A breakup story

I felt like it was time to get a profile picture but I didn’t want to use one of myself so I picked an octopus. I love octopuses. I think it’s crazy how little we know about them and how intelligent they are. Plus, they’re masters of disguise. My Octopus Teacher was such a fantastic documentary.

Tonight was better. After my husband went to bed I snuck into the room so we could have a little fun before he went to sleep, and then I snuck back down stairs lol.

We are very good at communicating. I’ve had trouble communicating my entire life. Probably because I was a middle child, also a twin, but my twin was very good at being the center of attention and I was more just the person everyone went to with their problems. I still am like that with my family, they need me to be. But with my husband, we hide nothing.

We actually broke up for a short period of time when we were dating. I hate thinking about it and I hate when it comes up because it was such a bad time in our lives. I was really overwhelmed. My anxiety was so bad that my doctor prescribed me anti-anxiety meds. My schedule started at about 9am everyday and ended at about 10pm. I was taking 21 credits, I had a job and an internship, and I had night classes for the LSAT.

Around that same time, my twin dropped out of college. That’s a big no-no for our family. Everyone in my family went to college. I’m zero-gen American (wasn’t born in the US), and every single in my family, even my grandma, has a college degree. So her dropping out was a huge deal.

The stress of everything consumed me. I didn’t know where I was going to go law school, or if I would even get in anywhere. I was having daily panic attacks. I wasn’t sleeping. And the medication that the doctor prescribed me made everything so much worse. My husband (boyfriend at the time), was also in school, working his million jobs and getting no sleep. I felt like no one was there for me, I felt unhappy. Not with him, I even told him that. I felt unhappy in general. I felt like I needed a whole new life. I didn’t want to be there anymore. Not in my family, not in my relationship, not in my life. So I broke up with him. I focused on myself. During that short period of time, I realized how much I loved him, how much I wanted him in my life. How much better he made my life even when it felt like shit. I realized that I put my unhappiness on the wrong person. The issue was with me, and I sabotaged the good in my life. So I went to a bar with one of my best friends and I spent that time telling her how I made the biggest mistake of my life. How I needed him back, but I didn’t know if he wanted me back. I knew I hurt him. I knew the breakup destroyed him. While we were at the bar I was looking through social media and I saw that he was at a bar close by. So I sent him a snapchat of the bar I was in and asked if he wanted to join us. After the bar, we decided to get a hotel room. We stayed up all night that night talking. I told him everything. How lost I felt, how alone I felt, how I pushed him away, how much I love him. He told me everything too. All of his feelings. We made rules.

1. We’re not allowed to hold in a feeling to the other person. If we feel a certain way, even if we don’t understand it, we have to talk about it. We have to explain it. No holding back. Ever.
2. Every fight, no matter how big and no matter how small, has to get resolved. We don’t end a fight and ignore it with the other person feeling hurt. There has to be a resolution.
3. After the resolution of a fight, that fight is over, when we have another fight, we don’t bring up it up when we’re having another one, because that means it’s not resolved.
4. We have to listen to other person’s thought process when we’re communicating, so that we can know why we feel the way we do.
5. We have to ask each other questions. If you spend a day with us you’ll hear us say “are you okay? is anything bothering you? are you stressed about anything? are you upset about anything? are you feeling sad? are you feeling happy? is there anything i can do for you?” We ask each other those questions every single day.

And 5 1/2 (I don’t like the number 6 and I have OCD so we couldn’t end the rules at 6). Once a month date nights. We take turns planning.

After the night we were back together and better than ever. We acted like the breakup didn’t even happen. And while I still feel guilty for the pain I put him through during those short few months, I know it strengthened our relationship, and our love for each other.