When heartbreak means putting your safety first

TW: This piece mentions sexual violence, emotional abuse and threat. If you find these topics difficult, you may wish to take care before reading. Details on support can be found below. 

I became friends with R in sixth year in secondary school; I can’t remember why we started talking, but we couldn’t stop. This quickly moved to calling frequently and then goodbye hugs at the end of each school day.

We got so much closer as my graduation approached, but by the time we both realised we had feelings for each other, our friend group was solid; me, one I had been friends with since I was six, and another two I was close with, and him, who had been best friends with two of them for a good many years.

We decided not to date because, firstly, if we broke up, the friend group would fall apart, and secondly, we both knew that if we dated, it would be permanent. It would have been his first relationship, and frankly, that scared me.

I honestly didn’t believe that I was worthy of a person who was so kind, so caring, so perfect in so many ways.

He would gift me art he had designed for me, our names engraved together. I gave him a necklace from a holiday, and he wore it day and night. Still, we wouldn’t date, even though we both admitted separately to our friends that we thought we were in love. For me, it was the deepest love I had ever felt.

A love we wouldn’t call love

That September, I went off to university, phone in hand. University put me through the ringer. I had just been assaulted before university began, so I wasn’t dating or interested in anyone.

We hung out on weekends, the four best friends, and all was good. He got busy with the Leaving Certificate, and I got busy with therapy and trying to keep my head above water. When I started having feelings for someone else, I told him, like I told him everything. He said he didn’t want to hear about him. I obliged.

Things started to get worse with him. Calls started to be more sparse, and the ones we did have had a depressing undertone. He no longer made me feel happy to be around. He accused me of only having feelings for others because they were thinner than him.

Everything changed after the exams

The night he finished his Leaving Cert exams, that comfortable friendship ended. He got drunk and high, and as I worked at a nightclub, I didn’t see the twelve minutes worth of voice messages until four AM that morning.

Twelve minutes that began with him crying and blaming me for breaking his heart. Telling me that he had waited till I had recovered from the assault to ask me out, and I had just moved on with someone else instead. Acting entitled to date me. As he continued into the night, the voice messages got worse; he called me names and a person with no capacity for love in my heart..

In one moment (or twelve essentially), he went from the boy I had loved to a stranger. Worse, he destroyed how I felt about myself. I had always seen him as the person who knew me best.

We called that night. He apologised. We both cried. I forgave him. We moved on with our lives, except that a few days later, still feeling the sting of his words, I asked for space.

First, I just left the chats open, but he continued to message, despite my asking him not to, apologising and saying I could tell how sorry he was since he couldn’t respect my wishes to be left alone. I blocked him.

Trying to make it work

Around a month later, I felt like I could trust him again. We messaged like normal, calls still being dark. He wasn’t happy, and I was stressed. We didn’t work anymore. We still loved each other.

Our calls got even less frequent. We didn’t see each other anymore. I stopped turning to him for safety and support, instead focusing on balancing three jobs over the summer and my new friends, as my best friends and we didn’t see each other anymore. He would continue to make snide remarks about my new friends and my interests over call but I would brush them off.

The breaking point

About a week before my brother’s wedding in France, we were on call when he told me that when I had rejected him and when I had blocked him, he had imagined physically hurting me. He had a past of anger issues and getting in trouble in primary school for finishing fights with violence. He blamed me for his newly begun day-drinking. I left that call shocked, unsure of how I felt about this development.

I went to the wedding, heart heavy, unsure what to do. He knew I was going and was busy, so I wouldn’t be messaging him much anyway. I asked my sister what she thought, and asked my close friends from university what to do. All of them told me it was a dangerous position for me to stay in.

The first dance was to the same song from Dirty Dancing that I had played a hundred times, thinking of him. The song that, if you had asked me six months before this, I would have claimed as a song for our first dance. Along with joy for my brother, all I felt was the pain he had dealt me, over and over again. I left the reception and delivered one final message to him, in tears, explaining that I would be blocking him. Full stop. I found out months later that he had shared this very personal and vulnerable message with our friends, who had picked it apart and got mad at me. That was the sting of betrayal that hit me months later, but it hurt just as much.

The aftershock

In the days that followed, I felt relief; no longer having to worry about his responses to everything, no longer stressing about his reactions to my just living my life in Dublin. It hurt every day, though. I continued this way, but attempted to get hold of my other friends. One told me, in no uncertain terms, that he didn’t want to hear from me. One just ignored my messages. Thankfully, one I had only known for three years stuck by me.

It took a few weeks for the loss to truly hit me. I kept wanting to unblock him and get back what little I could of our promised futures together. I couldn’t listen to my favourite artists without thinking of him, all my comfort shows had his touch, and all my best clothes had fond memories of him. It took one month before I could take his photos and art down from around my room. Three until I could remove his address from my saved ones. Five until I finally deleted his saved WhatsApp chats.

I kept waiting for his loss to lessen, kept waiting until I didn’t want to go back to him and beg for his friendship again, so I could tell him everything I hadn’t until now. My best friends all started university this year; how are they getting on? How are their lives? But I have consoled myself that I can’t break no contact because I know that it would be ten times harder to distance myself again. I can make new memories, but trying to relive the old will not do me any good.

Every time I think of going back though, I remember how much pain he put me through, and how many times he scared me. I think of the friends who have stuck by me through everything, who have kept me sane through these last few months. I still worry about my old friends, but I hope that overall they are happy.

Not an ex, but still a loss

It’s interesting, having never even dated, I can’t call him an ex-partner, but his loss has hit me more than any. In past relationships, I had questioned what love meant to me, that maybe I just was not built for the type of love I had imagined for myself after reading all the romance books that had shaped my view on love. Ironic that the person who had questioned my ability to love would be the proof to myself that I was capable of it.

Every train ride, every trip to my hometown, I can’t help but look for him. I always half hope he’ll appear in the seat directly in front of me and we’ll smile and talk about everything and nothing like we used to. I’ll complain about the job market, he’ll tell me about the newest art piece he’s working on and his struggles with charcoal drawing, and we’ll laugh about whatever new scheme one of our friends cooked up. I wonder if he does the same, but I also know that that time is over. The person I thought would be the main character in my story is just a chapter, and I’m beginning to be okay with that.

If you were impacted by any of the information in this article, you can contact the 24-hour National Rape Crisis Helpline 1800 778888, visit www.toointoyou.ie or call their helpline 1800 341 900 for support.

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