Help! New York has stolen my boyfriend!
I haven’t written for a VERY long time, I know. The truth is, I tend not to need to when I’m happy, and happy I have been since I got together with my lovely S2 a year and a half ago. Of course there are difficult moments, especially when my brain does the thing and I get all anxious for stupid reasons, or he goes off script in some way and I don’t have a way to cope with it.
Right now, he is going off script, big time, and yes, I am struggling. Once I say what it is, some of you are going to say, “pffft, what the hell is the big deal”, but remember (a lot of people seem to forget) that each brain works differently. We all have our own fears and our own set of values that we assume other people share, or at least can understand.
So, what has he done? The answer is, he has gone to New York. Not forever (thank God), but it has sent me into a horrible spiral of anxiety, just as I knew it would when he very first told me about it. He has gone to support a school trip, and he will return on Tuesday. Here I am definitely sensing the “pfffft”, but hang on. Let me explain the many reasons why this messes with my brain.
My boyfriend and I are in some ways very similar creatures. We’re silly and childish with a weird sense of humour, we like being lazy and cuddling up together, we both LOVE music, we have similar views on life and what we want life to be, and we love going on adventures... together. Whether at home or away, I have become very used to having him at easy reach. We meet up every Wednesday after work for date night, and I stay at his parents’ house with him at weekends. When we go away, I drive us somewhere far away, deep in the countryside, usually, and we wander around together, totally content with each other’s company. I have a few friends, S2 has none, but we have never actually hung out with my friends or anyone else. It’s always just us, and I love that. He is my safe zone, my happy place. We always send each other morning texts with a precise amount of kisses, and after work, we text all evening until bedtime, often using the same phrases and bringing up the same in-jokes. It never gets boring, and I still get the same butterflies when his name pops up on my phone as I did in those heady and confusing days before we got together. I rely on our little routines to get through the day. I guess you could say I’m addicted to him and the way we do things - I’m addicted to being a part of a perfect pair, and not one thing in this world would tempt me to willingly walk away from that, even for a moment.
One Wednesday afternoon, I’d driven the forty minute drive from my work to his to pick him up. I don’t like the drive, but I do it whenever he asks me to (he usually catches the train and I collect him from a station closer to home) because I like to make things easy for him and because it means I can spend as much time with him as possible when he finishes late. When I pull up outside his school, I’m usually a little shaken as I’m a nervous driver and there are some scary roads on this route, and this day was no exception. When I saw S2, my little heart lit up and I gave him my usual greeting, a “helloooo”, a big grin and a kiss. We drove off into the town (more scary roads) and while I was driving, he told me something that could have easily made me crash my car - he had signed himself up to go on a school trip to New York during February half term. My heart sank, and these are the reasons why:
1. Half terms are the only times we get to spend any REAL chunks of time together. I didn’t want to miss out on this time that I enjoy so much. Looking forward to half term with S2 gets me through the term! As much as I love doing what I do, working in a school is exhausting and sometimes stressful. Even when we don’t go away on holiday, being with him is holiday enough.
2. We were meant to be looking for a place to live together. S2 had agreed to check out some caravans parks with me during February half term and I was so excited. I have always had two dreams in life. One is to be in a beautiful forever relationship with my perfect person - check! The second is to have my own home and move out of my mother’s house. I could see my dream on the horizon! And then it disappeared.
3. I felt hurt because his decision to go went against one of my own values - I would never, ever, choose to do anything when the alternative was spending time with S2. My friends all know that I will fit them in AROUND my timetabled S2 time. Even my own mother has (I think) finally come to terms with the fact that my weekends belong to S2, not her. When I have uni work, instead of doing it at weekends like I used to, I do some on my lunch break, and the rest in the evenings I’m not with S2. Any “fun” things wouldn’t even make it onto my agenda if it meant “fun, but without S2″. I felt so deeply disturbed that S2 was happily choosing to do something he didn’t actually HAVE to do at a time that he would have been with me. Even now, after knowing he has chosen to do this, I still stick to my values. Things have come up that have peaked my interest, but as soon as I’ve realised they are happening during S2 time, I forget about them. Someone could offer me an all expenses paid trip to Norway with guaranteed Northern Lights and my own little red cottage with mountain views and I’d still say no if it meant being away from S2. Priorities! I didn’t feel much like a priority when I heard what S2 planned to do...
So, feeling all of these things at once, but still trying not to crash my car, I went quiet. S2 noticed something was wrong and starting trying to ask me, so I started doing that annoying “woman” thing of saying, “I’m fine” when I really wasn’t fine at all. Realising it was about the trip, S2 started back-tracking, offering to pull out if I really didn’t want him to go. At this point, a whole bunch of other thoughts popped into my head, on top of the hurty feelings I mentioned above:
1. What the hell kind of bitch girlfriend would TELL her boyfriend he couldn’t do something he wanted to do? One of my all-time pet peeves is when people are controlling over their partners and try to impose rules on how they live their lives.
2. BUT I REALLY, REALLY didn’t want him to go! So how could I just lie and say it was fine when it felt like my heart was being jammed into a shredder?
3. Even if I did pretend it was all good in the hood, how long would it be before my mask fell off and S2 saw how upset I really was about it? And what would happen then? Would it change anything? And if it did change anything, how bloody guilty would I feel about it?
So, in my usual painfully awkward way, I bottled it all up until we got to his house, and as soon as he mentioned it to his parents (who were really thrilled about it) I went into shut down mode, realising I was failing terribly at not crying in front of everyone and locked myself in the bathroom for a panic. After this, I tried to put on a brave face and cook dinner like a normal person, but I couldn’t, and S2 wouldn’t stop looking at my eyes and trying to get me to talk about what was bothering me. If you’ve read my blog, you’ll all be very aware of how difficult I find it to actually talk about my feelings to the person those feelings involve. I ended up turning into a pitiful, crying mess, forcing out each excruciating word, which made me cry even more. Somehow I managed to express some of what I was feeling and obviously this made S2 feel so bad he wouldn’t stop holding me and telling me or hinting at his secret plans that should really have stayed secret in order to make me feel better. What those plans were is a whole different blog post, so I won’t go into details! I mean, sort of knowing his intentions with me did make me feel good, but it still didn’t make me feel better about this New York trip. By the end of the evening, he had uttered the forbidden word (love!!!) so many times I was on quite a high, and he had also said enough to make me think that he probably wouldn’t be chosen for the trip anyway, so I pushed it to the back of my mind for a week.
The following Wednesday, I made the same journey to pick him up from work, and I had almost forgotten about New York. But then, at exactly the same point on the map as last time, he mentioned it again... and this time it was worse. He was actually going. I can’t actually remember how I reacted. I think I was kind of numb. I guess I’d thought about it enough and kind of expected it deep down, so I managed to appear OK. Obviously I was broken into pieces, but I was also so emotionally tired that it didn’t show. Feeling guilty, S2 directed me to a nice restaurant (where we’d gone on our first date) and pulled out all the stops to make me feel better. Again, all very nice, but it didn’t change the fact that he was going...
Because I actually value my relationship and don’t intend to start messing it up, I have managed to keep up my brave face until now. I got all through Christmas and my birthday without letting the dreaded NY monster take over me. S2 talked about it, but not so much that it triggered my anxiety, and things just kind of bumbled along smoothly. I tried my best to stop seeing his choice to go as a direct insult, and that was probably the way I helped myself the most. I also talked it out with Binbag and Skittles, who both completely understood my feelings and offered their services to cheer me up while S2 was away. Before their offers, my plan had been to sit under my duvet and cry for five solid days, so I was grateful, despite knowing exactly how my mind would be dealing with (or not) my situation. Little did I know exactly how hard it would be, or what complications would come along to make things even worse.
Yesterday at around 4PM, I parked up and saw that S2 had texted me. He was just getting on the plane and promised to email me when he got to New York. A part of me was freaking out because AAAAGGGHHHH IT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING, but the promise of his email was something to cling on to. I kind of knew roughly how long the flight would be, so had a time frame in mind where I expected to receive contact. Good. I could just about cope with this. I went home, decided I needed a Chinese, ate the Chinese and sat around watching rubbish TV until I felt tired enough to go to bed. That was around 10PM. I had already made sure my notifications were switched on so I’d be woken up at some point within the next few hours by S2′s “I’m here” text. Ignoring my obvious niggling anxieties about his plane nosediving into the ocean, or being shot by Donald Trump upon arrival, I drifted off into a pretty deep slumber.
Unusually for me, I didn’t wake up until about 4AM. At first, all I could think about was the weird dream I’d just had about trains and bicycles, but then it hit me. I hadn’t had my email! Surely he couldn’t still be on the plane? The flight would not have taken 12 hours, so surely he was already settled into his hotel and had had plenty of time to send me a quick email... Cue extreme panic! Cue sending myself copious nonsense emails to make sure my app was working! Cue desperately trying to Google something that gave me an indication of what had been going on with flights to New York! Cue taking to Facebook for reassurance from people who were definitely all still asleep! Cue crying, lots of.
The hours that followed were some of the most stressful and upsetting I have ever experienced. I don’t think I can even accurately explain what was going on in my head, but there was a lot of wildly swinging from “he probably just ran out of battery or can’t get WiFi” to “OMG HE’S DEFINITELY 100% DEAD AND I MIGHT AS WELL JUST JUMP OFF A BRIDGE NOW!” My brain was also giving me the horrible scenario of “maybe he just doesn’t really care all that much about you and decided not to contact you”. Great times. Great, tearful, wailing times, in the dark, all by myself!
I ended up posting in a travel group on Facebook I use frequently. I just wanted some kind words and reassurance, and I did get plenty. I also received some useful information/notions that I either didn’t know before, or hadn’t considered in my stressed-out state. They were:
1. Apparently WiFi in New York is terrible. Several said there aren’t really many free WiFi options available and they thought he probably hadn’t been able to contact me because of this.
2. There had been no reports of plane crashes or problems, so he was probably perfectly safe and alive. Several made a very valid point - if something had happened to a plane flying to New York, it would be all over the news in an instant.
3. Flights that long are tiring to the point he might have simply been too exhausted to make contact.
4. Being in charge of a group of kids, he might not have had the chance to grab his phone out of his pocket.
All of these ideas, as well as the many kind words and reassuring comments that people offered did help a little, but my brain was stuck so far into panic mode that it still wasn’t enough to calm me down and allow me to go back to sleep. I just needed contact. That was the only thing that could really help. And it wasn’t there.
A few hours later, time had moved forward while I had stayed still, and I received contact from S2′s mum, Diva, telling me not to worry, and this was just what S2 was like. But I knew differently! S2 was NEVER like that with me. There have been times when one or both of our phones have glitched out and contact has been lost, and I have spun off into a panic. S2 has learned that I need reassurance in these circumstances, so as soon as he realises something is wrong with the phones, he’ll get his mum to text me, or get on Facebook to message me instead. It stops me going crazy and assuming he suddenly hates me, which is a pretty common thing for me to do, unfortunately!
Anyway, so Diva’s comment didn’t really have the desired effect. In fact I started to question her mindset. Why wasn’t SHE worried that she hadn’t heard from him? Wasn’t that like a trademark thing for a mother to do? My mother worries about me if I go out in the next town and don’t contact her, so God only knows how she’d be if I jetted off to New York and didn’t touch base when I got there.
Another person we all used to work with ended up commenting too, and at first, her words were comforting. She echoed a lot of what was being said to me in the travel group. The problem was, other things were being said in the travel group that were triggering off other worrisome thoughts and giving me ideas, like, “you should contact the school/hotel to see if he has arrived”. I had tried Tweeting the school earlier, but unsurprisingly, no one was answering me at 4AM on the first Saturday of half term. So, the hotel... but what was it called? I don’t think S2 had ever told me the name of it, so I didn’t know what to look for. Thinking this was a great idea, I found one of Diva’s comments on my post and asked her if she new the name of the hotel. The first response came from the other person who’d commented and it shocked me. She all-caps shouted at me to “STOP IT” and basically told me off for even considering it, ordering me to just give up and get on with my life. Ummmm, well, I can’t really do that when I’m the most worried I’ve ever been, but OK!!! Then, even more to my surprise, Diva replied, ignoring my question, choosing instead to agree with the other woman. What?!?!?! His own MOTHER?!?! Refusing to help me, his loving girlfriend who she has always wholeheartedly approved of, find out if her OWN SON was still bloody alive?!?!?! I was stunned, mortified and livid all at once, and without even thinking, I snapped back, “So you won’t tell me?” deliberately omitting kisses for impact. As much as I felt well within my rights to question her mean decision, I immediately felt sick. The last person I needed to fall out with at this time, or any other, was my boyfriend’s mother. If she had taken an extreme dislike to me because of my snappy comment, my relationship with S2 faced a huge hurdle. He pretty much does anything his mum says, and most of our relationship takes place under her roof, so yeah, her hating me would kinda mess things up. Shit. I was halfway through composing a text to her, begging her to help me, but I didn’t want to make things even worse, and that’s when I fell into a pathetic crying mess. My mother was in the vicinity and heard me, so she came into my room. I was expecting her to be kind and comfort me, but instead she pretty much told me to man up and stop being stupid. Hurt and still deeply distressed, I told her to “fuck off”, which, again, made me think, “oh, shit”. She did immediately turn back to battle me, but I just cried and cried and wailed about how I needed her to be supportive, not to talk to me like I was pathetic. I don’t think she really got what I meant, but she refrained from continuing the argument and left. I cried solidly for hours after this, struggling to find comfort in anything anymore. Skittles had offered to meet up with me to cheer me up, and although I knew I’d enjoy seeing her, I couldn’t even comprehend being ready enough to leave me room. Plus, Diva was still ignoring me, so I was imagining all kinds of awkward and horrible scenarios that might occur between us. And through it all, I STILL hadn’t heard from S2.
Eventually, I was exhausted enough for a very patchy snooze, which killed about an hour, then I managed to drag myself into the shower, where I cried some more. By the time I was out, I was almost late for meeting Skittles. I hurriedly started trying to put my makeup on as the tears were still flowing. My mother was being kinder to me by this point too. I was so tired, my hands were shaking. And then, finally, it happened! AFTER 19 HOURS!!!!
S2 texted me instead of emailing, telling me that his data wasn’t working and that he was fine. The relief made me cry even more than the worry, and being so emotionally drained I could only manage to say that “I was so worried” and I was glad he was OK. He texted me a couple more times over the next hour or so while I was eating lunch with Skittles, and for a while I still couldn’t say anything apart from expressing how worried I had been. Diva had also texted me by this point, with kinder words, and I apologised for snapping at her.
I hung out with Skittles for the rest of the day, going back to her house to watch a movie. S2 continued to text me on and off, often with photos to accompany his words. I was better able to hold a conversation by this point, and even now as the evening is coming to an end here at home, I’m still in contact with him. I still don’t like the fact that he is so far away, that he will be there for days yet to come, and that there is likely to be a huge chunk of time I don’t hear from him when he is travelling home, but at least I know he’s not floating around in the sea, and his head isn’t mounted on Donald Trump’s trophy wall.
