What should it feel like?

A Story by Paigestar2004

At the moment everything is all a bit complicated. I mean how should you feel when your ex dies?

Now I am an adult, there is no bitterness, we were children and were most certainly never suited for each other. We were friends, sure, for a number of years. I was going through my own stuff, and he was too. The relationship was never really just that, we were a friendship on the rebound that went horribly wrong.

I have a collective amount of regrets. I am not going to lie, but please don't make me the enemy and him a martyr if you cannot see the nuances of the situation. It was not just a case of me being this awful human being who treated someone who was damaged in the most horrible way. He was controlling, albeit understandably. He was constantly worried about death. As someone who had lost too many people for someone of such a young age in the most extraneous of circumstances - of course he was constantly worried about death.

But it affected me. I was suicidal at the time. It takes a lot for me to say that, but it is true. I was a very lost individual and having someone who hung on my every word helped. What a horribly selfish thing to admit. One may hate me for that admission of guilt, but I am the one who will have that on my conscience. Despite how I felt, I could have done things differently, but I was a child.

And he was the same. Every time we had an argument he would threaten suicide. We did not work well together. He was emotionally manipulative and I felt trapped within the situation. I experienced loss. Loss of the friendship I had given away because I just wanted to have someone dote on me and make me feel better. That is unfair, but he allowed it. He allowed me to do what I wanted.

I was not all bad, I brought him gifts, I spent time with him, we went on dates, we had a laugh. We did not engage sexually. I was not sexually attracted to him. We spoke about things and I insisted that I was not ready, he was respectful of this. I think he knew, that our friendship was the old product with a new label. The only way we changed was that he became possessive and jealous and I became resentful.

Despite the inevitable breakup, I always wondered. Wondering is often less ambiguous with those invasive things like social media around. But he observed mostly radio silence. If I bumped into people who I knew, knew him, I would ask. At the start, there were amounts of chatter around the situation, but as things started to die down and dwindle, the chatter came to an end.

He became the grey man. Unseen, Unheard, Unknown to the world. He made many mistakes, and I will forever keep some of the secrets he told me. I was a bad person. Not always, not sometimes, not to everyone. But to him, I was the bad person. I did wrong. To his friends, all the same. I am struggling not to communicate to them at the moment but I am sure they would be shocked and outraged at the audacity I have displayed in daring to being upset.

I cried a lot. His death has affected me. I have spent time on Google seeing if I am the normal one, do people really care if their exes die? Apparently, yes. It happens. Especially in such circumstances, at his age, during the most confusing of times. And there is no doubt that his death has had a deep impact on my life.

And I hate admitting that. I feel guilty on my new life that I dare look back on the old one. I feel guilty that my current partner has had to deal with my crying over someone else, no matter how well he has responded to the situation, it feels unfair.

I feel most guilty that I will never fix it. The opportunity to bump into him in the street when we are in our thirties, both with children and careers, to laugh about our failure of a friendship and show each other that we have grown up, grown out of those basic situational dramas.

I feel guilty that the opportunity for that life has been taken away from him, and I get to carry on as normal - I get to carry on as normal but, just a little bit sadder.

© 2020 Paigestar2004

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Samuel Dickens

I think I understand why you feel the way you do. Being remorseful and sad over the loss of someone you were once so close to is normal, I believe. Speaking from experience, young lovers are apt to behave in ways that they'll certainly regret when older. I sense that this is from the heart and quite sincere. One little error--you wrote "effected" when it should be "affected".