Okay, so I know that I do not ~need~ a man to be happy. My happiness does not depend on whether or not I am in a relationship. The fact of being alone again is not the reason I am depressed again. Why is it whenever a girl gets really depressed after a breakup, people automatically assume it means she's co-dependent?
I'm not just depressed because I'm alone (again). Yes, that is a factor - I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. But like I said, I don't NEED a man in my life to be happy. I don't NEED to be in a relationship to feel fulfilled. It's just that I'm so damned lonely. I've had a grand total of two relationships now that had long-term potential and then ended suddenly. That's a grand total of two men - only two - that I have been with who treated me in a way that made me feel like I was worth being with. I've had what feels like more than my fair share of meaningless pseudo-relationships. I'm twenty-six and I just wanted the bullshit to be over. I'm just ready to settle down with someone.
Before *Evan, I didn't know what it was like, to be with someone who genuinely liked me and wanted to be with me. I didn't know what it was like to have someone want to talk to me on the phone for hours, about everything and about nothing. I didn't know what it was like to kiss someone, to be held by someone, and to feel the security in knowing they actually cared for me. I didn't realize I was someone who could find a relationship like that. I was already in my twenties when I met him, so I thought that what I'd been getting was all that I was capable of getting.
After Evan left me, I was completely devastated. I had been shown that it's possible for a guy to actually like me for who I am and for a guy to actually want to be in a relationship with me. Somehow, miraculously, I had stumbled upon someone who treated me in a way that I had thought was only possible in fiction, and just when I was starting to get used to this new concept of being cared for, being loved...it was over. How could I go back to what I was more familiar with, after having discovered with Evan what was possible?
I wondered often whether I could ever find that kind of relationship again, and it didn't take long for me to start thinking that maybe what I had with Evan was just a fluke. But then, years later, I met *Fionn. We both fell hard, and we both fell fast. It took a while, but I started letting my guard down little by little. I started thinking that maybe my relationship with Evan was never meant to go any further than it did - maybe I was only meant to be with him to show me what was possible. Maybe my relationship with Evan was sort of training wheels for the real deal with Fionn.
Well, boy do I feel foolish.
Fionn and I lasted longer, but it was only because he didn't know how to break it off with me sooner. I never saw it coming, though in retrospect there were signs. Things I did think were odd at the time, but that I attributed to the large amount of stress he was under, so I didn't pay much attention to them.
And it feels so much worse, going through this all a second time, because not only am I trying to get through the fact that Fionn and I are over, but just being in this situation again just keeps bringing up the first time for me. I'm not just trying to get through each day without Fionn in my life, I'm reliving trying to get through each day without Evan, too.
So I can understand why maybe people assume that what makes me depressed is not having a boyfriend. But it's really not as simple as that.
Think for a moment that your life is a jigsaw puzzle. For the most part, it's complete. You're only missing one piece, but you can still tell what the picture is supposed to be, so it is a minor distraction, at worst. You only really notice it when you focus on that part of the puzzle. Now imagine that one day, you're just going about your routine, when unexpectedly you find the piece that was missing from your puzzle. You felt like the puzzle was pretty okay before, since again...you could tell what the picture was, and you never really noticed the empty space unless you really looked at that part or someone else pointed it out. But of course you're also happy to be able to fit this piece in for a more complete picture. Maybe a couple of months or a year goes by. You realize you are really content with having a complete picture, and are really glad you found that missing piece. You didn't have to move anything around to fit it into place, and you feel a little more satisfied in a way with the picture as a whole.
Now imagine that for some reason, that piece ends up getting pushed back out of the puzzle. Have you ever tried to remove just one of the middle pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? It's impossible to do without compromising the integrity of the surrounding pieces. The piece has fit into that space so well, that when it gets pushed out, it takes with it the pieces directly around it and often large pieces of the puzzle end up coming apart.
That's what this is like, for me at least. For the most part, the pieces of my life were pretty well in place, or were coming together nicely at least - I have a job on campus that is very flexible so it works around my class schedule, I had a group of people I went out with on a fairly regular basis, I was starting to do pretty well in school again. I knew there was a piece missing - I was lonely after Evan, but I'd become content with and used to being alone again. Fionn just fit into that space so perfectly. Not only did I have a job I didn't hate, and not only was I doing well in school, but now I was also not lonely anymore. It felt wonderful to have all the pieces, even though I was getting by alright before (not perfectly alright, but I wasn't doing terrible either).
The problem is that he fit a little too perfectly. When he pulled himself out of the big picture, he disrupted the whole thing, and all that's left to do is either give up or try to start over.
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