Would I do it again? Lessons I Wish I Knew Sooner

Last night as I was leaving Toronto, I drove by the main TD building that was her “home base” office. I got so emotional that I pulled over for a minute.

I opened this post to work on today. It’s been saved and revisited for a long long time….and today when I reopened it, I checked Cris’s linkedin to see if she’s still working at TD.

Today, when I saw her role “ended”, my stomach dropped. I’ve been a sobbing mess for hours. I’m pretty sure she has to leave Canada and I know how much she wanted to stay here.

I can’t finish this post today…it wasn’t meant as a “pitch” or attempt to get back together. It was intended to be a brutally honest review of what I would do if that opportunity presented it self…..if I had that coveted Time Machine.

Now, I know that I won’t ever have to make that decision….and it hurts knowing that I likely won’t have the opportunity.

The short answer…
Yes, I would do it again.
I would do it armed with the knowledge I’ve gained this year. I’ve gained so much in so many ways.
I would hope I can make the changes needed in time.
I would have been more clear that all I truly needed was patience. I need patience to support me while I battled my own mind and internal struggles, not fancy words or gestures. Just patience.

I would do it all again and want to work daily towards “I Do”. But I would ask her what is most important instead of assuming I knew what I should “fix”.
I would ask her what I need to do to so we could wake up beside each other every day.

What I wanted most was to wake up and ask “What do you need me to do to make your life easier today, tomorrow and in the future?”

But the only way to start changing and repair/heal wounds we caused each other, is if both of us are humble and admit fault. I have gone through every moment I possibly can by myself. I can see what I did wrong and have made huge changes in my life. But there has to be things I’m missing and need to listen to (and re-listen again), from her perspective…because I need the mirror she was able to hold for me.

Cris would need to acknowledged the things she did that hurt me too. Change would start with admitting fault for weaponizing silence, for dismissing my mental health and internal experience. She would need to show desire to understand my “quirks” and be patient as I try to learn new coping strategies. A lot of these “symptoms” have surfaced and became worse since there is no alcohol to dull and hide them anymore. I also need relearn how to express myself in the context of a relationship and this is something I can’t fully work on alone.

She would need to denounce all the random accusations about being a narcissist, about cheating, about “suspicious” things like trying to have the boat clean for when she stays….if not, we’d repeat our mistakes again and have the same outcome.

And I know that person is in there, the one that has genuine compassion and empathy, not the conditional empathy displayed towards the end. We showed eachother many times that we were willing to work together. We just didn’t know how to do it properly. I know that version of us is real and not in my imagination because when I see and read things like these pictures from a book I wanted to buy for her, I think of the times I saw these loving qualities in her…and I know she saw the same in me too.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DQ7skfWCFud/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

But…… even if I was guaranteed the same outcome….The same heartbreak. The same internal chaos.
I would still do it again. I valued our time together so much that I still relive every cherished moment my brain allows me to. When I broke up with her, I was so angry that I wished none of it happened at all. I said that it was all wasted energy…but I was so hurt by her silence and refusal to talk to me, that I forgot she pushes me to be better, without needing to actually push me.

The cherished moments have helped me fight demons I’ve been fighting for decades. I don’t know if I would have quit drinking alcohol without this experience. I highly doubt I’d have wandered the path to being diagnosed and opening my eyes to a lifetime of feeling misunderstood, negative self-talk and constantly feeling like an inadequate failure.

I never wanted to break up with her. I felt like I had no choice because my voice and struggles were not being heard when I was struggling for months towards the end. I felt like I had no choice after the 4th situation in a few months (6th incident) where promises made were broken. They were vows to each other we wrote in our book. We wrote about how to not hold our relationship hostage and use it as leverage over the other person. They were the things that meant most to me in that book.

When I look at old photos or things that remind me of our relationship, I can see clearly how safe and at home I felt, before things got messy at the end. There was a time when I felt seen and heard! I can see how and why things deteriorated and I know in my heart both of us didn’t want that….we just sucked at figuring it out. I was also mentally sick and could not function.

I know my mental health was a massive factor in NOT allowing me to be the person I know I can be. Alcohol played a massive part in preventing that too. But now, I’ve won my battle with alcohol forever. I’ve overcame my mental health decline and now equipped with the ability to prevent that from happening again. And if it does happen again, I now know how to better express myself, how to ask for help and how to set boundaries for my needs when things get bad internally.

I now know my brain ACTUALLY functions differently than others and continually trying/failing strategies that work for others causes me great inner pain.

I need to stop writing and go work on the garage/apartment….and unfortunately, that space still has a strong emotional attachment to Cris (link)

I’ll leave my more coherent and analytical part of this post “password protected” until I can mentally read and add to it.