Somewhere There Is a Lie

 I'm happy to report that memories and dreams are troubling me less of late.  I have been able to make progress in my work pretty steadily.  I do have thoughts gnawing at the edges of my mind all the same, so I figured it would be smart to put some down.

When I was in high school, girls would often say to me, "Oh, well, I'm not really that interested in him anyway."  I knew it was a lie, though.  They had been talking about a guy non-stop for weeks, and suddenly they claimed they had no interest at all.  I had gently encouraged them to ask him out.  Easier said than done, especially in high school, I know.  I would say, "But it's just one date; you don't have to marry him!"  I still say that to people.  You don't know if you don't try, and one date is not some life-long commitment.  Still, my friends would baulk.  Sometimes there would be signs that the guy was not interested, but most often he would just not know that my friend existed.  The fear of him not being interested, of being rejected, was so intense, though, that my friends would let it go.  After obsessing over the guy, apparently they were not longer into him, and maybe had never really liked him anyway.  If you reject the person first, then they cannot reject you: a classic defense mechanism.  It is lying to yourself.

It is all the more tempting to do this after the end of a relationship.  Oh, well, the guy was crap and not for you anyway.  After all, "there are plenty of fish in the sea" and all those other things that people say to try to make you feel better after a breakup.  I remember when Amin broke up with me, he said that it would have been easier to end things in a fight or to say something mean to make me hate him.  He claimed that it is not better or nicer, but it helps people move on faster or better.  That anger, masking fear of being hurt, or of being rejected, makes you want to reject the other person and forge a new path.

Even if I am angry at the end of a relationship - though I do sit in hurt for the most part - I never have this thought of "good riddance!"  I did not even have it over François, who was not a good boyfriend, and I knew it at the time.  I knew there were better people for me, but I preferred him, and I stayed that way entirely too long.  No, my illusion tends in a different direction.  I am in so much hurt, and shock, that I am scrambling to catch up.  How did this happen?  It takes some time to figure out just quite what it is, but the conclusion is always the same: Somewhere, there's a lie.

Something was wrong: things obviously didn't add up.  When Amin broke up with me, of course it was understandable: he did not want to abandon his family forever.  My mind was busy reeling, though, looking at how he told me he had given up on ever coming back to Canada, even after his military service, but he kept up with his immigration French course.  That was no longer necessary for someone who was never becoming a citizen of the country.  He did it all the same.  So one of the things was a lie: which was it?  Was it a lie to be taking French, or was it a lie to be giving up on his dream of living in Canada? 

With Charlie, the lies were absolute poison.  He manipulated information to suit his purposes at the end of the relationship, and of course that continued afterwards in any interactions I had with him, including when we were trying to patch things up and try again.  He told me that he did not remember ever threatening to do certain things if ever I left the relationship.  Since he did not remember, I must have made it up to cast aspersions on his character.  So thought everyone in his family too, he informed me, and they all hated me now.  He had no filter by that point; this is not something you say to someone you want to get back together with.  His statements that I had "ransacked" the apartment when I moved my things out, and "stolen" from him resulted in the property manager letting him change the locks.  I was still on the lease at this time to make sure that Charlie was not thrown out, but I was not able to return to pick up some things I had left behind.  Charlie would not let me in, and I could not let myself in.  

The worst lie of all, though, was about his hospitalisation.  He called his parents and they found him in such a state, they took him with them for a few days to support him.  The first thing they did was take him up north to their cabin.  He was not stable mentally before I left, and he had a major crisis when I left.  They finally came to their senses and admitted him at the hospital psychiatric ward.  "Do you know what that was like?!" he blurted to me once.  Yes, yes I did, in fact.  I knew because I had visited a relative on the ward.  It is serious, it is stark.  I had taken him to the clinic on campus once because he told me he was feeling suicidal.  His parents took him in to the hospital because he was feeling suicidal.  Or was he?  He told me at some point later, after trying to make me feel bad about how I sent him to the ward, that he only did this for legal purposes.  It was only so that it could be documented in case he needed to sue me.  Somewhere there's a lie, but I don't know which one it is.  Did he lie to cover the fact that he really was suicidal?  Or did he lie about being suicidal to help his case?  Either way, that is seriously fucked up.  How could he have let me think for the last two years of our relationship that he had been suicidal, when it was supposedly only in case he needed to appeal his comprehensive exams (he was paranoid at that point and convinced that his committee was out to fail him)?  How could he have let me worry about him like that?  Less importantly: how could he have pretended just to have more ammunition to sue me?  That is just a colossal waste of everyone's time, including people who actually need help on the ward.  This was supposedly an act to make me look like the villain, but apparently I was the one who was calumniating him...

Here it is a year after my break-up with Jeremy, and the same thoughts are returning: Somewhere, there is a lie.  The relationship was not real.  I was lied to.  He never loved me.  He was with me just because he was homesick.  He was with me just because he was lonely during Covid.  As soon as possibilities started opening up for us, he did not want them.  He did not want to move in together.  He did not want to meet my parents (I had to twist his arm.)  He did not want to go on dates anymore.  He did not want to hold hands anymore.  He did not want to talk as much.  He did not want to date anymore.  It was a slow progression, but that is much how it went.  Someone who didn't want to be with me surely would have been able to leave sooner.  Why did it take so long?  He said he wanted to be friends; we were friends first.  Now we barely talk.  When I point it out, he's confused.  He doesn't know what to say to me, and he doesn't understand that what he is doing does not constitute friendship.  Surely this is a person who does not care and never did.  He would tell me that I'm wrong, and say that I always assume the worst.  Somewhere, there is a lie...

The worst lie of all, though, is the other one I tell myself.  He will wake up one day and realise what an idiot he has been and come back.  He really loves me, it's just that he's been struggling.  One day, there will be a second chance for us.  Months and months, this persistent little thought goes on in my mind.  Months then turn into years.  I know why I do this now: in my therapy, I've discovered that this is all about my trying to prove to myself that I am lovable.  Instead of letting someone else show me that I am lovable, I am waiting for the ex to change his mind to prove it.  It seems to be some kind of compelling proof to win someone over and change their mind.  Intellectually, I am so done with that.  I want to date someone who actually wants to be with me.  Emotionally, I haven't let this go yet.

I'm writing this post in part to bring it to the fore to keep working through it.  I keep seeming to have to repeat these things to myself, about how people do not magically change.  Life is not like in the movies with sweeping romantic gestures and quick turn-arounds.  People mostly do the same things that they did yesterday and last week, and will continue to do them next week, and next year, and the year after that.  Jeremy is not going to wake up one day and suddenly not be phobic about commitment.  It is not because I did not love him enough; it is because he was afraid.  He just hid it too well for me to see from the start.  It is hard to hold all of these things, and to stare the truth in the face.  Yes, he was depressed, and that is why he left.  Yes, he was afraid of being close to me, and that is why he left.  Both were true at the same time.  Yes, he also did love me.  That was no lie.  It is tempting to pretend it was a lie so that it hurts less (though I am under the impression it hurts more sometimes to think these kinds of things.)

I think sometimes that mostly, the lie is that feeling of "Somewhere, there is a lie"...  

Forgetting

The last few weeks, there have been some memories that have just been replaying over and over in my mind.  The mind can be fickle sometimes, and tends to show you a lot of things that make you sad when you are feeling down.  I thought this might be a good subject for a blog post, and even that entered into my dreams and gave me a nightmare about how I hadn't made this post yet.

Why do we remember some things so clearly, and struggle to recall others?  They say sometimes that certain things soften over time and we tend to remember happier things rather than sadder things.  I think they say that especially after someone has died.  A breakup causes grief a bit akin to the death of someone.  I think over time, I've been a bit calmer when recalling things about my past relationships, not so hurt.  But the last few weeks, I've been having these memories surfacing all the time, all the bad ones, playing over and over in my mind during my waking and sleeping hours.  It's really a time when I wish I could have forgotten these things long past.

All of these memories have been times where I have felt hurt with Charlie or Jeremy.  It even comes up in converation with people.  I was talking with a friend the other day, and I remarked how he is a planner.  I told him that I am a planner too because of my CFS.  Of course, I often need to adjust plans with symptoms that show up unexpectedly, but I do try to map out times in the day when I can work and when I can rest.  I wanted him to know that I understood, which not everyone does, and that it was cool by me.  Then before I knew what I was saying, what came out of my mouth was a story about how Charlie told me that it was a buzzkill how I was never spontaneous.  That is one way to view the world, and not the only way.  It was also unfair and hurtful of him to say.  I know this, so I don't see the point of revisiting such a harsh and untrue assessment of me.

I've also been having a lot of imaginary arguments.  I did this a lot after my breakup with Charlie.  I would take things he said to me, and answer them.  For example, that thing he said about how planning everything really made me a not fun person.  I would say something like, "But I am capable of being spontaneous too!  Don't you remember when I did spontaneous thing x, y, and z?  And you know why I plan; I have good reasons!"  This is perhaps not the best example, but I would be justifying to him, often out loud, who I am, and why I do what I do.  I was answering him back for all those times I had been silent.  My therapist said that this is what I was doing, but I was weary of having the same conversations both in my sessions, and apparently with myself at home.  I had established that things went poorly with Charlie because he was sick, and the dynamic turned into an abusive one, and I made myself into a pretzel trying to fix things.  I knew this.  I firmly believe this.  But seemingly I needed to go over it again and again with myself, prove it to myself.  I really wished it was just firmly established for me, because if I'm having to confirm it in some way, it is not all the way there.  And it means I have to constantly relive these moments I'd rather forget.

I've started having arguments primarily with Jeremy lately.  I was telling him things I would not tolerate from him, and stuff he did that sucked.  This was probably prompted a lot by a conversation which we had on June 3rd.  In way of making me feel like a burden on him and his time, he had suggested many times, including before we broke up officially, that I schedule his time.  We scheduled up to 2.5 hours on June 3rd.  He had had some questions about what I was doing in my PhD research, and caught me at a bad time, so I had asked if we could pick it up at another time.  He told me he had been meaning to talk to me about something anyway, so could we schedule time.  I declined a time he offered after his exercise, because I knew from experience that any time he is tired, which he would be after his long swim at the gym, that there is no quality with him.  I picked a morning time, when he is freshest and I was likely to get the best quality I would get with him.  It was a 7 minute converation, in which he told me that he did not remember at all how he had said he wanted to talk to me about something, or what that was.  He seemed to think he was there to help me with my research.  I told him that was not the case.  So I asked if he was curious about something; he certainly had been curious in our previous conversation, full of questions.  He said no, there was nothing he wanted to know about my research.  It was the lamest conversation ever.  I walked away from that reeling.  I know I've had a few imaginary things to say to Jeremy about it.  I think one of the thoughts that has come back a lot is, "You don't remember anything that's important!  You remembered that I forgot my sunglasses when I went to Vancouver last year, but not why I was going this year: my best friend's wedding.  You're so lame you couldn't even remember what you wanted to talk about.  BUT YOU REMEMBERED THE STUPID SUNGLASSES that don't matter at all!"  Why is it that women remember everything, and men forget everything?

I just wish that forgeting were easier, and that time was faster at healing.

A Profile on Jeremy

This profile is the hardest of the three because I am still actively grieving my relationship with Jeremy.  Near when we first started dating, I would tell people: "I met someone in the middle of the pandemic... figure that out!"  It was 2020; I was back in Toronto finally after sheltering in place for about six months at my parents' after escaping Covid in Italy.  I was doing my job on my departmental committee when I met Jeremy.  I was still confused and hurt about Charlie no longer talking to me, and still in the process of trying to get him out of my system.  I had decided there was no way I was touching a relationship with a ten-foot pole.  I was just doing my job.  Life had other plans for me, I guess.

Our first conversation was three hours.  I had thought to myself: is this guy giving me his number?  Funny how intuition is sometimes.  Jeremy is deaf, so he communicates primarily in writing.  He gave me his number so that we could actually chat (i.e. via text.)  At the time, I stubbornly had an old Italian SIM in my phone, and no Canadian number, so at first, I was like: that is that.  I can't text anyway.  Then he suggested to me and my colleague on committee that we might chat on WhatsApp.  Well, I reasoned, I had that, and it would work with vifi, despite the non-functional SIM in my phone.  We talked for three hours, so we obviously hit it off.  If I had this funny notion that this was pretty much the first guy to give me his number, well, at some point he said, "Come with me to Paris!"  I was drunk on it for days afterwards.  It seemed a totally cool thing to say to me, a first.  I had to explain to him how it might have come off, especially out of context, but reassured him that I understood what he meant: he had been regaling me with his European travel stories, and also explaining special treatment he's had in places like museums, where they let him in for free, give him hours beyond closing time, or exclusive access to certain art, like being able to go beyond the red velvet ropes to see the Mona Lisa up close.  "Come with me to Paris!" he said enthusiastically, as in, I could get you access to some amazing experiences too if you are game to travel with me one day.  It was just such a beautiful phrase, and had my head turning with beautiful thoughts.  

I was resistant, though.  I talked more and more with Jeremy and really enjoyed conversations, but I did not want to admit that I liked him.  I was very ready to ignore how I felt and deny it to myself or to him.  I would have gone on that way in perpetuity, I am convinced.  Funny how feelings have other plans for you sometimes.  One day in October, I basically showed my whole hand.  Jeremy had told me how isolated and lonely he was, something not uncommon during the pandemic, but this was more acute for him given that when you are down a sense, your other senses become more important.  He explained how he was touch-starved, and I felt for him.  So one day when we decided to go for ice cream (not our first outing, nor our first trip for ice cream), I told him that if it would help him, he could hold my hand.  Hands could be easily sanitized, I reasoned.  Hugs were more risky, so was the wisdom at the time, but hands could be washed.  He had also talked to me about how a blind person memorises faces; so while I didn't give him permission to map my face, I thought hands were innocent enough.  How we justify these things to ourselves... anyhow, we found a quiet place in an abandoned foodcourt, where you were not really supposed to sit, since Covid made Toronto absolutely hostile to people doing anything other than passing through, and I let him hold my hand.  He mapped both my hands.  He wrote me a note saying, "Are you sure?" but I told him I trusted him.  He cried when he touched my hand at first, and I was upset, because the point was to cheer him up, not make him feel sad.  For someone who wanted to pretend she didn't like him, I was not playing this smart letting him hold my hand.  "Every man who is in love is crazy" - a quotation whose author I do not know.  I had clearly taken leave of my senses that day.

We got kicked out of the foodcourt eventually, and ended up back outside in a pretty chilly October day.  When Jeremy cried again holding my hand, I just broke.  I pulled him close into a hug, something I said I would not do because of the Covid risk, and I just held him.  I wanted him to feel better, not worse.  But then I didn't let go.  It rained on us.  I still did not let go.  He felt puzzled.  He knew I didn't want to date anyone, but clearly I was sending a mixed signal here.  He went back home after this outing we had, and he poured some wine talked to his sister, screwed up his courage and wrote to me: I don't know all of that was entirely platonic.  I did not lie to him, but I would rather have not told him for the world.  "Now what?" I asked.  Mr. It Takes Me at Least Four Months to Have Feelings for a Girl told me that he liked me, though I had suspected and so had some friends.  He wanted to date me.  He didn't ask me then, but he definitely did.  I was terrified.  I did not want to be with someone after Charlie, a lot of which had to do with not trusting my own judgment.  I suppose it became really apparent to me, in case it hadn't be obvious before, that a lot of times my fear masks a lot of how I feel about a guy, and that I have to look to my actions instead.  They seem to bypass the fear if I like a guy enough, and serve as a pretty reliable indication.  I offered for Jeremy to hold my hand.  I let someone inside my bubble.  That means I liked him.  But it would be awhile before the rest of me would catch up.  

Jeremy was patient.  Jeremy was gentle.  He waited for me to feel less afraid.  He supported me through tough times, like the first time I encountered Charlie in person and came back from the library shaking.  He made sure that I knew, regardless what I decided, what a special person I am and how much I was worthy of love, something I had never been told before.  I agreed to go on a date with him.  We were getting into the colder months, which meant that your tolerance for being outside was definitely under an hour.  I realised the only thing we could do was to book a hotel room.  It seemed crazy for a first date, but I didn't see how else people from different households could be together indoors.  We booked a room with his points.  I took him to the Christmas Market, now called the Winter Village after how it had to shift during Covid.  There were no booths of artisans selling their wares, but the Christmas tree was up, as were the lights in the Distillery District.  It was pretty, and I felt warm and fuzzy with Jeremy.  I felt safe with Jeremy too; I would never have suggested a hotel date with someone I did not trust implicitly.  It was also the first time we were alone not in public.  Our chemistry just continued to develop so naturally.  Though we had avoided it at first, again due to Covid concerns, our first kiss was just right.  Jeremy knew that my brain tended to block out any feelings on first kisses, and even for awhile afterwards, so he said: I want our first kiss to be mutual, not the first one, but the one where we both feel something.  That was pretty much from the very first kiss.  It was like relearning how it was to feel loved in a touch, and to feel physically safe with another person.  Our chemistry is still unmatched for me.

After that first date, I had agreed to a new one in January when we would both be back from being home with our families for Christmas.  During that second date, I told him I wanted to date him, go steady.  Slowly but surely, I was gaining confidence with Jeremy.  By February, it felt so nice to have a Valentine.  I didn't call him my boyfriend yet, but calling him my Valentine felt very meaningful.  I signed for him the Sharon, Lois & Bram song "A You're Adorable", at least to the best of my ability.  I didn't know many signs at the time, so my rendition was not totally accurate, but it was comprehensible enough.  I also learned how to sign: Yes will your Valentine will.  It was one of my first fluent ASL phrases.  Slowly but surely, I felt safe, and I allowed myself to feel happy.  Whatever happened, I was sure that Jeremy was there for me.

Then came the time where I needed to be there for Jeremy.  My department, being particularly brutal as it is, fucked him over.  It was not the first nor the last time they would do so to students, or to Jeremy in particular.  He was in crisis, and understandably.  I was empathetic and supportive.  I had been through similar trials at the beginning of my degree.  The problems persisted beyond a year, because sometimes it doesn't take much in a PhD to have a snowball effect on your progress.  For my department's screw up, Jeremy was working overtime for over a year.  Slowly but surely, I was losing him and I didn't even know it yet.  But by the next Valentine's Day, he was telling me that he wasn't sure he could maintain a relationship at the same time as his studies.  I was on probation from that moment forward, and it was okay to try to ignore for a little while when putting one foot in front of another during the semester, but it came to a head during the summer.  I could not live that way indefinitely.

The problem was that Jeremy was legimiately burnt out.  This included decision paralysis, something I didn't realise at the time.  Trying to think about what to do about our relationship was like pulling teeth or worse; he couldn't decide anything, including what to wear in the morning, let alone something so important as what to do about our relationship.  So during my research trip in the fall of 2022, he told me the night before a big presentation in Berlin that maybe we should take a break.  That was one of the worst days of my life, because on 4 hours of sleep after this sudden announcement (though part of me tries to tell me that I did push for it, because I knew something was wrong, and I didn't take "we'll talk about it later" for an answer), I had to give a 45 minute presentation, the longest presentation I'd ever given, and sit through the feedback that said my research was pointless and unlikely to yield any tangible results.  I held it together that day, and for the rest of the trip.  When I got back, he ripped the bandaid off and said he wanted to break up.  I didn't accept it the first time.  Suddenly, I thought to myself: why make a big life decision when you are clearly depressed and burnt out?  You are not going to make a sound decision in that state.  I held on because he had supported me so much in the beginning, and I wanted to reciprocate.  It is also not in my nature to quit when things get hard.  I held on because he is special and was worth hanging on to. 

We persisted till April of last year, but only on fumes.  For about six months, he was living at home with his parents post surgery.  That meant we were long distance, and I had hoped that this idea of breaking up with me was because we were not in the same place, and he was feeling bad.  But when he came to Toronto in January, it was just as hard, if not worse.  He started seeing less and less of me, and he didn't really want me to touch him, beyond a hug here or there.  Finally, unlike with Charlie, I managed to get him into therapy for some help.  The first casualty of his therapy, though, was me.  

Two separate therapists had evaluated him and said the same thing independently of one another: the relationship has to go.  Or, more specifically: you are burnt out and trying to keep too many plates in the air, so something has to go.  Let's take the problems with the department off your plate by appointing you some kind of advocate; you do not have the energy to dot his work.  Then you have to choose between your PhD program and your relationship.  You cannot keep doing both poorly.  Come to the next appointment with your decision: the PhD or your girlfriend.  Then we'll work on whichever you've decided.

Like with Amin's family, I could never have asked him to give up his career, his dream.  I didn't understand why that meant he had to drop me.  I tried to listen to what the therapists had said about this being mutually exclusive.  I tried to understand.  He was also told that he had a unique opportunity of pulling out of his burnout faster by getting rid of the relationship.  If he stayed with me, not only would he not recover fast, he would deteriorate faster.  He would bring me to rock bottom, they said, and did he really want to get there himself, or to bring me with him?  No one wanted that for him, least of all me.  This convinced me to let him go at last.  The other thing which was convincing was the theory that, perhaps hidden trauma from his first relationship had been triggered.  I had been trying for such a long time to support him, but if a girlfriend was part of his trauma, I was literally the last person who would help solve that.  This helped me let go too.

It was still hard, because here I felt like I had to let go of the love of my life.  It hadn't felt it so hard since Amin.  I was determined to do better this time, so I tried new strategies.  I know how long I tend to stay attached, so I pushed myself to try to let go.  I went on dates even though I didn't want to.  I worked really hard on myself, especially on my thesis, but also personal projects like the CN Tower Climb.  I set new goals all the time.  I have done better.  Part of me is still attached, though, and I am still fighting to find a life without Jeremy.  I'm sure I'll get to elaborate more on this in further posts.  I have also gained a larger perspective on how things went between us.  I've presented here the view I had at the time, which was informed by what I knew then, but as is usually the case, there is more to it.   

A Profile on Charlie

As I mentioned in my previous post, my gap year was really rough.  I was very unsure what to do after my undergraduate.  All of Amin's talk about getting your life started really got to me.  This was part of his reason for thinking that he could never return to Canada: it would take too much time, and he wanted to get things moving for his life, like building a career and a family.  I had all but convinced myself that I needed in the next couple of years, to have a career myself.  In the end, I decided to accept the offer of an MA at University of Toronto only because I realised it was a no-lose scenario.  If I still wanted to go into an MA later where I could walk out onto the job market after two years, I could (I had been rejected from that program in my round of applications in my gap year.)  If I wanted to teach in the Cégep system after my MA, then I would be able to do so as well.  I could also go on to the PhD level if I really liked where I was.  All three paths were a good scenario, depending on what I wanted at the end of the MA year, and I would be applying from a stronger position with an extra degree under my belt no matter what I chose.  It was a no-lose scenario.

It is when I moved to Toronto that I met Charlie.  In fact, he made quite an impression when I visited for recruitment in the spring of my gap year.  I was so relieved at being shown around by a current student; it took away much of my anxiety of being in a new place and being quasi-interviewed about my academic interests and what my decision (yet unmade) would be.  When I first arrived for the MA proper, I tried to avoid running into Charlie: he was so high-energy that sometimes it would tire me to be around him.  I soon ended up speaking to him daily and seeing him frequently; we did live across the street from each other in residence.  He was the most intellectual person I had ever met, possibly even still, and I liked that very much about him.  I remember how Étienne told me that seemed an appropriate match for me when he met Charlie.  Our research interests were similar, so we had a lot to talk about.  I was still discovering what I should work on in graduate school, so Charlie was eager to mold me into a scholar in his area of study.  I still owe him a lot in terms of learning the vocation of what it is to be a scholar, and for getting me started.

It was clear very early on how he was interested in me.  I was still crying weekly over Amin, so I was not in the frame of mind to date.  I remember early in my degree going to a choral concert, a mashup of many different Broadway songs.  It came up recently in my facebook memories in fact; I heard for the first time the lyrics in the Broadway version of "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera, and I posted them: "Recall those days, look back on all those times, Whatever else you choose to do, There will never be a day, When I won't think of you!"  I really believed that at the time; I was still thinking of Amin daily and missing him dearly.  Charlie, however, cheerful as ever, kept coming back and trying, like a puppy who is just always happy, carefree, and ready to see if you will spend time with them.  I know I am glossing over a lot here, but I was pretty direct with him at one point about just wanting to be friends, something I quickly undid one month later when feelings appeared for me.

He had asked me to see a baroque music concert at which one of our mutual friends was performing.  It was a really nice evening, and I determined to tell him that I had started feeling differently about our relationship.  I felt like a first-class idiot, like I did with Amin.  Charlie had told me, in order to make me feel safer, that dating within the department was not a good idea.  So I told him that I understood that, but I had developed feelings for him, so now what?  I thought it took no one by surprise more than myself, because I had gone from thinking about Amin all the time, to not thinking about him anymore, and thinking about Charlie.  This upset me, as I had hoped to get over Amin in my own time, but sometimes you don't choose how these things happen.  Charlie, however, was completely stunned.  He hardly knew what to say.  He started babbling on about: was I really sure?  I could have my pick of anyone in Toronto; our department was big.  Was I really sure I wanted to date him?  His insecurities were talking, because he had never had his affections reciprocated before.  I was his first girlfriend.  I tried probably not aptly to explain that I was interested in him, not in anyone else.  We started dating from that moment, that perfect quiet moment sitting together in a chapel at his college.

Charlie's lack of confidence, however, was only the tip of the iceberg.  By the end of his first year of the PhD, he was burnt out, something not uncommon in our program.  He was worked up about passing one of the exams in our department, and spent most of the summer preparing for that.  It felt a bit like tug of war trying to get him to spend time with me too while he was studying.  After he got through the exam, I told him that it was a deal breaker for me for him to just disappear off the face of the earth like that agian.  I know I tried to get him into therapy at that point.  He did not feel that he needed it, however.  I should have taken my hint and left then, but I loved him deeply and wanted to keep trying.

By now, I was in the PhD program too, just a year behind him.  At the end of my second year, we moved in together.  He promised me that it would not be like those times I had stayed with him in residence during the summer.  He told me it would be better when there was room for two people, something I had no doubt of.  He told me he wanted to be more settled and less out till all hours of the morning at the pub.  He told me he wanted to be more responsible and keep his space.  I wanted to believe him.  There was only one way to find out if he was going to keep his word, I thought: move in with him and see how it is.  We fought about what we wanted in an apartment, and for a moment, I thought we would never agree.  We picked a great place in the end, and were both very happy with it.  I ignored all of the signs.

When we lived together, it was like pulling teeth to get him to contribute to the household.  He wanted to argue with me about how often something needed to be cleaned.  He did not believe me when I said that you could not spray chemical cleaners in a microwave.  Everything was a struggle.  I cooked and cleaned around him and could not get him to do things like pick up his books and socks which were everywhere.  He also told me that I was creating so much stress for him that I was slowing down his progress on his dissertation.  Finally, in a last ditch attempt, I got us into couples counseling.  The first thing he was told was that he needed a therapist to deal with things that came up in the couples sessions.  I had gotten him into therapy at last.  But none of this lasted.

I was in my fourth year of my PhD when I burned out.  I had been burned out before, but this was one of the most severe since I had first been diagnosed with CFS.  I had tried to maintain momentum after my qualifying exams, which came on the back of a year with a concussion and trying desperately to get through the exam which allowed me to take the qualifying exam, and therefore allowed me to stay in the program.  So many people fall off the cliff after qualifying exams in my department, and I was so determined not to be one of them.  I started running tutorials for the first time that fall, and tried to brush up on some Italian in preparation for a semester abraod in Rome.  When I got to Rome, I was so sick, I could not get out of bed.  I was nauseated all the time, and had all kinds of migraines.  I was just sleeping through the days.  I knew I was not ready for a four month intensive.  I crawled back home to Montreal to my parents' to rehabilitate.  I knew that if I were in Toronto with Charlie, I would not recover.  He was also very angry at me for not doing the program in Rome.  He was not supportive of my decision to return home.  It was incredibly hurtful.

I had my moment when I was at home recuperating when it died for me.  Charlie started reflecting on how poorly he was treated and how I would have to "win him back."  More than this, though, he told me that my behaviour towards him was abusive.  That was the moment.  This was the lose-lose scenario.  If I argued with him and told him that I was not in fact abusive, I would feed into the paradigm of the abuser who denies it.  If I accepted this assessment that I was abusive, then the relationship needed to end anyway because I was an abuser.  There was no coming back from this.  The irony is that, now I realised that I had to leave, I had to enact a safety plan.  Charlie had said to me on two occasions before that he "knew himself" and that he would want to be mean to me if I ever left him.  He said he would want to hurt me; I know this meant psychologically, not physically.  He told me he would want to steal my books, and that he would want to sabotage my career.  Because of this, my therapist recommended that I talk to the Campus Safety office, and I know that was the right move.  They helped me to develop a safety plan to extricate from the apartment.

I was about two months or so back in Toronto before my moving date.  In that time, I tried to enjoy my last moments with Charlie, whom I still loved dearly.  I just knew that this was not working, and that things were becoming more toxic by the day, and that I needed to leave.  I picked the time that was easiest for me, and I told Charlie I was leaving the day that I moved out.  He was devastated.  I had help packing up my things, and we left that same day.  My Dad drove me back home to Montreal and I was sure it was the absolutely wrong decision.  I felt so sick leaving my life with Charlie behind I was sure I was going to throw up.  My therapist told me that if it was a good idea to get back together with Charlie, it would still be a good idea in a couple of months.  This really helped me.  It was so hard for me to leave Charlie and give up on our relationship.  But I needed to do it.

Over the summer and the next few months, all I wanted to do was fix things with Charlie.  We met at summer conferences, and at first he refused to speak to me, as he had any other time I had contacted him.  We were sharing a bathroom in adjoining rooms at the first conference, and he refused to speak to me the first few days.  I just wanted to be able to be on good terms with him, and yes, ultimately to fix things.  He was favourable, and then not, and then favourable again.  Despite being yelled at, being locked out of the apartment we both still held a lease on, being berated, having our conversation recorded in case he needed to sue me, and him refusing for a long time to return some of the things I left at the apartment, I still wanted nothing more than for things to work out.  I asked him before I left for Rome again to do the program I hadn't managed to the previous year if he wanted to talk about where we were at.  He said "no."  

It was 2020.  Without knowing it, I had ended up in the epicentre of Covid in Europe: Italy.  I was still messaging Charlie, and I think he got to hear how I was repatriated to Canada with help from UofT's service InternationalSOS.  After that, it was radio silence, as it still is now.  I see him sometimes at the library, or at department events, and he refuses to speak to me.  He passes by me quickly, or at worst, hops across the room when I try to speak to him.  I was incredibly hurt by this at first.  I used to cry about it, and just to shake from the stress.  Now I am at ease with it, because I do not want to fix things anymore.  It just took a very long time to get to that point.

This is the very condensed version, and again, it eclipses many things.  It does not adequately convey the good things that Charlie did for me, and that our relationship was like before things started going downhill.  I did not even get to talk here about Charlie's drinking habits, which were a serious source of contention for us.  I just wanted some of the essentials to be here: how the dynamic developed from something good into something harmful, and how hard it was for me to let go.  I was ashamed for a long time that I had ended up in a relationship that had turned abusive.  The fact of the matter is, it can happen to anyone.  It can develop, like it did for me, or it can be abusive from the start, just so insidious it takes a long time to see it.  The best thing you can do for yourself is not to be too hard on yourself for finding yourself in this situation.  The most important thing you can do is leave as soon as you are able.  I was not able to leave very quickly, to my detriment, but I did leave, and that is what matters.

Again, my hope is that these words will help someone else who is going through something similar.  This will not be the last post about Charlie, just the first: the essential outline to give readers context for further thoughts and feelings.

A Profile on Amin

As a follow up on the “woes that lead to the present”, I decided it would be smart to give a summary of things so that I can write more on how I’m feeling now.  In order to for you to follow how I’m feeling now, you need a bit of context for when I start referring back to people and relationships.  The first person you know best, because I have quite a few posts on Amin in this blog already. 

Here, however, is how our story ended.

Over the Christmas holidays, Amin had gone to Tehran, the capital of Iran, to make inquiries about his compulsory military service.  He didn’t want to tell me anything about what had transpired until we were back together in person.  I don’t think it’s the first conversation we had, but I made him sit down with me in that first week for sure to break the suspense.  The news was not good: he had hoped to be exempt from service, but he found out that was not possible; the service was not for two years, but for three; and it was not in another year or so, but he needed to be back in Iran circa September of 2013, a mere eight months away.  I asked what this meant for us, and he said he didn’t know.

This was all very abstract for me while he was trying to figure out what to do.  I encouraged him to talk to a therapist to sort out what it was he wanted, because he was feeling so torn.  In the meantime, I was doing what I could to make him feel supported, and to try to move our relationship forward.  I was not trying to go leaps and bounds, but I was trying to avoid stagnation, which is where he was happy to place us.  We had a few wonderful moments, including a couple of purely magical dates I would have loved to recount every detail of especially when they were fresh in my mind.  Now I am in the time of summary, however, and not colours.

The final conclusion he came to was that it was too hard to have a long-distance relationship with me.  This is the thing he had asked me a few months prior, if I would be willing to do this.  I had been open at that point, and now my heart was so open and so willing.  He was not, though.  He was in the process of letting go of everything.  He was letting go of me, he was letting go of the place he wanted to live (Canada) and the career he wanted to have (working in the industry.)  He felt that Allah was pointing him towards living in Iran, and he was depressed because that is not what he wanted for himself.  He was depressed openly and giving up on all of his dreams.  He could not work as an engineer in industry without serving the Iranian government, so he knew he would have to teach instead.  He knew it would be hard to restart the immigration process in Canada after three years away; he no longer wanted to try.  It was too hard, he said.  It was not where Allah was leading him, he said.  “If only I’d gotten my permanent residency,” he would say, or, “If only I’d met you earlier”, as though this would change something.  So he showed signs of still fighting it, and wanting things to be different.  The one that really astonished me is how he took his French courses obligatory for Quebec immigration up until he left for Iran.  Why do that if you did not believe in coming back?  So many hours of his life wasted on that.

He did not want to give up his family.  How could I blame him?  He would never be able to set foot in Iran again if he skipped his military service to stay in Canada and stay with me.  I could never ask him to do that.  He explained to me that they would never be able to get a visa to get out and visit him.  The government knows how to use pressure tactics.  Could they not meet in Turkey? I wondered naively.  The Turkish government would likely turn him over as well.  There were so many things like this that my mind just spun through after he broke up with me, because he had done all of his deliberating in silence and without me.

My mind was reeling.  I wanted to do anything not to lose him.  At least, almost anything: when T told me I should marry him and that this could help his immigration status, I balked.  What if I wasn’t ready to marry him?  We had dated for four months.  How could this be my life?  How did I get stuck in a Nicholas Sparks film?  I proposed to him a couple of months after the breakup to go to Iran too for my gap year, and learn Farsi properly, understand his culture better, see where he comes from.  He refused.  I’m sure he was right, but at the time everything felt completely arbitrary.  I had freedom of movement unlike him, so why should I not take this important step to be closer to him before I began my graduate degree?

I lost my mind in that gap year.  I was also on a medication that was making me depressed as a side-effect, so it was a terrible combination of factors.  I had little hope for anything at all, including my own future.  I was sure I had lost my soul mate.  I had soul-level pain; that is the only way I know to describe it.  I had the feeling of the rug being pulled out from under me, and like my insides were completely gutted.

I still have to mostly pretend like this is not something that I experienced.  It was a film I saw, something I read.  It was not my life.  When I think about it more than just in a cursory way, I still cry.  In all this time, I couldn’t even bring myself to write it in my blog to give some kind of conclusion to this story I had been building.  Writing this tonight is very painful.

My only hope is that this will help someone out there trapped in a Nicholas Sparks film instead of their own life.  My only hope is that this will help me start turning the page for my own life.

 

It's Been a Long Time

It’s been a long time since I have updated my blog and I am not better for it.  In the creative exhaustion that grad school brings, and in my stubbornness to write this story in chronological order, I have managed to put a stop to my writing.  The truth, however, is that I need to be hopeful more than ever, so I want to try again.

It was so important for me to let unfold Amin’s story, to show how well-suited and happy we were together, how much in love.  I find it so reductive after breakups to say one sentence or two about how it did not work out.  I think it has been the most reductive for Amin.  It erases everything we had and everything we were to say that he rightly chose to go back to Iran to do his military service and not lose his family forever.

I am undergoing a similar grieving process at the moment.  I was sure I had lost my soul mate in Amin and that I would never love anyone again.  Two breakups later, I at once know that this is not true, but also feel it more than ever.  It has been about five months since Jeremy broke up with me, and I have that same feeling of nothing making sense in my life anymore.  I fight the feeling every day that I lost the love of my life, and that is it for me.

Here is a timeline to help catch you up to the present:

2012 – I met Amin and we started dating

2013 – In March, Amin broke up with me

2014 – I began grad school in Toronto and met Charlie.  We started dating.

2019 – I broke up with Charlie

2020 – I met Jeremy, and we started dating

2023 – At the beginning of April, Jeremy broke up with me

I am trying anything I can to heal from losing Jeremy.  I know myself, and I know how I can stay attached for a very long time.  I’m not getting any younger; it has been ten years since I updated this blog properly, since Amin left.  I don’t want to stay trapped like I did after my breakups with Amin and Charlie.  If any of this feels like you, hopeful reader, I hope you will find comfort in my words.  Sometimes it will be messy or ugly, but I hope we will find our way through.

~ Elise

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder, Or Narrower

So for just over a month, Amin was home in Iran.  I remember I encouraged him to go, since his mother kept asking when he was coming, and the Christmas break presented such a good opportunity to go.  It was a good chunk of time, which one needs when making a big trip.  Thinking of going to Europe, most people need a good two weeks.  Iran is a bit further, and a couple of time zones over, so Amin felt like three was a minimum to be able to enjoy time there.  

I remember that he was concerned about being away from me for such awhile right at the beginning of our relationship.  I assured him that it would be fine, and that it was important for him to see his family; he hadn't been home in awhile, and they missed each other.  I told him that it was not like I was going anywhere, and I'd be there when he got back.  He got to see me every week, and the opportunities to see his family were rarer, so I figured he should capitalize on them.  Still, it was harder to say goodbye than I imagined, and as I mentioned in my last post, I didn't do such a good job of it, which made me feel awkward.

Most of the awkwardness melted away from continuing to talk pretty much as usual.  This was still the days when MSN was online (I miss that chatting platform so so much!).  When he was in Montreal, we talked daily, about everything, all the time.  I really wonder how we got any school work done, the pair of us!  So when he was in Iran, I expected that we would communicate less, because he was busy with his family, and needed to make up for lost time.  He also explained to me that the Internet situation is not great in Iran, as many websites are blocked.  They still had Google, unlike China, but no social media, and many other websites that we use here in North America every day and simply take for granted.  He told me that this would make it more difficult to communicate, and that sometimes there would be lapses of time where he could not connect with me.  Connections were less reliable, particularly when using some kind of work-around to bypass the website bans, so he could access things like facebook.  He was very motivated to do it, though, and so we stayed in touch with relative ease.  I think there was only once or twice he cut out in the middle of a conversation.

In fact, it really began to make me feel concerned at how he was coping with being away.  I felt like he was not making the most of the time with his family, which felt to me like a waste.  He spent a lot of time at the computer chatting with me, instead of experiencing things with his relatives.  I might have suggested quietly once or twice to him that he should spend more time with his family.  I did, however, put my foot down one day when I was out shopping with my mother and he had a bit of a meltdown.  I had at least three messages from him when I got back, with the tenor of "Where are you?!" and they seemed quite panicked.  I told him that it was the middle of the day, I was out, this was Normal, and that he needed to not freak out about that.  I said furthermore that this kind of behaviour was excessive, and could even be construed as controlling or stalker-like.  So maybe I pushed my point a bit far... It woke him up very fast, though, and he was mortified when he realized how his messages could have come off.  Problem nipped in the bud immediately: this never happened again.

The remaining awkwardness resulted from vibes.  I just scrolled back through my posts to see how much I had said about them, and I am pleased to see that the subject has had a good preliminary discussion, particularly in the post Two Chocoholics.  Certainly since Amin and I first met, we both picked up on each other's feelings in one another's presence.  Again, one could argue that we were detecting facial cues, or noticing body language, or something of that sort that would give an indication of how the other one was feeling.  This cannot explain how we were able to sense one another's feelings when not physically together.  This simply continued as usual while Amin was away, despite the distance being multiplied exponentially across continents.  Perhaps this explains part of Amin's desire to talk to me a lot from Iran.  I know at least one time he was visibly distracted in company: it was New Year's Eve, and he was sitting around the table with many relatives.  I knew it was midnight there already, so I was fantasizing about that New Year's kiss I had never yet had, but seen so many times in movies.  Amin felt that, and got such a look on his face, that people asked him what was wrong, and if he was okay.  If anything, I think our psychic bond was growing stronger.

Absence can certainly make you grow fonder of another person.  I think it is the yearning that can make you pull closer.  I had asked Amin how to say "I miss you" in Farsi.  He explained that you say "my heart is narrow for you" ("delam barat tang shode").  He said that was supposed to be the image of how it feels when you miss someone, how your heart gets narrower.  I immediately recognized that tight feeling in your chest as your heart is hurting, as though no air can get to it, or you can't breathe anymore.  I marveled that Farsi had an expression precisely for that feeling.  I'm still amazed at what a beautiful, clever, and evocative language it is.



P.S. Since I do not have a better place for this, I am going to finish this post with the beautiful Christmas e-card that Amin sent me.  He delayed delivery, because he knew he would be traveling on December 25th.  I was so touched!  From what I remember of the attached message, he called me his "Christmas angel" 💖https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRNXC8dRMII

Short December

This is a post I did not have a draft for, but nevertheless is essential to the timeline.  It is for time spent with Amin in December, which was short, since he was headed home during the holidays.  Yet, in just over a week, we had a couple of very memorable moments together.

For my birthday, my Dad gave me two tickets to see Loreena McKennitt, so that I could take whoever I wanted.  I forget at what point I told Amin that I wanted him to go with me; it might even have been before we started dating.  Knowing that he loved her music like I did, I could not think of a better person to treat to my concert birthday gift.  I had seen her during her Ancient Muse tour twice, and had been with various friends and relatives, so now it was his turn.  He felt a bit uncomfortable at first, until I explained that it was my gift, so it was my choice who I would bring, and that he should not feel strange about it.

So, on December 7th, the time had come for the Loreena concert.  I remember that we had seats pretty near the stage and I was really stoked when I saw the lantern before the performance started.  I called it: she was going to sing Dicken's Dublin.  She said it was the first time she tried it in concert, and hoped that technology would cooperate to incorporate the recording which she plays alongside the music in this piece.  Everything went off without a hitch, and it was magical.  Amin and I were simply thrilled as she played so many of our favourites.  It is still amazing for me to think that we grew up on opposite sides of the world and listened to the same music.  There were many tender moments holding hands and squeezing them as she intoned lyrics from Penelope's Song ("I will keep your heart with mine, Till you come to me"), or Never Ending Road ("Here is my heart, I give it to you, Take me with you across this land, These are my dreams, So simple and few, Dreams we hold in the palm of our hands").  I know we floated out of Place des Arts, a place that now had a couple of great associations for us.  I also remember killing time before catching my bus sitting with him in the deserted Complexe Desjardins and sharing many good kisses.

My sweetheart putting ornaments on the tree
like a pro
(Seems I broke my rule of never posting a
picture for you readers to ogle at... I'm
calling this an exception since he's in profile
and all you snoops can't figure out Amin's
real identity, or at least so I hope!)

December 9th, we invited Amin over for tree trimming.  He had expressed an interest in Christmas, and experiencing it with people who celebrate it, and experiencing it with me.  Of course, he was not going to be in Montreal over Christmas, so we had him join us for putting up the tree and decorating it.  He was really excited.  My sister's boyfriend was with us too, and it was his first time decorating too, so it was perfect.  The part that was a surprise for all of us, was how my Mom put on a small Christmas dinner for us that day.  She didn't even tell me that she planned to do this!  She cooked a chicken, and made many of the traditional fixings that go with turkey, I think some stuffing and cranberry, and mashed potatoes.  When I realized what she was doing, and all the work she was going to at such a busy time of year, I was really touched.  Amin was also really happy to have a taste of Christmas.  After supper, we even opened Christmas crackers and wore the hats and read our jokes.  It made parting for the
                                                                         holidays not feel half so bad.

One thing that really hit home as I saw Amin for the last time the day before his flight is that I am not good at saying goodbye.  I think we grabbed some tea for an hour or two, and we parted on a metro platform.  I don't even remember what I said, but it was not particularly apt.  I still don't think I'm very good with parting.  I think it might have started back when I was around 10 or so, and my kindergarten sweetheart Luke was moving to BC.  We actually refused to say goodbye, because we found it too sad.  I think that might have been my idea, and he was good to agree with me.  I have regretted that ever since, because I never got the chance to say goodbye and we have since lost touch.  He was one of my very best friends from childhood, and I never said goodbye.  So on the metro platform, I probably said something about seeing him in January or some such thing.  And as soon as I got on the metro, I felt really strange.  Like maybe in that moment, when I said whatever lame thing I said, it had not been real.  But it was real: he was leaving for a good month.  And I wasn't going to see him.  And I was going to miss him.  But I didn't say any of those things.  I just felt awkward.  It even feels awkward remembering this...

Learning Farsi

My next draft post was entitled "Learning Farsi".  Clearly I thought I needed a thematic post in this spot.  I don't see why not.  Though I have only a couple of point form notes here, I think it is a good one to have here, because to me learning Farsi was very important.  I recognized that learning Amin's language was part of learning about his culture and understanding him better and bonding with him more deeply.  I also love languages, so it was something I was excited about.  

So one day early on, I sat down with him with a piece of paper with a list of phrases that I wanted to know how to say.  I knew already how to wish him good night on chats, but I wanted to start incorporating more small things like that.

I brought him the page with English phrasing, leaving lots of space for him to fill in the Farsi.  He helpfully wrote them for me with the Roman alphabet, because I could not read Persian script.  I had "Hello" and "Goodbye" at the top, which I figured were the most basic.  I should've guessed that "Hello" is "salam".  "Goodbye", he explained, "Khoda hafez" means something like "God protect you".  I really like that.  Then I had how to say "How are you?" and "I'm fine".  I had those introductory phrases too "What is your name?" and "Pleased to meet you", because those are often the first things you say in any beginner's language class.  I also think I had the idea that Amin's Mom might like to say Hi on Skype at some point, so I wanted to be able to see "Khosh-halam ke mibinametoon", which is the formal way of saying it.  I love that when you say that you are pleased to meet someone in Farsi, you are literally saying "I am happy (khosh halam) seeing you".  Next was "Thank you", which I laughed to see is "Merci" borrowed from French (or "mamnoon" if you want to be less French-derived, or more formal).

"Flip it over" I told him.  Amin looked overwhelmed, perhaps because he thought it was a lot for me to take in at once, or perhaps because he had just explained a lot of phrases to me (especially between formal and informal forms).  All of this melted away and was replaced by a smile when he saw that there was only one phrase on the other side: I love you.  This was my little dramatic reveal.  In a way, I had done all of this because I wanted to know how to say "I love you" in Farsi.  I did silly and cute things like that when I was younger.  "Doostat daram" he wrote.  And then I learned why he said "I love you so much" in English.  Like in French, when you say "doostat daram", you can say this to a variety of people like family or friends, just like the verb "aimer".  How can you tell the difference between "like" and "love"?  French does not really have a good answer to this question.  In Farsi, though, they add something to help give context, oftentimes the intensifier "kheili" ("a lot", "so much").  When you say "kheili doostat daram", it is "I like you very much", read "I love you".  From then on, I tried to say "kheili doostat daram" as often as "I love you".

November Postscript

The next entry in my drafts is entitled "November Postcript".  It had a couple of notes for things that happened that did not have to do with Amin for the month of November.  One said to talk about this Spanish/Indian guy I met on the bus.  I had included this in the draft, because we spoke for the entire bus ride.  It has happened to me before to have conversations with people in Spanish when they find out I can speak a little, I think because they are so very happy to hear someone speaking their language in the middle of a linguistically-prejudiced province.  This guy, however, was really wanting to get my number and go on a date.  So I wanted to write this here because it took me by surprise.  Yes, even after all my experience with Plenty of Fish I did, and do, find it strange when someone expresses an interest in me.  It is so rare, that I am not expecting it.  Usually I'm just invisible to men, so I was taken aback because I was Noticed.  I remember marveling about it while talking to my sister's boyfriend at the time, and saying something like: what, do I glow now or something?  Are men suddenly noticing me?  Maybe so.  He was an isolated incident, though, so it's hard to say.  I like to think that being with Amin made me glow :)

The next note says "Brunch with Louis".  Yes, indeed, I did go for brunch with him.  I guess this is here because I was wondering a bit if he was interested in me.  A friend had warned me, saying that all French guys from France were just big flirts.  I knew he had a girlfriend, who we talked a lot about during this brunch, so as I suspected, I was very securely his friend.  He talked about how they were trying to get her to emigrate to Quebec too, and what a better quality of life it would be.  He was finishing up his Master's degree in History with a focus on teaching in the Cégep system.  It was nice to catch up with him, and he chuckled when I told him about the blog and how he was in it.  "Je ne savais pas que tu avais une vie sur les blogues!"  Well, no, not really a whole secret blogging life, Louis...  It kind of sounded like I was cute and he needed to humour me.

This is also the month, of course, when I deleted my Plenty of Fish account.  Under this, the note also said "writing last messages".  I guess there were just a couple of people I needed to tell about not looking anymore.  There is nothing really significant that I remember about this, other than the fact that I was feeling very good about Amin and confident that things were going well.  I permanently deleted my profile and settled into my new relationship.