Elliott Rodgers

This is the post I wrote at 2am on the 17th January 2010 unable to sleep after the split with my then girlfriend it took me an hour and a half to right, at the time, writing it down felt cathartic. It’s here in it’s original form as it may explain to friends of mine and hers how I felt about the break up. It’s to significant to not include in my website and goes a long way to explaining why I’m moving on from Chesham end of 2010 beginning of 2011.

Sometimes being right can be a terrible, terrible burden… Sometimes you really, really want to be wrong.

Things with my beautiful, lovely, kind girlfriend haven’t been great for a while and slowly but surely we began to drift apart. I hoped that once Christmas was out the way we could maybe start to drift back together. Sadly she’d decided that wasn’t the best idea and came over to call it a day since we’d drifted to far apart. I’d worked out what was going to happen a day or so before she was due at the flat. One of the things I admired about her was that like me she would make a plan and go for it rather than making plans, changing plans, remaking plans and so on – sadly this meant I knew she wouldn’t be changing her mind.

Along with a major tidy up and reorganise of the flat (spring cleaning, getting things together for workmen to arrive and work on my kitchen) I did a radical, thorough and deep search of the flat for anything of hers. It made me cry so many times as I found silly little mementos and gathered her things. I emptied her wardrobe of her clothes, folded them all neatly in a laundry bag, washed the few bits of hers in the dirty laudry, folded them in the bag. Collected all her knick knacks, the stuff of hers that had accumulated in the bathroom like bath salts, bubble bath packed them all neatly. Her boxed DVD sets of Tru Calling and Dolls House that she had left here. Earrings she’d dropped down the side of the bed. Hair bands and the like.

All of it. All packed.

I did it for loads of reasons: It would have further damaged my already broken heart to have watched her going round the flat doing it herself, I’ve been taught how to search a room properly [although that was searching for evidence] and I know how much it would have hurt me to find things of hers in the next few weeks and months. Better that it was done over a couple of days, buffered by alcohol, chocolate and supportive friends than constantly ripping open the painful wounds.

Once she got here, we talked and chatted and worked out together how to untangle our shared life. There was lots of tears from both of us and multiple hugs and kisses goodbye. We’ve parted as friends, we’ll still be part of the same church community and able to be in the same pub without there being pain, angst, anger and drama.

At the end of the day she was there for me at some of the worst moments of my life in just over a decade, helped me explore and start to unravel the traumas of my abusive and broken childhood letting me finally talk about abuse that happened to me in my childhood that I had never told anyone. We had some amazingly good times as well, had some of the best fun ever and built some very, very happy memories.

Even if we’d parted and decided not to remain friends, the 2 years 4 months and 3 days we spent together has made me a different, much better person and that’s got to be worth the heartbreak and tears.

This is not the place to start having a go at my ex in the comments. If anyone does the comment will be moderated straight to the delete pile and wont be seen by anybody but me.

The Danger Broken Heart Ahead image is thanks to Says-It Danger Sign Generator.