La Vie En Rose

Breakups suck. From the gruesome beheadings of Henry VIII’s wives in the 16th century to Tom Cruise and Katie Holms multimillion-dollar divorce in the 21st, the end of a relationship is traumatizing. The mausoleum of breakups is constantly filled with songs of broken hearts, stories of unrequited love, desperate declarations of "You cheated on me less than my last girlfriend. I just need you to stay with me!" At some point in our lives, we will all be victims of a horrible heartbreak. "We need to talk," is the most anxiety inducing phrase in the English language that, more often than not, becomes "I'm breaking up with you." And in this moment of tremendous emotion, we are also given a choice: disintegrate into an empty shell of sadness or shed the skin of the old relationship and rebuild.

Meeting Michael was like that cliché moment in every romantic comedy. Boy enters the scene, boy flips hair in slow motion, cracks a smile at the girl, and the girl is overcome with lust. From the first five minutes I spent sitting across from him in the first class of my college career, I knew he was going to be important to me. We were going to fall in love like wildfire. He was going to be the beginning of the rest of my life. I put together an entire life for us before we even had a conversation. However, as our relationship progressed, I realized that the life I built for us was entirely one-sided. He existed in my fantasy world for three years but never played the active role. Instead of living my dream of relationship security and a lifetime of happiness, this fantasy quickly deteriorated into emotional entrapment.

From a very young age, we all learn about how heat and pressure change an element. We watch our science teachers set chemical fires to reveal new forms of matter. Coal morphs into diamonds only after billions of years of pressure within the earth’s mantle. Firefighters set acres of land on fire to clear dead foliage hoping that something new will grow in its place. In each of these processes, something is changed to reveal something new, something stronger and more sustaining. The end of an intense relationship is a shock to the system. Everything routine and ordinary in your life is gone, but it's not always a bad thing. Movies portray break-ups as gloomy days, sad songs, and bitter loneliness. But it only happens like that if you let it. The roaring blaze of my relationship with Michael was extinguished quickly, however, the patch of land he had burned only damaged one layer. My gloomy days turned into sunshine as I began to rebuild my foundation.

After our “meet cute” in class, we talked all day, every day, and he came over to my dorm every day. We had sex, and we had tickle fights like 12-year-olds, spent every moment together. He was essentially my boyfriend. But for the first three months of our "fling" he didn't want the label of a relationship and could never tell me why. Throughout the beginning of our wild affair, I had to prove to him why I should be his girlfriend — I played the role perfectly. I let him know I was thinking of him throughout the day, asked him about his past, made sure we had a fulfilling sex life, and that all his needs were met. I told myself that I was going to make this boy fall in love with me. I was going to prove to him that we were meant for each other.

I had a serendipitous encounter with Michael the instant I laid eyes on him, but that’s not reality. These moments don’t happen in everyday life. True love can be genuine even if it doesn’t have the grandiose story behind it.

In high school, I dated Austin. There was no cliché movie moment when I first met him. A teenage boy was wearing a "Yoshi" shirt at a friend's birthday party and a girl who was trying her hardest to dance to Pitbull. We danced like fools, and we talked through the duration of the party, and for the six months following. Our first kiss happened on a trampoline in someone’s backyard. I fell hard for this kid, and nothing about it was a fairytale. We were awkward 15-year-olds who spent afternoons watching movies and making toast with peanut butter, bananas, and cinnamon. We made stupid decisions and gossiped about our new-found sex life to our friends. Just like every other teenage couple. Austin and I fell in love without even trying. Our love story didn’t fit in with Taylor Swift’s songs or romantic comedies starring Ryan Gosling, but it was still our story. The feelings I had for Austin were real, even if it wasn’t anything extraordinary. It was my first real love. He made me happy; our ordinary relationship made me happy. Michael and I were never ordinary.

Five months later and dozens of conversations proving to Michael I was worthy of his love, I finally won. “I love you,” he said, softly, the day before we parted for winter break. My heart swelled with affection and satisfaction as I whispered those three weighted words back to him. Love is a powerful phenomenon. Once put into the space between lovers, it cannot be taken back. Actions and words fueled by elevated levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain turn the best of us into addicts — constantly craving affection. As I anticipated, our love was like wildfire; the roaring blaze quickly consuming everything in its path until there was nothing left. Michael was the fire, and I was the wreckage he left behind.

The way that Michael broke me is something nobody should have to experience. Three years of me having to prove to him why I was worthy of his love constantly made me question my self-worth. Was I worthy? Was I worthy of not only his love but also anybody's love? One’s self-worth is confidence his or her confidence or abilities. By the end of our relationship, my confidence was non-existent. This thought embedded itself into my subconscious and tore down every notion that I was worth anything in this world. Looking back on my relationship with Michael, I’ve realized that the person I love should never define my worth. I never needed the emotional validation from him that I craved so intensely. I am the only one who can value my abilities and exude confidence. Michael’s affection should never have forced me to question my value as a human being. If I had known this during my relationship with him, I wouldn’t have put myself through the abuse I did.

Recounting the fond memories of our relationship is like looking at photos through an old-school movie projector. Film traveling through a chamber, being exposed to light, and with a click, displays an image. In our movie, I saw the way he smiled at me and squeezed my leg while I was driving. Click. Rolling over in bed and pulling me close to him. Click. How our inside jokes kept me laughing for hours. Click. I remember every dimple on his cheeks and the freckles on his collarbone. I see his deep brown eyes and a closed-mouth smile that made it seem like he was never truly happy. Between these beatific visions, I see dysfunction. The air is tense in my bedroom. He’s sitting on my bed, leaning up against the wall, arms crossed and legs extended. I’m on the floor. My head is in my hands, muffling my sobbing, making myself as small as possible. Every fight we had followed the same pattern. I was upset, but my feelings didn’t matter. Nothing he might have done could hurt me. I was too sensitive. I was unreasonable. I was wrong. I apologized for something I didn’t even do. He forgave me. There were hundreds of fights, hundreds of apologies, and hundreds of opportunities to leave. I never did. He never did.

In telling this story, I know it may seem like Michael is the villain. But it’s not entirely his fault. I saw the tumultuous nature of our relationship almost from the very beginning. Apart from Austin and a select few others in my life, most of my other relationships have some elements of emotional abuse. My relationship with my father is almost entirely made up of our ability to manipulate each other, but also my constant need for his approval. His love for me, or any of his children really, has always been conditional. He will only display love towards us if, and only if, we are providing him something in return. The three years I spent proving my worth to Michael was minuscule compared to the eighteen years of conditional self-worth from my dad. I think I stayed with Michael for as long as I did because in the lifetime I’d spent fighting for my own parent’s approval, I believed that it was the only way to gain affection. For a long time, I didn’t know that the way Michael treated me was not normal. It was the only thing I’d known.

Within my first year of college, I gained forty pounds. I struggled to find confidence in myself, and when I looked to Michael for reassurance, he wasn’t there. The girls he dated before me were five-feet tall and 120 pounds. Being heavier than all his exes continually made me feel like I wasn't ever enough. When he looked at me, he didn't see me as "the most beautiful girl in the world" and as unrealistic as that is, I never felt remotely close to that standard. I fished for compliments in my most desperate moments, but the most I received was “we should go to the gym and try to eat healthier.” He left me starving for his affection. At one point, I dyed my hair fire-engine red because he told me he liked redheads. It was hideous, but I did it so that maybe he would say I was the sexy redhead he fantasized about. I wore certain outfits around him because of the one time he told me he liked my shirt. When I put on red lipstick and that long dress he liked to go out on a date, his first response was, “Who's driving?" Oblivious to my disheartened expression, he immediately followed up with: "Can you?" We mostly had sex with the lights dimmed because if he couldn't see me that well, he didn't have to compliment my naked body. Right? It was okay that Michael didn’t compliment me. It was unreasonable for me to think that I was the most attractive girl that he's seen or dated. I am not anything special.

Proving myself to Michael became a full-time job. I lost all the friends I made my first year in college and didn't try to make new ones as time progressed. I fell into pits of depression and when I needed my partner, he was unavailable. The support system I thought I had in him did not exist. He was distant, apathetic. On countless occasions, told me that I was too sad to be around and that he had his own shit to deal with. Therefore, he couldn't be there for me. Throughout our entire relationship, my parents and friends from home expressed their disdain for Michael. They did not like him nor the way he treated me. I refused to take their advice. However, part of me knew they were right. I just wasn't ready to admit it. By the time I had finished my third year, I had no friends, was severely depressed, and emotionally shut down by my boyfriend. In that time, I'd built a wall around myself, and Michael was the only one allowed in. I was a fortress with an impossible moat, the tiniest bridge, and the highest walls. I had built my walls up so high that nobody knew what was happening in my castle. Michael had become my master: feeding me, bathing me, tucking me in at night. Isolated from the world and he was my only salvation.

After graduation, I moved back to Colorado, leaving him behind by his own choosing. We were to embark on a long-distance adventure until one of us finished graduate school. Everyone knows long distance relationships suck, especially one as dysfunctional as ours. Every moment was a battle, and finally, I lost the war.

He'd come to visit me for our three-year anniversary, and after he left, things were incredibly tense. On November 17, 2015, three years and one month into our “official” relationship, Michael broke up with me over Skype. It started with a text on his way home from work: “We need to talk.” Of course, that sent me into an angry tizzy. (How could HE say that to me after HE was such a dick to me the other night? He better be apologizing or so help me God…)

When I joined the Skype call, I knew without him even saying the words that it was over. My only reaction that evening was a scream, a resounding screech and an ended Skype call. I was not sad, I was angry. I went to sleep angry, I woke up angry, and for weeks afterward, I was angry. I burned every picture, tore apart every stuffed animal, destroyed everything that had the slightest imprint he was there. And good lord did it feel good.

Emotional growth can happen in a moment where you’re forced to grow up, or over time. In the weeks I had been without Michael, I was re-examining our relationship without the rose-colored lenses. I saw the emotional disconnect, the abusive patterns in our fights, the feelings of worthlessness and cripplingly low self-esteem ingrained into my head because of him. Recovering addicts, counselors, teachers will all tell you the same thing about problems: the first step in fixing it is realizing you have one. This was my realization of the problems Michael had caused me. I finally grasped that the wreckage caused by the fire wasn’t the problem. It was the fire all along, and Michael was the fire.

In the way that fires burn and creates new life, I began to rebuild my castle, starting with the foundation. The walls were not going to be as high, or the moat as deep. I could decorate my castle the way I wanted to. I made it a palace, for I was a queen.

About a month or so later we were talking about our relationship and the next steps to take; I found myself wanting to slip back into the same submissive patterns. Michael could do no wrong, and everything was my fault. But I caught myself; I noticed that I started feeling less and less that I needed his affection. The energy we spent “working things out” was just another way for me to stroke his ego, proving to him why we should be together. I didn’t need to prove anything to him. I didn’t want to try. For the first time in three years, I no longer felt that I needed his approval. Emotionally, I was free.

The attempt to rekindle our affair progressed until March. Three more months wasted trying to salvage a relationship I did not even want until I finally told him how I actually felt. It started as a short text: "We need to talk." It was my turn to say this just wasn't working out.