For a moment I was Cinderella

Earlier this year I reconnected with a high school crush. When I was 16 at my friend's high school dance this really hot guy asked me to dance. I was a shy 16 year old with NO self-esteem. At first I didn't even believe he was smiling at me. That 3 minutes and 59 second dance left an indelible mark on my heart. From that point forward Ken occupied a place in my mind regardless of where either of us was in life. We didn't keep in touch and as I would learn later he didn't even remember the interaction we had at the dance. He dated my good friend for more than a year but that ended at a point in which she meant her husband. Over the years I kept up with what was happening with him from my friends who had known him in high school. I heard when he got married and later on when he had kids. Those things killed the faint hope I had that I would get a second chance to be a part of his life. Even when Facebook became a thing I never sought him out until earlier this year. My friend Heather had told me about a visit she had with him when he was in town for work and it got me thinking about him again. So I went on Facebook and added him. It led to us talking a lot. We are in different cities so that was really the only option we had. When I friended him I was only thinking about friendship because what else could we do with so much distance between us? The conversation quickly escalated to flirting and I thought, we both found ourselves swept away by this connection. Our story felt really powerful. While I had been trying to be cautious and keep myself in check his enthusiasm pulled me in and I threw caution to the wind. He said some of the most beautiful and loving things to me and he treated me the way I'd always wanted to be treated by a partner. Except...he had several very serious issues. I knew what they were. He was open and honest about them from the beginning. I also thought I knew enough from having dealt with others that I had known with this same problems. I was wrong. I wasn't prepared for the abandonment I felt when he would stand me up for phone calls, which was our main method of staying connected. The pain of being forgotten or worse yet wondering if something had happened and he was sick or injured was so hard to cope with. The fear of the unknown became a constant burden. When he chose to get help I was his biggest fan and as supportive as I could be from a distance. More than anything I wanted him to be healthy and happy. I wanted him to enjoy life. I had grown to want a life with him. We both travelled to see the other and on my last visit to see him I thought things were good. Even now I'm unsure if that is true or if he was hiding the difficulties from me. Leaving that time was hard for me. I liked the life I had with him when I was there. He got two pieces of bad news when I was there and I did worry about the impact on him but upon leaving he told me it would not be that long till I saw him next. I trusted this and summoned my strength and went on with it. This period of separation was harder. We had made tentative plans for him to see my play in November and I had set up a dinner date with him and some of my family so they could meet him. Come November I started to feel reluctance from him to talk to me. He would make it happen when I asked but I could feel there was resistance on his part and I didn't know why. This amped up my fear response because I know what this is cause I've been through it before. That shift in the balance when you feel you have become the only one who cares about the relationship anymore. My brain starts spinning trying to find the point in time in which the change occurred and I still can't pinpoint it. It didn't help that as I was feeling this a lot of change was happening in his life that he had very little control over. He was overwhelmed with stress that amplified his existing problems and my requests to communicate with him were becoming too much for him to bear. I just wanted to know what was going on and how he was and how I could help. I felt cut off from him and felt jealousy stirring towards all the people that got to interact with him on a daily basis. I resented them for taking up his time. I resented his living situation for making it harder for us to talk because he rarely had privacy. I resented that I lived so far away from him. I even started looking for jobs there and contemplated moving. I wanted to make this work with all I had because he was worth it. Problems, issues and all he was worth it. Then last Thursday he pulled the rug out from under me and asked that we take a break. This came after six days of silence on his end. I was absolutely anxiety ridden and terrified. I thought I would have heard from him on Tuesday and he would tell me the weekend had been fine and now everything had settled down. When I didn't hear anything I went straight into an anxiety-fueled thought spiral including wondering if he was dead or if he was having an affair but the biggest fear taking up space in my brain was that he was going to ghost me. In desperation I texted his roommate to try and see if there was a logical explanation for the silence. Uncharacteristic of her she was clueless. She told me she hadn't seen much of him in the last few days and had no idea what the issue could be. I immediately regretted the decision to approach her and for getting emotional in my responses to her. At one point I said that if "he missed me as much as I missed him I would have heard from him by now". Having gained nothing but more anxiety from that conversation I vowed to myself I would not contact her again. Thursday when I arrived home from work I saw a text from him asking if he could call me when I got home. I knew in that instant what he was going to tell me. So I took a deep breath and let him know I was home. I honestly had no idea how I was going to talk to him when I felt like the walls were closing in on me. He didn't leave it hanging. I asked firstly if he was ok. He assured me he was but that he had to tell me something. That was when he put it to me that he needed a break. He said that he realized over the weekend that being out of touch from me proved to him that he didn't feel the need to talk to me as much as I felt it to talk to him. Immediate pain cut through me. Here I go again. Another man who can't stand to know me. Who can't love me. Who doesn't want me. All of that comes back. He puts forward the idea that what is going on for him right now is a symptom of the physical distance between us. That he would still like to see me at Christmas and find out if those feelings reignite when we see each other. He told me I could let him know later how I feel about that. When I suggested he may change his mind by then he said that he wouldn't and would still like to see me. He said he was going to get himself better. He told me about the numerous steps he had already taken to do so. I found this hopeful because more than anything I love him and want him healthy. I didn't want to have to let him go for this to happen. I wanted to support him through it. It hurt that he didn't want me in his life. That he had begun to resent my text messages because I was becoming another problem he had to deal with/manage. I felt like I was bleeding out from razor slices that he was administering slowly. Each admission another cut. Slice after slice after slice. At the end of the conversation he told me I could take my time changing the Facebook relationship status. Another slice. I contemplated doing it right away and getting it over with but I couldn't bring myself to do it nor to bear all the comments and inquiries attached to doing so. I finally did it on Saturday. Saturday was my housecleaning day. On the day that Ken broke it off I finally got an ebook that I had on hold at the library for close to six months. It was a self-help book for losing weight but by doing it through improving other things in your life. I read the first few chapters and discovered it's a 7 week course. So I started with the week 1 assignment which is cleaning, purging and adjusting your living environment. So that got me started on 'improving myself' which is the advice I got from pretty much everyone. UGH. I love them. I know they mean well but it feels condescending. Saturday the cleaning/purging was inline with the book assignment and to keep me busy so I wouldn't spiral into sadness and hurtful thought patterns. That was when I changed the relationship status. That left me feeling scared so to ease this fear I sent him one last text message. I wanted him to know that I still loved him and that if he wanted to talk to me he could still text me but I wouldn't be on Facebook. Finally I just said that I would honour his request for space and not message him. Just before I was getting picked up to go and see a friend's play I started crying and feeling upset that there were all these unfinished things I wanted to say. I knew I could NOT message him. Instead I pulled out my stationary and started to write him a letter. So far I have written two. I decided that whenever I have things I want to say to him I've written them down and stuck them in envelopes. Come December depending on which way things go I will either give him the letters or destroy them when I come back from Christmas. Using the breathing techniques my therapist taught me I manage to get through the sadness and anxiety and still function at work. It has become a habit now that whenever I feel those bad feelings rising I just go back to the breathing until it passes. When I'm home if I'm still feeling bad I unpack the feelings and deal with them there. I'm more prepared than I was when Vince broke up with me at least. For the first time I feel like Cinderella. People have jokingly called me that for years and I had never once felt a connection to that character. Right now I feel like Cinderella after leaving the ball. I left my shoe and my heart behind and now I'm locked up in my room hoping my Prince will come and let me out.