#4 - Regret

Regret

I felt the need to write a blogpost about my past girlfriend purely because my relationship with her became a fundamental chunk of what has made me into the person I am today. She was called Julia, and she was the first and only serious girlfriend I've had in my life; we met, became friends, and got together all in the same year. Our relationship lasted for roughly a year, and we ended up breaking up during Year 11. I was around fifteen to sixteen during this relationship, as was she. I am writing this blogpost because no matter how many years go by, I can never seen to fully forget about her, and she always seems to somehow come back to my mind even after so many years. In addition, I took some very valuable life lessons from my time with. These life lessons helped make become the person I am today. I will keep this short and sweet, but we had a nice relationship, and she did a lot for me. Even before we officially started a relationship, we clearly had a connection, and from the outside looking in, I would imagine it looked just like just your typical secondary school relationship. She was my best friend as well as my girlfriend. I could rely on her for anything, and, from my point-of-view, it felt like a very healthy and loving relationship; not perfect by any means, but good. Although, my friends on the other hand had always argued differently, due to reasons I'll go into later. From my perspective at the time, she was always there for me, and was very supportive of me and my hobbies, never making fun of me for having them, and I am definitely grateful for that. However, in life, and in relationships, sometimes, things just change. There doesn't have to be a clear motive, or a clear reason; sometimes feelings can just change, and your heart isn't in it like it used to be. 

A year into our relationship, my feelings decided to change seemingly out of nowhere, against my will. It was like there were two sides within me; my heart, which still told me that I loved her very much and that I was just going through the motions; and then my head, which would debate these feelings from my heart and would otherwise insist that I don't love her any more due to multiple reasonings; it was a constant war of conflicts within me, and I was completely unable to control it, resulting in me becoming a very unhappy, unstable person on the inside as well as the outside. There was no ulterior motive to cause my changing feelings; no other girl, no other distractions. It happened purely randomly, and as a result of my unsure and complicated feelings storming inside of myself, I eventually decided to break it off with her, as I felt like this was the best course of action to prevent any more hurt. I had debated with my own thoughts for weeks, then months, trying to figure out what to do, or what to say, figuring out all sorts of mental gymnastics trying to come up with any sort of solution. I realised that I could never come up with a suitable answer that would make both Julia and myself happy, or, at least, this is what I told myself, since I always tend to carry the burden of issues alone. Therefore, I felt like I had no choice but to break up with her, as I had become a very distant, unhappy person at this point, and I honestly was just treating very unfairly because of how distant I was being. After breaking up with Julia, I fell into a lot of self pity and told myself I was to blame for what happened, as I told myself that things could have gone differently if I had just worded what I wanted to say at the time differently. On reflection, I also realised that the relationship itself was one of a rather one-sided nature, since I often couldn't and/or wouldn't do much for her in return. It isn't that I didn't want to, I just didn't have a lot of self-belief in myself to carry things out, and I felt like I wasn't capable of providing for her as much as she did so for me. My friends at the time weren't very fond of Julia, and at the time, they were personally happy that I had broken up with her, yet I still felt very insecure and unhappy with my decision. They had claimed that she was being way too clingy, wasn't giving me any time to myself, and constantly wanted my time and validation against my will. Reflecting back on our time together, while I briefly remember that this was a valid reasoning into why I felt like I had to break up with her as her family life was truly quite overwhelming and her step-dad intimidated me to no end, I still so horribly regret breaking up with her at that time and in that manner. When looking at the bigger picture, rather than being stuck battling my own internal demons, I realised it was a conflict that could have just been talked over, rather than being carried out by extreme decision making. I recall how gradually, over time, we grew farther and farther apart due to my incompetence and inability to discuss the problems I felt in our relationship, and while she kept trying to reach out to me to try to connect with me, I kept growing further away in the opposite direction because I just wasn't sure how to connect with her at this point of a fragile relationship. I felt particularly broken up and distraught throughout this end phase of our relationship, because I could see that her feelings and her desire to fix our relationship was crumbling away more and more each day. I wanted to reach out to her, and I wanted to tell her how I was feeling, but I was simply not good at communicating my feelings face-to-face with someone, as I had never had to do this type of thing with someone before, especially someone so special as a girlfriend. I remember seeing the look of hope on her face vanish more and more over time, as I slowly became more and more distant. I really wish I could have just been upfront instead of passively pushing myself away in self-loathing and overcomplicating. It had eventually gotten to a point where she had inevitably given up with trying to fix our relationship, and I really couldn't blame her. I pushed her away, and she was done with trying to chase after me when I was the one that initiated all of the issues in the first place. 

There were certainly bumps in the road; I didn't get along well with her family, and I wanted more alone time than she was happy with; you could argue she was maybe slightly possessive and got jealous easily. However, every human has these traits to some extent, and I wouldn't hold it against her. I used to be able to talk to her every day about anything on my mind, and yet, for some reason, my feelings just changed. I get it, these things happen and it's a part of life, yet still, so many years later, to this day, I can't help but ponder upon the thought that that things could have gone differently. If I had reached out to her truthfully, or been more honest with my feelings, or simply asked to have a small break instead of a total breakup; these are all possible outcomes I'll never know the answer to. Our breakup really affected me, and I feel like this was around the time where my depression truly started. Up to this point in my life, around the end of Year 11, my final year of Secondary School, I had never really been truly depressed before. Sure, I had my fair share of anxiety attacks and insecurities over myself and life as a whole, but I had never been actually depressed. Yet, with the breakup affecting me in such a way it did, I truly believe that this was where my depression began. I retreated back into my hollow shell even more so than usual; I began talking, laughing and interacting with friends and family less, both in school and at home, and my mental health really plummeted; I began thinking of myself as a failure, an idiot, someone who threw away something great, I was unable to clear my mind and think rationally. Despite this, I was still moderately happy thanks to the best group of friends in the world. I think they themselves could tell that things were different with me. It really affected my day-to-day life at school since I would still see her there, every day. It made for quite a few uncomfortable interactions, which then lead to me carrying those heavy, depressing thoughts with me even after school and during my off-time as I would replay these interactions in my head over and over again and wonder why things were the way they were and how I was at fault for it all. Most people had likely just assumed that we were a typical high-school relationship that lasted a few months, but emotionally, she meant a lot more to me than that. She was the only girl that I've really been seriously emotionally attached to, she was the girl that I lost my virginity to, she was someone I spent a lot of time with at a crucial time in my life, and these are the reasons why I still seem to feel so much regret over something that happened so long ago. 

During the time that I began college and left school, my depression began to get a lot worse, and it began to affect my everyday life with hobbies and relationships. It felt like a physical sensation which would slowly begin to creep up on me; the longer I tried to avoid embracing these thoughts, the harder they would hit me when I eventually gave in. It is like trying to put paper over a crack; even though you are temporarily distracting yourself for a certain amount of time, eventually you will have to acknowledge the depression. It catches up to you and you cannot run away from it, and when it does catch up to you, you'll surely feel horrible and worthless for realising that you have this awful feeling created through a memory that you just cannot seem to forget or fully move on from. 

For reasons that I can't remember, we also had a period of time during our Year 11 term where we agreed to use each-other for a "friend with benefits" deal, after we had broken up. You know how it goes. I don't remember this chain of memories very well, but what I do remember from it is that it ended in nothing but more hurt and more depression. While we were in this weird limbo phase of being friends with benefits, but not lovers, there were absolutely still feelings lingering there, but since we had already previously decided to go our separate ways, we didn't go any further. It definitely sounds weird as I'm typing it out right now. Off the top of my head, I would guess we didn't get back together because we didn't want to complicate issues between friend groups, our separate families, to eachother as humans with flawed feelings, and so on. And so, for a few weeks/months, we were stuck in this weird limbo scenario where we would use eachother for a temporary pick-me-up and then refused to interact in any other way afterwards. At some later time, we stopped doing this, since those kinds of things obviously never work in the long run, although I'd argue that it was likely for the best for it to have ended as soon as it had started anyway. A friends-with-benefits arrangement with someone you previously had feelings with is toxic and will never lead to a positive outcome. 

The last school memory I have of Julia was on the very last day of my Year 11 term, as I was leaving the school gates for the last time after completing my GCSE exams. She was standing there with her new boyfriend, acting in a very mocking way towards me and milking the scene as much as she could, seemingly moved on from me entirely and letting me know that she had no more "use" for me, neither as a friend or a friend with benefits. That memory is still partially ingrained into my memory, and it genuinely affected my mental state very badly for some time. I overthought it, replayed it over and over in my head, and made myself upset just thinking back to it. I guess, in a way, it's kind of ironic that this was the last I ever saw of her for many years, like it was some kind of divine retribution for breaking her heart so long ago. At this point in my life, upon leaving school and being closer than ever to a new chapter in my life, I was still "happy" overall as I had finally finished my exams and was met with a 2-month summer break. Deep down, though, the feelings of depression and general unhappiness were lingering closely, and eventually, the 2-month break merged into the start of college; around July to September. At this point, my feelings of depression over the breakup and life in general had really started to bubble up, and I began feeling very distant and uninterested towards life in general, which resulted in me spending a lot of my days indoors, pitying myself, and feeling extremely lonely and upset; not just over Julia, but with life in general, which in turn would often relate back to Julia since she was such a large chunk of my life at this point in time. I couldn't help but think that I had taken a wrong turn in my school years.

I would say that, during my time in college, she wasn't always at the core of my thoughts, but she was often a secondary thought in my head; always at the back, impossible to truly forget about, never able to really disappear. I would confidently say that at the time of me writing this, with me being 21 years old in 2022, I am over her now in the sense that I could see her on the street, talk to her, and it would be a mature, positive conversation. However, I still tend to reflect on certain things from back then; songs we listened to, recollecting memories when walking down paths that I had walked down with her next to me, and other corny scenarios like that. It's cringeworthy, but true; life can oftentimes be cringeworthy, but this doesn't undermine your feelings or make them any less valid. Over the past few years, through going to college and working part-time, I've moved on and very rarely spoken to Julia; only two or three relevant times that I can think of in the past 5-6 years. One of the relevant times was where I had initially apologised to her for how things had ended, and asking her if she was doing okay with life. I will admit that this was done largely just for my own selfish reasonings; it wasn't actually to see if she accepted my apology or if she was doing okay, it was initiated through my extreme self-guilt and self-loathing, forcing me to do something about the regrettable feelings inside me. I had hoped that, by doing this, I could show myself that I was capable of apologising for the actions I had made years ago; actions that had stuck with me through an indescribable amount of mental weight of regret that I've had no choice to carry over the years; which I could then hopefully unload off myself with an apology and a clean sheet. Just to be clear, this didn't really work. The guilt still stuck with me. Another time involved Julia randomly asking me to see her outside of my house, as she was in the local area, stopping by on a car drive. There was no real ulterior motive to this, she simply wanted to see me. This sudden, out-of-place interactions made me VERY nervous, anxious, and uncomfortable, because I had quickly come to realise through the years we spent apart that she has moved on to become a very respectable person of society; a car, a job, a boyfriend, her own place, new friends, and so on. This made me feel uncomfortable, since, in comparison to me, I did NOT feel like I was that respectable person of society. I have no car, no job, no girlfriend, and all I could feel was that I did not belong here in this conversation. I was out of place, uncomfortable, a stranger. I'm someone who is incapable of being a "respectable person of society." Again, though, I have soon realised that this negative way of thinking loops back into my self-loathing and lack of self-belief; the very thing that started this entire journey in the first place, as I was unable to bring myself to talk about my feelings openly. Julia would also, on very rare occasion, check in with my dad and say hello to him, as Julia and my dad had a friendly relationship. This would oftentimes make things very uncomfortable for me too, however, that's an entire story for another day. 

Nowadays, I'd confidently say that I'm over Julia. Even if I wished I could go back and change things from the past, I can acknowledge that this would realistically not even be a good choice to make, seeing how different we are now as young adults. And you know what? That's okay. People grow up, people move on, people change over time. She still tends to pop up in my thoughts here and there, even all these years later, but I think that's also okay. It's not something I tend to openly admit to friends and family, but I'm happy and grateful that she was my girlfriend at the time that we were together, even if it did ultimately end on a bad page. It was certainly a learning experience for me. I learned how to love someone, how to make someone truly happy, and even how to deal with heartbreak and regret. Even though our breakup gave me heavy depression and changed the type of person I am, I feel grateful that I was able to experience it in the first place. I hope that in the future, I can have another relationship with as much love and appreciation as I had with Julia, and hopefully I won't come to regret that one when it comes around. Unfortunately, I'm a nerd who sits behind a computer for 12 hours and has parasocial relationships with Twitch streamers, so it's not looking too good for me right now.

Well, that's the end of this blogpost. That was a long one. It's very personal and delves into the most vulnerable corners of my life, so I might just delete it, or overdose from cringe when recollecting this a few weeks or months down the line, or maybe even both? We'll see.

Either way, thank you for reading. Until next time. <3

Connor Lunnon 01/06/2022