I Miss Saying "I Love You"
I think the hardest part of breaking up for me isn't wondering if I could've changed things, or if I was a different version of myself we could've been happier, but not having someone to say "I love you" to.
This is extremely weird to explain to people. Yes, part of the reason I loved being in a relationship was feeling like I belonged to someone and vice versa, but I loved being able to love someone wholly and truthfully. I say "I love you" a lot to other people, sure, but I can't say I mean it for my immediate family...
I felt that with my partner I could be honest and say, "Yes, I love you. It's authentic and it's safe for me to love you." I didn't have to have any mental baggage attached to that—to feel like I was lying to him.
It's been hard to fill that gap when I don't feel emotionally intimate enough with others to say "I love you" in that sense. There is always this overhanging feeling that people's love for me is conditional, or that they're waiting for a chance to hurt and use my vulnerabilities against me. ...I believed that my (ex) partner was unconditional in his love for me.
I'm only sad we can't at least be friends. I'm not sure what I could've done differently for him to have accepted that, though. I still feel like if I was not who I am now, things would've ended differently.
Maybe I'm just feeling awful about it because I'm probably coming down with something that my parents caught. I feel like I'm oscillating between feeling normal and wanting to rip my skin off and totally reinvent myself. I don't feel like any relationship is actually "safe" for me to be in anymore. I'm not really interested in dating, because it's...a complicated scenario that I don't want to go into too much detail for. I feel deeply unlovable and like the only way for me to be wanted is to completely change who I am.