In June, after four and a half years together (and my record to date), I asked him to marry me. By August I was dumped. I have needed desperately to write about it but have been unable to write. So instead, I turn the recorder on in my phone and just talk it out to the open air. Below are abridged transcriptions:
Fri, Aug 28 3:17AM
Always. After heartbreak or trauma I crave a tattoo.
I think because my emotions are so strong and overwhelming that they aren't just feelings or brain synapses. They are truly tangible to me and I need evidence of that. I need physical pain to match my emotional pain, to leave a mark on my body as part of my healing and processing.
What's interesting is that I just thought about this today. Today marks two or three weeks since we had that conversation and it's the first time I've thought about getting a tattoo. And I wasn't even thinking about getting a tattoo, I was thinking how I usually would have gotten a tattoo by now. And I haven't even thought about getting one, only just now to think about how I haven't thought about getting one.
So if that's how I process emotions, what does that mean? Does it mean I'm not processing this? Does it mean I'm numb to the emotions? Does it mean I'm not emotional about this? I have no idea what it means. I think because I have no idea how I feel about it.
How I feel about it is changing from moment to moment. So for my own sake I'm going to start documenting the things I feel from moment to moment so that I can process what the fuck is going on with me.
For example: I have become unfamiliar with my body. And this manifests in a lot of ways. I had been wearing glasses every day but I just bought some contacts... but that's a minor thing and I don't understand why I did that enough for it to be a good example of what I'm trying to say.
I could say that I have lost eight kilos. I only know this because I have to weigh myself every time I go to the psych clinic for medicine and I was 88 kilos and I knew that I had dropped to like 83 but now I'm down to 80.
True to form I will always find the silver lining, which currently is: the weight is leaving what I have considered my problem areas mostly, like 75-80% is coming from areas that I wouldn't mind to see a little flatter, and only a small portion is leaving my tits and ass. Like, I've still got the significant majority of my tits and ass and that's what matters, so there's that silver lining.
In the meantime, I feel like I'm eating less but I don't feel like I'm eating lose-eight-kilos less. And I should note that I have no idea how many pounds eight kilos is at all. My last shitty breakup was extremely traumatic, and I lost twenty pounds, because I was still living in a country that measured pounds at that time.
How else can I talk about what's happening in my body? I feel unfamiliar in it. I have forgotten how to sleep. Am I a side sleeper or a back sleeper? I feel like I occasionally used to be a stomach sleeper but I haven't done that in some time. I'm unsure if it has to do with the mattress I'm on, but it's been the same since mid-March. It hasn't changed, so it's got to be me that changed. So what changed and why?
It's like I sleep better on my back than I used to. I sleep better on my right side than on my left side. And that's because when I sleep on my left side, my heart starts getting a little palpitate-y like it's struggling under the weight of my lungs? sitting on top of it? Is that what's going on? What else would make it do that. I used to sleep on my back only rarely but now I might spend most of my night on my back, I don't know.
I have lost interest in taking care of my hair. And I have naturally curly hair so that's saying a lot, other natural curlies will know. I have found it really challenging to keep up basic maintenance on my fingernails and toenails. It's like, oh they don't need attention (repeat) OMG they all need attention at once oh they don't need attention (repeat) wait exactly 47% of my nail ends need attention right now stop everything and fix it now. It's so weird it's -- but then other nails haven't grown at all. Even my breakouts are different.
I'm trying to make this new pillow work for my needs. I'm not sleeping properly. I'm sleeping entirely too much like I'll get out of work on a Friday, let's say last weekend I got out of a meeting at 4 or 5 and I came home --
oh, I don't know how to DRIVE any more! I used to be a very aware, conscious driver, even a little bit aggressive, like compassionately aggressive, because you have to be a little bit aggressive to drive in Taiwan without dying. But now I space out, not even thinking about anything, I just become an empty head and I drive at a perfectly boring speed and I try to keep to the right so all the other aggressive drivers can just go around me. I see something on the drive and I realize, I just missed the last three blocks. For three fukkin blocks I wasn't paying any attention at all, oh okay, I'm here now.
What else is weird. Eating is weird. I was brought up in a food insecure household, so now as an adult having food gives me a sense of security. When I feel depressed I start spending money on food. However, when I feel depressed, I have less of an appetite so I'm buying food because I feel the need to have food in my house because it will give me comfort to know that there's food in my house but I'm not fukkin eating it, so it goes bad, and I have to throw it away, and then because of how I grew up I have guilt about throwing away uneaten food that I allowed to go bad or spoil and that just makes me more depressed and it's this fucked up cycle.
I really can't even begin to address how it's affecting my work performance because I'm trying to fly under the radar at work right now. If I start to talk about it and catalog all the ways in which I've been a shitty employee lately then I would have to face the fact that I've been a shitty employee lately and I prefer not to do that. I have been flying under the radar. I've only turned up as a blip maybe twice, and it has been resolved, and they know what I'm going through. I'm managing to get enough work done so that when classes start I won't be behind, I'll be able to do my job and god willing there won't be any more blips.
So what's weird: My eating my sleeping my body my driving my work - that's pretty much everything right?
I feel like I need to catalog these thoughts that I'm having just to keep them straight for my own sake, because I don't really understand what I'm going through. Maybe this can help me make sense of myself. As far as what I've been thinking... I will start with a couple of thoughts that I just had and then leave it, then come back to it and continue to add thoughts as they come to me just to show how completely all over the spectrum my thought process has been. It's exhausting. I'd rather be fucking duct taped inside the world's craziest roller-coaster for 24 hours nonstop. Like that would be easier than my thought process these past weeks.
So the thought I just had was: He knew who I was. We were friends for a year and a half. He saw me picking up a different hookup for every night of the weekend, every weekend. He knew that I was nonmonogamous. He saw me in a relationship with another person and we were both dating other people, happy with it, happy with each other, having a great time. And so when we started becoming a couple and he said what he said on that bench on that beach on that island, when he said I don't know how I feel about it but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and I just believe that we can get through anything.... I believed that. It had been such tooth pulling work to get him to say even that much that when he finally did say that much, I just considered it a win and backed off. When instead what I should have done was right at that moment pinned him to the motherfucking ground, put my fukkin knees on his chest, pinned his arms above his head and been like, Say more about that NOW. Tell me how we're going to get through it NOW. What's your plan NOW. What's your thinking about that NOW. Now not five years from now, now. And I tried to bring it up again (repeat) throughout the years, the five years, the half of a decade that we spent together and he just kept being evasive. And I kept letting him be evasive.
And it speaks again about the ways that the unequal burden of emotional labor falls upon women and the ways in which that fact repeatedly manifested in our relationship, that I kept bringing it up and he kept avoiding it. Even I am now saying I should have forced him to talk about it -- no he should have forced his fukkin self to talk about it, but since his ass wasn't doing that...
I keep waffling on my feelings toward him. In one moment I'm all--you know what fuck him and the thousands of dollars and the sixty fukkin months of my life that I wasted on him while he was pretending to love who he pretended I was.... and in that moment I mean it 100% from the poisonous pits of my blackened heart. And then fukkin 20 minutes later I'm saying to myself, if only I could have found a way for us to get married online on Zoom or whatever then he'd be stuck with me. And he'd be forced to work through it and deal with his feelings about it and work out a compromise that could work for both of us.
How do I feel right now right this second? Right this second I feel like if he wanted me in this moment, he oughta know what he oughta do if he wanted me, and he's clearly not doing anything, which must clearly mean he doesn't want me. And if one conversation about my needs can cause him to pivot that drastically, one conversation, then after 5 years! of me going through so many different kinds of hell just in order to stay by his side he can't be bothered to do what little it would have taken to keep me or even to get me back, then he Does Not Care At All. Clearly. That's where I'm at right now.
Another moment and I'll think to myself, if he were to come back, I wouldn't want him. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't take him. And then in another moment my fucking heart cries out, I would take him back right now, he would only have to say one word, and I would take him back with each and every one of his faults that hurt me over the years, I would welcome all of those faults and that man who hated me so, I would welcome it all back in a fucking heartbeat.
That's not where I'm at right now, but it's where I have been as I flit from moment to moment. I guess that about brings us up to speed.
Fri, Aug 28 7:47PM
Right now I feel like: I'm so relieved. Because I was willing to put up with a lifetime of his self-defeatism, his irrational anger, and his general negativity, but now I don't have to. I don't have to be frustrated by someone who just gives up and then complains about a situation while refusing to do anything to resolve it.
This bedroom that I'm sleeping in right now, that I have been sleeping in for five or six months, has got the loudest air conditioner of any place I've ever lived in my entire life, and I just... go to sleep! But he wouldn't be able to spend even one night in this room without losing his mind. He would go insane he'd be so angry about it. And guess what? I'm doing just fine.
Sun, Aug 30 2:09 AM
From my perspective, nothing changed! Nothing has changed. From my perspective, nothing changed except we had a conversation.
From my perspective, I am the exact same person right now that I was before the conversation, so... I guess I just don't understand how having that conversation means he can throw away... ME. and US. and EVERYTHING that we went through together and everything that we meant to each other, and all this is past tense now because it's been over two weeks, maybe three weeks, feels like a year, and I just keep waiting for him to fall all over himself to apologize and reach out to me and be like oh my god I'm so sorry what was I thinking I'm a fucking fool what do I need to do to make it up to you -- because from my perspective nothing changed, all that happened was we had a conversation and so I don't understand.
Because he is so defeatist and so pessimistic, I wonder if he believed before I even left Korea that we were gonna break up. Even though I never wanted to do that at any point, because he's so defeatist and pessimistic, he believed that and made it come true. That's what I wonder. I wonder if, when the conversation happened, he was just like, ope here it is, may as well just sever the cord and get it over with just like I knew nothing good could ever happen!
If that's the case then that makes it even worse, makes it so selfish of him just to indulge his sick pessimistic fantasies and punish me, make me have wasted thousands and thousands of dollars, half of a decade, and to hurt me the way that I've been hurt just because he's such a pessimist and he just wants the worst thing to come true at all times and just insists on it. Maybe that's not what happened, maybe he never saw it coming and he was really blindsided and it just goes against all of his principles but that's hard for me to believe that because for me nothing changed! I am now exactly who I was five minutes before the conversation, during the conversation, immediately afterwards, and even five years ago, six and a half or seven years ago when we first met! I'm still the exact same person that he always knew me to be. I'm so furious for him doing this to me.
Sun, Aug 30 9:29PM
Right now if he called me up or if he sent me a message and said, I'm an idiot, I'm sorry, what was I thinking, please take me back so we can work this out, I would. No conditions, no questions. Right this second he could have me back. I wouldn't make any -- okay well we have to -- no I would just say thank god.
If I'd found out a way for us to have gotten married online then when we had the conversation he'd be stuck with me. He couldn't just say that's a dealbreaker and be done. He would have to talk it out, work it out, but because I couldn't find a way to do that he was able to just cast me aside.
Tues, Sep 1 1:19AM
I wonder if he has started cataloging all of the little quirks and traits and things about me that he won't miss. All of the little annoyances that used to piss him off but he would let it go because we were in a relationship. I wonder if now he's looking back, kindof the way I am and thinking to himself, well at least I'll never have to hear her say (whatever) again or never have to find her underwear on the couch again for example. We've all got little things that annoy us; Lord knows I'm over here thinking I'll never have to be the only one fighting to save us anymore, only have to save myself. Over here thinking at least my air conditioner isn't causing someone to get irrationally pissed off and just run their mouth bitching about it nonstop every day for hours on end. I wonder if he's over there doing that, thinking to himself, God I'm so glad to be rid of this and that and the other, never to be given a lecture on feminism ever again never to be told I'm using the word "triggered" wrong ever again... Is it shit like that? He's over there singing hallelujah? Is that why he isn't contacting me at all?
I get -- philosophical is too big of a word for it and pensive is too small. I get caught up in my thoughts in the rare times like these, which are times that I don't feel one way or the other about him. I don't feel broken hearted desperate that he would reach out to me and say oh my god you're the best woman i'll ever find, nor do I feel that fukkin asshole how dare he create a false pretense for five years and waste all my time and my money. I do not feel I wish we'd already gotten married nor do I feel I wish I'd never met him. Very rarely do I get caught in this I-don't-know-what-I-want middle place. I'm usually oscillating wildly back and forth like a pendulum on crack.
When I get in this ambivalent indifferent noncommittal place it's almost more depressing. When I feel unaffected by any desires regarding him is when I feel most lost, and maybe that's because he has been an anchor for me for so long that when my purpose is tied to him (whether it is I hate his guts or please god come back to me) at least it's still tied to him. And the times where I don't know what I want, that's when I start casting out the longest fishing lines.
I sent a letter to a director of education up in the aboriginal mountains and villages to say like heeyyy my contract will be out this time next year, are you going to be looking for anybody sure would like to hang out in the mountains... or I looked at google earth and I found the upper and lower latitudinal coordinates between which reside climates that I enjoy, and I started where I currently am on the globe and started rotating west, and wrote down the name of every even semi-inhabitable country. Like it had to be notoriously war-torn for me not to write it down (which is a surprising number of countries unfortunately). And when I got back to where I started then I scrolled down into the southern hemisphere, found those same opposing coordinates, and scrolled east, writing down the name of every country that fell within the two latitudes of the climate that I like. Now I've got a list of somewhere between four or five dozen countries and I'm writing down what is required to teach English (there some of these countries I haven't found any information on teaching English there, maybe it means they don't want foreign English teachers, maybe it means i haven't looked in the right place, or I would have to do something else or they don't want foreigners at all)...
but the ones I can find, I'm writing down cost of living, salary, whether I could save money, whether the jobs provide housing or I find it, what is the health care like... and then I'll use those things. (and there's a few other categories I can't remember) but i'm finding this on like 60 countries give or take right now in these moments where I don't fucking know what I want. That's the scale of how seriously I have no idea what I want, that I'm literally looking at the entire globe to figure out what I want. I am so ignorant, I am so devoid of any knowledge about my wants or even wants at all that in order to narrow it down and find what it is that I want I first have to start with the entire planet.
I know a few things I don't want, that's a little helpful at least for now. And I know that for now I should just keep living where I am, keep working where I work, keep saving what I can and just... keep taking my medicine, waking up in the morning, going to work, rinse, repeat... because apart from that I really don't have any wants. I have a few needs like I need to sleep, eat, shower... But even those things become difficult to force myself to do. I'll stay up on Sunday night until fukkin 3AM putting off a shower when I know I have to wake up at 6AM to start the school week but because I don't WANT to take a shower or even work or I don't want anything ...
I don't even want food so I just keep snacks around in the house. Because I start feeling hungry and it's the time when I would start preparing and getting ready for a meal, but when I start thinking about food my brain is like nah not interested i'm good and so I don't get anything together until the moment when I finally have enough hunger that I can't ignore it anymore. At that point still nothing sounds good so I have to just have snacks like small bread things that I can just put in my face, chew, drink water and they'll expand in my stomach and my stomach will just shut up and leave me alone for a few hours
so yeah basically i'm doing great.
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