The Day My World Was Shaken (TDMWWS)

(This story is the prelude of “what makes a good life”…you will see what these things are in the articles to follow). Considering my age, my experience, and how many relationships I’ve had, I am very fortunate that this is the first time in my life I’ve felt heartbreak.  Some of you might be hating on me right now, but just hear me out. Yes, I have felt heartache after my previous relationships ended…..but…..well, I’ve never been the one to receive the break-up.

However…..I expect receiving the bad news in a mature and decent manner is one thing….but experiencing what I experienced….was quite another.  I thought I had some serious feelings for this person….our history is a little long and complicated, but now is not the time for that. Through this dealing process I now know that I didn’t have serious feelings for him…but serious infatuation. Lust. So I will refer to him as so.

Lust and I had this interesting and very casual long-distance thing going for quite some time. And finally, through an internship, we would be living in the same city for the first time in our “relationship.” Fantastic.

When Lust arrived in Madrid, he proposed the idea of only seeing eachother. Really? I was stunned. But I was ecstatic. So…in 3 weeks we were together a lot. It was pretty spectacular. And it also got “real” pretty quickly…..and I saw some red flags….but hey, Lust wants to finally do this, so it’s okay….I convinced myself the red flags were more of a light pink….

Lust and I spent an awesome weekend together scubadiving…well I was getting certified, and he was already certified. We also had our first fight that weekend. Nothing big…frankly I was scared shitless of this scubadiving thing, and the day of my test….well I needed some comfort. I’m a strong chick, but I’m a chick…and sometimes we need to be comforted damnit. Well Lust just slept and didn’t do anything. So I got pissed and stormed out of the hotel room.  We talked about it later that evening like adults….and everything was good.

Well 2 days after that Lust felt we shouldn’t see eachother anymore.  I thought I was meeting him at a café to talk about things he’s had on his mind. I was not at all expecting this. For real? I would have thought that when somebody is about to dump you, you are kind of expecting it. Yes, the news probably stops your breath for a moment, but deep down I would imagine most people know it’s coming. I had no idea. We had a lot of plans for the summer. Not to mention, the master plan was to gives “us” the summer….to finally see where this could go…and then figure out what we were going to do in the fall once the long-distance became a factor again.

So not only did I get dumped completely unexpectedly…..as he knew it too, because as soon as he said “I don’t think we should see eachother anymore” he said “I know this may seem like it’s coming out of left field…” Um….yes…..yes it does….. he also threw in a bunch of shocking accusations, then the cruelty. Who was this stranger in front of me?

I was stunned. I got up and left….before I started yelling….or crying….or puking. Who knew what could happen, so I left. And I walked around Madrid for about 2 hours. Everything looked different. Everything felt different. I felt completely lost.

TDMWWS: Infatuation is bad, and not real

It’s amazing how powerful infatuation can be…even for the smart and intuitive ones that know better. I was infatuated. With a person I will refer to as “Lust.” I thought Lust was the greatest thing and he could do no harm. The truth is, Lust has a LOT of good qualities…aside from being very attractive and sexy, he is extremely smart, ambitious, and has already traveled the world at a young age. A very appealing candidate for me. And all of his “stupid acts” I brushed off as immaturity. And yes, most of them were. But there were a few BIG warning signs an infatuated person does not see. LOVE is NOT blind. Infatuation is.

I’m not sure how I got so carried away. That’s never happened to me before. Yes, looking back, my previous relationships all had a level of infatuation involved. But none this great. And never had I had to suffer such repercussions.

When one is infatuated, you put that other person on a pedestal. And you start conforming to their ways. You slowly start to lose yourself. Well luckily for me, I could be infatuated from afar, as Lust and I never lived in the same place. I had put him on a pedestal, but I hadn’t conformed…..until we were finally living in the same place for 3 weeks. Being in the same place we finally had the chance to get to know one another. In the past, Lust and I always “played it cool”—nothing serious. Well now Mr. Cool was having reactions the complete opposite of “playing it cool” and was acting jealous and insecure. At first I took this as a positive sign---“oh good he does like me!” Infatuation made me have blur vision. And I slowly started changing my character…. I wasn’t being “me”---and deep down, I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I wanted Lust to be real and true. The fact is, I started seeing these signs about a month before we were living in the same place…because we were getting closer, and perhaps he was letting his guard down a bit.

Infatuation didn’t let me see anything clearly. I look back on things that happened nearly a year ago and ask myself, “are you serious, you just ‘accepted’ that?” In the last few months, I built a world for us….a happy fantasy world. I ignored all of the red flags because that is what you do when you are infatuated. I didn’t SEE. After our so-called “relationship” ended, I discovered some big lies he told me…..wow, double side-swiped. I was not only depressed and felt a great sense of loss because of something I created so magical in my head was now gone, but now I know Lust (infatuation) is a liar…double blow to my fantasy world. What was this reality? Who was this real person?

Don’t we become wiser with age? How is it I never dealt with such bullshit before? I mean, I suppose we all have to at some point….but wow. Maybe had I not been so infatuated, I could have seen, really seen, Lust for who he is. The real him. Who he really is, is not at all the person I put on that pedestal. Poor guy, that was a lot for him to live up to. I wanted to love the person I created, the fictitious person I believed in. A very dangerous thing when that person was never real.

Cheers to reality, and loving from that place. Because if you can love knowing all that is real, then you know you’ve found real love.