Spontaneous Combustion

I am not a good person.

I broke up with the Boy on Friday due to his pattern of shady actions that made me feel insecure, and an inability for us to have open and honest dialogue about them.  I did it because based on the hurtful things he said and did, I thought he was done.  I did it because after a year of struggling to communicate with someone who could not have been more different than myself, I thought I was done.

And to numb the pain, I got drunk and hooked up with someone who didn't matter.  Exactly what a wise friend told me not to do.  I wish someone had warned me what Bacardi 151 was before I shot it, and not to combine it with a broken heart.  Resolved to never speak of that night again, I put it in a box and hid it under my bed with all the other mistakes I'll never repeat.

The Boy talked last night and it looked like we would find a way to make it work.  That he was beginning to understand how hard it was for me to love someone who communicated through leading questions and mind games rather than responding to the simplest of my concerns.  I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and I was overjoyed.  And then I felt my heart cry out, calling to that box and telling me there was no way we could move forward, start anew, be happy, with that secret hanging over my head.  So I told him.  And he broke into a million little pieces.

We spent the next hours in silence.  In absolute disbelief of the nightmare my life had become, I couldn't move.  In the past, he told me he would understand something like this.  When we first started dating, he spent nights with other women and I didn't find out until months afterwards, left with the struggle to heal something I that was too intangible to face.  He said that if I ever did anything like I did Friday, that he would find a way to forgive me because he loved me, cornering me into forgiving his behavior.  But in actuality he was devastated and enraged and broken.  I felt the urge to be sick, to scream, to die.  Hurting the ones I love is my worst fear, and here I was making him pay for my mistakes.

He asked me to stay the night with him.  I didn't want to, but I didn't feel like it was fair to deny him whatever comfort I could offer.  He told me he forgave me and asked to have sex, something we never asked of each other unless we were in a good place; but it was rough and unloving.  He pulled me into his arms and fell asleep, and even though the dark thoughts in my mind were raging through me, I told myself that we would make it.  That we loved each other and we would find a way.

In the morning, he was detached again.  Even though he asked me to stay in his arms, I could no longer deny the doubt and insecurity I felt.  I left with the promise that we would talk again and prayed that he would find a way to heal.

Hours later he texted me saying he could no longer see me.  That his forgiveness didn't mean he would forget, no longer be hurt, or ever want to be with me again.  That he only had sex with me to release his frustration.  That he never felt so much rage in his life.  I stopped responding, because I realized I've turned him into a different person.  I've hurt him so much I shattered the man I loved and left nothing but vengeful, selfish fragments.

And to top it off, the Boy found out today that he was accepted Yale for graduate school.  The one school I couldn't attend because they don't offer teacher credentials.  The one place we both knew had no future for the two of us.  It's what he wanted, I know he'll be ecstatic and successful, but I can only offer half-hearted congratulations and lost dreams of the adventures that awaited us past graduation.

My stomach has been in knots for hours.  My chest is breaking under the pressure of a thousand regrets.  Jenna and my other loved ones have been my life support for the last four days, and I don't even know if it'll be enough anymore.  I've spent the past four years of my life working every day to become someone worth loving.  Someone worth trusting.  Right now I feel like I couldn't be farther from either.