A contortionary tale - part 2
Watching a movie brings up uncomfortable memories of a past relationship that found me losing myself on repeat. While the connection is long gone, I still find myself living out the insidious dynamics that were at play more than 10 years ago. This is Part 2: How it ended.
Working as an audio assistant at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. Love me some curling! 🥌❄️
Vancouver Marathon, 2012
One of the only photos I have of our dog, Josephine, the husky-border collie-lab 🐕 2014
-
This is Divine Interruption.
I'm Sarah Hildreth Rankin.
Hi, so I'm picking up where I left off in the last episode, part one.
This is part two, so if you haven't listened to it, please listen to part one.
And we're just gonna start at the beginning of the next leg of this journey, essentially, where, yeah, the rest of my life was happening in this relationship, and I started to notice that certain things had changed and other things hadn't.
So there were a lot of different things that, you know, he would kind of say and do that, you know, again, started at the very beginning of the relationship, but continued on throughout those six years.
And what's tricky about it is that it's not all the time.
So the things that he would say or do, it wouldn't be every day even.
It wouldn't be every week.
It would be random and out of nowhere.
So it would really throw me off, and then we would get back into a same rhythm, and I would almost, I would never forget.
I think that's the painful part of it, is that it always stuck, but I would be able to kind of brush it off because we had to keep moving on.
And like, he would apologize, or something else would come up, or he'd be like, that's silly.
Or we'd talk about it, and it seemed like it wasn't a big deal.
So then it wasn't.
But deep down, my body knew that it was.
It didn't feel right.
It didn't feel good.
And every time I would allow something to happen, or I would go along with it, or we would move past it and continue on like normal, it was like I was betraying myself every time.
I wasn't honoring how that actually made me feel.
Regardless of what we would call it, is it right?
Is it wrong?
Whatever it is, it didn't feel good to me.
But I found it much easier to kind of allow it to happen the longer we were in the relationship because it had been so normalized.
And because there were all these other things that he was doing that would show you that he is committed.
And I really felt that way.
And that's why it's so freaking confusing because this person isn't a bad person.
This person I felt like is a very good person who's dealing with some things and is choosing to do or say some things for different reasons, and that doesn't make him bad.
But was it good for me?
No, it wasn't.
And I had a hard time getting myself out of that scenario.
So he would do things like he tested me a lot, especially in the beginning of the relationship.
He would put me on the spot about like random subjects, like, oh, tell me everything you know about politics.
And then he would start quizzing me.
And he'd like pass it off as a fun game, but I always felt really uncomfortable.
It was like he was testing my worth, essentially like, was I good enough for him?
Do I know enough about American politics?
Just random tests on like, do I know this or don't I?
The history of the natural world, like all sorts of stuff.
And I'd always feel really proud of myself when I passed.
And I would be like, oh my gosh, he'd be like, wow, like you're really smart.
Like tell me things that would build me up and make me feel good about myself.
Even though getting there was extremely stressful, I really didn't like being put on the spot or feeling like if I got this wrong, this person would be judging me or thinking that I wasn't smart enough.
And he could be very unpredictable, like very up and down.
He could get very angry, very quickly out of nowhere.
And he would like kick things or throw things.
Again, not all the time, but it would come out of nowhere and it was never directed at me.
But he would just get very, very angry.
And this meant that even in public, he would sometimes just freak out on someone, like a parking attendant giving him a parking ticket.
And he would start a complete verbal assault on this person.
And I would be there and I really wouldn't know what to do because I felt like the response was so over the top and inappropriate.
But I didn't really know what to do in those moments.
We were at a party once and someone was talking to me and he got just extremely enraged out of nowhere and started almost like pushing the guy with his finger and yelling at him and grabbing me and taking me out of the party.
He was so angry and it felt so out of line, so confusing and I didn't know what to do.
So it felt like I was walking on egg shells a lot because I wasn't sure what kind of thing would make him upset or would get him to react in this way.
And I really didn't like it.
I didn't grow up with anger in a way where it felt healthy to express it.
So I have a lot of stuff around there.
It does make me feel very uncomfortable, but I will also say it also can feel unsafe.
When someone is angry and unpredictable, it's a space of unease.
You don't know what they're going to do.
And he would prove that he would do things.
And sometimes he would, in those moments, say really cruel things or come in and be really mad and just dump all this stuff on me and then walk out and then later come back.
And he'd apologize.
He's like, oh, I'm so sorry.
He could recognize later that it was a really intense response.
So he would write me really nice notes and say, I'm sorry for saying those things.
And he'd bring me flowers or give me a really nice gift.
He would have those moments, and then he would come back from those moments, which to me felt very human.
I was like, wow, he's human.
He's trying his best.
Still didn't feel good.
And I still didn't know when those moments were going to come.
He would do a lot of things where it felt like he was able to get in my head.
Like he was able to say the exact right thing that would make me question myself, or question my reality, or how I was feeling about something.
And even we went to a restaurant once, and I remember trying to figure out the tip.
And he told me, it felt very personal.
He said, he's like, the only reason you're even worried about tipping is because you want people to like you.
He's like, that's why you're tipping.
It's actually very selfish.
It's all about you.
Everything you do is just to make yourself feel better.
So there is a little bit of truth to that, right?
Like there is something about me wanting to act in a way that is societally appropriate.
But I also think the norm is to tip.
There's a reason why we tip, and I've also worked in the service industry.
Like here, see, this is even getting me questioning myself right now.
Like I would question everything I did because I was open to his interpretation, and I thought, well, maybe this will help me become a better person.
But some of it just made me question too much and made it very confusing to do anything because I felt like whatever I was going to do was going to be wrong.
Like every time I tip, I still have this moment where I'm like, well, don't over tip because you're only over tipping because you want that person to think that you're a good person.
Like really gets in there, right?
And when we had been going to counseling, there were moments where he started to use almost like therapy talk.
But against me, he would bring up things.
He's like, well, the reason you're upset is because you need to deal with your own stuff.
And you're actually putting this on me.
And there were moments when I was like, okay, yes, I can understand that.
But the same time, he was almost using that to shut me down even more, because then I was equating what he was saying with what our therapist was saying.
And so that gave even more credence to the words, and it felt more serious.
And I would just get up in my head about it even more.
And it very much felt like at any moment, I could do something wrong.
And when I say wrong, I mean, like I would do something and he would talk to me like I was a little kid.
It made me feel like I felt like a lot of shame.
I felt like I was being berated for something.
If I accidentally broke a glass or spilled some yogurt on the floor, that really set him off.
Like he would say really horrible things and be like, there's no accidents.
Like how could you do that?
That's so stupid.
Really kind of harsh words over something.
And I would react and say like, look, it's an accident.
I'm not trying to do this, you know.
These moments that felt really illogical to me, like why would you criticize me for this?
And it would be about anything and everything.
It'd be the way that I walked down the street when I would dance in the grocery store.
Like I was just being myself and you get very upset about that and tell me like, yeah, don't dance in the grocery store.
Like stop drawing attention to yourself or don't walk weird.
Like what does that even mean?
But you know, like you're always drawing attention to yourself or maybe I'm smiling too much or whatever I'm doing.
He would criticize the way that I ordered food at a restaurant.
He's like, don't order in that weird way that you order, like the way that your voice does that thing.
And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.
I'm just being myself.
But it was very much, he said, you know, you need to strip it down, you need to be more logical, you need to be more straightforward.
Order like, it's like he was teaching me to change how I expressed myself, to be different in a more acceptable way.
When I would do projects, when I went back to university later, and I would be coming up with ideas for a certain project or assignment.
And I'd get really excited and he'd be really interested in a lot of the things I was doing.
We would talk through these things.
But a lot of times, he would say, well, don't do that weird Sarah thing.
That idea is too weird.
That's too you.
Here, do something that everybody would be interested in or something that other people actually care about.
And in moments, sometimes he could be very helpful.
Like that could help me discern or make decisions.
But other times, it felt very personal because to say that my ideas or that when I'm doing something that is personal, is weird or undesirable or stupid, or just not what anyone would be interested in, is essentially just breaking down my character, the way that I walk, the way that I talk, the way that I express myself, the ideas that I have.
Even dropping things on the floor accidentally, there was always room for me to just mess everything up.
I just didn't feel safe being myself.
There was always something I had to be trying on or working or changing to be acceptable.
And one memory that came back to me a couple of days ago out of nowhere, we went on a trip and we were driving across the border from British Columbia to Washington.
And it's a silliest thing.
I had a grapefruit in the glove box.
I remember thinking something about fruit, and it's like, oh, you're not supposed to take fruit over the border.
But I had been planning on eating it, but I forgot.
And when they question us, I was like, oh, I do have this.
And it ended up like they had to take us in.
We had to pull off the road and drive into this place and actually declare the grapefruit.
I had to do it all myself.
And it was so silly.
I thought it was hilarious.
And I was like, oh my god, I'm such an idiot.
I can't believe I did this.
And it was like a part of me must have known that maybe something could happen.
I don't know.
I'd never had that experience, but he was so angry with me, so angry.
And when he sat in the building, when I was lining up to declare this grapefruit, he was just staring at me and just casting this look.
He was truly, truly upset, and he was truly angry with me, and he wanted me to know that was so stupid.
I can't believe you did that.
And just the whole energy of the trip, and this feeling of, oh, we're going somewhere together, just black cloud, and the black cloud lasted for hours.
And at some point, he moved on, but it was just a mistake that I'd made, that I'm like, let's make the best of this.
But it became, how could you ruin our trip?
Like, how could you do that?
Why are you so stupid?
Why didn't you think ahead?
And that made me feel very uneasy most of the time.
And he would allow me to be insecure.
So how do I say this?
There would be moments where he would be like over the top, I guess, flirtatious with someone, or allow something to happen that...
And again, this is very subjective.
Everybody's different on what they feel is appropriate or not, but it felt sometimes like very obvious and over the top.
And he would kind of allow me to sit in that insecurity, and it wouldn't be a safe place to talk through it, or I would never be validated that maybe something went on that didn't feel right.
Like, just my feelings about it weren't valid.
And this is a very strange story, but we went to a wedding once of our friends on this island and didn't really know anyone else there except the bride and the groom.
So, you know, you just kind of befriend whoever at the wedding, and there was this friend of the bride that when we met her, she came up to Tom and was just like really over the top, like jumped on him, gave him this big hug, and then like, I've heard so much about you.
I'm so excited to meet you.
And I was like, okay, this is weird.
Like, they've never met before.
But then as the night went on, she essentially just kind of, I don't know, it's really weird, latched on to him and they were dancing and just spent the entire night together in a very overt way where I was very just left out.
Like I wasn't a part of that interaction.
And I didn't really know what to do.
I kind of tried to befriend some other people and dance around.
I'm like, Sarah, don't be weird.
Don't show that this is bothering you, but it's very odd.
And near the end of the night, I remember thinking, okay, like I just need to go to bed now.
Like, I think I'm going to get kind of upset.
I'm being ignored, and they're being really, I don't know, flirtatious together over a span of hours.
So I decided to leave.
And as I left, she ran after me, and then came up to me and said, like, do you want to fight?
I was like, what?
She actually wanted to have a physical fist fight with me.
This story is probably like, what am I even talking about?
It's just one of the weirder things that's happened to me.
Like, she actually said, like, do you want to fight?
Do you want to fight right now, right here?
Like, let's just get down and start physically punching each other.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
Like, no, no, no, like, I don't want to fight.
Like, I didn't want to get into any sort of altercation because I knew that I was feeling very upset, and it was like not a good place.
And I had to figure out what was going on.
Like, here's my partner, and he's just kind of ignoring me and being with this other girl the whole night.
Something is weird.
How do I process this?
I've actually had someone else offer to fight me before, too.
Can I just say, is that not really weird?
I don't think I've ever, I don't think I give that vibe off.
I remember being confronted by a coworker and her sister inside a bank at night once when I was all alone.
And then he said, like, do you want to fight?
I was like, what?
Anyway, that's just coming to me now.
I'm like, why would someone want to fight me?
I don't know.
What am I doing?
Anyway, so the wedding was very odd, and it really felt like it was so overt to me what was happening, but I didn't know what to say or do.
And he was pretending like nothing was wrong.
And then the next day, oh, I remember having the worst hangover and just, like, puking into a Ziploc bag in the car.
And he really just allowed that insecurity to happen.
Like, he wouldn't acknowledge that anything that had occurred would maybe make me feel uncomfortable or weird.
And he wanted me to question why I would feel that way.
So there was no ownership over it.
And it just felt like somehow it was always my fault.
Everything was kind of my fault.
It was my fault that she was really attracted to him and that they spent the entire night together and that she wanted to fight me.
I'm like, I don't even know.
But yeah, he would really allow me to go to that place.
And it was always about exerting control.
And this could be very subtle.
And just the more time I've had away from that scenario, the more I can see that that's what was happening.
Even if he's not doing this consciously, it's kind of how it would work.
Everything was around his schedule.
And it was like, don't go here at this time.
Wait for me.
Don't do this until I get there.
Or I need a ride.
Can you pick me up here and then take me there?
Or he was on a bike ride once.
He got a flat tire, something like that.
He couldn't fix it.
And it became my responsibility to make sure that he got picked up.
And like, we didn't have a car.
I didn't have a car.
I had to phone around to a bunch of friends and then find a friend who had a car.
And I felt like I was using her, you know, and I was like, hey, are you free?
Can you drive me out here?
You know, half an hour drive to go pick him up.
And it felt like it was my job to kind of do those things.
And yet I was like, wait, you had a phone, you called me, you could have called anyone to help you out.
You have friends and family too.
But it was just about getting me to kind of do things for him in certain ways.
If I was doing something on my own, that was purely mine, and he wasn't involved, he would either find a way to be involved, or he would find a way to kind of strip me down or strip down that experience.
When we were in our final year of school, we had an opportunity to work at the Olympics.
I decided I wanted to do it, and I got put at a curling arena in Vancouver, and I mic'd all the players, like took care of their audio, did the audio for the curling arena.
And he decided he didn't want to.
And while I was there, away, working every day, doing this different job, it was just hell.
Our relationship was so strained.
He was not comfortable with me doing something for myself that he wasn't a part of.
And he would call me, and he'd be angry, and he'd be upset.
And I don't even know what it was about, but there was always something happening.
There was always some sort of drama, and it always felt like it was my fault just for going and doing something I wanted to do.
When I got a job at the university, I had been a part of an interview process.
When I actually got the call that I was accepted, they're like, yeah, we chose you, you got the job.
I came home and I told him, I was like, oh my gosh, I got the job.
And he was livid.
Like he was actually so upset and visibly so, and said, well, of course you'd get it.
You get everything.
Things are just handed to you in your life.
And he wouldn't talk to me.
He wouldn't look at me.
He wouldn't talk to me.
He left.
He just left our apartment.
And this was after I had gotten a job, which I thought was beneficial for not just me, but for him, for our family, right?
I got a job.
So those moments where I felt like I was being punished, like I'd be cheered on in one moment and then punished the next, for just essentially living my life, I never knew when that was going to happen.
I trained for a marathon once, and I'd been laid off at a job, but I was going through a rough time and I was like, I know, I just need something to focus on.
So I was like, okay, I'd ran a couple half marathons.
I was like, yes, I need a challenge, something that I can just commit to.
And it became for me kind of a cathartic process of training and just getting my head away from what was going on in my life.
And he'd always supported me running.
He was into that.
And I joined a clinic, so I met some other people and trained together.
I trained in a very short amount of time, which was quite silly, but I thought I could do it.
And I think it was maybe two months out where he decided, he's like, you know, I want to run the marathon too.
Like, I want to train.
And it was kind of unexpected.
And on one hand, I was like, oh, that's really cool.
But on the other hand, I'm like, just as long as like, I still get to do things my way.
I want control over my schedule.
I don't want it to be changed or different.
But then we could run together sometimes and that was okay.
But I felt like, I don't know, just like it was taking it away from me in some way.
Like I tried to focus on my own thing.
But then when the day of the actual race came, I remember thinking this actual race, this is kind of a big deal.
Like it's honestly, like I swear, it's almost more psychological than it is physical.
Just being able to get through and never having run the full distance before.
You know, I was very nervous.
I had been preparing for a long time, and I knew that I had to listen exactly to what my body needed to do to get myself through that process.
And I'd been training with a friend that I'd met in the clinic.
And so her and I had done all these really long runs together, and we were going to tackle it in the same way.
But on the day of the race, he was there, and it ended up being about like, no, well, obviously we're going to run this together.
So last minute, there are all these changes that were made, and I ended up running the race with him and not with her.
And I remember being really upset about that, but not knowing how to navigate it.
And when the race started, he was going at a different pace than I was.
He was going quite a bit faster.
And I remember he started looking back, he's like, what are you doing?
Like, you need to pick up the pace.
You're going to not make your time.
You're not going to finish on time, whatever that is.
You know, you have a goal, but I'm like, I don't know if I'm even going to finish this race.
But as it went on, like even in the first hour, I was just like, I can't do this.
Like, I have this person.
He's starting to kind of like act like my coach or something.
And he's kind of dragging me down.
He's telling me what I'm doing isn't right.
And I'm like, no, I need to do this my way.
But he was berating me, telling me I was going too slow.
I started crying.
It was really embarrassing.
As we're like rounding a corner, and I could see my mom and his parents had come out to support us and they're waving and cheering.
And I'm just like got tears streaming down my face.
I'm like, I don't want to be this way.
I just want to enjoy this thing that I've been working so hard for.
But now my partner is telling me I'm doing it wrong.
He's getting in my head, and he's berating me and telling me to go faster.
And it was just really stripping me of my experience and of my knowing because I knew I had to do this my own way.
But I was also felt trapped in the scenario where I didn't want him to be mad at me, and I didn't want to upset him, and I didn't want him to berate me, and I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of our family.
And I don't know if the race could have turned out any differently.
I completed the race.
It was really hard.
There are moments of it where I was like, there's no way I can keep going.
But I really wish that I had stuck to doing it my own way because that's how I had trained.
And it just felt like he had to somehow take that over.
And I was like, I was so angry.
I was like, how dare you berate me at this moment?
Like, how dare you try and get my emotions flustered and tell me what to do?
And this is so critical to be in the right mind frame.
And this is when you're choosing to almost like pick on me.
Yeah, that was a really tough one.
That was very telling as well because it came in this nice guise of like, oh, I'm really interested in doing this too.
But then somehow it became about him and he was controlling the experience.
And I don't know, a lot of it was around like building me up and then kind of stripping me down and like supporting me to do this race and running, and then entering into it and telling me I'm doing it wrong, you know?
And over time, my life just revolved more and more around his.
And it felt like this was just expected of me in that relationship.
It was like, quote unquote, I really needed to be there for him all the time, and that could mean anything.
He really expected me to be fully involved in all of his hobbies, in anything he had to do with work, and I wanted to be supportive.
But it was like there was no space for me to have my own life.
Yes, I had my job, so I would go and I'd work at my job, but then it felt like on the weekends, he did all sorts of stuff and he was into different sports and activities and volunteering.
And so there was always like a race or a game or a rally or an event that he would need me to be at.
So it was his things.
And it was very much like he's like, you need to be there.
Like, of course, you need to be at this basketball game or you need to be at this bike rally or you need to come out to this volunteering event.
Like, you need to be there.
And I just, a lot of it, I was like, I don't want to be there.
I just want to do something else, you know?
But it wasn't worth letting him down.
I didn't want to let him down because then maybe he wouldn't talk to me for two days.
Like, I don't know.
There was, I remember a bike race that he really told me I needed to be at, and I was already at all of them.
But I had shifted my plans around so I could be there, show up at the right time, like wait outside for him to pass by.
And I made a really big point of being there.
And a few days later, we were in a fight about something and he brought up, he's like, well, you didn't even come to my race.
Like you didn't even make an effort to be there.
And I remember saying, I was there.
I worked my entire day around being there.
I saw you multiple times.
And he didn't even remember.
Like he didn't even know that I was there.
Like that's, like for me, I was so cognizant of every moment that I was showing up because likely I didn't always want to.
I wanted him to notice that I was putting in this effort, but he just didn't even remember.
It was so flippant.
I was at dinner with a friend once, who I hadn't seen in a while, and we planned this dinner, and I was out to dinner with her, and he called me and he said, he was doing some sort of political rally.
And he's like, I really need you to come right now.
Like I need you to hold a sign.
It's really important.
We're doing this televised thing.
And I was like, well, no, like I'm at dinner with my friend.
And you know what?
I ended up leaving the dinner, running downtown, getting a sign, standing in a crowd of people.
He barely acknowledged that I was there.
There was tons of people, like other people there.
I realized that it didn't even matter if I was there, but I did it.
And I think I ended up coming back and having the rest of the dinner with my friend or maybe meeting her after, or maybe I blew off the rest of our dinner.
I don't remember, but it was so much effort for me.
And when I got there, I realized it didn't even matter, but he made me feel like it was the biggest thing in the world for me to be there.
And then when I was there, it was so insignificant.
And yet my dinner with my friend, to him, was nothing.
He's like, well, you're going to have to leave.
I'm like, why?
It was things like that.
It was hours of my day, and then my weeks and my years were spent so involved in wanting to please him and contorting myself or changing what I was doing.
And it was just like everything was spent on this relationship beyond my own health issues that were starting to show up in a really major way or we got a dog, then that was a whole other realm of work.
And then me needing to be there for him when he wanted me in the way that he wanted me to be.
And yet he would pick on me quite a bit for not having my own hobbies and my own activities.
He's like, you don't really have anything you're into.
You don't really do anything.
But then I would be like, but I have no time to do anything.
Like you've brought me to this place.
You've needed me to do everything for you or to be there for you or to be so involved.
There's no space for me to even do my own stuff.
And when I try to do my own stuff, then you come in and tell me it's wrong or you change it or you're a part of it.
So I felt very trapped and alone a lot.
I felt very angry, but I didn't know how to express that anger.
I felt quite sad and I deeply, deeply like wanted just freedom.
I didn't want to feel this inner conflict all the time.
I didn't want to feel this outer conflict all the time where I felt like I was competing with the person I was in a relationship, where it felt like there was no space for both of us.
And I just felt so stressed out all the time.
And I would look to myself, I would always be like, okay, I need to do more counseling or I need to change my perspective on this, or I need to try harder or do better or put in more.
It was like me always having to change or shift or contort.
I was never good enough, and I always felt like if I just do my best, then it will be okay.
But then the person I'm with, I'm like, is he doing his best?
Maybe, but he doesn't really seem to be shifting or acknowledging his behavior or he would, but it wouldn't change.
And it was just kind of a mess.
I really lost myself.
And I will say the tricky part of all of this is that this behavior, especially like the cruel comments or the dragging me down, all of it, like it's not happening all the time.
In the beginning, it was happening all the time.
Like there was, it was just so chaotic.
But over the span of like six whole years, it wasn't happening all the time.
It was like 70 percent of the time things were good.
That we were getting along and we had this nice life, and we were making plans and doing things, and cooking dinner, and going out to movies.
And he'd be like, oh, you're so pretty, or this and that.
It wasn't going on all the time, so I couldn't always place it.
Or when something would happen, then I would wedge it down, and then I would let it go.
Actually, I don't think I really did let it go.
To be honest, I think I was sometimes holding it so that I could maybe use it later.
Be like, no, you did this thing.
I need to remember.
It's like I need to remember when you hurt me so that when you hurt me another time, I can bring up this other hurt.
Like very unhealthy.
I felt like even if I did express how I felt, that would be taken away too.
He would say that that wasn't the truth or that I wasn't doing something right.
But yeah, it wasn't happening all the time.
And then there was also kind of this, this is the insidious part.
And this is when I think back to the movie that I watched and the reaction I was having.
And some of it was around this really deep unease, which is like this, almost like this unspoken rule, this rule that this isn't actually happening.
What you think is happening when I'm saying things to you or when I'm trying to make you feel bad about yourself, like that's actually not happening.
It's this unspoken rule of like, I will be quiet.
I will never question this.
I will never tell someone else because this quote unquote isn't actually happening, right?
If we don't talk about it or we don't acknowledge it, or if we flip it around and he's like, this isn't actually happening, you're crazy, then it's not happening.
But it was.
It was happening the whole time.
But that's what also makes it so challenging to step back and see what the truth of something is, because 70% of the time, it's like I'm with my best friend and my best friend cares about me and my best friend is making an effort and like is going out of his way to make my birthday extra special and really does love me.
And I know that he does, but it's also tinged with 30% of the time.
There's also things happening that, I don't know, they don't cancel out the love, but they're there at the same time.
And when we hold those truths of like, I can love someone and they can love me, but they can also hurt me, and it's actually okay for me to honor myself and like not be okay with this, but I can still love that person.
That's where it can get very tricky.
And I would always kind of see, I would try and see past that because we are also human beings, and each of us has our own stuff going on, right?
He has his own past.
He has his own set of patterns and dynamics that he inherited from his family or things that he's gone through.
He's had his own traumas and experiences that come into play, his own insecurities, just like I do.
So we both have those things going on.
And so sometimes I would be able to see, well, he's saying this or doing these things because blank, blank, blank, right?
Like he's in pain.
He's experiencing this.
He doesn't feel secure.
He doesn't feel safe, or this makes him feel better.
And so because I felt like I wanted to look through that and like I could like feel those things, sometimes that pain or I could see that in him.
I could see his soul too.
I'm like, I know you're like a great person and you're like really trying, but you're also struggling with things that overrode how I felt about myself and what I thought I deserved.
So I never fully honored my own feelings.
He wouldn't honor my feelings most of the time, but I also wouldn't honor my own feelings.
And that's like a very sticky place to be because talking about this today, I can keep allowing myself to not say it because I'm afraid that at some level, I'm like abandoning him or hurting him by accepting my own truth.
But it is my truth.
Like my truth matters.
Why would his truth or his experience or me protecting him matter more than my own truth, right?
Like I can't abandon myself anymore.
And that's the really, I just find that that's so hard to hold all of that.
And, you know, I don't think I fully understood all of this when I was experiencing it, but I knew that I had to find another way.
Like at some point, I knew I'm like, I can't be in this.
And that was very uncomfortable too, because we had been together for so long.
And it's like we had this history and I was so linked to so many of my experiences.
It was just, yeah, like in a long term relationship, right?
You experience so much together to then decide, okay, like I want to let go of this.
It's very painful because you're losing so much.
And yet I'd already lost so much of myself.
So on my 30th birthday, he planned a surprise present, which was amazing.
It was like a surprise trip to Vegas.
And it was so thoughtful and fun.
And we had such a great time.
He'd gone out of his way to make me book off work without really knowing it.
He'd talked to my boss and arranged that it would be okay and all of this stuff.
I packed a whole bag not knowing where we were going.
And on that trip, there was so much fun and it was so lovely.
But at the same time, I remember also feeling really lonely.
Just kind of knowing the outside.
I'm like, the outside of this looks so good.
And inside of me still feels sad because I already know that it's not working.
I can't do this.
But I didn't really know what to do.
And we went on another trip that year to the States, went to Washington and Oregon and did a road trip.
And it was that same feeling.
I have a hard time revisiting some of those memories because they're both so, like, I don't know, just like, yeah, so beautiful but so painful because I was really sad.
I kind of knew that I was like, I don't know what to do here, but like this isn't forever.
And I couldn't see a future.
And I don't know how to describe this.
Maybe you've experienced this, like, with someone.
When I say that, I mean, I cannot picture, like we had this dog, we had this apartment, we had this life, and we talked about getting married, and but like I couldn't see it.
Like I visual, like in my head, I couldn't see what that would look like.
I was like, where would we live?
And then when I imagined kids, I was like, I just couldn't, just wasn't adding up.
Like I couldn't see it in my mind's eye.
I couldn't see it.
So it's like, I just knew that something had to change.
And I developed a friendship at work with my now partner, Nick.
And it was just like fun and nice.
And we just really enjoyed each other at work just as friends.
But there was one weekend where Tom was away and I was trying to find a bunch of photos so that I could print them and put them on our wall.
I had a new frame that I wanted to fill up.
And I was going through our hire drive and just looking at all of our photos.
And I found something.
I found a photo, and it brought me straight back to the beginning of our relationship.
And I hadn't felt those feelings at this really in such a long time.
And when I found it, it was of someone else.
And I remember thinking, I was like, okay, rationally, I cannot make an assumption.
And the right thing to do is to bring this up.
I have to bring this up.
I have to be like, hey, I found this thing.
I don't want to assume that I know what it is.
Let's talk about it.
That's a very healthy thing to do.
I don't know.
I don't know the full story there.
So I found it.
I felt the feelings.
And then I was like, I can't.
I can't bring this up.
I don't even want to bring it up.
I know I should be seeking clarity, but I just, I can't.
I'm just done with this.
I'm just so sad.
And it brought back so much.
And it just put things into perspective for me.
And it happened.
And then it was like, over that time, I'd gotten closer with Nick, and I remember thinking, I was like, uh-oh, like, you know, so you just kind of like someone.
I was like, oh, I really like him.
And then he'd just been in a relationship, but he wasn't anymore.
And it felt like there was that opening, that moment again, that moment of like, well, maybe I could be in a relationship with him.
Like, what would that be like?
And that feeling, that gave me strength.
And yeah, when I saw Tom, I just came out with it, and I said, you know what, I don't think I want to do this anymore.
That's probably the worst breakup I've ever had.
When you're saying it's coming out of your mouth, and then you realize what you're saying, and you're like, oh my God, like, am I doing this right now?
And I did it.
And I said, I'm gonna go stay at my mom's house.
So there I am, back in again with my mom.
And he did ask me, he's like, does this have to do with anyone else?
Like, you better tell me, be honest with me.
Don't drag this out.
I was like, I need to think about things.
And he's like, no, if you're gonna break up with me, tell me right now.
And I was like, I don't know, I just need time.
And so I left.
And, you know, it was like what helped me get out.
I needed to leave, and I didn't feel like I had the strength to do it.
But I had this hope of this other person that had a different energy that, again, I was drawn to, and I was like this.
And then also, I wasn't necessarily prepared to share with Tom like what was happening.
I felt guilty about that because he did ask me straight up, does this have to do with someone else?
And it did, but it also had to do with everything else.
It had to do with everything else.
I was like, I need a life of my own.
I need to sort out my things.
I need to be not in this relationship, like not in this space.
I was like uncertain about everything.
And so I was honest about that, but I did not share that I was really falling for my friend at work.
You know, like that was the part that I didn't.
But I've talked about that a lot in therapy after, and I remember the therapist telling me, she's like, it's okay, like you got out.
She's like, you do what you do.
It was okay.
Sometimes you just do what you have to do.
And I guess I didn't see it like that, but I was really needed something to leave that situation.
And I did.
And I wasn't sure what he was going to do.
If I told him that, what would happen?
How would he react?
I went back to pick up my things at one point when he wasn't there, and he had torn out a bunch of things in the closet.
Everything was on the floor, but there was one hanger in the closet, and the closet door was open, and there was my dress.
My new summer dress was in there, and he had torn it with his hands.
He had ripped the entire thing from the top to the bottom.
So it looked like a vest.
He'd torn my entire dress in half and left it hanging there for me to see.
And I just thought, okay, that's all I need to know.
Like, you're allowed to express yourself.
I don't know.
This feels kind of violating and not cool.
And, you know, we left things like that.
I got my things and left, and I was out of the relationship, back in with my mom.
And it was really painful and confusing, but I remember this, like, deep, deep, deep, deep relief of just being like, I did it.
I did it.
Oh, it's going to make me emotional.
There's just, like, removing myself from that situation.
I felt like I was hurting him and betraying him, and there was so much guilt and so much shame.
And at the same time, I was just like, I needed to make a decision for myself.
And I am just so grateful that I did and that I got to that place.
And, you know, after the fact, we didn't really talk.
It wasn't necessarily on bad terms.
There were moments where I feel like he reached out and we talked, and he had kind of come to terms with things, but he soon found out that I had started a relationship with Nick.
I think it was like months later after the breakup, and at that point, everything shut down.
We never talked again.
And I think that's very healthy.
Like that probably helped him move on, having that information that I wasn't able to share in the beginning.
Like I wasn't strong enough, and I was like ashamed and felt guilty.
And I have not seen him since in 10 years.
It's just that's kind of how things ended.
But, you know, I don't know, the distance that comes, it's taken me so long to process all of that.
And it was something that Nick said early on when we were together.
I was talking about relationships.
I was like, well, relationships, you know, they require compromise and like working together and, you know, doing things for the other person.
And he said, yeah.
He's like, relationships require compromise.
He's like, but you never compromised yourself.
And that just like hit me like a ton of bricks.
It just hit me so hard because I had never really seen things that way or realized that because I felt like I had completely lost myself and compromised myself in my entirety to be with this other person.
I needed to please him and make him like me to feel safe, to be loved, and I had contorted my entire being.
And there is a memory that encapsulates this for me.
And it's a reminder when I have moments of like grief or kind of shame even in sharing this story.
Like I've gone over this so many times of like what feels appropriate and like this is a whole human being.
We are all working through our stuff and we came together and I had my own stuff.
And that's a reason I can talk about that.
I'll do another episode, but like how do we end up where we are, right?
It was very specific that it was me and him.
And I almost doubt that he has that dynamic in other relationships.
I feel like ours had something going on because of my past experience and what I was bringing.
And then his, it's like we fit together in this really insane kind of like trauma pattern.
So I don't ever want to make it seem like he was doing all of these things and that's it, right?
Like I played a part and that is the truth.
Something that helps me see past that because that's where I stop.
I keep stopping at the point where I think about him and I feel so bad and I feel like I hurt him and I feel like I betrayed him and there's just so much pain there that it stops me and prevents me from being honest about what I experienced because I don't want to hurt him.
But something that helps me remember that I do matter and that I did matter and that my experience did matter, even if it was just how I perceived all of it and then how that changed me, if we even remove him and just say like, hey, this is what I was feeling and this is where I ended up.
And this is where I don't ever want to end up again.
But yeah, I had this memory.
This is fairly recent that I remembered in the past year.
I reached a point in that relationship where Tom had like quite a specific like, you know, we all have our like weird things and I like a routines.
And he had a very specific like bathroom routine where he would need to go in the bathroom and hang out with the cat.
And he would like smoke in there and like do whatever, listen to the radio.
He just had this whole thing and like take a shower.
And it was like a routine that he had.
And it would be at least 45 minutes to an hour.
And it would happen.
I'm trying to remember, if not twice a day, at least always in the morning.
And then I think at night as well.
I'm trying to remember.
And he was very specific about it.
And I kind of learned early on when I was like, what's going on?
I was like, oh, he has this routine that he does.
And it's just a thing.
And I learned early on that I was not allowed to like change this routine in any way.
I wasn't allowed to disrupt him.
Like it's very important.
And he would get very, very angry and thrown off if I would interrupt it.
So in the mornings, when we both had to be at work, like I would have to get up way earlier because he would need to use the bathroom for an hour straight.
Like I was not allowed in there.
And we lived in like a studio apartment.
So there's one bathroom.
And I would need to get ready for work.
Like I was like, I need to shower and do my hair and whatever.
I can do some of that away from there, but I need to use the toilet, like all of those things.
And I would get up way earlier in the morning just so that I could do that.
So that he would then be able to do his routine.
And there were other times like I would come home after work, and he would be in the bathroom, and I wouldn't know when he was going to get out of the bathroom.
And if I asked him, he would get very angry, and he couldn't always tell me.
So there was this insane kind of dynamic where I never fully had access to the bathroom, and I didn't know if I would be able to use it or not.
So when I would come home from work, I would always make sure, like, before I leave, I'm like, okay, you have to use the bathroom.
Or if I was getting off the bus, I'd be like, okay, go to the coffee shop and go use the bathroom.
So I'll have to, like, buy a coffee, then use the bathroom and wait in line, then come just so that I could come home.
And I'd come home.
Sometimes he wouldn't be in the bathroom, but I wouldn't know.
So I'd try and work my way around his schedule so that I would be able to, like, pee, you know, or do things.
And it got to the point where I would...
Wow, as I'm saying this, I'm getting really emotional.
And I wasn't, I really wasn't expecting this.
This is very emotional for me.
Sorry.
It got to the point where I would keep, like, if I go out for coffee, I would keep, like, a Starbucks cup or, like, a paper cup.
And I would always, you know, come home, put it in the recycling.
And I would always make sure that I had a coffee cup so that I could pee in the coffee cup in the kitchen.
So I'd keep it in the recycling.
If he was in the bathroom and I had to go, I would take this coffee cup, and I would, like, squat in the kitchen, like, pull my clothes down, and pee into this cup.
And then I would hide it somewhere, like, under the kitchen sink.
And when he would come out, then I would have to find a way to take this cup and, like, pour it into the toilet, because I wasn't allowed...
Oh, I wasn't allowed to, like, even use the bathroom.
Like, I couldn't take care of my own basic needs in my own home.
And he never knew that I did this, and I would get very weirded out, like, if I didn't have a coffee cup, because I would start to panic, and I was like, I have to go pee, like, I have to go pee, and I have nowhere to go.
Um, and, like, I think that just, to me, shows the level of, like, contortion.
Of my being, my body, my mind, like, that's where my mind was, that that was normal, and that's that, that's what I would do.
And I would need to hide that, and feel, like, ashamed and embarrassed by it.
And yet, that was also how I was, like, surviving.
So, that's, like, a reminder for me.
And when Nick said, like, you don't compromise yourself in a relationship, I think I'd been doing that so long, I just didn't even understand that that was a way that I could be.
What would it be like to be with someone who was going to support me all the time, or going to be there and, like, did care about me at that level, who wasn't just care about me 70% of the time, but would care about my, like, well-being overall.
And, you know, what's fascinating to me is how this has just come up recently and kind of unlocked, right, in the last few weeks.
And has been so important for me to examine that I wasn't ready because I was actually, I feel like I was being protected in a way.
If this makes sense, I had a phone at the time that had all of my photos during the time we were together, essentially, and also a hard drive that contained all of the photos off of my old phones and all the pictures we take on our trips together.
And he ended up not giving me that hard drive back when I requested it.
It was something that I left at the apartment and I was going to come pick up.
And then he never allowed me to come pick it up.
So my entire life, like the six years we were together, was like on that hard drive.
Every project from college and from university, all of my papers, all of my photos, everything from all of my phones, everything was in that drive.
And he refused to give that to me.
So I didn't have any of that.
And the phone that I left the relationship with ended up locking.
And I've gone back multiple times, and I cannot access.
Like it's locked completely.
My passcode does not work.
I don't know how that's even possible.
He also, at one point when he found out I was in a new relationship, all of the photos, and this is something I was like took for granted, like that I had, that we had on Facebook that he'd either taken of me or that were of us together, or during that time, all of them disappeared overnight.
So he got rid of all of them.
And some of that, there was a lot of grief in that, because I'm like, whoa, I lived six years of my life, and now I don't have access to any of those memories.
And some of those memories wouldn't be of us together, but just of me, even of our dog together that we raised.
And it almost feels like it was protection, because I wasn't strong enough to maybe go there or look at those things until 10 years later, and here I am.
I still don't have any of that.
But I feel like I have learned a lot more, and I am a stronger person, so that I have the distance to look at the relationship and maybe do the healing that I need now that I wasn't able to do then, and was being protected from doing.
I need to confront this dynamic.
And like I said, I'll talk another time about why I was so predisposed to be in this relationship, because I questioned that a lot.
Like, how did I end up there?
How did this even begin?
Why did this happen?
All of it, the way that I associate love with pain, the way that I felt like I was a victim, the way that I was hypervigilant, and there was a lot of codependent patterns, all of it, there's all a reason for that.
And I brought all of my past with me and met this person where we played out this dynamic again and again.
And like I said, I didn't want to talk about this.
I really didn't.
I actually, when I was working on other things, I want to talk about other relationships and experiences.
And this one just always felt like a dead space.
I was like, no, there's nothing there.
But really it was just like this fear, like this deep fear that I have that I am betraying the person in that relationship by speaking about it.
And that is that insidious part where there is so much shame attached to it of how I felt that talking about it, I feel ashamed and I feel like there's so much.
And it's crazy that this still has a hold on me, that it exists inside of me.
And that's the reason I didn't want to share it.
I didn't know it had such a hold though.
And now my body's opening up and it's like responding to all of these things.
And I'm crying and I'm feeling pain in parts of my body.
And I'm like, oh my God, like this is actually the most important thing for me to talk about.
And I don't want to play by these rules anymore.
Like I need to choose myself now.
And that doesn't mean that I need to think that that's hurting someone else.
I need to choose myself above all else and break this pattern for me.
It's important to break the pattern by talking.
So wow, that was epic.
How do I put six years into an episode?
And I know that I am far from alone in experiencing things like this.
Again, every relationship will have a slightly different tinge to it.
You know, I'm lucky in the sense I didn't experience physical or sexual abuse in this relationship, but I do feel like I experienced what feels like some mental and emotional abuse.
It's even hard for me to say that out loud because I feel like someone's going to say, no, that's not true.
That's not what that was.
You're making this up because that's how in my head I am about it.
And I think that's what that can do to you, being in a relationship like that where you're really contorted and you believe that you don't matter.
You believe that the other person matters more and you live kind of in fear of what they're going to do or say, or how they're going to make you feel.
So you change yourself continually until you don't know who you are anymore, and you don't have as much strength that you did in the beginning to see things or to move past them or to leave the situation.
So yeah, I am not alone and I know that.
But also because I felt like maybe it wasn't so dramatic.
Like there wasn't anything big and crazy happening on the outside that I could validate myself with to be like, you're worth it.
This is a big deal.
This isn't okay.
It was all very subtle and underhanded, which made it very insidious and made the feelings of shame.
I'm so insidious.
I always felt like if I share this with someone, they're just going to think it's really dumb.
It's not a big deal.
I should get over it.
But I know that if someone else shared this with me, or when I picture this being a different person in a different relationship experiencing these things, I'd very clearly be able to discern that it wasn't safe for them and that they're valid in their knowing.
And so that's what I'm trying to do for myself now.
So, thank you for listening.
Thank you for holding space.
Thank you for just being here.
And wow, okay, I did it.
We'll see what my body does this week.
But I think just this release of talking like this is so healing to me.
So, okay, enough, enough.
I have so much more to say another time.
Thank you.
We'll talk soon.
Bye.
