Mauve Momma #12

I will make this one short and honest. No literary flourishes.

I regret many of the things I have done in my relationships that have resulted in me being here, happy, with PF. I have had three boyfriends before him and have broken up - quite painfully - with each one. I have witnessed these men cry, call back over and over, and show up at my house with last-ditch romantic gestures. More than this, though, I have failed to observe any respectful "waiting period" in each of my last two relationships. I went on a date with Pre-PF a week after a difficult phone breakup with Pre-Pre-PF and stayed with him for a year and change. And PF and I decided to make a long-distance go of it almost immediately after the tearful breakup with his predecessor. I knew doing those things would make it look exactly as if I had left each man for another, instead of because the relationship was falling apart and I had finally gotten the courage to get out. I knew there would be people who wouldn't believe me, but I still did it. And I still think about it.

I don't regret or cry about the fact that the breakups happened. They needed to. What is more difficult is knowing how much I hurt them. I loved them, sometimes a lot. We went to movies and cooked together and had parties with our friends and all those happy mundane doings of a couple. And we had heavy silences and snide remarks and sneak personal attacks. And they thought we were still okay. But we weren't. And I had to be the one to leave.

I have the best possible reason to not weep for my past choices -- I am happy now, happy in a deep and abiding way. And I know that I had to make it through those battlefields of phone arguments and awkward pauses to get to own the left side of the bed next to PF- there was no shortcut. But I am still sorry I hurt them. Sorry without absolving them of their part in the chaos, to be sure....but deeply sorry nonetheless.


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It would be thematically consistent if I now reflected on my relationship fears for the future, but it isn't going to happen. Oh well.

There was a commercial many years ago that showed a dad and his son solemnly making dinner sandwiches in the kitchen. Flash to a mom huddled miserably in bed. Enter onerous voice-over about the symptoms of depression and where to get help. Gut-kicking closer: The kid looks up at his dad and says, "Dad? Does Mom still love us?"

I always HATED this commercial. First, I thought it was ridiculous the dad didn't know how to make anything besides sandwiches for dinner. I guess Mom always cooked. Stupid. But the other reason was that I knew the mom. I knew how she took naps and baths all the time, how it didn't seem weird until you added them all up. I knew she would come out to eat or shop with you, but she seemed tired and irritated and like she was never having any fun. I knew because that had been my mother. And I never, EVER thought that she didn't still love me. Ever. That's why the commercial made me so pissed.

My mother's story isn't very dramatic- it's common and ends well. She fought with chronic depression for many years before getting properly treated and on antidepressants. She's been doing well for much longer than I remember her not doing well. The twist is that she isn't the only one in the family who's been affected - so has my aunt, and the prevailing opinion is that my grandmother was depressed in an era without good mental health care. Depression isn't a death sentence. But it's heavy, and tiring, and it requires you to stick to the medication to keep a feeling of normalcy in your moods. That alone is a little scary. And although sometimes it arises out of bad environments and experiences, sometimes it just...arises.

I can't make it any simpler than this. I am afraid it will happen to me.