... and now it seems light-years away.

Last thanksgiving, I got into an EPIC fight with my boyfriend at the time, who I will refer to in this story, as X. I guess it was "technically" the day after thanksgiving, because this "fight" happened at like 4 am. We went to my parents house early that Thursday for midday dinner, and around 6pm, we went to X's mother's boyfriend's family gathering. It was a day full of extreme consumption, mixed families and I remember being pretty happy when we finally crawled into bed. Completely stuffed, and relatively peaceful, I drifted off to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, X was restless, and kept getting up. This wasn't entirely uncommon. X frequently had trouble sleeping, due to being a Type A, overly anxious, basket case about 80% of the time.

At around 3:30am, I could hear him mumbling in the other room. Wondering what the hell he was doing, I got up, in hopes of coaxing him back to bed. He was in the office, putting his shoes on when I entered the room. I sat down on the couch and asked him what he was doing, and he proceeded to lose his mind right in front of me. My eyes were still blurry, and barely open, as a whirlwind of emotional re-verb, blew my eardrums out of this dimension. The flood gates of everything I had ever done wrong, came gushing into that cold room. I remember he told me I was selfish, and that I didn't care about anyone but myself. He said that I constantly took from everyone around me, and that I never gave anything back. Tears were streaming down his face, while he blubbered about how immature and silly I was. That nothing mattered to me, and he was sick of dealing with my selfishness. This went on for at least 45minutes, but that's the only part of the conversation I really remember.

I was calm in the beginning, and tried to reason with him in an attempt to understand what had triggered his lashing out. My attempts at a logical discussion seemed to only make him more upset. "You're always trying to be so rational! I can never win an argument with you," Mr. X screeched back at me. I remember almost laughing at how absolutely insane that sounded. Who would ever use "being rational" as an argument AGAINST someones credibility? The fact that it was 4am, started to sink down inside me hard, and my eyes were so very heavy, and so very tired. I started to cry out of sheer exhaustion. I didn't understand what I had done, but apparently it was all my fault.

Once we both calmed down, I learned that X was upset, because the day before thanksgiving, I said I was going to come over in the afternoon and make cookies. I ended up having to work later than I thought that day, and decided to finish some homework before I went to his house. I called, and told him my revised plan, and everything seemed fine. I guess it wasn't. Apparently, he was secretly mad at me for putting my job and school before him/thanksgiving cookies. This in turn, made me a selfish, immature, horrible human being.

After hearing all of this information, I screamed at him for being such a child and treating me this way. He yelled back, and left the house. I threw myself on the floor and cried until I didn't have any tears left. It wasn't about the fucking cookies, or even all the horrible things he said. It was the fact that this all came erupting out of nowhere, that it was almost as if he spent the early morning hours while I was sleeping, to conjure up some way to get angry with me, just to break me down. I felt so alone, and so helpless laying on the bedroom floor. I felt so sorry for myself and absolutely pathetic. I couldn't believe I let someone talk to me the way X did, and even worse was the fact that I was still so in love with him, I couldn't bring myself to even fathom a life without him.

I eventually pulled myself off the floor, went into the bathroom, and stared at myself in the mirror, for longer than I care to admit. I remember gawking at my face, and being unable to recognize myself; like I was the ghost of a complete stranger. The girl looking back at me was so sad, and so lost. She was no longer me, but rather a version of something awful I had become. I went back into the bedroom, got dressed, and drove to my friend Lauren's house.

Mr. X apologized the next day, and begged me to forgive him. I did, and things went back to the way they were for a few months longer. We broke up in the spring, about 4 months after that fight. It blows my mind to think about what a completely different person I was a year ago. I was convinced that I would crumble into pieces without Mr. X. And now, 365 days later, I can't even imagine being with X. I can barely understand how we ever fit together, or even loved each other. I feel like I'm light-years away from the girl I used to be.

I wonder now, so far from who I was then, if I ever really loved him? He never actually knew who I was. He never really saw me, like really truly saw me. It was always a game, an illusion, with slight of hands, and tricky wordplay. When he first told me he loved me, I knew he meant it, but I was still playing the game. I was still pretending, stuck in the distractions I had created to shield me from the frightening consequences of reality. In my heart, I want to believe that it was true, that I was actually in love, but something inside, tells me I wasn't. How can you be in love with someone who doesn't even know you?

A lot has happened in the last 365 days. So often, I feel like my life is at a stand still, as if I'm simply static on the screen. Thinking back on the last year, it's pretty obvious to me that my life has been anything but a stand still. I just don't know why it's so hard to feel the movement in the immediate present. Retrospect is a motherfucker. So smug in its ability to give meaning to the time that has passed.

Then again, if someone told me a year ago that my life would look like it does right now, I would have laughed at them, and retreated back to my emotionally abusive relationship... Time has a way of giving everything perspective, while simultaneously making a joke of the perspective you USED to have.

I wonder what this life is going to look like next year?

I can't say for certain, but I've got a feeling it's going to be pretty amazing...

love you mean it.