Year five - melancholy

When I felt particularly sad, which in those days was often, I would fantasise about breaking up with M.

Depending on the specific flavor of melancholy accompaning me at any given moment, these imaginings would vary in style in content, but they always had an air of inevitablity and irreversibility that seemed to choke me whenever I thought of him.

Sometimes, I would approach it in the generous and mature manner of a person I desperately wanted to be. "It's not you, it's me", I would calmy say in my mind over a restraurant meal while my dissociated body was busy setting the oven for frozen fries. Because of course it wasn't really me, but if I was feeding myself, I was well enough to play it like a grown up.

"Maybe we just aren't meant for each other." I would justify at other times putting the blame on some nefarious Fate having woven the string of our destinies incorrectly. I would look out of the bus window, proud of myself to be out and about, living my life. It wasn't my fault, clearly, and in those moments I could afford the grace of convincing myself that it wasn't his, either.

Other times, I would devolve into an altogether different approach. Those visions were mostly saved for cold evenings and dark early mornings that I would spend sleeplessly in bed fully aware of how awful everything felt when no distraction was forthcoming to use as a guise that my life was put together. By that time, I had stopped actively crying myself to sleep. I would just stare into space, while in my mind, I cried. I cried, and yelled, and sobbed, and screamed, and either fell to my knees in a physical manifestation of anguish or threw something across the imaginary room as a final straw to relieve all the pent-up aggression.

Long monologues about all the ways I felt unhappy, unloved, used and abused, abandoned, strung along, and taken for granted run smoothly through my mind, while I lay there, pretending that I intend to sleep. These weren't even the worst; despite the tears, I was still being civil. I used "I-statements" like the self-help books advise. I focused on cause-effect chains, not on intentions. I don't blame him, ultimately. I'm just hurt. I'm so very, very hurt, and I can't do this anymore. And I feel weak and pathetic for not being able to do this anymore. I-statements.

I could revise them, too, as I went along. If a particular statement didn't sound I-enough to me, or I simply disliked a specific phrasing, I could start over. More than once, it would take me multiple hours to compose a satisfactory speech of twenty to twenty-five minutes. Then, I would start over, or replay it again and again, depending on how tired and desperate I was.

And there were the other monologues, too. The unhinged rants that I would imagine shouting out practically on one breath for multiple quarts of an hour. Things I would never dare to say to anyone in the real world, especially to him. Things no person deserves to hear, and no person should feel the need to say. I would scream that he was ruining my life and mental stability. That every moment I've spent with him was emotional self-harm. That he was immature, unreliable, and a liar. That he was cruel. That he didn't deserve me and the love I gave him. I said that I knew he didn't really love me and never gave half a flying fuck about me. That I hated him.

The last types of fantasies were never in first-person point of view. It felt more like watching a film with me as the main character. I saw her face twisted in anger and resentment. Her eyes wet with tears, but somehow shooting flames of hot fury. She didn't feel like me, but I knew that on some level her feelings were my own. I could watch her for hours, laying still in bed, my eyes tracing the moonlight shadows dancing on my ceiling, but not really seeing them. Vaguely aware that I was sacrificing morning lucidity for this sad ersatz of a cathartic experience. But I couldn't stop.

None of these narratives reached any climax or other resolution. They were tunnel-visioned around my person and my thoughts, they never included a single word from him. How would he react? Hell if I knew. I could never read him and this was one of the issues I had with this year-long relationship. His moods were volatile and seemed random. Would he be sweet and supportive like he could be so many times? Would he validate my view and let me peacefully go my way, or - even better, - offer a solution I hadn't thought about before? Or would he shut off like he also could in times of stress and make me so acutely aware that I was hurting him, too. That I was the problem. That his feelings mattered, too; mattered, more. Or would he also fly off the handle in a blind rage that I never actually witnessed, but often felt bubbling just below his happy demeanor. Could I be the one to actually set it off? Was I capable of that?

I didn't know and on many levels I didn't want to know. And so all the fantasies remained incomplete. Breaking up with him in my mind was the easy part. The part I could ravel and unravel to my heart's content, the part I could marinate in to perfection, that could be the sole backdrop of my melancholy moments. But to really leave? To imagine what comes next? That required too many vulnerabilities I was not willing to share even with myself.

They say that if you are ever unsure about a choice and feel stuck in a decision, you should toss a coin. Not because leaving your decisions to chance is wise. But because during that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you might suddenly realize which outcome you are hoping for. Looking back at it now, I think that I couldn't include his responses in my fantasies, because no matter how many times I tossed a coin I wouldn't get that hit of clarity. It spun and spun and spun, and never landed. Or it landed, but fell under the couch before I had a chance to check luck's verdict on my love life. I simply didn't know. I did not know which outcome I was hoping for.