I thought you would love me unconditionally

I expected you to love me unconditionally.

It’s very hard coming to terms with how this isn’t the case.

I never thought you’d block me the first time, back in December 2015, cutting off all contact and saying that you didn’t want to speak to me anymore. Your husband brought me to the train station the following morning. I walked out the back door with my suitcase in my hand as you stood there and watched me with a stern expression and your arms crossed. I cried when the conductor blew his whistle and the wheels of the train started rolling. I cried again as the plane took off. I only felt numb on the bus on my way home.

In the months that followed the emotions came washing over me during the most random times. I thought about all the good memories and felt like they were a waste. They no longer meant anything in our current standing.

You had turned me off like a television screen. Apparently, you felt like you no longer wanted to hear or see me. I mean, there was nothing I could do.

This period lasted for a little bit less than a year when our contact very slowly and very stiffly, re-emerged. We then had our ups and downs and a seemingly mostly stable relationship for a while, but the problems that had caused the initial fights and the eventual block were never talked through and solved. While you seemed to be happy with this arrangement, the problems kept on bothering me.

It was hard to raise this topic. You didn’t want to talk about it. You felt like the past should be left in the past, but I felt like the past was still playing an active role in the present.

I couldn’t do this anymore. We had another fight, from a distance this time over Whatsapp, back in March 2019.

For the first time, I said something a bit out of line, fuelled by emotion. ‘Fuck you,’ I said. It felt like I was talking to a wall; it felt like it didn’t matter what I said because you didn’t want to listen.
I didn’t want to talk to you anymore. I knew you didn’t want to talk to me either. We had already said that it might be good to give each other some space.

Then you blocked me. Again.

And threw me off your social media. Everything.

I wanted to smash the mother-daughter statue you’d given me. How could a mother block her child? How immature? How could you?

You wanted me, didn’t you? You actively chose to have me. That’s the reason why I was born, right? It’s not like I particularly wanted to be alive anyway. But now that things weren’t going your way you had enough of me. You turned me off like a television screen. Muted. Completely. Again.

This time though, I wasn’t as affected by our deceased contact. Before bringing up the topic that led to our fight, I had decided that I could no longer live in this relationship that was built on conditional love. If that meant we might no longer have contact, that would be something I’d have to accept. And so I accepted it and found some peace.

Both the positive and toxic parts of our relationship ceased to exist. And thus the toxic parts no longer bothered me. In fact, it helped me. It made me feel a little bit more stable. I hadn’t realised how much I was affected by it on a daily basis.

This August, I’m visiting the Netherlands. I’d never felt so at ease and understood while being here.

And then you messaged me again.
Asking if I was coming to visit you, or if that was over forever.

I had an immediate breakdown. Then I recovered and realised: this is why we can’t have contact. This message shows it all. The ‘conversation’ that followed reinforced this notion.

I feel at peace with it, or maybe it’s just that I feel nothing at all. I have no yearning for a relationship anymore. I currently can’t find any joy in our memories, and therefore they can’t hurt. However, I expect that it’ll hurt again one day.

It’s a relationship that we always want to have.

I wonder if you have thrown away our picture taken at my graduation that you used to be so happy to tell me about. I mean you must have, right? I hid the mother-daughter statue all the way in the back of one of my drawers.

It’s such a shame.

Expectations are resentments in the making