future ex boyfriend

autofiction

art by @Pangchiucowboy

But I wouldn't really know
Until I know
And I won't stop
Until you go

And you always know need this much
You know you always need this

- until i know - panchiko

I don’t really know what it was that got me. It might’ve been the Spring, how it makes love and everything else sound so inviting when it’s no longer cold. Or it might’ve been the 22 years of being single, the fixation on getting something done that felt a bit personal before graduating college. Like a relationship would finally be that thing that made me older. An adult. I wanted something to happen to me before I went into the world and thought I’d stop being a person. But I was more adult before the relationship than I was during it. I was flaky and dismissive and anxious during it. I thought the worse thing I could do was whatever he thought might be the wrong thing, and I never really knew what that could be. It could’ve been anything. I was always good at guessing wrong.

I think he had a way of making everything sound sweet. Like I was the city girl and he was the lake. Like all I needed was his family and a dinner table and a place to set my phone down. I wanted to want that, I really did. His mom picked me up at the train station once and told me stories about him and I nodded like I knew him. Like I had the right to listen. It all felt like a version of someone else's life that I didn’t belong in. That I always knew I would wake up from.

And I did. In New York. I was working all day and sleeping on the subway and wishing my friends would visit me. I was so lonely and so unaware of it. Even when he was there. Maybe especially when he was there.

There was always something wrong, something that it was my job to find out how to fix. He’d come over when the ceiling in my midtown apartment had caved in and lie in my twin bed and not speak, like that was something. Like his presence had fixed it. He’d call me after work and ask me when I wouldn’t be so busy, like it was a thing I was doing to him. I didn’t know how to say never, that this was what I liked to do. That if he didn’t like it then maybe he just didn’t really like me. He’d text me from panic attacks and bad days and worse and I wondered when it would ever be my turn. I wanted to tell him I was scared. Of everything. But mostly of him. Of how much space he took up when he didn’t say anything.

I think I had gotten so used to being anxious about the people I love that I figured it was normal. To not miss him, to feel guilty when he missed me. He’d tell me to come visit him and I’d be nervous the whole way there, like I’d already messed up something that I would say an hour from then. It was like visiting home in the worst way. Like wondering what room would appear on the other side of a door. But sometimes it was nice too, like sitting in the silence of a room. Eyes closed on the back of a bike. Putting all of your life in the palm of his hand and telling him to go. A good day with him was like getting something right I’d been working on for weeks.

And during this whole time I knew that it would be temporary. The phone calls never got easier, just more expected. More scripted from me. I figured that this was how relationships always were, because what examples did I have? The anxiety turned into boredom, then into resentment. I hated the way he spoke to me in the morning. Hated that I was supposed to feel protected but just felt trapped, a little claustrophobic. Like a dog with a reluctant owner. Like someone who could never quite trust their doctor.

It only really hit me in Fall. I wanted to want to tell him things, to be open. I realized that I shouldn’t have to want these things. That they never felt undeserved with my friends, with the people he always had something to say about. But it had been six months and I’d never cried in front of him. I had been so polished and so easy. I’d tried so hard to take care of him that I wasn’t sure what part of me was doing that anymore. If I had any of it left in me.

I think I could’ve stayed if he’d learned how to listen without needing the sound to be about him. But it’s not fair to say that. I don’t think I was that kind either. I was tired all the time. I was always finding things that were missing, with him, with me. I think what I was hoping for was for him to figure me out. And when it didn’t come, I thought maybe I was the one who didn’t know how to ask. But really, I think it just taught me a lot about expectations. About the difference between hope and love.