just another little side note here: I’m also firmly convinced that when people use the word always, there is usually always something actually going on. Always is a word that comes from a place of frustration. A word we use as an amplifier—to strengthen and intensify a point we are usually trying way too hard to make.
Anyway, him pulling back, coupled with the lack of any substantive communication about why, is where I knew something was really wrong.
And I guess that’s the place we all start measuring, isn’t it? Once we feel that something is happening—especially in the absence of any concrete information telling us why—we start hyperfocusing on every single little detail. And we collect these details from every interaction we have—or every lack of interaction—while we try with everything we’ve got to figure out what is happening before it actually happens. We start paying attention to how long it takes that person to respond to messages they used to immediately respond to. Whether they answer on the first or ninth ring. Or not at all. We are constantly sensing whether the connection is still there that used to carry us. And the longer we go without those things—or with fundamental changes in those things—the more we get in our own heads.
And overthinking is a dangerous game. Because that’s the place the chaos starts.
When we get into that spin of overthinking and overanalyzing, then we also change how we act in (or react to) a situation. We don’t see that part happening, of course, because we’re just focused on what the other person is doing. And how that is affecting us. But when we change how we act; they change how they act. And it’s a vicious cycle. Where one side is contributing to the other, and the spinning just keeps getting faster and faster and faster until we have each created a story about what is happening, and why.
A story we haven’t communicated to each other.
A story that is likely very far from the real truth.
A story that, with each word we write, cracks a little more of the foundation we have spent so long building our love story on.
Anyway, the point came where I couldn’t wait to figure it out anymore. So, I called him. I was kind. Genuine. Not argumentative. And he was—immediately cold. Like, cold in a way I’d never seen in him before. Still thinking this was something we could work through, I explained that things had felt different, and I wasn’t sure why. I asked if he felt it too. I tried to get him to talk to me—I mean, we’d spent hours and hours talking about everything we could in this life. Even communication itself, and how incredibly hard it could be when things actually did get hard.
“I guess so,” he confessed. “I mean, we haven’t talked as much as usual.”
I ask him again to tell me what is going on. He reverts back to diversion.
“You always think something is wrong. Nothing is wrong.” (See what I mean about always?)
I calmly point out that there is clearly something wrong because we’d never spoken like this to each other before.
“Things are fine,” he snaps. “They’re fine.” (Uh-oh. Fine. The other danger word.)
“Can we meet up tonight? Talk about this in person?” I ask.
When
you overthink,
you change how you
act in, or react to, a situation.
And when you change how you act—
they change how they act.
And that is how the
spinning begins.
He mumbles something about being tired and “not wanting to get into all this right now,” (All this?) but agrees to meet up. In my mind, we were going to see each other and talk through this thing that was happening that I didn’t understand and seemed to have no apparent cause. In my head, things were going to be ok.
Things were not ok.
He met me in the courtyard near my house. He was leaning against a concrete wall, and when he saw me walking toward him, he turned his head away. Away. He had his arms folded across his chest protectively—closed off. All I can say is—it was really, really surreal. Weird, even. I know, not quite an eloquent phrase for a writer, but, alas. I mean, I guess I was still expecting him to be him. The person I thought I knew so well. The person that just days ago was talking about us and trust and how excited he was for the future. The person whose eyes had started to feel like home. And I’m telling you, there was none of that there. None of it. And it’s almost cliché to say, but when I tell you he looked like a stranger, I cannot stress it enough. I literally did not know the person I was looking at.
I walked up to him and he looks at me.
I force a smile. “Can I get a hug?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything, but stands up like it takes all the effort in the world. And he one-arm hugs me. (Ugh). I remember searching his eyes in that moment and silently pleading with him to open back up. To look like the person who had been my person just days ago.
That person was not there.
As we walked down the street, I could sense that all around me, people were heading excitedly into their Friday evenings. And then there was me. Walking next to a stranger.
I had been cast into some parallel universe where everything was falling apart at a time I had thought things were finally all coming together. I was walking next to a stranger that used to hold my hand. That used to laugh with me. That just the Friday before—was telling me I could trust him. And I should. But this stranger—he was responding to my sentences with one-word answers. For every question I asked, I got nearly silence. He literally offered nothing as input or answers or reasons. And the longer I looked at this person I had known so well—that I thought I had truly cared about—the longer it took to see him. Who was this? This closed-off, cold, passive-aggressive anchor that was dragging us both down at the same time?
We stopped walking and sat on these cold gray stairs on this side street in my neighborhood that I don’t think I’ll ever look the same way at again. During the first part of the conversation—if you can even call it that—he did really well to hold up the “You always read into things” and “nothing is wrong” story. But as time ticked by, he admitted that “maybe he’d been thinking about some things,” and “maybe he just didn’t know anymore.”
My. Absolute. Most. Favorite. Break. Up. Lines. Ever.
Now. I feel like, in hindsight, this was a learning moment. So I’ll tell you—when someone doesn’t know how they feel, then I’m sorry, love, but the answer is no. Unequivocally. Totally. No. I think most of us realize that in the rational part of our brains. But when we’re in the midst of the I can’t believe this is happening moment, we don’t always act with self-respect at the forefront of our decision making. It’s human.
I started getting frustrated with his lack of contribution to the conversation. His coldness. And so anger begins to take over the place concern used to be.
“So are you telling me your feelings have changed completely in a matter of—days? Because I’m pretty sure a few days ago, you were the one pulling me forward.”
He mutters another “I don’t know.” And like—completely
