My dear friend Kat (aka Bibliosaurus) (for whom I have coerced into letting me design her a website. Possibly with a dinosaur eating books) (and with whom I am ROAD TRIPPING to New York for BlogHer10!!) needed to vent. My blog is a safe place She’s gone through a lot and recently had an epiphany with regards to her self-worth, happiness and a past love. Have a read, won’t you?

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My ex is getting married. In January. To a lady he met on match.com.

Normally, had I heard the news that someone else found love and was truly happy*I would have been ecstatic. This time, sitting in a warehouse with my friend Meghan, stretching to try aerial for the first time, I was blown away.

On  the surface I laughed, called him a tool, made a joke about how he would never be happy* and moved into the next stretch.

In my head, my jaw dropped and I reeled.

The problem isn’t so much that he moved on so fast. While that, in itself, is a crushing blow to both my self-esteem and my knowledge of how he will never be happy, knowing who he is better than he thinks I do, the problem instead is the fact that knowing this, knowing he has moved on so completely so quickly, means that what I thought was something huge was  false, was lies, smoke and mirrors, nothing.

January 2009 he told me he still loved me. For the last time. I told him I couldn’t keep being jerked around, and I meant it. Being dumped and getting back together with someone is  only possible for so long. I was tired of being told I was worthless only to have him come back saying that he forgave me for whatever error he felt I had committed. I was tired of being the 4am phone call when his depression surfaced days after he kicked me out of his life again. I was tired of the emotional roller coasters, the friends giving me that pitying look for still trying, the  face that I couldn’t keep food down due to stress, that my job performance was consistently lowering. I was tired.

In January 2011 he will be getting married to a very nice girl he met online. I have absolutely nothing against using dating sites. Two of my absolute favorite couples ever met online and their relationships make me ache with beauty and love. The problem is that he started this profile while we were still sleeping together – broken up but still faking it I guess? – and he told me he started it as a kind of joke.

The speed of turn around makes me feel as though the love he proclaimed, the deep emotions he told me he felt, that I felt, we nothing. Because, as Meghan said to me on a completely  different subject, “if he was in love with me, he wouldn’t be with someone so fast”. Those feelings don’t go away over night. They can’t.

I recently (read: in the last few months) realized that I was emotionally over him. My heart had healed to the point that I was completely and utterly in love with someone else, that all my doubts seemed to have been erased, that my mind could focus on the fact thathe was that and what I had was something different – and something more. I was secure in the  knowledge that what we’d had had been something for us, but what I had now was something better, and worth a lot more.

But now. Now its as if hes telling me it was nothing. Telling me through the mouths of other friends. Telling me the time we spent together was worthless.

There was no mourning period for him.

There was match.com, a new girlfriend literally weeks after he told me he was still in love with me, and a marriage  planned for less than 2 years later.

Putting this into words makes it harder to articulate. I don’t want to make you feel that I hate my life or think what I have now isn’t worth it, or that I miss him. Nothing is farther from fact. Instead, I feel like I’ve wasted time, I’ve wasted energy. I wasted emotion on someone who felt that I wasn’t worth it. I feel that I was lied to and unappreciated.

And I feel so happy that I have moved on. I have a handsome, funny, silly, loving and caring man. I have a man who appreciates every little thing I do. I have friends and a life that I am absolutely happy with. I am content.

I am content.

And the bitch in me? The bitch in me is happy that I know he will
never be happy. That little voice in me knows I’ve won in the end. Not
that I’ve won the relationship, not that I’ve won over him. But that
I’ve won in my ability to move on and be successful and happy in life.

And while sometimes I will worry and fret, sometimes I will feel disheartened because he may have never meant what he said or what he acted, sometimes I will have doubts of not being good enough based on his warped criteria, I will also remember how much I am loved and how much I have bettered myself in the process.

Because I have, and I will continue to do so.

And also, January weddings are lame.

*He will never be truly happy. That’s just not who he is.