Mental health ruined my relationship

Currently it’s been a little over a month since my breakup. Towards the end i found myself getting so anxious and depressed over the thought of my significant other potentially cheating on me or doing some sort of horrible thing to me despite that never being in her character.

I created another version of her in my head due to all of this thinking and insecurity. This other her in my head would do nothing but bad things to me in my mind as i replayed these horrible intrusive thoughts and eventually I sometimes began to treat the real her as I would have treated the version of her I created in my head.

I feel as though a major role in this thinking was the amount of weed I had been smoking. It had definitely made me complacent where I was in life not wanting to actively better myself, and when I wasn’t feeling good because I wasn’t bettering myself I often resorted to using her as a big crutch and many times felt very insecure and didn’t see any value in myself which probably led to the idea that she wouldn’t see any value in me and would potentially do these bad things to me.

Additionally the amount of weed I had been smoking caused me to never really be connected with the world which affected my ability to empathize, connect, and feel emotions like I should. This definitely helped make me very paranoid and scared that others around me would want to hurt me.

I realize now that these are things that she would never have done to me. We had been through so much together and had been friends since elementary school (currently in college). I stuck by her side in the hospital during her stay as she went under to get a benign brain tumor removed. Another time she drove over and wiped the blood from my head as I accidentally hit myself in the head with a tire iron while trying to replace my tire when I hit a curb in a parking lot (stupid I know). And what I also think about so much is how she threw me a surprise birthday party with all of my best friends and family as I came home from work one day expecting to do nothing for my big 18.

She broke the news to me in person and initially I was shocked and sat on it for the night and didn’t say anything in person because I just didn’t know what to say other than I don’t know if a friendship after would be the best decision. We met back up the next day and had a very nice conversation asking about each others day and how much we missed each other, then had a really productive and mature conversation about what we both had seen going wrong in the relationship. We both did a whole lot of crying and hugging and I joked about us making sure we didn’t have each others hair on us so we wouldn’t cry about it when we found it later on. She had said she’d like that very much so i asked to pluck a strand off her head which she said yes and laughed.

It was a really dignified last talk and I’m glad we ended things so much better. She mentioned how it absolutely hurt her the night prior when I said i wasn’t sure if a friendship after would be good as she definitely didn’t like the idea of us never talking again. She also said she sobbed her eyes out when she realized i gave back almost every bracelet except for the one she gave me on our first valentines. She said she would keep many mementos of mine in a box, and even said she’d keep the little park ranger teddy bear I got her from Alcatraz on her desk.

Overall, she had said she wanted to talk again after some time but just wanted me to get better mentally as she felt responsible for how bad i had been feeling and felt like a horrible girlfriend hearing about me discuss how I felt. I failed to realize how this had been affecting her too and only assumed it had been affecting me.

This took so much out of her and I never really stopped to realize that. She had said she didn’t really know who she was as a person as she hadn’t been single for a long time (I was the rebound after a very shitty guy so she never had that time to really get to know herself, not bad or toxic at all but she never really had that time to do things for her). She had said she wanted to use this time to figure herself out, focus on her community college classes, and make some more friends as outside of me she didn’t have many people.

It was a rough last week after a pretty decent stretch of good days after the breakup. However, I stopped smoking the day after we broke up and i feel so much more connected to reality and able to regulate my own emotions. Now I’m getting back to the goals that I have set before mental health sidetracked me. I’m working on completing my EMT, getting out of my depressing bakery job at a grocery store where I don’t talk to too many people as I’m the only one back there, and going to the gym as much as I used to and rediscovering how good that felt. I’m also working on getting a job at my gym as i’ve been a member for a couple of years and am looking to get into a much more positive environment and make friends with people who’s goals line up with my own.

As much as I wish to text her I know I need to figure out how to handle things by myself and with the occasional help from my very close friends and family. I also need to respect the boundary of no contact to allow us to heal and show my maturity that I respect this decision we’ve made. She would want me to get better and I know as the dumpee you aren’t supposed to text first if anyone texts at all, but I potentially will check in with a Merry Christmas text and update her at the very least on how I’ve progressed, and how she has progressed as well as I feel that’s a solid amount of time for us both to do some growing and healing.

Long post but it might as well be some good journaling for me to put this all into words. Thank you for reading 🙂