The relationship started out like any other, full of overly cutesy text messages and hours spent on the phone. It was great and made me feel so good about myself. I really liked the boy I was with, and the fact he really liked me put me on cloud nine. As months passed, the relationship, like every other relationship, fell out of the honeymoon stage. We weren't as routine with our texts and the cutesy texts died. That's where everything started to go wrong on my side.
It felt like I was putting in more effort and that made me think he didn't want me. I knew he worked with a lot of other girls, so when he was at work, I'd obsess over what they talked about, I wondered if they knew he had a girlfriend. I wondered if he had a work crush. Sometimes, I wondered if he was cheating.
He'd leave me on read sometimes and it would feel like a dagger. I would think nothing but the worst.
My mind was constantly at war with itself. I hated myself for thinking that he'd be capable of hurting me like that but I also developed a hatred for myself because I figured if I was prettier or better in any way that he'd always be talking to me. These thoughts would be fulled by things I'd see online, articles about how if your boyfriend doesn't text you __ number of times he didn't love you. I constantly worried about his feelings for me.
I came so close to breaking up with him a couple of times, but I knew I would be even more miserable without him.
I figured that the more time that passed the more okay I'd be. It was my first long term relationship, so of course I had worries.
Unfortunately, the more time passed the worse things got. The more obsessed I became with getting his reassurance the more I pushed him away.
The day we broke up we were sitting on my bed and I knew exactly what was coming but I didn't realize how bad things had gotten for him. He told me, "I can't be the boyfriend you want me to be." Those words haunted me for months and every time I thought about them, it killed me. He was the boyfriend I wanted. I just wanted reassurance that I was the girlfriend he wanted. A couple months after we broke up, he told me he felt like he spent so much time trying to make me happy in our relationship that he was no longer happy.
I felt like a complete failure. I didn't understand how I could do that. How I could actually take away the happiness from the person I loved so much.
It wasn't until seven months after our breakup that things started to be pieced together for me. My therapist told me it wasn't all my fault, the combination of three mental illnesses had taken over and killed the relationship for me.
The obsessions I had and the constant reassurance I needed wasn't my brain being needy, it was my demons telling me I wasn't good enough and he didn't care and my mind needing to be in control of some aspect of my life.
Somehow the revelation that it was mental illness that killed the relationship made me feel even worse. He had completely removed me from his life and probably hated me because of my mental health and he had no idea. I had no idea.
If I couldn't control my thoughts enough to save that relationship, I'm not sure I can ever have a successful relationship with someone I care about.
My mind is a constant clutter and I'm constantly anxious and I am so sorry I couldn't make you happy. If it's any consolation, you made dealing with my mental health problems slightly easier and are the inspiration for me to fight the demons in my mind.
