Ah Shit.

It's the end of 2015.  And I feel fine.

Not really.  I just broke up with my most recent boyfriend.  This one I thought was the man of my dreams.  And he still may be.  But he is coming out of a 15-year marriage which was blown up (at least in part) by actions he chose to pursue.  Not little actions, either.  Big ones, which span years of that marriage.

And yet, I still love him.  Warts and all.

He is in dire need of fixing himself.  He hates himself.  He has an unending amount of guilt.  He doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of his past.  He doesn't want to do to me what he did to his ex-wife.

All of which I understand and respect.  But it still hurts.  He gave me a taste of what I have longed for - a man who treats me well, who is fun to be around, who can be that manly man I want and still let me be the tomboy I am, who seems to be more emotionally aware than any other man I've ever dated.  So it hurts to have to walk away from that.  (He's not perfect, not by a long shot.  But I know that.  I've seen where he is imperfect.  Can I live with those imperfections?  I guess that's a moot question at the moment.)

I also have my issues, and this relationship really brought them to the forefront.  My dad abandoned me and my sister when I was very young.  It was abandonment in slow-motion.  It happened over the span of 10 years, from when I was 4 through 14.  He had remarried and had another child.  Along with being the daily father figure for three children from his wife's previous marriage, there wasn't room for my sister and I in the picture.  My dad didn't know how to stay in touch.  And he couldn't just cut the ties and walk away.  Rather, he kept us in limbo - never quite accepting us fully, not letting us go either.  And over the years I kept the hope alive that someday he and I would be able to reconcile our lost time.  Then he died this past January and that hope went with him.

And my anger towards him came out.  But that's a different story from the one I want to tell now.  Right now I want to talk about this breakup.

The signs that things weren't good in boyfriend-land started a month ago.  He had gone away for a weekend by himself, to contemplate his life - his recent divorce and the causes of it.  When he came back he was distant.  I should have known that the relationship with me was all too much for him this close to his divorce.  But his distant demeanor tapped directly into my abandonment fear and suddenly I was back in my 4-year old mind, scared shitless that I was going to be left alone.  So I wasn't thinking very logically or, well, normally on any level.  I'm only now coming back to my senses, really.

We kept going for three more weeks.  Things got a bit manic.  I saw it, but couldn't stop it, couldn't recognize it so well because I was part of it.  I was manic with fear.  He was manic with... I don't really know.  We were on a path to somewhere bad, we had started to go off the rails.  Fortunately he saw it too, and was able to do something to end it.  I wasn't.  My abandonment fears would have made me go through hell so that I wouldn't be left behind.  I had done that before, and it had ended poorly.  But I don't always learn the first time around.

He came to see me one evening, and we talked.  It was painful.  I thought I was hearing the same "I don't know what I want" comments from him that I had heard before.  After that he somewhat disappeared again.  I had another week of emotional hell.  My mind was playing tricks on me.  What did he want?  Why wasn't he calling me?  When was I going to see him again?  What if he wanted to break up?  What if he doesn't love me?  What if it was all just a big cosmic joke on me?  Again.

My 4-year old self was in sheer panic mode.

The idea to ask "what do I want" only came up by talking with my sister.  This wasn't just about him. She asked me what did I need?  What did I want?  Well, what I wanted wasn't possible.  And I knew it.  I couldn't fix his issues, and I was only just starting to work on mine.  We were both in the wrong spots at the wrong time.  Dammit.  So my options were to continue on in my misery or to break things off.  In my heart of hearts I could grudgingly accept a break up - as long as I was the one who was calling things off.  My little 4-year old self would be destroyed by being left again, but she was very familiar with the self-preservation tactic of getting out before you got left behind.

But I still didn't like that option.  Somehow the hope that, magically, everything would be fine kept clanking around in my brain.  Magical thinking.  When, really, I knew what needed to happen.

He came over to visit.  We chatted a while about what had been going on in our lives.  It was awkward.  We were talking, but not interacting.  Finally I asked what was up with us, were we just friends now?  He said that was all he could offer me and that he thought he had made that clear the last time we saw each other.  I said no, that hadn't been clear.

Sigh.  So there it was.  We were broken up.

In the long run, we said we both want to leave the possibility open that we can revisit a romantic relationship together in the future.  So it's open.  It's a possibility.  We're both still attracted to each other.  We still care a lot for each other.  Really, it's a very positive break up on the surface.  No yelling, no recriminations, we talked about where we were each at and agreed that to continue on would be in no one's best interest.

But underneath my surface I'm still hurting.  Every break up hurts.  This one only more so because I saw what it could be.  Maybe.  In the future.

In the meantime I have to get back to myself.  My lonely self.  I need to fix my own issues.  My ex's actions (his distancing himself, his issues with clear communication) are not the actions of my father.  Full stop.  They are similar, and thus they raise the spectre of my dad.  But they are not the same.  My dad was an adult, was supposedly my protector.  But he failed at that task.  My ex has actually succeeded in protecting me - by stopping our relationship now instead of later.  But I'm still hurt.  I still need to convince my 4-year old self that this wasn't her fault, that she is still lovable, she is still valuable, that she has always been those things.

I may not be a mom, but I know how hard it is to convince a 4-year old of something she doesn't quite believe.

End of the year.  Time to emotionally clean house.