Beautiful Man Part2

Beautiful Man Part 2

We hadn’t seen each other since we broke up. It had been four months, which had flown past, and I had spent the first two of them bouncing off my new-found singledom, and the last two of them crying my heart out and missing him.

We had become in contact again, a little text message here and there to see how the other was doing. We both still worried about the other, which I guess is one of the factors we were no good for each other. Worry.

I missed the best parts of him. I realised nobody had ever loved me the way he did, treated me with so much respect as he did, and that I had never felt so safe and trusting with him. I knew he still loved me, and I wanted that back. So in an effort to get him back, I asked him to spend Xmas day with me, as he would have been alone. He agreed.

We began speaking every day, I would video call him when I woke up, just like I used to do when we were together, but I always felt like I shouldn’t be doing it. I asked him if I should contact him and he told me I could whenever I wanted. It was the answer I wanted yet it still didn’t feel right, but I did it anyway. I felt like I was pushing myself into his life too much, and I didn’t know if that was what he wanted, yet he never turned down a phone call and never lost an opportunity to compliment me. Surely, he was feeling the same way as me, right?

Xmas eve I was waiting for his message to say he was nearly at my place. I was SO nervous! I had my outfit prepared, which was the dress I wore on our very first date. I hadn’t heard from him since he left but I was sure I had at least another hour when I saw his car come down my driveway. I quickly jumped up and changed into my dress, sprayed on some perfume and fixed my hair, before rushing out to see him. He looked beautiful as ever, a little thinner from the physical demands of his Xmas shifts, but still gorgeous. We hugged so tightly for a long time. He felt warm and safe as always. We were so happy to see each other and started talking and catching up as he came into the house.

We were close from the moment he arrived, touching and hugging whenever possible, the closeness between us stronger than ever. That night we watched movies and cuddled. It felt so good to be back in my love's arms. We didn’t really kiss, I expected us to have sex but there wasn’t anything sexual between us at that point. I questioned this and then put it in the back of my mind. That night I had a weird sleep, lots of dreams and awareness of someone next to me in my bed. I got to wake up to my love's face, next to me as he watched TV. It was such a beautiful thing to wake up to on Xmas. He smiled and kissed me good morning. We then went to the beach for a quick swim.

We unwrapped our presents from each other, and he awkwardly reciprocated a thank you kiss when I opened mine. Something was different, but I was trying to be optimistic and put it down to shyness, that maybe he was trying to play it cool and not get carried away. That day we had sex. It was full of love, lots of slow kisses and eye contact. It was obvious we still loved each other very much, but something still felt ‘off’ and I couldn’t put my finger off it. I brushed it aside again, trying to remind myself he was probably holding back as we hadn’t seen each other in so long, and that he still loved me or he would never have been there in the first place.

We spent the rest of Xmas day doing what we would usually do, eating cheese and crackers and watching Netflix. It was fun, relaxing, we snuggled a lot and talked about all sorts of things that had been happening in our lives. I hugged him so tight, told him I loved him and how much I’d missed him. He still held back. That night was much the same, but I had a deeper sleep. I woke up on Boxing Day to him watching me sleep. He told me he had been watching me for a long time, and how beautiful I was to watch sleep. I knew he loved me so much and couldn’t figure out why he was holding back.

So I asked him, “What are we now”

He didn’t know how to reply. I wanted him back, wanted to be his girl again, for us to try again and do things differently, but I couldn’t get the words out. I felt like because it was me who did the breaking up, that I had no right to ask for him back. I gave him a letter I wrote which poured out my entire heart, but all he said was thank you which confused me because usually he would have talked about what it said and said “I love you too”. I was lost, scared to lose him, scared to be alone, scared what life without him would be like.

I asked, and tried to convince him into giving us another chance. I became so confused at this point because he wasn’t on the same page as me which was unlike him. My emotions grew more muddled and I began to sob. Why didn’t he want me back? I am crying as I write this, the whole conversation was awful. If he loved me why didn’t he want to try again?

Fuck I was scared, I felt fear right down in the pit of my stomach, tears flowed, panic took over. He tried to explain that he wasn’t ready to be in a relationship, that he still loved me more than anything, that he had just begun the journey of finding himself and he wanted to discover who he truly was for now. I tried to talk him into us just taking it slow, but he reluctantly agreed to calm me down. I can’t even describe how much fear I was feeling and how much pain I was in. Physical pain in my chest because I knew, deep down I knew that we wouldn’t work, that we couldn’t be together, and I didn’t want to admit it.

“Even if we got back together our problems would still be our problems” he said. And he was right. The reasons we broke up hadn’t changed, we both needed to discover ourselves and had only just begun our journeys. We were not in positions in our lives to be in a relationship no matter how much we loved each other.

I cried for almost an hour, trying every way I could to make him take me back, refusing to admit the truth to myself. I cried saying goodbye, and he begged me to stop. “I need you to be strong for both of us as I have a long drive home now. I love you so much. Stop crying, please understand and be strong” he begged me. So, I did. We kissed each other a million times over like every kiss was our last kiss. Sadness hung in the air. “I will come back once or twice a month to check on you” he said, but we both knew that we were trying to make ourselves feel better, hanging onto that last little speck of hope.

For the next few days, I went through mental and emotional turmoil. I called him crying, cried on the morning of my birthday instead of smiling, cried for three days. I felt like I had lost him all over again and my heart had been ripped from my chest. I texted him trying to get him back until I realised the truth, we could never make it work. We just couldn’t. The problems up against us were never going to change, our individual paths of self-discovery were only just beginning, we had long roads ahead of us. He thanked me for finally coming to that realisation and that he was hoping I would at some point.

I am proud of myself for realising these things and sticking to it. The old me would have wriggled my way back into his life and ignored the realities, which in the end just makes everything worse and from my experience, you become enemies.

I still love him, but I love him enough to set him free. He loves me enough to set me free. We love ourselves enough to set ourselves free.