Part 1 of 2 It was always such an embarrassing moment for me, whenever a new doctor or new nurse would ask the question: “Why did you do it?” ‘It’ being trying to end my life.
The simple answer of course is I’d wanted my life to end. I was in too much emotional pain; it became unbearable. But the reason for that? I felt like a walking, talking cliché every time I began to explain.
My three year relationship had just ended, and it was him that broke it off.
I’d been aware how lost I’d become within the relationship for a while, especially for someone with Borderline. But before I lost myself in it, it was the first healthy relationship I’d been in. I guess that’s part of the reason it was all too easy to lose who I was along the way. All he wanted to do was care for and protect me. To understand me. He was proud of the fact that I invested so much time into my writing, especially about my mental health. It helped him figure out some things about himself along the way, as well as his brother.
I guess now that it’s ended, we’re considered one of those “pandemic relationships”. We met before the world seemed to go into lockdown. So pretty immediately, we didn’t have your average kind of beginning. The world went into lockdown and the rest of the world was beginning to experience what the last nine or so years of my life had always been – the isolation. I saw and read online about people struggling to adjust to a life of isolation and I’ll admit, it was hard for me not to scoff considering what my life had already been like. I could only think to myself, “Welcome to my life,” as I read others’ recent experiences. Considering just how long I had been isolated before the pandemic, I found that I’d become extremely jaded about the topic as it became more and more relevant in the world. As it became months for the rest of the world, I thought to myself “Go five years without seeing or even having friends.” It was hard not to be bitter about it since it’s just normal for me. It forced this new relationship I was in to progress quite fast, but I was extremely grateful for him.
Cut to the end of August 2023; him saying he needed a break. It devastated me but if he was unhappy, of course I’d do what I could to help. A week went by agonizingly slow, and I felt myself preparing for bad news. I just had a feeling. So why was I still completely and utterly blindsided when it turned out to be true? He wanted out. He was done.
My Borderline can bring out the best and the worst in me. I sat with the pain for as long as I could before I found myself writing a note to my parents and one to him, and making an attempt. Because in that week long break before he officially ended it, it became glaringly obvious just how much I’d lost myself in this relationship.
I found myself back in Form 1 at the hospital, wondering; Is there something beyond this? Beyond him? If there is, I can’t see it. I can’t picture it. He’s all I had. He was really all I had. I depended on him in every way, something I always tried to ignore as time went on. And I guess I stopped wanting to have a life outside of him, one that’s not dependant on someone else.
He was it for me. His world became mine, not the other way around. The enormous lack of his presence was too much. It felt like every single person, all the friends I’ve lost over the years, magnified.
Three years of nearly every single day and night with him. Through the pandemic, through all the ups and downs, the good and bad, the exciting and mundane. All the plans we made. To this day I still miss the people who left me behind with no explanation or warning. But nothing as painful as this. I’ve never felt the absence of someone like this.
How do I go back to the room I opened up to him to call his own? How do I go back to sleeping in a bed I spent three years right next to him in? It’s always the nights that are hardest. It was him that would wake me from bad dreams, who held me whenever I woke up crying from nightmares and assured me that I was okay, that he was there.
It might seem like he was complicit in further isolating me, but I know that’s never what he’d wanted to do, or meant. But it happened nonetheless. I waited for him every day to get back from work. He would pick up my prescriptions. His friends became mine, as any of the remaining ones in my life kept drifting away. His family considered me family. He was my support system. I even lost my writing – this is pretty much the first time in two years.
He was supposed to protect my heart, help mend it from all the past abuse. Not break it himself.
He gets to move on clean… I get the remnants