New Chapter: Goodbye to the Virtual Dating World
I know I said I would not write anymore, and it's true. All my writings have been done on Wordpress, sparingly, and I've picked up a mini notebook from Dollarama to record the daily things in life.
The past two years have melded together and one of the biggest reasons it has felt this way is simply: sleep, eat, work, video games. Rinse and repeat. For five days a week.
But I did want to record this without spraining my wrist from having to use a pen for 20-30 minutes to write all this.
I've been seeing a new guy since mid October. In the beginning of Dec, he felt we should start using labels, but reassured me I should tell my social circle when I felt ready. Between our occasional game days on Monday/Wednesday, my OW nights on Tues/Thurs, groceries/errands on Friday, and half my weekends spent cuddling with him, watching movies, playing games and a mix of sexual exploration... my schedule was constantly packed.
In early January I finally revealed that I was seeing him, which made my parents ecstatic. Much of January was spent integrating him into the various aspects of my life, and during early January we had our first sleepover.
I officially said goodbye to Abrams at the end of last month.
He and I had still been messaging frequently as platonic "So how's your day been?" friends, but I had no interest in his life, and I didn't fit in with his social circle any longer. I had very little to no time at all with him, and the constant messaging was irritating me. I was also tired of having to weather his temper in video games. I just didn't care anymore and I was tired of pretending.
I sent his photos/texts to my e-mail where I promptly dumped them onto my hard disk drive and then digitally shelved them under a different name, then removed them from my phone. The recent texts mostly were about him wishing happiness for me and Aron. Took the cards from my closet and shoved them into a memory box. I didn't want to see his texts, photos and e-mails anymore. Not even in relation to the new chapter of my life. I couldn't keep splitting my time with one foot in the virtual world, nor did I want to.
So I purged everything.
It was methodological. Indifferent. Precise.
I then sent an e-mail addressing the past six years. I politely requested silence from him, that I did not want to keep in touch any longer and I would be deleting the app and all direct means of communication. I told him I wanted to be free and to not expect me on Xbox much. I would keep the app installed but I didn't want to see messages asking me to play; if I wanted to do so, I would log on and message him.
If it was absolutely urgent (ie. removing me from gameshare), to e-mail me.
He wrote back; it was bittersweet for a little while as I read through it, but cathartic. It did not hurt. He said he would respect my wishes and wouldn't pester me as Phoenix had.
I felt free for the first time in months.
The first week without the app made me smile a little. My reflex to hit the app wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; it was no more a hindrance than reflexly hitting the Facebook icon. By the end of the week, I was barely having to think about the missing app. I worried that by letting him remain subbed to my YouTube channel, that it would set me back psychologically whenever my new S.O. and I tried to do anything physical.
That didn't seem to be the case, thankfully.
Aron is the person I didn't know I wanted in my life. He's the person who doesn't blink at my eccentricities, who is fine with plush Pikachus, who asks if I'm okay when I'm hungry/cranky/exhausted. He's the person who checks in whenever we do anything physical.
(He actually tried to escalate things the other night. I froze up and started crying because I didn't know how else to handle all the things I was feeling. He took me in his arms and let me get it out of my system. After that, I was fine.)
And yet...
I had a dream this past weekend. I can't remember everything that happened in it, except that Aron was there. But in this dream, I was begging him not to go, because that feeling of dread. That feeling of absolute misery that he had to leave to go back to his home country.
The same feeling that I used to have when Abrams departed to return to the States. I am NOT the same person I was back in 2017. I have a decent job, I have an OW team, Aron wants me in his life in the foreseeable future, I have people who want to play Siege with me... my life is going fantastically.
But I was definitely feeling sad and hopeless in the dream.
Then I woke up, still with that weird sad feeling enveloping me, and I looked over and saw Aron peacefully sleeping. I reached out to touch him and he turned around to cuddle me. I... debated on telling him, but didn't. Was it important? He already knew I was inexperience in dating and that it had been a while since my previous intimacy encounters.
Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I hadn't moved on enough? Maybe I should have said goodbye to Abrams sooner? Maybe it was a mistake letting him remain subbed, maybe it was a mistake to let him remain on my Xbox list, despite it being a console I boot up once a week, if that? Maybe I can't let go of the lingering shadow that this relationship might not last past its first year?
I'm so afraid that what we build up, as a couple, is going to be shattered at some point. That we're going to have a stupid argument or something will escalate, and he'll turn around and say he wants to break up. I am legitimately scared of that, even though it's been four months and no one has a magic eight ball to tell the future. The more time I spend with him, the more time I connect with him, and I don't want him to be out of my life.
Because I trust Aron. He's become the person I go to, to share my day. He's become the person I can be emotionally safe with. The person I automatically send funny images to and copy hilarious comments from Reddit.
And yet it's so hard to be vulnerable. To just let go and be okay with that. I want so badly to keep connecting, to be the person next year who says "So what do you think of moving in together?" and have this work out over the years. I want this to actually have a future instead of being just another relationship that fails after 1-2 years, as most couples do.
Because if it was really about Abrams, then why is Aron there?
How can I be so afraid of something that I already cherish so much, and still wonder why it's the very thing that's become realized in my dreams?
The past two years have melded together and one of the biggest reasons it has felt this way is simply: sleep, eat, work, video games. Rinse and repeat. For five days a week.
But I did want to record this without spraining my wrist from having to use a pen for 20-30 minutes to write all this.
I've been seeing a new guy since mid October. In the beginning of Dec, he felt we should start using labels, but reassured me I should tell my social circle when I felt ready. Between our occasional game days on Monday/Wednesday, my OW nights on Tues/Thurs, groceries/errands on Friday, and half my weekends spent cuddling with him, watching movies, playing games and a mix of sexual exploration... my schedule was constantly packed.
In early January I finally revealed that I was seeing him, which made my parents ecstatic. Much of January was spent integrating him into the various aspects of my life, and during early January we had our first sleepover.
I officially said goodbye to Abrams at the end of last month.
He and I had still been messaging frequently as platonic "So how's your day been?" friends, but I had no interest in his life, and I didn't fit in with his social circle any longer. I had very little to no time at all with him, and the constant messaging was irritating me. I was also tired of having to weather his temper in video games. I just didn't care anymore and I was tired of pretending.
I sent his photos/texts to my e-mail where I promptly dumped them onto my hard disk drive and then digitally shelved them under a different name, then removed them from my phone. The recent texts mostly were about him wishing happiness for me and Aron. Took the cards from my closet and shoved them into a memory box. I didn't want to see his texts, photos and e-mails anymore. Not even in relation to the new chapter of my life. I couldn't keep splitting my time with one foot in the virtual world, nor did I want to.
So I purged everything.
It was methodological. Indifferent. Precise.
I then sent an e-mail addressing the past six years. I politely requested silence from him, that I did not want to keep in touch any longer and I would be deleting the app and all direct means of communication. I told him I wanted to be free and to not expect me on Xbox much. I would keep the app installed but I didn't want to see messages asking me to play; if I wanted to do so, I would log on and message him.
If it was absolutely urgent (ie. removing me from gameshare), to e-mail me.
He wrote back; it was bittersweet for a little while as I read through it, but cathartic. It did not hurt. He said he would respect my wishes and wouldn't pester me as Phoenix had.
I felt free for the first time in months.
The first week without the app made me smile a little. My reflex to hit the app wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; it was no more a hindrance than reflexly hitting the Facebook icon. By the end of the week, I was barely having to think about the missing app. I worried that by letting him remain subbed to my YouTube channel, that it would set me back psychologically whenever my new S.O. and I tried to do anything physical.
That didn't seem to be the case, thankfully.
Aron is the person I didn't know I wanted in my life. He's the person who doesn't blink at my eccentricities, who is fine with plush Pikachus, who asks if I'm okay when I'm hungry/cranky/exhausted. He's the person who checks in whenever we do anything physical.
(He actually tried to escalate things the other night. I froze up and started crying because I didn't know how else to handle all the things I was feeling. He took me in his arms and let me get it out of my system. After that, I was fine.)
And yet...
I had a dream this past weekend. I can't remember everything that happened in it, except that Aron was there. But in this dream, I was begging him not to go, because that feeling of dread. That feeling of absolute misery that he had to leave to go back to his home country.
The same feeling that I used to have when Abrams departed to return to the States. I am NOT the same person I was back in 2017. I have a decent job, I have an OW team, Aron wants me in his life in the foreseeable future, I have people who want to play Siege with me... my life is going fantastically.
But I was definitely feeling sad and hopeless in the dream.
Then I woke up, still with that weird sad feeling enveloping me, and I looked over and saw Aron peacefully sleeping. I reached out to touch him and he turned around to cuddle me. I... debated on telling him, but didn't. Was it important? He already knew I was inexperience in dating and that it had been a while since my previous intimacy encounters.
Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I hadn't moved on enough? Maybe I should have said goodbye to Abrams sooner? Maybe it was a mistake letting him remain subbed, maybe it was a mistake to let him remain on my Xbox list, despite it being a console I boot up once a week, if that? Maybe I can't let go of the lingering shadow that this relationship might not last past its first year?
I'm so afraid that what we build up, as a couple, is going to be shattered at some point. That we're going to have a stupid argument or something will escalate, and he'll turn around and say he wants to break up. I am legitimately scared of that, even though it's been four months and no one has a magic eight ball to tell the future. The more time I spend with him, the more time I connect with him, and I don't want him to be out of my life.
Because I trust Aron. He's become the person I go to, to share my day. He's become the person I can be emotionally safe with. The person I automatically send funny images to and copy hilarious comments from Reddit.
And yet it's so hard to be vulnerable. To just let go and be okay with that. I want so badly to keep connecting, to be the person next year who says "So what do you think of moving in together?" and have this work out over the years. I want this to actually have a future instead of being just another relationship that fails after 1-2 years, as most couples do.
Because if it was really about Abrams, then why is Aron there?
How can I be so afraid of something that I already cherish so much, and still wonder why it's the very thing that's become realized in my dreams?