Tags
Broken engagement, Ex-fiancé, Heartbreak, Living alone, Lonliness, Love, Relationships, Supermarkets, The Corso, Trust
I’ll never forget that trip to the supermarket when for the first time in years, I was no longer shopping for two.
I’d just moved in to a unit on the other side of town, a short stroll from the beautiful tourist beaches of Manly. And I was shopping for food and supplies.
Little did I know, aged twenty-seven, this was the first solo shop in a long line of more of the same.
Felt like I’d almost forgotten what I wanted. Cringing as I looked at those things we’d buy together – stuff my ex-fiancé liked/needed.
Suddenly, I was free of planning meals that were always a compromise. He, a meat eater who wasn’t big on vegetables, and I, a strict vegetarian at the time.
I didn’t want to plan meals any more, so I just bought whatever! Such sorrowful freedom, I made a point of each difference as I noticed.
Most stuff I’d left behind – spices, sauces, soap, toilet paper. All of that had to be purchased again.
Really, it felt so weird. Shopping alone, no one to argue with about the home brand and if it was really worth the extra ten cents to buy something else.
Nothing says you’re alone quite like the contents of your shopping trolley.
In that brightly light Safeway (or Woolworths?) on the Corso, it felt like I was rolling my trolley on broken eggshells, crushed rocks and seashells.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
No, wait. That was my heart crumbling.
Okay, I left him. Well, that’s how it looked from one point of view. But emotionally, things had been putrefying for a while. Felt very much like he’d left me six months earlier. Did I even have a choice, in the end?
The night before my move, boxes were all packed, removal truck was booked… and he breaks down and says Don’t go. Don’t go, I’ll change. We’ll make it work. Sleep in our bed tonight and not the front room.
Is that just the pain of separation talking? Not wanting to lose something that’s already almost slipped away? Sentimentality? Fear of change? Or did he really mean it?
Look, I said, I’m tired. I’ve tried for so long to make this work with us. And you kept saying things would get better, but that never happened. So I have to go right now. But if you want to try, then here’s the deal. I’m still moving out. But we’ll try to get things back on track. We’ll date. I’m afraid if I stay here right now, things won’t change. They haven’t before. Why should this time be any different?
He didn’t like that, not at all.
No, if you move out then it’s over!
His way or the highway. The story of my life – men wanting me to bend this way or that. Do things like this and it’ll be great, they’d say or imply, or both.
So, my choices were – stay in what had become a loveless and passionless engagement, with no concrete plans to actually get married any more. Or leave.
Stay, where I’d repeatedly tried to discuss and work out our issues. Or leave, and see what happens.
Stay, and watch him constantly say I understand, only to never work with me to resolve problems. Or leave, and create real change.
He hadn’t given me much to hope for.
Saying I love you in those circumstances is a hollow phrase. A threat, an attempt to justify or manipulate. It’s not really saying I love you. Its saying – how can you leave me?
Well, I did. Had to, for my own peace of mind and mental health.
Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell. Or that I wasn’t supremely lonely in that supermarket.
~Svasti
Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness 
Somehow it doesn’t seem to matter much who does the physical leaving– when a relationship ends– it hurts.
When I got divorced from my first husband — something I pushed for and wanted to happen — I couldn’t cook for months. There’s something about food, the social aspect of eating, the shared memories or history of meals, or even just the habit of it, that really affected me. It took several months and lots of therapy (which wasn’t really about the marriage ending, of course) to help.
@tricia – Yeah, doesn’t matter who does the leaving, doesn’t matter what sort of relationship it is, either. And yeah, it hurts.
@Jennifer – I know what you mean. In some ways, eating whatever I wanted instead of meals being so stressful to plan was freeing, but at the same time, it represented the end of something that had been a very good thing for a very long time. Til it wasn’t any more. The end of my engagement was the first of three ‘nails in the coffin’, that I’m fairly certain led to my being in the same room as the man turned out to be a monster. Ah, the things we allow in our lives!
Sounds like you really had your head on straight when dealing with that. Many would’ve caved and ended up in the loveless and passionless marriage. You held your ground. Good for you!
@earthtoholly – There’s some good reasons why I didn’t cave, the story of which I might tell some other time. I’m very glad I didn’t stay, but even that didn’t make things easier, you know?
Brings me back to when my first husband and I split up. I wrote a poem about how alone my toothbrush looked.
Just as my toothbrush and I were getting used to being alone he came back. We put one another through one more year of hell and then divorced. You were smart to cut clean.
@Lydia – I can imagine that lonely toothbrush very much! I have done it the other way, too. In fact, my very next relationship was just like that – incredibly self-destructive, prolonged and painful. Why do we do those things? I think its all about the need to feel connected…
You are a she?
Why I have always thought you were a he?
lol
Funny!
I hate supermarket. I always have this feeling you had at the first day. Never know what to buy.
About love… I’ve heard something that might sound silly but it was in a class and said by a great psychoanalyst (I’m not saying that he knows about love because of that):
“Don’t expect more of love. Love is it. Don’t expect more of it.”
I’ve translated and it’s not very good.
I don’t know.
Sometimes I think about it and I believe that sometimes we wait more of love than it can give.
I hope it makes some sense.
Ana
@Ana – hey, I didn’t know you had a second blog! Am checking it out! 🙂
Hmmm, I have no idea why you thought I was a male… I guess it depends which posts you read, but I give myself away a number of times in different parts of this site.
I think you may have something there about love, and yes, I do think we tend to expect too much of it and of those we love. Frequently. Its a long hard lesson, isn’t it?