cliche.

Some good cliche statements are running through my head at the moment: this hurts me more than it hurts you, and breaking up is hard to do. Both true for me at present.

I broke up with someone a few weeks ago. Someone I'd been dating for the better part of 5 months, which is a decent run for me. We got along really well. In some ways. In other ways, we couldn't have been further apart. I liked him a lot, I cared about him a lot, though I'm not sure he'll ever believe I did. We had fun when we were together, shared good conversation, regularly enjoyed Sunday breakfast over the Times.

But I questioned why we were together sometimes. We had so many different opinions on so, so many fundamental topics: money, work, relationships, the meaning of key relationship concepts like selfishness, and sacrifice. We also had a few fights, and after the first of these I decided to take a little break. And then, slowly, we worked our way back to being together. And again I found myself wondering why we were together.

Our second big fight came right before I left for my visit to Minnesota at the end of July, and I guess that one freaked me out more than the first. The concept of violence in eastern cultures extends from the external to the internal, so that a person's emotions can be considered violent, but may not be expressed externally, in an outwardly violent manner. I never felt physically threatened by him, but I did feel somehow emotionally threatened. And I know he never meant to seem threatening, but a few times, while arguing, I felt really uncomfortable, in a way I knew wasn't quite in line with someone I should be so close to.

So, when I returned from MN, I had hoped we could mend the fence, continue on as before. But I think sometimes when emotions are truly exposed, lines are crossed, and you can't ever really go back. I think that happened with us. I came back to SB, and I really wanted things to be the same, and they were, actually, but without any substance underneath. I remember this when I was young, and my parents would fight- maybe someone would come over, and they'd sort of have to act normally, until they were really acting normally, and then everything would be ok again. A sort of marital fake-it-til-you-make-it routine. We were doing that, the two of us, right when I got back. And it sort of worked, except that there was all this shit, this unsaid emotion and anger and blame underneath, but not so far underneath.

And it was too much. And I ended it. And I felt really shitty about it. And I still do.

I guess that's the surprising part. It's not that I don't want to feel bad about it, because obviously there's an emotional investment there, and a mourning period is normal and required. But I keep finding myself crying briefly, at odd moments, and sort of sending him telepathic apologies. I'm sure by this point he's over it, focused on other things, but I'm still doing it, still feeling really shitty about it. Which maybe says more about me than him, or us, or the relationship. But it certainly makes those cliches feel pretty true to life.