To Dump or To be Dumped?

This year has been a year of many firsts, and for the first time in the span of one year, I have both dumped and been dumped. Now, normally my rate of relationships hovers somewhere around one every 4 years with a healthy smattering of single or fallow years between. But this February before the ground had even started to thaw, I was dumped by a guy who I loved. Quickly, smoothly, and moderately painlessly. It was done with the precision of a surgeon, so to not let the wound become infected. A skilful severing of two lives, so that each may thrive. And whilst I wonder now if he could be the one that got away, it was decided most definitely that he would be getting away. Just not by me.

And today, 10 months later. Today I ended things with a lovely person. Well, I say lovely. They are someone's lovely. They are someone's ideal person. They should have been my ideal person. They were everything I could have wanted in a person. Except I didn't love them. I'm not even sure I liked them. As friends, yes. As a comfort, certainly. But when they held me, they could have been anyone. It wasn't that they were holding me, it was just that I liked being held. For the first time in my life, I knowingly or unknowingly strung someone along. They liked me. They may even have loved me in a way. Flowers and chocolates and handwritten notes. All given by them to me. And they received none. We talked repeatedly about how we wanted to keep things casual, when they wanted a relationship I said no. And yet they came back. They wanted what little of me I was prepared to negotiate. And I am a strong negotiator.

On paper, it's clear that I 'should' have ended things sooner. But I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do. Give things time, or 'wait and find out', or even have fun figuring it out. But this morning I woke up and I realized a morning that had all the markers of a perfect morning was actually making me sick. I didn't want to be there. I was trapped. Something was kicking in. My PTSD? My guilt? My fear? I felt awful and awkward. And I wanted them out of my bed ASAP. I spent the day unable to shake the feeling that I needed to end things. But there was nothing to end? From my side it was casual, it could fade in and out of existence like fog, without trace or fanfare. But it became clear when I started the conversation to end things, that fanfare was present.

I've never broken up with someone who really cared about me before. I've never made someone cry. Broken a heart. And I can honestly say it is a deeply unpleasant thing. It would be easy, so easy, to take it all back dry the tears and say I'd changed my mind if only to put a cork in the outpouring emotion coming at me from the other side of the sofa. (Sidenote, this is the exact same sofa I was dumped on earlier in the year, talk about bad feng shui) But I couldn't. Somehow doing that would be more of a cruel thing than anything I had said up until then.

There is some cruel twist of the universe to be loved by someone you cannot bring yourself to love back. To see them care. To see their perfection. And know that it is not enough for you. Some truly fated thing, to be the one that gets away. And you do get away. For to be trapped in comfort and love, is still a gilded cage, never capable of loving, never capable of removing that scoreboard in your mind's eye.

I didn't realise I was in a relationship. But hey. If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck. Get ready to duck.

I wish this gave me some kind of closure on being dumped. And maybe it will, months from now. But for now. Right now I feel like an evil cruel gremlin. A green beast. A mystical creature dooming unrequited love in helpless souls. I feel like the Grinch.