The Brutal Stuff-Swapping
Jock drove to mine. He dumped my stuff on my front doorstep. He ripped the bag containing a few of his things out of my hands, then he drove off without even so much as a backwards glance. It was brutal. As I shut the door after him, tears streamed down my face. I walked to my room, closed my door and fell to my knees. For about fifteen solid minutes I sat there, hugging my own legs, tears silently rolling down my cheeks. The way he did that really, really hurt my feelings.
That’s that then.
It was brutal. It was truly brutal. And I text him to tell him as much. It’s all my fault, of course. I said it was over, etc. He wanted to come over tonight to talk and drop my stuff off. Last night I told him that I would get Bestie to keep an eye out for it because I wasn’t sure I would have wanted to listen to whatever he had to say. I answered the door… not Bestie. I thought that might have given him the suggestion that I was open for talking but all he did was throw my stuff down, hop back in his car, and drive the fuck outta my life.
I was kinda hoping he woulda had more gumption than that. I woulda thought there was more fight in him for me… for us. But there wasn’t. And there never will be. Isn’t that why we broke up in the first place?
I can’t believe how hard I cried when I shut that door and locked myself away in my dark room. Proper tears – tears that stopped me from breathing, to the point where I thought I might throw up. Those were real tears – the first tears I’ve cried since we broke up. My heart is really hurting. Really, really hurting. But it’s OK. I’ll be OK. I’m always OK.
What did I expect? I broke it off. I said those words. I broke his heart… didn’t I? Do you want to know what I really wanted? I wanted him to run up those stairs, hold my face and kiss me like he used to kiss me. Kisses that meant something and were more than just perfunctory or obligatory. We couldn’t get enough of kissing each other once upon a time. When did we stop kissing?
But that never happened. And now I’m just looking longingly at my phone, wishing he’d send me another ‘I love you’ message because above everything, I truly did love him. And I still do. That’s probably why I can’t stop these stupid tears.
He gave the shoes back to me. The shoes he made me for Christmas because he couldn’t find them to buy them. He made me a pair of shoes… Ducati shoes. He painted them and decorated them with pieces of square glass, lovingly encasing them in a glass jar like the one that held the rose in the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ movie. As I unwrapped them, just a few moments ago, I found two of the envelopes that I had once given to him. Remember for our anniversary I wrote him 365 little love notes, each one a separate quote about him from my blog? It was my little way of inviting him into the very heart of me, without actually needing to show him. I didn’t spot them when he I first picked them up. Well, he gave two of them back. I knew which two it would be… They were his favourite ones.
“I know I’ve got something really special right here, in my hands. I’d be a fool to let that go!”
“It just makes me wonder… If he could keep a relationship with a kid that’s not his after 2 years of not being with the mother, he could be the greatest father in the world!”
Did he give them back to me because they were too powerful for him to keep? Or is he trying to tug on my heartstrings. It’s worked if that was the intention. I messaged him asking why he gave those two back to me. I want to message him again. There has been so much I have wanted to tell him over the past week or so. In fact, longer than that. We’ve not communicated properly for a really long time. I can’t remember the last time we had a proper conversation about anything. Not about anything that matters. We’ve done the idle chit chat and small-talk, but we’ve not really talked. Not really.
I can’t believe this is actually happening.
This sucks.
Thanks so much for reading my blog today! 🖤
Read all about Jock, the full chapter, from start to finish, right here.
