How do you know when it’s time to break up? And what if you regret leaving? If only there were a simple formula for figuring it all out. We believe that many answers can be found in the stories of women who have found the courage to walk away from a dead-end relationship. Their insights, observations and hard-won lessons can help you see your own life more clearly. This guest post from one of our favorite bloggers–Disaster on Heels–is so perfect, no further introduction is needed.
If I believed in signs I would have turned around two days into the drive. On my way to Chicago I hit blizzards in Flagstaff (wasn’t Arizona supposed to be desert?), tornados in Omaha, and ice storms in St. Louis.
When I graduated from grad school I nabbed a killer job with a San Francisco-based start up while my on-again off-again boyfriend of six years kept his job in the Windy City. Though this meant we’d be dating long distance, everyone (including my boyfriend) agreed this was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up, and “if it was meant to be, it’s meant to be.”
So I moved to the Bay and despite frequent visits, ten months in I got the call that I feared most. “I am not moving to San Francisco,” he said. “And I don’t want a long distance relationship.”
I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, I was plagued by the fear that I’d look back at this moment when I was 50 and wonder if I’d let my husband slip away simply because I had decided to put my career first. Plus I was about to turn 30. In Maine we have an expression for just such crossroads: “Fish, or cut bait.”
So I fished. I quit my job, secured a new one, and three weeks later, in the middle of February, I was bound for Chicago in a Mini Cooper.
I think I knew somewhere it was a mistake. But it’s amazing how long it takes for the brain to understand what the gut instinctively feels. My arrival was marked by insignificance. I had left my friends in San Francisco in tears, with goodbye parties and promises of upcoming visits. When I arrived in Chicago, there was no celebration, no flowers, no welcome dinner. Just the 27 boxes I had FedExed to his apartment stacked in an otherwise empty dining room. Rather than ship everything back to San Francisco right then and there, I shut the bathroom door and cried.
For the next month while I adjusted to my new job by day, I nested furiously by night. When the hollowness settled in I immersed myself in Craigslist. I was rejuvenated by bargains. I found hope in antique chests, joy in recycled lamps, and affirmation in hand-made coffee tables. With each new treasure I expected my boyfriend to smile, thank me and tell me how happy he was I was creating a home. But that never happened.
One day I decided our hallway needed color. It took me three runs to Home Depot to find a paint color that my boyfriend and I agreed upon. We settled on a vibrant orange, which, I convinced myself, looked cheerful.
It was 10PM on a Tuesday by the time I started lining the panels with blue tape and carefully placing the sparrow stencils I’d picked up at a street fair in San Francisco. While I was perched on the ladder my boyfriend looked up from the TV and said, “Just so you know, if this doesn’t work out with us, you’re going to have to paint it back.”
I let his words roll off me. He’d see what I was doing and love it. He’d be so impressed. For the next four nights I painted quietly while he watched TV. My back hurt, I was exhausted, but when the paint had dried and I peeled off the blue tape, I was proud of what I had done. It was beautiful, and it was ours.
“It tells a story,” I told my boyfriend, walking him down the hallway and showing him the birds. “See? It starts with one gold bird in the first panel and then as you go down the wall the flock of grey birds gets bigger. But in the last panel the gold bird is back in front. Get it? It’s about transcendence.”
“Cool,” my boyfriend said, and then headed towards the kitchen.
I lived with those birds for three more months, but eventually orange paint and antique lamps weren’t enough to keep the walls of our relationship from crumbling. I knew I had no choice but to leave. I took everything I had brought into that apartment, down to the drawer liners, but I could not take my painted birds. I cried as I walked down the hall, out of my apartment and into the darkness of the months that followed.
I didn’t see my ex for the next six months. I had envisioned the day we would inevitably bump into each other and the scenario played out differently each time in my mind. In one version I’d play it cool, say “hi” and keep walking. In another I’d beat him with my purse and stab him with a tube of lip gloss. But what actually played out exceeded even my best fantasy.
We ran into each other at a party hosted by a mutual friend, and my sister saw him first. She put down her cocktail, stared at me from across the room and lipped “OH MY GOD.” She rushed over and told me we could leave at any moment and asked me what I needed, but I turned to her coolly and said, “I’m fine.” To my surprise, I wasn’t even faking it.
He hovered like a vulture. He kept swooping in to try to talk to me and pick a fight. He wanted to see me upset. He was after tears, but he wouldn’t get them.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m good.”
“We should probably talk.”
“Why? I don’t think we need to. I’m happy.”
“I thought you’d be back in California by now.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Are you still in the apartment?”
“Yeah. But it looks a lot different now. I painted over the birds.”
He looked older, worn, and anxious, and he smelled like cigarettes. Looking at him I felt no nostalgia, no regret, just relief that he was no longer my problem to deal with. I felt the freedom of release, and the current of my future sweeping me up from below. And in that moment I knew: the gold bird was me. And that, he could not paint over.
“Disaster on Heels” lives in Chicago. If you liked this post (how could you not?), you can friend her on facebook, follow her on twitter, or subscribe to her blog. You won’t regret it. Just like she doesn’t regret leaving her boyfriend.
