HIMMGF – pt 28 – An Almost-Breakup

Catch up on all HIMMGF posts here. [Back to part 27.]

The first week we spent back in Ipswich, Jas had to work all week. She left early in the morning before each sunrise and returned home long after sunset. I’d spend entire days boxed into Jas’ tiny bedroom watching the sun rise and fall, alone.

It’d really been the first significant amount of time I’d spent on my own since COVID lockdowns. And it happened in the place I felt the least comfortable: Jasmin’s family home.

Over the years, I’d learned how to manage my discomfort to the best of my abilities without overstepping my welcome. But the unspoken web of patterns Jas lives in with her parents goes against my own comfort, at the least. I’m not a person who looks for conflict by any means, and in fact, I often actively avoid it even at my own disadvantage. But when something feels deeply unfair, I feel motivated to bring such issues to the other person’s attention and attempt conversation and conflict resolution.

That is not the precedence in Jas’ family. Everyone operates on such an intensely conflict-avoidant default, that each one of them plays out a role of routine where no one seems even relatively happy with their home lives. Maybe it’s my bootstrap American attitude or maybe it’s my parents demonstrating varying degrees of conflict resolution in my childhood, but the cultural difference in our first families came to the surface so plainly in those winter weeks spent in her bedroom, doing my best to avoid their patterns by avoiding everyone entirely.

I’d always been sympathetic to Jas’ situation, placed between the parents she’d obeyed and cared for her whole life, and her partner who can’t help but point out all the ways they weaponize ignorance to let Jas enable their lack of effort. It’s certainly impossible to appease both parties.

In short, I hated spending winters in England. The lack of sun forced me to spend more time worrying about what a future in that country would look like. We’d be living closer to people whom we couldn’t trust to respect boundaries and further away from people whom we could trust more easily. Saying goodbye to my own family who loved me with actions and not empty words felt real for the first time. My stomach churned one morning Jas was at work when the realization hit me. I couldn’t move to England. I couldn’t operate within these rules. I couldn’t trust Jas to maintain boundaries with her parents if we stayed in England permanetly, and I couldn’t live like this.

I texted Jas that we should talk after work, in a tone too serious. She left work early, pulling a sickie, actually feeling sick that I was going to break up with her. I met her in town at a park, where I begged my therapist to Facetime me last minute while I waited for Jas to meet me. We had a brief therapy session under pine trees in the rain, where I sobbed, terrified that Jas would break up with me because I couldn’t move to England.

The previous few weeks we spent together unfolded as fun and happy as they always did, and I relished all those moments. But the reality was that our relationship over the past year and a half had disconnected through the isolated pandemic months. My own mental health faltered, and I found support from my local friend and my sister when I couldn’t get it from Jas. In a way, I didn’t always trust her to comfort me, and I resented her for the times I gave her everything I had in me. (This would come up again in therapy a year from now. Dealing out unconditional love as a way to get it back isn’t a foolproof plan, as it turns out. Not that it was ever a conscious plan to begin with. Still, it was just as damaging.)

If our trust was shaky, maybe this was the end. I sobbed in the rain, audibly, snot down my face kind of crying. I thought I’d have to change my flight that night and fly home early. That I’d have to tell everyone we broke up. That we couldn’t do the distance anymore. That after almost 7 years, my whole life in England stopped.

We met in a café, and at the sight of me, Jas’ eyes filled with tears. I think I held her hand over the table in a corner as secluded as we could get. My emotions ran so intensely through my head and body; I hardly remember our conversation. I just know that at the end of it, we didn’t break up. That I must’ve told her I can’t move to England. And she must’ve said that wasn’t a dealbreaker. That she can move to the US.

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