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.