Love/Growth

I just finished reading The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante...it stirred me up so much lol. Basically, the protagonist's husband leaves her for a much younger woman, and she has to try and resume a normal life while processing the grief, which comes in stages—disbelief, determination to return to how things were, the setting in that it won't happen, breakdown, extreme spite and violent thoughts, depression, trying to find out who you are without them, and eventually healing. I went through something similar and it made me exactly that fucking crazy, so I appreciate that the author wasn't afraid to illustrate the bad parts of it. So many stories now, maybe in an effort not to offend, depict people as these hyper rational, wise creatures in total control of their emotions. If someone hurts them, they say "I don't need this" and just walk away. In reality feelings can be so intense, irrational and animalistic and they impact you sometimes in very ugly ways, and you get stronger by going through that and understanding it fully. It's not that you're weak for having felt it at all...

There is a scene early on where the husband, who had left the home to be with his new lover, returns to grab some things. The wife, knowing he will be coming, frantically shaves her legs, does her make up and dresses up, and curses when she realizes her period is starting. Her heart is wounded and she can't think properly, she still can't accept what has happened and thinks if she employs everything she has, he will realize he never should have left, everything will return to how it was before it was broken. Watching her act so pathetically both stung and vindicated me because I had been that person at one point in my life. Your desperate brain is clawing to return to a state where it wasn't in pain, which is when they were still around, so you rationalize that you can somehow get back there even though you shouldn't even want to be anywhere near there.

In my first relationship (which lasted around 5 years) that person was basically synonymous with the concept of love itself in my mind and so I clung onto it, even though they never loved me very much at all, did not give me even the basic respect of being honest with me about not loving me. They stopped reaching out to me, eventually rarely returning my texts, forgetting my birthday, never wanting to discuss the future and so on. They would say nothing is wrong when I tried to talk about it, that I was seeing things that weren't there. But when I eventually was driven to tears by it all, they admitted they didn't want to end up with the first person they slept with, and they'd been treating me bad to try to get me to walk away. They thought that was kinder than dumping me, and they also thought it was a kindness to leave the door ajar and kept saying they knew they'd regret this decision. In other words, they were as pathetic and immature as I was. And I, inexperienced, thought I could have everything the way I wanted if I were just as beautiful as possible and always said and did things the right way. Like a video game, there was always some pathway if I just did everything correctly; the happy ending (as I pictured it) was available, I just had to find it. I heaped on the "unconditional love", willing to forgive anything they did to me, always concerned with their grief only, while privately I was as dysfunctional as the protagonist of this novel. For me who was not used to rejection, never having failed a course or been fired and always sought after romantically, having the person I poured so much meaning into treat me like that broke me down in a way I couldn't reconcile with, so I left a line leading back to me—you can always come back, it will be as it was, better, I won't hold any of it against you, I will give you everything you should want (if you were a good person; you are a good person, right?) and on my end my ego can remain intact. And at some point, after months of tearful late night car rides, months of overly long texts neither of us should have bothered to write, and then eventually months of no contact, they did tug on that line, and decided to get back together with me, whether they felt bad for me or for some other reason of their own, I held them in my arms again and it was an instant analgesic. Then we slept together again and after that, suddenly, everything bubbled up in me. Indignation, spite, hatred, disgust. And then I left them and never spoke to them again.

I went through the long period I assume everyone has to go through, where I became jaded and bitter, no longer believing in love, becoming more selfish. But eventually rebuilding an understanding of myself and of love that was more realistic. And when I finally was ready to date again, I returned being much firmer about what I wouldn't tolerate, to the point I thought I had become a little mean, but (unsurprisingly) people treated me much better now. Eventually I attended a Halloween party (my costume was Ms. 45 in the nun outfit) where I got very drunk and don't remember much beyond 10pm, but apparently I had chatted with someone there and from Nov 1st onward they chased me very openly, told our mutual friends how much they liked me, treated me with more kindness than I was used to, spoke honestly and openly with me, and as of writing this soon we will have been together almost as long as I'd been with my ex. From someone I could not plan a vacation with ("it scares me to think too far in the future") to someone who cuddles in bed lazily going on and on about the furniture we should get when we live together. I don't have to beg for their love or attention, they want to heap it onto me freely, and on top of it they are much better looking and more skilled in bed. lol. My first relationship now feels trivial and very silly. I'm so happy I'm no longer there.

If I died today you could say I had a good character arc and a happy ending lol. Of course, real life keeps going on and I know it's perfectly possible my current partner could cheat, leave me for someone else or things could sour in any number of ways. Even after you have your character growth moments, the universe might decide to break you even further, far past the point of you having anything to learn from it lmao. But I feel like I could deal with that if it does happen, not to say I wouldn't be sad. I doubt I could have had a good relationship and been a good partner myself if I didn't go through the first, awful one. Obviously you can see I was not that great, even if I didn't cheat or start fights, I exerted a lot of pressure onto them. But my abundance of care for them was really all about me. Now I know I can make it alone, and I don't heap meanings onto things beyond the meanings that are immediately there. I can genuinely care about the other person, independently of what they mean to me.

Maybe there are people who are fully formed, rational girl/boy bosses at the age of 15 onwards who do everything right the first time, but I think there's even more people who think that's where they're at and will only realize their immaturity in hindsight.

(spoilers for the end of the book, you should read it)

I kinda thought this story would be the protagonist taking bigger and bigger Ls until she eventually either died or ended up in prison. I was really pleased with the ending. It's not a triumphant "and then everybody clapped" thing, but very subtle. After enough time had passed, she comes across her husband and sees him without all the filters from her emotions and ego and love, he's just kind of a sad and sort of pathetic aging guy, his 20 year old lover is pathetic for dating him too, and their relationship isn't perfect, and the protagonist's life isn't perfect either but she's learning who she is in a new context. Her old identity has broken down and washed away, but she's still there.