They say the ghosts of our past come back to haunt us, right? Well, mine did. In case you aren’t sure who this ghost I’m referring to is, check out part 1. Now, we last left off with my boyfriend disappearing without a word. I was sad, hurt, and I was struggling with how to move on after the end of a relationship with zero closure. Given the silence on his part, what else was I to assume? But, as if this story couldn’t get any more crazy, we talked after three weeks and it only made things that much worse. How?
SCENE:
Phone rings
I look at my phone and I notice the contact, X – my boyfriend. My heart begins to beat fast, a look of shock appears on my face, and I slowly slide the phone icon over to accept the call.
Me: Hello?
Him: Hey
Silence, long silence
Him: How have you been?
Me: Alright. It’s been a few busy weeks with work, school, and some other things.
Him: Wow, it sounds like you’ve been quite busy. I’ve been pulling long shifts and honestly feel super exhausted.
Me: I’m sorry to hear that.
Another long silence
Me: So I haven’t heard from you in three weeks.
Him: Yeah I know…my phone broke.
…
END.
Cut the scene! He said what? His phone broke!?!?! The second he said this, I didn’t know how to feel. Was I supposed to feel sorry for him because of his situation? Admittedly, I did. Or was I supposed to be a pissed-off girlfriend who hadn’t heard from her man in weeks? Kind of felt that too tbh.
Anyways, we get to talking. As you can imagine, a conversation that started off on this foot didn’t go very well. In my mind, I was telling myself to play it cool, be calm, and dim my emotions that had been welling up during the past few weeks. In every hard conversation, I always like to establish and clearly state my intentions for them (thanks for this tip @ Sex with Emily Podcast!). I was clear about two things: expressing how his actions impacted me and coming to a mutual understanding about each other’s feelings. What I wasn’t clear on – where I wanted this relationship to go. Was I willing to look past these three weeks and continue my relationship with him? Or did the recent events make it clear that the relationship needed to end?
As I would discover shortly into the conversation, there are two things that don’t go together well: feelings and facts. The more and more I explained my feelings, the more I lost touch with the facts of the situation. The fact that his phone was broken was lost on me as my anger bubbled over. I only sensed my emotions that stemmed from the situation and blew it up into something way bigger than it was. One thing I cherish and also despise about my personality is my ability to feel things deeply. On the good side, I’m intentional with what I say to people and how I act towards them. When I show my care for people through my words and actions and someone feels that I truly care for them by what I say and how I act towards them, I genuinely care – deeply. On the flip side, I cut with words just as deeply as I feel my emotions.
He wasn’t just this boy with a broken phone. No. He was disrespectful, inconsiderate, lacking regard for human emotion, lazy, and more. These were all the words I swung to describe his character. Leaving me in silence for three weeks wasn’t fair, but throwing these words at him wasn’t fair either. I was too caught up in the way things were in August, to realize why things were how they were at that point. He would’ve spoken to me if he could, but I let the emotions boil over and create a completely unnecessary mess.
Despite my words, I’m not sure if I could’ve done anything to change the outcome of this conversation. Honestly, looking back, I think what happened was for the best, even if it does sting a little. So what happened? We’ll get to that next week.