I’ve been hovering around in a daze for the better part of two months now. In that time my life has gone from one extreme to another, quite unexpectedly. It’s been a lot to wrap my head around, and it’s proven to be almost too much for me to bear. I’ve been physically exhausted and sick since it all happened because I haven’t been able to deal with it psychologically. It is just way too large, the magnitude too extreme, the ramifications too severe. I know I’ve been rather vague about all of it for some time, but I really haven’t felt comfortable giving any level of detail to it yet. It *is* a big deal. It doesn’t only affect my life directly, but the lives of several people I care about more than anyone else. Basically, there are three things at work here: I am dealing with my own feelings regarding a life-changing situation, the feelings of the others directly involved, and the feelings of those not directly involved but who are part of my life. Now, anyone who knows me will realize that I am overwhelmingly empathetic. I often care more about how others think and feel than how I feel myself, and will let that take precedence. Therefore, if someone else is having a difficult time with something, it will often overtake me to the point where I am feeling how I imagine that person to feel. This is something I’ve struggled with my whole life and recently have been forced to try to control…simply because it’s gotten out of control.
The events of the last month have worn me down to the point where my body can no longer bear it. I am worn thin, out of energy, and just gasping for relief in any form. Until a few days ago I’ve been unable to cry about it. This has caused me a great deal of unease because normally I cry at the drop of a hat, and now that the most amazing, life-altering event has happened, I am frozen. Something is stopping me, preventing me from breaking down. So instead of breaking down emotionally, it wears me down physically. I need to have release, I absolutely *need* it.
I suppose it’s only fair to explain a bit of what has happened since some time has passed now and most people most directly involved seem to have come to terms with it in one way or another. As you probably gathered from previous entries, Ross broke up with me around Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t really too much of a surprise as things had been falling apart for quite some time prior to that. I cried more about it before it happened than when it actually took place since I had been expecting it for awhile. I was incredibly depressed and lost. I felt disposable, worthless, and worst of all, I didn’t understand why. Ross could not provide me with any explanation whatsoever, other than he “wasn’t into the relationship.” Ross didn’t seem to understand it himself, let alone be able to explain it to me. I was so confused. I spent a lot of time that following week with Jon, playing Resident Evil 4, trying to keep my mind off it. It helped a lot, and he tried very hard to keep me distracted. I thank him so much for that…I needed that *so* much. I also talked a lot with Rose and Jules that week, trying to make sense of it all. No one could figure out what was going through Ross’s head.
While I was dealing with the depression and sorrow over this loss in my life, Jules spent a lot of time comforting me. He’s always been such a constant in my life, always there for me when things go awry, and he always knows just what to say to make me feel better. He understands what it’s like to be inside my head because we are just so similar…we share this understanding on a level beyond anything I’ve ever had or could have with another person. He absolutely understands me. The one thing that is important to stress here is that the whole time we’ve known each other, there has always been a wall in place between us. Early on in our friendship we had established that yes, there was something incredible and amazing between us, an unconditional love and mutual respect that could never be tampered with, regardless of circumstance. We were free to love and adore each other, but we both knew where the line was drawn. He was happily in love with Rose, and I respected that wholeheartedly. Their relationship was on a pedestal, absolutely untouchable to me, to the point where anytime I’d consider the idea of anything coming between them, it would make me ill. There was an isolated incident several years ago where the thought of me coming between them actually occurred to me as a possibility (not because of anything I personally thought, felt, or did) but because of something Jules said to me. I rolled around on my bed in agony for an entire afternoon, sobbing and moaning and saying “No, no, please don’t let me be the reason.” At that point I didn’t think I’d be able to live with myself if that would ever happen.
In any case…this wall I spoke of…it was firmly in place for nearly three years (the entirety of the time we’ve known each other.) Since he and I were both comfortable with that, we had no trouble sharing with each other how we felt about our relationship and often being openly affectionate. In both our minds, there was no danger in that because we understood what was and was not appropriate. He remained completely devoted to Rose while I went through a series of confusing emotional involvements with friends of mine, which included my initial relationship with Ross which fell apart, and a year later the most recent involvement with him which also fell apart in a similar way. The difference in the latest failing with Ross was that I had been there in Australia with them for a month, and they had gotten to know me on a different level than was previously even possible. And then Jules did something that up until this point neither of us had ever allowed ourselves to do.
He took a peek over the wall.
Then several realizations began to occur, very quickly. For some time he’d felt as if there was something fundamentally missing in his relationship with Rose, that he had to hold back so much of himself in order to not be too overwhelming to her, to edit and control his behavior for her comfort. This was extremely difficult for him, but he’d done it for so long because he loved her so much, and he was committed to making things work. When he looked past our wall, he would caution himself, as he feared that if he didn’t watch himself he could very possibly end up falling in love with me. He promised himself (and me) that he wouldn’t let that happen. When he saw what Ross had done to me, he would say to me “I would *never* do that to you if we were together.” The question would come up, then, inevitably: “What would have happened if we’d met first?” It was something I couldn’t answer myself, because in the entire time I’d known him he’d been untouchable to me, never an option. I had *never* considered him in that way, I simply couldn’t. I’d always resort to the old excuses I’d learned to treat as truth, that I could only think of him as my best friend, my soulmate, but on a strictly platonic level.
We had a conversation one Friday that really got me thinking about what could have been possible if we’d never had these things to keep us apart. He was still comforting me about Ross (I was still *really* upset) and then bit by bit we began to speculate what it would be like if we had a romantic relationship (still only as a thought, idea, dream.) Of course, after this my mind focused on that for most of the weekend, as for the first time I’d actually begun to allow myself to look at him in a different way. I was really bothered by the idea because of what it would mean for his relationship with Rose, but still, it was something that I could no longer hide from. The idea had been planted in my mind, and there was no going back on that.
The following Monday proved to be the day that changed everything. When we began talking Jules was really disturbed and anxious and upset, tormented in a way I’d never seen him before. I was really worried and confused when he said to me that he had something he needed to talk to me about but he wasn’t sure even I would understand, and that once he told me there was the possibility I’d never want to talk to him again. What he needed to say was so important he was willing to risk our friendship in order to tell me, because it was something he couldn’t deal with by himself without telling someone. Based on the conversation we’d had prior to the weekend, I had a suspicion about what it might be, but I didn’t want to believe it. No, no, please, no.
My suspicions proved to be correct. With a shaking, scared, nervous voice he confessed to me that he was falling in love with someone. Unsure of what to say, I gently asked him to continue. My heart and stomach plummeted through the floor when he told me it was me, and he finished with a flurry of desperate apologies, saying he was sorry because he’d promised this wouldn’t happen, fearing that he would lose me forever over this, and assuring me that I didn’t owe him anything. I remember sitting there, my head spinning, paralyzed with disbelief. My heart thumped loudly in my chest and this overwhelming ache overtook me. He sounded so horribly tortured and broken, so weak and lost. “Oh god, what am I going to do?!” he would moan over and over. The only thing I could do was reassure him that there was nothing he could ever do to lose me, even something as drastic as this. Regardless of anything that happened, he would always be the most important person to me and I would never want to live without him in my life. I told him he needed to talk to Rose about it, that above all things, she deserved to know how he felt.
He was terrified about hurting and losing Rose, as expected. He explained the situation to her and talked with her about trying to be friends for awhile, which he felt he would be okay with since much of their relationship recently had felt that way to him anyhow. Once he had tested the waters a bit and saw that he was still able to maintain a close relationship with her despite what happened, he came to me again and asked me if I would be his girlfriend. At this point I made the one and only decision that I had any control over in the whole situation.
I said yes.
I knew that this decision would be the end of many things and the beginning of many others. It wasn’t just *a* decision, it was *the* decision. Of course there was absolutely no way I could have turned him down, but I still had to bring myself to say it. I realized that this was going to not only upset my life and his, but Rose’s as well, not to mention the network of friends who had come to regard his relationship with Rose as an institution, untouchable and unchangeable. I can easily say that I trusted in the steadfastness of their relationship more than most people, so the idea that I had been a catalyst in bringing it to an end crushed me to an unbearable degree. The idea that it wasn’t even directly my fault, that I’d not even done anything to cause that, only made it worse because it meant it was completely out of my control. This is something Jules would have done even if I’d said no to him.
I admit that the thing that troubled me most of all was how this would affect Rose. Over time I’ve grown to love and admire her, and she has become one of my closest female friends. I respected her bravery in coming to Australia to study and be close to Jules, and her willingness to make her own way in the world, based on her own choices rather than her family’s. I know Rose is a very strong person and very convicted in her beliefs, and that she is a survivor. When I looked at the situation I realized that even if I said no to Jules, my relationship with her would never be the same simply because of what I represented in the equation. This hurt me very deeply as I thought about the pain I’d have caused her inadvertently, just by existing. Again, the worst part of it was there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t just go on and expect her to be all friendly with me…in fact I fully expected the possibility she’d never want to speak to me again. Things had changed, and I just had to figure out how to deal with that.
Because so many people had put so much faith in the Jules and Rosey relationship, Jules and I tried to explain the situation to each of our friends individually, to try to avoid any speculation over what had happened. The main point we tried to get across was that this wasn’t just a swap meet…that in fact two distinct decisions had been made. One, that Jules felt his relationship with Rose was one better suited for friendship and he felt better being on those terms with her, and two, that he had fallen in love with me.
And…if all of that wasn’t enough…
Not too long after this, the wheels began turning in Ross’s head. When he’d seen what Jules had risked simply by telling me how he felt, what Jules had given up in order for the possibility of us being together to exist, Ross realized what he’d lost. It suddenly struck him that he’d had the greatest gift on earth and had just tossed it by the wayside because of apathy. He fell into a despair uncharacteristic of him, and this began to weigh on me as well. Luckily, this turned out to be a good thing as time went on, because Ross began to talk to me very openly and frankly, and as he began to come to grips with what he’d actually been thinking when he let me go, he woke up. He kicked himself in the ass and began to take stock of his life. He looked around himself and realized he didn’t like what he saw, so he began taking immediate steps to make changes. When he noticed that I was never going to look upon him in a negative light despite the pain he’d caused me, it showed him that people do care about him and want to see him do well regardless of how much of an asshole he’d been. He finally believed that I would always love him no matter what happened, and he decided that was something he could no longer take for granted. So he’s going to be doing the same Microsoft Sysadmin certification course Jules has been working on and try to get a job more satisfying than carrying around heavy equipment for traveling theatre gigs. And he’s been shaving regularly. (If you know Ross, you’ll probably find the latter more amazing.)
So yes. All of this has happened within the last month. It’s the most dramatic change I could possibly ever imagine, and even now it still feels like unreality. So many times a day I ask myself “How can this be real? How can this be true?” I never would have thought anything like this would ever happen to me. I mean, I always had this idea in my head of what true love was like, and what would happen to me when I found it. I had these dreams of this beautiful and charming guy from a far-off land…this silly fairy tale implanted in my brain that many girls grow up dreaming of. The only difference is, it actually *happened* to me.
Believing in my dreams has always been such an important part of my life, and ever since I allowed myself to indulge in that, absolutely amazing things have happened. My mother would always tell me that doors and windows will open before you if you follow your bliss. All I had to do was open myself up to extreme possibilities, and suddenly there was no reason why my dreams couldn’t become reality. So perhaps I *am* horribly naive and unrealistic. I am a dreamer, and a lot of the things I think and feel are rather outlandish and silly to most people. When I repeat them to myself in my *own* head they sound absolutely ridiculous to the logical part of my brain. I *am* a silly girl. I’m full of fanciful ideas and dreams and wishwashy fantasies. But is there anything wrong with that? Believing in those silly ideals has brought me more happiness than I could have ever known if I didn’t subscribe to that manner of thought. Is it better to be logical and proper, and live a respectable, normal, comfortable life, but devoid of wonder and mystery….or to let your biggest wishes and dreams float to the forefront of your mind, and follow them blindly, taking whatever measures are necessary to take the first step, and then letting them carry you wherever they may? There is so much that is unknown and *unknowable* about the second option, which is terrifying and horribly threatening to most people. Personally…this is how I prefer to live my life. I’ve done things most people would consider absolutely ridiculous, simply because I felt I *had* to, because it was integral to my happiness. I am willing to be thought of as a naive fool if it means I’m happy. And I *am* happy.
Besides, Jules would never love someone who wasn’t seen as completely deranged and unhinged from reality. That quite possibly was the most romantic thing he’s ever said to me. :)
