What I found after the furniture was gone
I haven’t written about the recent partnership I ended until now because it mattered to me to keep it private while I processed what happened, and because it involved someone whose experience I don’t get to or want to narrate.
I’m not sharing details of everything. I’m sharing impact, ownership, and accountability.
I’m only sharing this now because without that information, there’s a massive hole in the story of what happened last year and the changes I am making moving forward as a result of it all. I am now providing the context.
Nothing in this story is an indictment of another person. It’s accountability and ownership of what I chose to do.
I can see clearly now what lead up to me ending us in the terrible way I chose to:
With distance, and months of internal reflection and processing, I can see now how much of my fears, insecurities, dysfunctional attachment, traumas, self-hatred, internal shame, and long-standing patterns I brought into the relationship, and how early they were present, even when things looked good on the surface.
My fear of abandonment.
My fear of rejection.
My fear of losing love.
This showed up with my constant scanning for signs that something was about to go wrong, even when nothing was wrong at all. Anytime a potential conflict emerged, I quickly smoothed it out through avoidant and codependent behaviors.
I own my internal problems and patterns. Not only for having them, but for how they shaped our space, our time together, and their experience of the entire relationship. I own the damage they caused.
From the very first date forward, I believed that if I did enough, loved enough, gave enough, stayed attentive enough, was flexible enough, was emotionally available enough, solved problems enough, and kept my struggles hidden long enough, everything would remain safe and secure. That everything would be fine.
I believed closeness and secure attachment could be maintained through effort and performance instead of honesty and sharing anything that was going on inside my head. Instead, my fears and insecurities grew exponentially. I avoided being honest and having any real vulnerability. I kept conversations and checkins at the surface level and never went deeper. I never asked for help or partnership with anything I was struggling with. I kept everything nice and smooth, containing it inside myself until my internal instability became bigger than my ability to manage it.
I avoided my toxic shadows until they completely overpowered me. I let my internal self-hatred and shame destory everything in my life and destroy the life of the person I loved and who loved me.
The destructive decisions I own:
Shortly before their birthday, they walked through the door one evening after a long day away expecting the same welcome they always received, a hug, kiss, and warm welcome home. Before they could even put their things down, I sternly confronted them and abruptly ended the relationship. I gave them two weeks to move out and find somewhere else to live. I told them to never contact me again.
I shifted all of the blame for my personal problems onto them. I continued to avoid myself, my deep self-hatred, my shame, and all of my problems by abandoning them and the partnership. I asked the person who had always stood next to me, who loved me deeply, to move out instead of admitting I had big problems, asking them for any kind of conversation, help, patience, or partnership.
In seconds, I created chaos and major destabilization. Within 24 hours of me ending the relationship, the furniture was gone and our apartment was empty. Years of love and companionship, completely obliterated by my impulsive and avoidant decision.
Throughout all of this, I devastated them. I shattered their sense of safety. I created immediate housing insecurity for them and their pets by making them homeless. I put that housing burden on their supports and loved ones, giving them no notice. I endangered their employment by making them have to miss work, with no notice, to handle everything in the days following. I created unnecessary logistical challenges by making them have to move out, with nowhere to put their belongings, and nobody to help them move these things. I burdened them financially with the costs of establishing their new life. I caused them sudden and immense amounts of stress and anxiety that negatively impacted their mental and physical health.
I destroyed years of trust and dismantled a long-term, nested partnership in a split-second impulsive decision, that offered no warning, no opportunity to have any kind of conversation, and no chance to even orient.
I made a big fucking mess, that day, and several times later before I completely walked away and stopped digging the hole on a very triggering day.
In that final moment, on a significant holiday, of all days, I destroyed all hope for any kind of repair and amicable friendship. I put the final nail in the coffin of our partnership.
This decisions I made throughout the relationship, the day of the breakup, and in the weeks following were the worst decisions I have ever made, in any relationship. I chose to let my continued avoidance overwhelm me, I blamed everyone else, I panicked, and I chose to let my fears, insecurities, shame, self-hatred, patterns, and traumas take the wheel, and drive the bus right off the cliff.
I don’t know the full impact or burdens of everything I did, and I never will. Not because I don’t care, I’m ignorant, or because I’m unwilling to look, but because I severed my access to that truth by ending things the way I did. I can only speculate because some consequences and impacts will never return to me. Some harms will forever remain invisible to me. That does not make these smaller. It does not make these hypothetical. It does not make these less real.
I carry deep remorse every day that I can’t repair and heavy guilt I may never resolve. I may never get to make amends. I can’t take any of it back, it happened, and I wish it never had. The consequences of my decisions are serious, permanent, and deserved, and I accept them completely.
Accepting them does not erase the harms done. It means I am not denying them, minimizing them or trying to outrun them. I am facing them head on and permanently changing myself moving forward.
My living amends through demonstrated accountability:
- I am no longer avoiding or repeating my toxic behaviors and patterns or outsourcing responsibility for them—I am working on them everyday and involving professional supports.
- I am no longer blaming people for my fears, insecurities, patterns, decisions, behaviors, internal shame, self-hatred, problems, or traumas. They are mine and only mine, regardless of where and how they developed, who or what caused them, or what they are rooted in.
- I am owning my decisions, demonstrating accountability through correcting my behaviors moving forward, and making amends where I can with the people I have harmed in the past.
- I am being brutally honest with myself about my problems and struggles, and no longer avoiding the toxic patterns that have followed me throughout my life.
- I am no longer hiding any of my problems and struggles until they metastasize, overcome me, and spill all over people who love me.
- I am asking for help from my supports and professionals early and immediately when I am struggling with anything.
- I am no longer making unilateral and inhumane decisions that devastate, destroy, and harm the people who love me.
- I am communicating honestly, openly, and immediately with my connections about my problems and struggles before they build up and eventually overwhelm me.
- I am understanding how all of my actions and decisions land on others, not just how they protect or regulate me.
- I am maintaining sobriety and no longer avoiding my feelings by numbing them with substances and alcohol.