the summer of The Break Up

i felt from the beginning that 2008 would be a challenge. but it has proven even more so, as in the past few months i have had to deal with the disintegration of my relationship with the man i thought i was going to spend the rest of my life with.

although it had been brewing for quite some time, and i should and did see it coming, the whole thing ended (for the most part) at the beginning of last month, and the resulting month of june was a struggle for me. it was a struggle to get out of bed, go to work, eat, sleep and generally just make it through the day. thank you, ambien.

the month was filled with a lot of ups and downs. i suffered through two colds and pink eye. tim russert died. i moved out of my apartment and into a new one.

but there were lots of happy and unexpected moments, too. i challenged myself in ways i wouldn't have done if i had not been forced to peel myself off a certain blue futon. and, i've realized the true strength in numbers: i have an amazing support system consisting of family and endlessly loyal friends.

i feel like i have grown up so much this month. and i have finally started to discover who the real amanda is and what i want to be like for the rest of my life. but i am sad that never again will anyone call me poptart, his nickname for me. no one will (most likely) ever ask me why i'm weird, something he did for reasons unknown to me. and i dearly miss his parents, who welcomed me into their home and their lives with an incredible amount of love, right from the beginning. and i also miss his sister, who i thought i clicked with immediately. right now, i want to wish her congratulations and lots of luck. i don't think i'll get another chance to do that.

i have had what i consider two really serious relationships during the first 25 years of my life. the first was amazing in high school, but turned less so once i went to college. i was very young, but the feeling that it felt "right" was hard to deny. even after we broke up, i stayed close with my ex, and we only recently completely stopped talking. i think we were not able to stay friends over the long term, despite our obvious connection and mutual love, because after we broke up we dated on and off for many years. as a result, he never got over the relationship and i did. now he is still dealing with that, almost six years after we split.

the tables have turned on me in this situation. i still loved him with all my heart, and would have given anything to dive back into a -- possibly broken -- relationship and try to make it work. he was less willing.

its times like this that i wish that the procedure from the movie "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind," which completely deletes a whole relationship from your memory, actually existed. i would even give up the good memories of our relationship (the downside of the mind erasing in the film) if i could get rid of the knowledge that he has already met someone new and moved on. i would especially like to forget a certain list he composed citing all the things that he likes about her, which i accidentally came across while cleaning my stuff out of his apartment. (in my defense, it was right out in the open and, admit it, you would have read it, too.)

it was devastating, and still burned in my retinas. but what doesn't kill us make us stronger, right? (in the past few weeks i have started spewing cliches uncontrollably. hopefully this will stop soon.)

now, don't get me wrong. i know i will meet someone new eventually. what we had was more than love, it was true friendship and -- dare i say it -- a sense that we were destined to meet and be together. i have hope that there is someone else out there that can give me that, and much more. it is with great reluctance that i have given up hope that we will end up together in the end, but i think the new girl was the final nail in the coffin -- which i needed to know about in order to let go.

i have wanted to write about what i was dealing with for a long time. honestly, i have put it off because i was holding out hope that this would repair itself and there would be no more break up to report. it is quite clear that that's just not going to happen. at least any time in the near future.

so i have decided that this will be the last time i talk about my break up, or my new ex, on my blog. i wanted to let you know what was going on with me, have my say and clear the air. now that you know everything, there will be no more talk about him. that chapter of my life is now closed.