For two days, I had anxiety in my stomach and thoughts in my head–stuck in sadness and unclearness. It’s the kind of anticipated relationship pain that I’ve experienced before, but this one was different. This relationship has been the healthiest relationship that I’ve ever been in which includes both partners liking each other (I tend to like them more than they like me, but there was a lot of give and take in this one), exclusiveness, communication, friendship, intimacy, respect, and individualism (time balance). We have been dating for almost 4 months now and the first 2 months were the honeymoon stage and the third month was getting comfortable and we were more or less boyfriend and girlfriend. It’s definitely not my first rodeo of breakups and heartbreak. We hung out, ate a lot of Chinese food in the Sunset of San Francisco, conversations about work and life over beers watching Warrior games in an Irish pub, and motivating each other to find new jobs and be better people, and once we went on a trip to Lake Tahoe to go snowboarding and he met my family.
The Irish pub.
We go every time we wanted to hang out after work or we want to see each other. The Irish bartender lads and lassies remembered us and our drinks, that’s how often we went. Located on upper Haight Street, where parking is easy to find and sometimes free, where it’s more difficult to dodge wannabe hippies (not hipsters–there are lots of hipster techies around these days taking over little parts of the city) than dodging pit bulls (don’t get me wrong, pit bulls are amazing dogs, so sweet and so loyal)—you get the metaphor. Upper Haight is a part of San Francisco that is still in its authentic form, weird, strange and curious.
Both of us are 25 years old and in the same part of our youth/young adulthood, finding a job, figuring out a career path, travel, explore and solidifying ourselves as young working adults. It’s definitely a change compare to the past two people I’ve dated. I was challenged with him, he challenged me to think different, more positive and to make things happen.
Our Lake Tahoe trip was great. We had so much fun snowboarding and our cultural differences were apparent when he met my family. I enjoyed his company and he’s sweet with my family. We stayed at an AirBnb in a winter wonderland in Reno.
So…back to my anxiety for the past two days.
I was anxious because I could feel my heart contracting with the thoughts that this relationship is going to end. In the past month, I notice he has been paying less attention to me and feel like he’s kinda just slowly checking out. He booked his plane ticket back to France departing March 6th and I decided to tell him how I feel through text. I told him that I feel anxious and that I’m sad because I feel like it’s ending between us. He didn’t answer my text and I was about to jump out of my skin. Texting fucking sucks and the time between texting gives me the biggest anxiety more than anything. I texted him two hours later to say “…tell me something…”.
“Yea, we can talk about it.”
That’s all.
The next day we didn’t talk, he didn’t text me or tried to contact me. I felt like I needed it for the situation to rest and it gives me time to think about my plan to recover from potential heartbreak, loneliness, and fear of heartbreak and loneliness.
I asked him if he wanted to have dinner the next day after that and he agreed and then became hesitant about hanging out. He asked me if I was in a good mood. I felt like he wouldn’t hang out with me otherwise. Red flag. I told him I was better.
We went to eat Chinese in our favorite restaurant that we found in the Sunset district called Nan King Bistro. We didn’t hesitate to talk about what needed to be addressed. He actually started it, he was brutally honest and non-affectionate.
“If you expect me to do something on Valentines day, don’t expect too much okay? Just letting you know just in case you cry when I don’t do something.”
I shrugged it off and let him know that I’ve never celebrated Valentine’s day before, but it would be nice if he bought me flowers or sent me a text showing some love. For some reason, I think this stupid holiday is dumb, but I fantasize a day when a guy would be so happy to show me how much he likes me on this day because he gets to. Is that real? Does that exist?
“You’re so honest and simple…and romantic.” Sarcastically pointing out the fact that I feel like shit. At this point, I could have cried if I allowed myself from feeling so unloved and not special.
“I could be romantic. I’m just not romantic with you because I don’t love you.” Sadness fell upon me and my food and life itself. While trying to distract myself from crying, I continued to eat the delicious eggplant dish and drank too much water.
“How are you romantic if you were in love?”
“I would pay more attention to you.”
He somewhere said that he didn’t love me again and at this point, I had baby tears boiling up that I hoped he didn’t see. A rush of thoughts came into my mind. Did I, again, put myself in a unrequited love situation? How could I have thought that we were good? Here we go again (heartbreak). How do I show him how much I liked him and get it the love back?
My baby tear was filled with sadness and disappointment, but I was also turned off by him.
Then we talked about how I’m going to miss him and that I was sad the other night. He said that he didn’t text me back right away because he didn’t know what to say and questioned what else do I want from him. He also mentioned he was high and he didn’t want to answer wrong and then have a disastrous ending.
“We both went into this relationship knowing that I’m going to leave, so there’s really nothing I can say. If you thought that we can stay together and be together, it’s not going to happen.”
My hopeless romantic person, my open heart and risk-taking lifestyle for love was saying, YES. Let’s make this happen and stay together and make a great story out of this.
I went home with him, we discussed about other things and it was a little weird for me. I wanted to go home and cry but I also wanted to stay with him because I know we have limited time together and I don’t want to end it with so many emotions and disaster.
I thought about what he said, he was very direct. It may be because his English is not as good as his French and when he translates what he wants to say in English, it’s more simple and direct, to the point. It was harsh but also true. Yes, I knew that he was going to leave and long distance is not going to work. If I were to do long distance with someone, I would have it either all or nothing, black and white.
I’ve been taking these days to come to terms with myself that this relationship is what it is. I had a lot of fun and in no moment I felt like he didn’t like me until the very end, he just doesn’t love me. This man is a sweet, smart, and my friend. A man who has a lovely sensitive soul that I cherish and he gave me this opportunity to show me that I’m capable of loving again and capable of a relationship! It was so easy with him, with little doubts and lots of communication. I enjoyed every second of being with him and experiencing what we have and I want to do it again but with a person who loves me. I’m sad, but what can I do? I can’t make him love me nor do I want to change his mind and do random manipulative acts to try to change him.
Not a traveling destination post, but traveling through life.
With Love,
Dandelion Traveler
dandeliontraveler 