No One Asked for This

by Cazzie David

  Everything about our relationship felt special and in turn made me feel special. I tried to make him feel the way I did but I wasn’t as good at it as he was, which shortly became a problem that never went away. Still, I felt so lucky to be in a relationship where, for the first time, I had no fear at all that the person I was with didn’t want me as much as I wanted him. And despite feeling genuine love for him, more than I’d ever felt before, he had a hard time believing me, getting it in his head that I didn’t do the things one who really loved him would be doing. Being loving or nurturing didn’t cut it. It was easy for me to empathize with; I had seen myself in him.

  Long after it had become untenable I contemplated ending it, but there would never be a good time. I couldn’t do it if it seemed like one of his emotional blackouts was coming on, because the results would be unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Previously, self-harm and suicide threats had come about from trivial circumstances, incidents that would go from 0 to 100, which were so momentarily urgent, like the last minute of an escape room before the time goes off, except I’m the only one in the room and all the clues are tricks. Once he was back in a good headspace, I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to do it either; I was too mentally exhausted to do anything besides emotionally recover from the chaos of the week before. I’d go through that time in a state of cognitive dissonance, attempting to return to a consistent view of myself and of him. When a few days had passed and normalcy returned, I would no longer want to call it off. It’d feel so good for my environment to be calm that I didn’t want to do anything that would disrupt it again. Plus everything would be great; we were as close as two people could possibly be, and I loved and missed that person so much, so why ruin the time I’d get to spend with him?

  I ended up pulling the trigger on the conversation after four consecutive days of being kept up in circles on the phone until three in the morning for whatever new reason I was causing him unhappiness. If I weren’t so worn out, I wouldn’t have gone through with it. But my sanity and health were the only two things I cared about besides him, and they had both been deteriorating for some time. So my conscience screamed at me, DO IT, CAZZIE! FUCKING DO IT NOW, I SWEAR TO GOD! until I did.

  I was afraid of all the possible scenarios that might happen and knew that I would always feel responsible for his safety whether we were together or apart. But in that moment, I preferred to be scared than to spend yet another day on the receiving end of a diatribe as to why I had failed him. Something that didn’t start occurring until we were five months into dating, but once it did, continued every few weeks thereafter, lasting for hours or days no matter what I did to try to resolve the issue. It didn’t matter how logically or lovingly I approached the situation or how many times I apologized for something that at first I knew was ridiculous but by the end no longer felt so sure of. It took me a while to realize it wasn’t my fault. But it wasn’t his fault either. After figuring out what was wrong, he did his best to get help and I learned everything on the diagnosis I could. You cannot believe what a hell this disorder is to live with, and I have endless sympathy for the people who have to spend their lives struggling with it as well as for their loved ones. It was extremely painful to admit that I was no longer strong enough to stay.

  But I was also not strong enough to stay away. It seems I am also codependent. Only a few days into our break, I called him to get back together. I regretted doing it and missed him like a drug. Deep down, I knew I was never going to stick with it; whenever I was upset, he was the only one who could make me feel better, even when he was the reason behind it. He was my person, and I was always going to be there for him; I just couldn’t take it anymore and thought it’d be the only way I could make it stop, at least until I could clear my head.

  I was crying and ready to express my remorse before he even picked up the phone. But it was too late. He told me he was now the happiest he had ever been, and he wanted to continue our time apart. This 180 wasn’t what I’d expected, but it wasn’t unfamiliar. I said okay and that I loved him, tears streaming down my face, and he hung up quickly. I thought he must be punishing me for wanting to end it, and I knew it wasn’t actually him on the phone but the other him, and I prayed it would switch over again soon. Two days later, I received a text from him officially breaking up with me. The flippancy of the message might have been what fucked me up the most. It sounded like it was meant to end things with a person he’d been dating for a couple of weeks. There was so little thought put into it, I could tell he’d composed it while walking down a flight of stairs. I even knew which stairs he had written it on.

  The next day I was still crying as I boarded the flight to DC for my sister’s graduation. I felt like it was all my fault for ending it in the first place, and I’d been stupid for not thinking that permanence might be one outcome. After I settled into my seat, I scrolled through Twitter and saw that my ex of one day had a new girlfriend. I think I probably left my human body. My dad held me as I shook uncontrollably in his arms for the entire flight. I was paralyzed with fear. This wasn’t in the realm of possibility of things I thought he would ever do to me. He was fiercely loyal, never so much as looking at another girl or doing anything that would cause even a speck of doubt or jealousy in my mind. From the moment we met, he did everything he could to make me feel like I was the only girl who had ever existed or would ever exist for him. I believed him because in addition to being exceedingly loyal, he was the most honest person I had ever known. Not because all the things he said ended up being true, but because you could tell he deeply felt them, at least in that moment.

  When we landed in DC, I opened Instagram as fast as I could, shaking so much the phone almost fell out of my hands. The first thing I saw was a picture he’d uploaded of himself with his hand covering his face to show off his new finger tattoos. My name, which had been written in cursive across his ring finger, was now covered over with black ink. Another tattoo he had of my favorite emoji (yes, I know how fucking absurd that sounds) was now replaced with a matching tattoo he got with her of what I guess was her favorite emoji. And that is the exact moment when all emojis were ruined forever and I began living in a Black Mirror episode.

  The only other detail I could pick up from the photo was that someone else’s hair tie was around his wrist. He used to always take my hair ties off my arm and put them on so he could “wear a piece of” me. I felt like I was being terrorized. Did he want me to take note of the hair tie? Or was he just repeating everything I’d thought had made our relationship special with someone else one day later? Then I noticed that all of his friends started following her at the same time, friends I thought I’d become close with over the last few years. Was this a calculated effort? Was he asking them to do this to hurt me? Why would he want to hurt me so badly? Did it have nothing to do with me at all? Why were none of them standing up for me? Was it all to punish me for wanting to take a break? How could he stop caring about me in a day? Were they following her because she was actually his girlfriend now?! How can you even get into a new relationship in a day? The haste hurt like an amputation.

  Even though I had supposedly escaped my emotional prison, I didn’t feel like I had. Instead, I felt like I’d been transferred to a new prison, a much worse prison, an almost pitch-black room lit only by footage of them meeting and immediately falling in love accompanied by audio of her baby voice whispering sweet nothings in his ear dubbed over his past declarations of love and trust to me. It was a place where he could still control all of my emotions, but now from afar. He could now finally be happy because he had transferred his mindset that always told him No one cares about you over to me, even though he always had someone right in front of his face who did, and I was the only one with someone right in front of my face who didn’t.

  I guess that’s why the end of my relationship still blindsided me, regardless of the fact that it was technically my doing. It was just unbearable to sit with the feeling and humiliation of being so discarde
d. There’s a particular impossibility to processing the shift of being the most important person in someone’s life to being absolutely nothing to them in a matter of a single day. It can be quite the mind-fuck. Especially when that person made you feel like he couldn’t live without you, and if you had known that he could have, you might not have spent every day enduring his abandonment fears only to be publicly abandoned yourself on a larger scale than you could have ever imagined.

  I knew that what I saw on that single visit to Instagram would be just the tip of the iceberg and that it was going to get much worse, fast. At a minimum, I wouldn’t be able to go on my phone again for a very long time. If I saw any of this play out in real time, I would die trying to understand the rationale. I deleted all of the news and social media apps on my phone and texted all of my best friends Heeelpp meeee because I was too profoundly shaken up to think of anything else to say. I was terrified of everything that was happening, everything that was going to happen, and everything that had already happened. Obviously there are far greater afflictions in the world than breakups, but they really can make you feel like you might die.

  I spent the next day and a half in a fetal position in the empty bathtub of our hotel room in DC, smoking all my weed pens that were supposed to be saved for out-of-the-country nausea emergencies. My dad came and checked on me every hour or so.

  “How’re you doin’, sweetie?” I think he was hoping that at one point I’d respond, You know what, I’m actually fine now! I don’t care anymore. To which he’d say, Thatta girl!

  But I couldn’t formulate any response beyond trying to catch my breath from crying so hard.

  I cried into my hands throughout Romy’s graduation ceremony, too ashamed to see anything other than the darkness of the cave my palms created for me. I was poked to look up and watch her take her diploma, as I did, my dad’s girlfriend peeled a crunchy old contact off my tear-soaked glasses frame. If I weren’t so distressed, I would have laughed.

  Romy had made plans with her friends months before to celebrate their graduation later that night with all their siblings. She relayed that it was imperative I attend the festivities despite what was happening and what I looked like. How embarrassing would it be if she was the only one whose sister didn’t show up? I tried telling her that it wouldn’t be as embarrassing as her sister showing up like this, but she didn’t care.

  “You’re so selfish! I never ask anything of you! You’ve ruined my entire graduation weekend and made it all about you!” She stormed out of the hotel. This time, she wasn’t being dramatic; I definitely was ruining her graduation weekend.

  As you might have picked up, I’m pretty easily guilted. So I splashed some water on my face (it was the most “getting ready” I could bear) and let my dad and his girlfriend walk me to Romy’s apartment. They brought me right to her door, since no one had the heart to leave me alone for even a second. I walked like I was an ninety-year-old woman, like every step was a struggle and standing up straight was impossible for my body.

  “Betrayal is worse than death,” I kept repeating as we walked over.

  “Life is a long, rough slog. Even if you have means!” my dad said. “Think about how many people have to live without means.”

  Perspective wasn’t really working for me this early on. It almost made me feel worse that I could be this lucky and still feel this intense level of anguish.

  My dad sadly patted the top of my head as Romy opened the door.

  Inside, a bunch of twenty-one-year-olds stood around with red Solo cups. The girls were all wearing the same sexy, tight black tops, while the guys wore colored collared shirts, their faces flushed from beer. I wore my sweatshirt that had old and new mascara stains on both sleeves from me wiping my eyes on it the last few days. A classic look.

  Romy introduced me to all of her friends, and the next thing I knew I was sobbing to three of them in the bathroom as if I’d known them forever. They should have been celebrating the end of the best years of their lives, but that’s what happens when you force a broken girl out. The new graduates alternated between classic don’t-feel-bad comments like “OMG, they’re so dumb!” and their own breakup horror stories that all started with “My high-school boyfriend . . .” or “When I was abroad, my boyfriend . . .” But mine was too isolating for anyone to be able to understand. I know, I know there is no hierarchy of breakup suffering. But my boyfriend that I spent every last drop of energy I had on, had a new girlfriend after one day—who also happened to be a hugely inescapable public person. So you were saying, your boyfriend drunkenly made out with a girl once in Barcelona?

  When my sister and her friends announced they were ready to head to a club, I tried to beg off and go back to the hotel, but three of her friends had just done lines of cocaine and started doing that thing that all people who’ve just done coke do where they make it seem like tonight is going to be the greatest night of your life. They insisted I stay out with them and because I didn’t have the bandwidth to agree or disagree, I followed along, holding on to whoever was closest to me regardless of whether I knew them or not. The physical contact helped remind me I still existed despite how valueless I felt.

  After about four minutes at the club, a song of hers started playing and I ran out hyperventilating and caught a cab.

  On the way back to the hotel, my manager texted me to remind me not to say anything to anyone about what was happening or it could end up on the internet.

  Just curious, would you say that crying in a bathroom to twelve sorority girls was not advisable?

  I wondered how this story would end. I imagined for me it would be lying in a hospital bed in the middle of South Africa after having a heart attack, and for him, it would be his best, most fun scenario, which was already his reality.

  The next day my mom sent a text to all of my friends telling them not to tell me anything that was going on with my ex. She sent this right after another breakdown I had when one of them updated me on the latest actions from the world’s greatest love story. Cue the loop: Why would he do this? He knew I would see, so was it to hurt me? If it’s not to hurt me then how could he not care what this would do to me? Is he actually not thinking about me at all? I’d planned on not following another male human on Instagram for at least six months if we broke up so as not to trigger any anxiety or pain. I wondered what he would do if I had done anything like this to him. But only for a second, because I knew.

  “Cazzie, we cannot analyze sick behavior,” my mother said as I sobbed into her lap, again.

  I analyzed it anyway. Every second. Until I began to think that maybe it wasn’t the behavior that needed to be analyzed. Maybe it was as simple as me being useless.

  The next morning, my family was gathering for brunch at the hotel we were staying at in Georgetown, although I didn’t feel like I was actually anywhere on this planet at that moment. I had been up the entire night making myself sick with intricate thoughts and visuals of them, the idealization of her, and the devaluation of me. I was still up ruminating when the royal wedding started at five a.m. I remember thinking that Meghan Markle looked so beautiful. I watched it in its entirety, which under normal circumstances I could have never done because, wow, was it boring.

  I was glad I hadn’t slept that night; it was the only way to avoid the pain of waking up and having all the information come at me like a speeding train. NONE OF IT WAS REAL, YOU MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO HIM, and NOW HE’S IN REAL LOVE dropped into my head like bombs. The three previous mornings I had woken up screaming in agony. My dad and his girlfriend literally had to pull me out of bed by my arms to stop it.

  “I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t do it.”

  “CAZZIE, COME ON! YOUR ANCESTORS SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST!”

  Staying up all night made me feel like I was making progress in comprehending what was happening. A part of me felt like I had to use all twenty-four hours of the day for my brain to try and catch up, they were moving so fast. Even though the re
ality was I had just stayed up all night.

  I splashed my face with water because that was still the only hygiene I could muster and met my family downstairs. I knew my demeanor would make everyone miserable, but there was no scenario where I could fake it.

  “You look good, Caz. Natural. Like Meghan Markle,” my mom said when I arrived downstairs.

  I looked up at her with a naive expression that implied Really? I do?

  I didn’t, and I think after she said it, she realized I didn’t too, judging from her expression.

  After brunch, we all flew to Martha’s Vineyard, where we’d stay for a week before heading off to South Africa. There, I was expected by my mother to rehabilitate myself in order to be a “person people would want to be around on this trip.” I don’t think my mother considered me a person people would want to be around even before this happened, so I think she must have meant a person who could get out of bed and maybe have a conversation, a person who remembered she should drink water and then, once she remembered, actually went and did it.

  Generally speaking, I tend to move through life with little observation about how things look and feel. My surroundings have never really mattered. I’m too busy obsessing to notice a large oak tree through the window or the color of the wallpaper. Yet, in Martha’s Vineyard, the colors and details are too strong and beautiful to overlook. All you see is green and leaves, and everything you eat is green and leaves, which can confuse you momentarily, like, Am I a leaf living in a leaf? The sun shines pink and orange. Little red and yellow birds hop around looking for seeds, and baby bunnies run across the road. The air smells fresh and clean, but not in a tailored “newly cut grass” way. Here it smells good because the grass is left to grow. It’s the most serene place, where some of the best times of my life have been spent. But now everywhere I looked felt like a twisted contradiction, like I was tainting this beautiful place with darkness just by being there.