It's amazing how someone's good memories can be your bad memories.
Shortly before my ex and I split, he gave me a phone to give to my Grandpa. An iPhone, something I could download games onto, that Grandpa could sit in his chair and play. Something to learn. Something to help keep his mind sharp.
Much like everything else in our relationship, I used his generosity to calm my own fears of the relationship ending. He wasn't one for words. So I used those little tokens to help me feel at ease, something I hadn't felt in a relationship in a long time. The desk he bought me for his basement. The trip he had planned for August. The phone he gave me to help the one other significant man in my life.
So when we split, I was devastated. But the day I turned on that phone, that's when my heart really broke.
There it was, in retina display, all the pictures he had taken of his former life. His ex girlfriend. His old dog. All his memories of when he was capable of love...all the memories before me.
You see, he never fully gave himself to our relationship. He was carrying the baggage of a failed relationship, one I wouldn't really know about until ours was over. Unlike me, that was his first heartbreak, and I was the extended rebound as much as he wants to deny it. I was the relationship after, the one he couldn't fully commit to, the one that was doomed to fail simply because it was the one after a heartbreak. Not the second after a heartbreak.
But the way he always spoke of his ex, he downplayed it. They were together for a long time but he knew it would end. She was cool and all, but not the one. He had his fair share of gripes, but then again, who doesn't?
It wasn't until he couldn't say that he loved me, even after 15 months, that I knew I wasn't going to be it. I was the relationship that had to fail so that others could work.
So when I turned on that phone, and I saw all the pictures of his ex, it just reminded me that were none of me. And suddenly I realized just how insignificant I had always been.
After we split, he talked about how he was going to buy her a ring. He had seen life with her, though he refused to admit that to me until after he admitted he didn't love me. Whether it was him being incapable of being in love, being incapable of saying he was in love, or some combination of the two, seeing those pictures of his life before me put it all into perspective. She had something I never got. And knowing that made me realize all the other truths of our relationship. He could give me all the tokens he wanted, but I would never get the one thing I really did want...him.
