to handle him seeing me naked for the millionth, but also last, time. Remembering what it is like to live by myself. (Answer: simultaneously liberating and lonely.) Wondering where my friends were when I needed them most. Waiting in the cold, dark, rain for the bus after yoga class late on a Wednesday night, wishing that I could call him to pick me up like I had so many times before.
The truth of it is that the hardest part has been the feelings of betrayal and confusion, of not understanding how he could not want to spend his life with me when our times together had been so blissful, so full of laughter and love and support. Were all my memories false? Or was he simply the biggest idiot alive to walk out on us? I have spent a long time alone in a canyon of sorrow.
But there is only one way out of a canyon (aside from Medivac), and that is this: you put one foot in front of the other. You keep going. You only let yourself break down and cry in the shower for 30 seconds at a time. You date. And so this story begins...
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