What happened after that? How did/do you cope?

Last night, my girlfriend of three years came home from work. Earlier, she was excited that we'd get that night to ourselves. Anyway, I was expecting that we'd have an awesome night together, so when she came in I immediately shut the laptop and pulled her towards me. Then I noticed she was crying. The oh-shit moment came with her sentence "we need to talk". And seemingly out of nowhere came "we have to break up. I'm sorry. I totally agree that we're very different people." Confusion, anger, and then utter despair ensued. It felt like a plane hit me while driving to work. Things like that just don't happen, you know?

I spilled my heart out to her and eventually talked her down. Instead of breaking up, she wanted to take a break for a week. It's incredibly difficult to put into words how terrible it feels to hear your amore you adore ask you to please spend a week at a friend's house. We talked for awhile, and she ended up leaving rather than me. After she left, and many tears later, I experienced the full force of the succinct-but-deadly phrase "Please, God, I don't want to be alone."

I literally could not function. I went into the bathroom and just stood there, lost in thought. The overwhelming silence made me feel claustrophobic. Then for some strange reason I began combing my hair. Halfway through that, I broke down again. So I jumped into the shower (1AM at this point) and tried my best to shut my brain off. Instead, I shut the water off after it got cold. Following that, I just sort of crumpled down into the bathtub and started to freak out. It was incredibly weird, and I was trying to make sense of the whole situation. But in matters of the heart, logic is about as effective as using a red cape against a bull. You can use it to dodge, but not to stop, and I had already been trampled at that point anyway.

So at about 3AM I grabbed a few sheets of computer paper and began writing. It was a drastic, desperate tactic to keep my brain occupied, but it worked. Slowly the despair began to fade away, but anger took its place. The letter didn't even start as a letter, just as a sequence of events. Then its tone ping-ponged between a breakup letter and a suicide note. (No, I am not suicidal, I was just caught up in the emotions. That kind of situation can temporarily alter a 20-year-old's view of the world.) After a few hours of being alone, I finally accepted that this really was the end, that the situation had permanently changed, and so I finished with "thank you for motivating me to do this now rather than later" right before falling asleep / passing out from exhaustion.

Waking up was difficult. Not because I felt tired, but because it was a shock. I was blissfully pain-free, then I wondered why she wasn't next to me, then I remembered what had happened. It was 6:50AM; I woke up from the sound of someone coming up the stairs. My heart raced and I have never hoped for anything more than I hoped at that point that it was her... but it wasn't, which plunged me back into the quicksand of despair. So I picked up the pen again. I started a theological conversation with myself about why people who believe God exists would respect him so much even though he is apparently a cruel, heartless bastard. Then she came back, and in an instant all of the anguish evaporated, as if I was being tazed and then wasn't.

We're going to a movie tonight, and I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll work through this. It's hard not to resent her for ambushing me like that, especially when I'm doing a startup. But I'm overwhelmingly thankful that she came back.

But this all begs the question, palish/Shawn, why the heck did you post this? Answer: I don't know. stcredzero's situation strongly resonates with me, and it's interesting how relationships in general share so many similarities with drug addiction. I'd imagine that the above experience felt similar to Heroin withdrawal. I wonder how very different my life would currently be if I had popped an anti-love pill right after she said "we have to break up". Or how much pain I'd currently be in if she had popped one right after she left.