justanothermentalhealthblog

[justanothermentalhealthblog]

Starting over

So, very recently me and my ex-partner split up. Which honestly sucks. We'd been together for 5 and a half years and some of the fondest memories I have are shared with her. We'd started to build a life together and currently are renting together (More on that situation after). It wasn't a complete shock to me that our relationship was struggling, and the signs had been staring me in the face for a while. However I was blissfully ignorant about how bad the situation was right up to the point where 'the conversation' happened.

Everyone has a conversation like this at some point in their lives. You go to sit down very unaware of the bombshell that's about to be dropped on you. ''when the tenancy is finished, I'm moving out'' - Now the tenancy doesn't end for another 7 and a half months, but I instantly read between the lines, we were done.

The panic instantly set in, and a number of questions flooded into my extremely confused and now very active head while we continued to talk;

Does this mean were ACTUALLY breaking up?

Where am I going to live once the tenancy is up?

How could I have not seen this and prepared myself?

What did I do wrong?

At this point I just go into autopilot, nodding my head and agreeing with what she's saying...

You see my ex-partner has had a rough year of it, she's lost close family members, had others fall very ill, and the strain on her has been immense to just carry on and continue with her life. It's taken a toll on me as well, dealing with the days where nothing is going right, and everything seems like it's going against us. I think that for myself, I've tried to do everything I could to support and be there when she was most vulnerable, but in that moment, I felt like I wasn't enough for her. And I probably wasn't, yes I was assured that it wasn't my fault and it was her perspective that had changed, but I was left with the feeling that I had done something horribly wrong, and this was my fault.

I think it's human nature for us to react like this after a breakup, thinking about what I could have done better, if there was a decision that I could have changed, or if I could have just been the person that they needed, when they needed. I felt like this year had been spent grieving, and we couldn't handle any more loss between. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Not only do we now have to deal with the loss of a partner, along with all the other horrendous things that have happened, we now have to live together while dealing with it. We have just about 7 months left on our tenancy agreement, one we both aren't financially able to just end and move on. So while going through this breakup, we have to live in the same space and co-exist, while hurting, and trying to move on.

We both still want to be in each others lives, but this is a bit full-on by both of our definitions. This is probably going to be the hardest 7 months of my life (so far). Fortunately we have a 2 bedroom flat so we have our own space, but it doesn't make it that much easier.

For the first few days, I was a mess... I rarely cry, but the first 2-3 days, I was in tears over the smallest things. Seeing pictures of us together on the wall, out on our adventures, or just goofing around. Finding little trinkets we'd gifted to each other and remembering how we'd got them, boy this is going to be hard. I rarely slept or ate, and the people i worked with had caught on that I wasn't okay. I don't think I've ever received so many hugs at work before. They knew about the situation at home, and I honestly couldn't have got through it without them, I love you all <3

I've got better since then, going on walks and exercising, eating full meals and re-connecting with old friends. It's going to be a rough journey still but I'm going to share it on here, so hopefully, anyone going through something similar will know that it's going to be okay, because it will.