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(I can hear a sad whistling tune through the breeze, punctuated by a melancholic electric guitar backdrop....)
Right until Christmas, everything was moving forward. My partner and I were planning the next stage of our lives, and my career was finally stabilizing to the point that I could wind down a little in the evenings. Kids were talked about.
On January the 7th, we got a letter from our landlord. He was kicking us out. Not just us, but the entire house. His daughter wanted the property and since his wife had died the year before, she had now become a part-owner of the property.
At that point I saw a few future's die. The logical thing to do would be to buy a property, but that's something that people with time and money do and we suddenly didn't have any of those things. Sure, we could go through the ordeal of moving again, and planning again, and putting our plans on hold for another year or two whilst we uplifted the home we built and painted and tried again somewhere else, but my heart just couldn't do it for a few reasons:
1. I missed my family in home country. I didn't see them over christmas, and with my parent's ailing health, my missing brother, and my sister whose mental health I began to question, I realised that they need me around.
2. I love my girlfriend with all my heart. She is a sweet person. She would be a fantastic and loving mother. She supports me in all I do unquestionably, and asks for little in return except a few tender moments in the evenings. But, when it comes to a deep conversation with her, I realise I have more in common with others than I do with her. We're not intellectually equal, and there's a language barrier. That's not to say that we won't always be not in sync, and she's made great strides in the years we've been together, but I began to realise that some things I just couldn't share with her because she wouldn't appreciate them.
Half of learning a language is knowing the culture, and there were huge gaps in mine for hers, and huge gaps in hers for mine. I thought that these wouldn't matter if two people just loved each other as we clearly did, and that we would conquer all our difference with time.
Part of me still believes this, but I know it would be a slow process of 10-20 years until we were mentally in sync, and by then I may have fully retreated into my own head to the point that I would resent her.
I could also see a future where having a child with her would be enough of a common interest that would bond us together, but I've seen enough relationships where throwing a child into the mix is not the solution, and feelings of guilt and resentment can brew.
It's been a rough few months. Exercise, long baths, TV and Cinema have helped. Alcohol makes it worse. I miss her still so much. It's hard not to cry over a lost future with her. We might have been really happy.
Is it possible to feel extremely happy and forlorn at the same time? That's how it felt inside the relationship. Outside of the relationship I just feel like an empty hollow husk of man who couldn't appreciate something good.
We still see each other, as she comes to collect her stuff or we dismantle furniture together. She's been living with her parents, but will be moving into an apartment nearby to them. I'm helping her move, and giving her my internet contract. She's helping me deregister from the system here, so that I can move back to my home country.
I've quit my job, quit my utility bills, and packing up. I'll be living with my mother for a few months until I can recover and find a new job.
Part of me thinks that it isn't over. That this is all just a weird dream, and that I will come home from work and she'll be there listening to her podcasts and making pasta as I embrace her from behind and forget about the worries of the day. Maybe there's a parallel version of myself where this reality still holds true. I think about my other selves a lot.
Another part of me thinks that it might be on pause. Who knows, maybe I will feel just as lonely back home as I did with her, and then only then will I realise that the problems were in my mind the whole time. Maybe she'll take me back in a few years, after we both try a string of failed relationships and I come to my senses and realise she's the best I'll ever have.
And a final part of me thinks that we'll both just move on, and never see each other again and that will be that. I can live with that if I know that she finds someone to make her happy and can make her wishes come true. She deserves all the kindness in the world, and I don't think I will ever stop loving her.
Change, for better or worse, always seems to catch up.
I'm truly sorry you had to go through all that
Howdy ~tetris, good to see you here.
Reading your thoughts has of course brought up my own experience. I have been on a similar path a long time ago in my life. I met the nicest lady I could imagine in $foreign_country in 1990. I was still a student. We fell in love badly. My options were quite limited at the time, and internet and video calls were not common. But I chickened out of that possible future much sooner than you. It took me quite some time an a "midlife crisis" to realize (among a lot of things), why I had done that. And only after that I could make peace with this decision of mine. It still haunts me once in a while. But "what, if" is not a good advisor. We cannot go back and try again. Even though this dream of going back has been cast into an incredible video to the music of Johnny Clegg: King of Time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ssXuvNf9k
I hope you can make peace with your decision rather sooner than later.
~bartender? Coffee for me, and whatever it takes for ~tetris. He might have a long journey ahead. And give him that jar with the magic refills, will you? Thank you so much.
you can love someone and still need someone else. my last relationship ended on pretty amicable terms, and i still feel a kind of love to that partner. and yet i also have my current partners, and i love them. the end of a relationship doesn't mean you stop loving the other person, and that's ok c:
who knows what the future holds but i don't think there is such thing as "the one", instead there are many, many who have different reasons to love them. and you may end up with one of the many, but be assured that there is always others and that's ok.
the idea of "the one" is seen as romantic but to me, the many is much more romantic. there are many people i could love and be happy with and i chose these people i am spending my life with.
i guess this is to say whatever the future holds, it is not unlikely that you will find someone new c: