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Patience Really Does Pay Off...

Love exists!!!

By Ann BreadinPublished 6 years ago 16 min read
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I had transformed, I had crumpled like an aluminium can under a bus, with the pressure of finding the perfect "romance" (which, in my head was something a lot different to my reality). I had wasted time with a person who wasn't so much a character as a list of symptoms for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. And I forgave him, excused him, too many times.

The thing was he had stepped into my life at a vulnerable juncture. My grandmother had recently had a massive stroke that had taken away her independence and left her paralysed and having been really close to her, I was struggling to see her like that. He had swooped in with a gentlemanly manner and I had wrongly seen him as that archetypal "knight in shining armour" in my vulnerable state.

But as time passed the cracks began to show. His controlling side came out. I gave up the gym, which I loved, because he said I didn't need it and preferred me weightier (nobody should dictate to you how you should look!) He would berate me for the small things like chipped nail polish when I had just been too busy to care, "unsightly." He would drop time with me and pick it up again on his terms, and I allowed it all because my confidence had packed up and moved to another galaxy or dimension, which he knew all too well.

I completely lost who I was and was focused too much on his "control" over me.

I share this really because I know I won't be alone in this and if I can save even one more woman from that unnecessary drama, the cat and mouse chase of emotional and verbal abuse, of feeling a "pull" or a commitment to a person like that, it'll be worth it. Anybody who can make you feel that bad needs to be gone from your life; they are never worth the pain.

There were tears, there were arguments, but every time I had a shred of fight in me to say, "I'm not a robot and I deserve to be treated better than this," Mr. Narcissist wouldn't get it and he would fly into a stubborn silence which in turn would draw me back in, even apologising for challenging or arguing with him! And of course that would please him immensely. Appealed to his inflated ego. "No matter what I do she'll chase me." Craziness.

At a certain point, I don't know quite how it happened, but my confidence came knocking at the door gradually and I became less tolerant of it. Eventually Mr. Narcissist and I came to a very uneventful end. And I did hit a slump because suddenly without him a fear hit me: what now? I have no "other half" and I was somehow dependent on that weird relationship to keep me going, I had loved him, as twisted as it was. And there came a big slump of depression with the tears the box sets of SATC and similar, and as much sugar in ones diet as to sink a ship, (so to speak, my relationship with myself).

One day, I was in my local pharmacy and I knew I had lost track with my weight. (My favourite clothes hadn't fit for a while and I'd been saying "I won't weigh myself til I do start fitting into them" even though I was making no effort to cut down on junk food. It had gone too far.) And I took the plunge to stand on the scales and there it was, I had gained 30 pounds plus. I'd been in denial believing Mr. Narcissist's claims that I was sexier like that (bigger bust) but it didn't look or feel right on me.

No matter what shape or size you are, you should go with what feels right for you, but for me personally I felt awful. So I went to the gym, and I booked a trainer. And immediately started feeling better just to have made the first steps. I then took time for my inner self, or spiritual self if you like. I reconnected with all the small things I was interested in that I had pushed aside for that someone else's interests, which quite frankly were boring in comparison.

I then got back into my reading and creative writing. Gradually I made time in my life for me. Which sounds so strange now! "Me time" is the most important thing you can do in your life, after all the only person you are with 24/7 is you! You just can't be your own enemy, it's pointless. I also reconnected with some friendships that had been quite damaged from my time with him (him calling out of the blue, me dropping them for him, him expecting that from me, so the pattern continued...) and found out some home truths about myself that I just hadn't faced up to before. Things I should have been doing had I had a free mind, to study and learn and explore.

Life with him had been compressed and blinkered and that condracticted the free spirit I have always been since childhood, when I was letting my imagination run free with the rainbows and woodlands and coastal ventures.

And outsiders, friends and family, well they could see the things I couldn't while I was wearing the inevitable, cursed, "rose tinted lenses." Easy to see what they saw now but at the time it was "he does lots of nice things to show he cares" or "you don't know him the way I do"...

Ugh.

In fact, ughhhhhh!!!

It wasn't how I initially believed a female can behave.

My inspirations growing up were Agent Scully and Lara Croft.

Strong independent fierce types who didn't rely on any man (although if they did, Fox Mulder was never a bad choice).

So here I was determined now to go ahead independently and gain as much (mental and physical) strength as possible, I certainly wasn't looking for anybody else and had become quite cynical, not that I didn't believe there were any good men out there, I just didn't believe any good men would particularly attract to me. That maybe I was a magnet for the bad types and if so, better a lone soldier than go through anything like that again.

For the first time in a long time I was feeling good. GOOD!

AND I was seeing results from the gym.

My inner confidence was showing, particularly in the workplace, (a nursing home) where staff had previously pre-judged me on not being "all there," well I truly really hadn't been in a way. Distant, dozy, "ditzy," not the intelligent and inquisitive sort that lurked, sort of buried, deep within.

Suddenly I had burst into light and I was fighting back against those who only sought to take me for granted. I had opinions, I had a smile that the most sour faced of types couldn't easily wipe off.

And then... Just when I wasn't looking or asking for it, into my life walked an incredible man. In the workplace, of all places. His mother was staying for respite care and, I wasn't sure at first why I felt so compelled to approach him but there was an initial fascination with his look and his mannerisms and his verbal delivery. I got along very well with his mother and was informed that he was single... I sort of brushed it off, still bruised, suddenly a little side of poor confidence kicked in and I was thinking "well what would he see in me?"

And, I let the moment slip through my fingers.

She went back home, and I felt I'd missed my chance and suddenly I was really bothered about this. This man, who had leaned back in his chair and said I was "an absolute delight," was gone from my life and it unsettled me. Suddenly, "Miss Independence" was pining for a man I had known little about but got enough of a glimpse into who he might be. What to do?

What to do...?

It started to haunt me just how actually we HAD clicked and how things he had said resonated with me. How sweet his smile was and how statuesque he stood with a distinctive hairstyle adding to his handsome appearance.

And, this yearning for him suddenly drove something in me that I never expected: a desire to make the first move. I just couldn't let this go.

I had previously and wrongly thought of Mr. Narcissist as a "soulmate" but nothing could have been further from the truth, then I had ceased to believe in the concept of soulmates and now, I was pining for who I absolutely believed really WAS my soulmate! And I had no idea where to even begin.

Weeks passed. I got along with things, I continued with my gym, but this feeling of missing this man just wasn't going to leave me. And I mulled over alternate ways to contact him, searched on Facebook to no avail, ugh no sign!

It was suggested to me that "it wasn't meant to be."

And this greatly upset me.

I more than ever needed to counteract that. I more than ever felt there was a chance of a real connection and who was anyone to suggest anything different when I had personally witnesses him catch and hold me eye contact? When the three of us myself him and his mother had these incredible if short lived conversations, that had kept me wishing for more of the same? When his mother had privately given me a knowing look and said "my son is handsome isn't he, but then, a mother WOULD say that..." catching my blush with a certain sparkle in her eyes?

Weeks passed of trying to figure out what to do.

I even had a tearful moment with my cat (he nudged my shoulder in an odd yet affectionate way with a paw resting on me for a prolonged moment!)

I just thought, "Why do I always realise things too little too late? Does it happen to everyone, or just me?"

It didn't SEEM to happen to anyone else I knew, they just seemed to breeze through life just fine enough.

Yet here I was facing obstacles again.

Then...

One evening at work yet another lady came in for respite care.

Only, she was wearing a top I instantly recognised.

And... on checking the label, my suspicions were confirmed.

Her laundry had gotten mixed up, she was wearing a top belonging to the mother of my Mr. Right! Just like that, I had a chance. Looking at the label and seeing her initials (which I had written in), was a great sensation. A wave of elation washed over me! If one could indeed receive "signs" from the universe, then this was undeniably mine. "Don't give up!" and just like that I had a chance to contact him.

So, upon being given his number, did I? Did I leap at the chance and dial his number into my phone and eagerly inform him that I had his mother's top?

Erm. Nope...

Fear set in. I suddenly actually had no idea how to start the conversation and suddenly started thinking about all the things that hadn't previously entered my head like; "what if he only liked my presence in the home but will actually be weirded out by my effort to contact him?" Or "what if he questions me ringing him at all and how dare I obtain his number, and all that?"

Ughhh!

Suddenly I was disarmed.

I've never been forward before!

Is that a good thing though?

Because given previous experience, what has being the opposite way actually earned me?

But how do I be... forward, yet not so forward at the same time? After all I don't want to scare him off and OH these butterflies threatening to eat their way menacingly through my stomach when I even think about it??!

I programmed the number into my phone, shaking even at the idea I might accidently hit "call" while doing that, and decided to sleep on it and start the next day with a fresh mind and a renewed confidence and do it then.

I think I slept well, I don't remember but I do remember waking into a fresh mindset of "I'll do it, by 11am at the latest I'll have called him and however it goes, I'll know either way..." I was due to start a late shift at work starting 1:30pm and I knew if I had left it til then, the whole day would pass by without ever having done it and then it would roll on from there into the blavk hole of bever getting to do it but REALLY wishing I had...

The morning ticked away and 11am did indeed arrive and I found myself staring at his number on the screen and feeling physically disabled to hit that phone symbol. Suddenly THAT phone symbol, which I had previously hit time again with no thought whatsoever, represented some gateway into the unknown that posed some potential threat of rejection.

Suddenly THAT phone symbol seemed to overtake the entire screen and GLARE at me like a double sided sign (one side: danger of death! Other side: caution: happiness ahead?) Ughhhhh! The gamble!!! The risk!!!! I was on the verge of some sort of panic attack and couldn't possibly operate on this ludicrous level of nervous energy. I had to burn it off somehow. So I took myself off on a walk.

And when my walk came to its end I took myself into the local Asda. And its busyness did nothing to calm my nerves...

I wound up, on a perfectly sunny day, pacing up and down a narrow street near a health centre until it dawned on me I might appear to be part of some pre-planned drug heist to the untrained eye. And I imagined the surreal scene taking place me being arrested and questioned when it was all perfectly innocent...!!

I looked at that looming symbol again. THAT. Symbol.

And, here at something past 12, my finger made contact with it. It was just time to act and see what happens.

Heart in my mouth and eyes wide I heard ringing on the other end.

And ringing.

Here's something I hadn't anticipated; what if he just didn't answer any unrecognisable number, or was busy himself?

But around 6 rings in (not that I was counting or anything) he answered. And I stuttered, thrown off, a brief introduction and "I have your mother's top, it turned up in someone else's laundry..." (which had always been the fall back if all else failed, to say it was all about getting the top to him anyways...!!)

And... he responded positively. Was happy to hear from me, asked me how I had been doing and before I knew it we were sailing into a conversation. Most of which is fuzzy now because of the mood in the moment "it's going well!" (although I had admitted to being nervous, then internally asked myself "why have I just said that??!"). We agreed on arranging to meet up as he'd been meaning to thank me for the care I'd provided his mother and, in turn I could return her top to him. And he'd "text in the next couple days." By the end of the call, my nerves were gone and replaced with happiness. I had done it! Nothing bad happened! I went to work replaying parts of our conversation in my head suddenly feeling an excitement I'd never expected to feel, ever.

Then...

Day 1. Silence.

Day 2. Silence.

Day 3. Silence... Til about 1pm. Then in my lunch break during an "early" shift, I picked up my phone to find a text from him. It started off looking quite negative at first, sorry to say his mother wasn't too bothered about the top and wasn't feeling up to seeing me, it's not me, "I can assure you" and my phone hid the rest of the text with "see more" til I would click on it. My heart sank expecting the text to then open up maybe along the lines of "and thanks for being in touch but there's really no need to meet up after all"? So... nervous again I hesitated.

Ughhh...

But a pleasant surprise awaited, suggesting "however if it's not inappropriate" he would be keen to meet me for a coffee and thank me in person for all I did.

I didn't know how fast to respond to let him know "it's NOT inappropriate!!!" (although, I worded my response in a more subtle tone than that). From there, we had this wonderful pattern of text exchanges which revealed two like minds and, we abandoned the idea of meeting in a coffee shop in a quiet town for meeting up in our favourite city, 1pm on a Saturday.

On this Saturday, I was still so nervous. I didn't text him at all incase it came across as "too much" and I overdid the make-up because I wasn't really sure of what I was doing, then all sorts of things were in my head "what if we have nothing to talk about, and it dissolves into awkward excuses to leave? Or worse, he disappears when I've gone to the toilet"... Silly fears and doubts that I would try to quell by re-reading our lovely text conversations...

Travelling into our local city by bus added to the tension because it was an hour long journey to sit and contemplate. I combatted this by listening to music... Not that it completely worked.

At 12:55 I was walking down the street to our agreed meet up place when my phone pinged, a text to confirm he was there waiting, and a final surge of nervousness washed through me til I turned the corner and saw him... Looking as handsome as I'd remembered in a lovely shirt, jacket and jeans combo.

He clocked me, our eyes met and we both smiled... And from then on somehow we hit the ground running. We never stopped talking, a short meet up became 8 hours and I was still keen to stay longer, (which made him laugh!)

I could go on, how it wasn't all instant and it took some time for us both to fall into place but really, ultimately, in this moment now I'm standing strong 8 months into our relationship completely and mutually in love, and being continuously romanced and treated with a respect and care that I've never known before.

So that's my long winded way of saying, life can really be that unpredictable and love really does exist. And I firmly believe now, that when it's meant to happen it will. Oh and his mother was keen to see me (that part had been put into place to decipher what my true intentions were), and welcomed me with open arms the moment we came to visit her, as a couple.

Life can be wonderful, and it definitely all has to start with that first initial connection to yourself, who else is going to put you right?

love
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About the Creator

Ann Breadin

Hi I'm a free spirited sort who looks at the world a little alternatively, colourful and often misunderstood by the masses as a result... Proud of that!

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