Matt was an ill-fitting jigsaw piece, and I kept trying to force the fit. No wonder, then, that I kept struggling against his indifference. My weak, hopeful heart wanted it to be something else - something other than what it clearly was. Its self-deception was so complete that it led me to last night, sitting across him in my room, a gulf between us, hearing the words tumble out of his mouth, 'Do you really think that this is working? Me and you?'
I'd seen it coming. I knew what was coming days before it happened. In New York, I was hurt and angry when he didn't reply to my messages for more than a day, and the hurt and anger intensified when he didn't respond to a long message that I sent about my hurt and anger. Over the phone, then, I let it all out. I was combative, argumentative, kept insisting that he was at fault even after I conceded that I'd partly overreacted. He, on the other hand, kept insisting that he'd done nothing wrong.
He would later tell me that he'd made up his mind to break up during this conversation.
Knowing what is to come, though, and having enough presence of mind and self-awareness to accept the consequences of my action, do not prepare the heart at all for the impact of his words. I knew what was coming and it hurt anyway. I knew that, sooner or later, I would have to stop trying to force this, but my heart still didn't want to let go. There's something here, it thought. There's something, there's something about him, about this, and it didn't want to let go.
But it was all a smoke screen produced by the romance of the situation, the idea of him that I'd built up in my head over the months that we'd interacted before we'd started dating. This image never managed to catch up with what was really happening and so constantly denied a simple truth: he just wasn't that into me. It doesn't matter his other reasons for this, his inherent personality quirks; the only salient fact here is that he just wasn't that into me.
What was I into, then? He was right when he said that it was always a bit awkward between us. He was right, too, when he said that we were two very different people who didn't gel. I knew this, and yet I liked him, but what was it that I really liked? Did I like him for who he is, or was I more interested in the fairy tale that I made up of the two of us, romanticised by the unconventional way we'd met? Is it not telling that I'd told so many people that if he were some guy I'd met on Tinder, it wouldn't have lasted this long?
When I was hurt and angry in New York, I'd wanted to break up with him. But of course, my heart, being weak, hoped itself into delusion that we'd talk when I got back and work things out, find a way through, whatever. Shocking, isn't it, my readiness to settle for something less just to avoid short-term pain, my readiness to keep ploughing an infertile ground, hoping for a miracle, for reasons that I don't fully grasp. At least he was rational enough to do what needed to be done, what I should have done weeks ago. That phone call was the catalyst, he said; but even without it, it would probably have been a matter of weeks before it ended.
I know that this is for the best. A part of me is relieved that it's over; I was getting tired of chasing after him and wanting it to work but feeling so utterly alone in it. Still, it really hurts at the moment, and like I told him, it feels as if I've lost not just him as a boyfriend (though it's telling, in retrospect, that I'd never really felt comfortable referring to him as such), but as somene who made me smile. I can't step into Fitzbillies for a while now. I guess the bright side is that I will only need to be in Cambridge for two more weeks before I fly home for five weeks.
The only thing that I would like to understand now is why I was so stuck on this guy. Apart from that: I will be okay. This is the right thing. I'm rather glad that he did what I didn't have the heart to do.
*
As for the rest...I need to sort my shit out. I need to stop being so desperately unhappy and lost, trying to find someone to fill up this void. It's just so fucking hard.
