Something inside me changed in that moment. I had spent most of the night listening to Theo tell me what I did wrong in our relationship. How me quitting my job to pursue writing had been stressful for him. How my anxiety and depression were bringing him down. How he’d been ‘miserable’ with me. Miserable. I remember that word distinctly. It’s quite a severe word. Theo basically made it clear that I was the cause of all his unhappiness. His floundering career, his turbulent relationship with his mother, even his own emotional instability could somehow be attributed to me.
I sat there nodding my head, brow furrowed as I took this all in, so weak and dejected that I believed him when he said that I was the only thing holding him back and if he could just be alone, to focus on himself and his career, he would finally be happy. But seeing him there, with his head between his knees, sobbing, something shifted.
Initially, almost a reflex, I put a hand on his arm and tried to comfort him. I apologised for telling him about the pregnancy test, for burdening him with this information. Then I looked around at the other diners, who were glancing at us over forkfuls of food, and I saw myself as they must see me; a pretty girl in a pretty dress, consoling a man in a pair of shorts who must have just received some horrific news. Except he hadn’t! I had! I wanted to scream at them …
‘HE IS BREAKING MY HEART! I AM THE ONE WHO IS BROKEN! HE SHOULD BE COMFORTING ME!’
I withdrew my hand, pulled my shoulders back and breathed deeply. Yes, I was broken and sad, but I was trying to keep it together. I was supporting him when I needed support. And I was being made to feel responsible for all his problems. It was a microcosm of our entire relationship.
Not for the first in my life, I put up a wall around me to protect myself from getting hurt any further. I grew stoic for the remainder of our time together, which was spent primarily dealing with the peculiar logistics of a breakup. He said he’d be in touch about collecting the rest of his stuff. He offered to pay his half of the rent for a couple of months until I figured things out; the least he could do, he said. He assured me he was not seeing anyone else, that he couldn’t even think about that right now. And he said he wanted to remain friends. That, in particular, stands out, because even though I was hurt and angry, I still loved him, and I didn’t want him to be out of my life completely.
Afterwards, he saw me to a taxi, and he took my hands in his and told me to call him if I needed anything at all. We kissed and I left. That was it. It was done. I felt at once lighter and infinitely heavier.
That night it was my mother’s turn to put me to bed, just as Maya had. I didn’t ask her to tell me any bedtime stories though.
*
A few days later, my mother flew home to Ireland and I picked my life up where I’d left off; I write a magazine column about mental health, and a weekly blog for the magazine’s website. I’d fallen behind on a couple of deadlines but, lucky for me, being a writer means I can channel my feelings into my work – or as Norah Ephron would put it, ‘Everything is copy.’ And so I ended up with a series of raw, honest articles, documenting my grieving process. The words practically poured from me, which is a rare occurrence for any writer.
My motives were mostly selfish to begin with – I needed to hand something in and wasn’t capable of writing about anything else – so I definitely didn’t expect the response I got … hundreds of comments and emails and even handwritten letters from people who were going through the same thing in some form or other and had found comfort in my words. They all said I made them feel less alone, but the truth was that they had done exactly the same for me. My boss was delighted, of course, and she renewed my column for a further six months. She’s also encouraged me to write a collection of short stories about grief, and promised to help me find a publisher. Another silver lining, I suppose.
Then came Theo’s birthday. A few weeks had passed since our dinner and we hadn’t spoken once, so I decided to extend an olive branch and send him a text to wish him happy birthday. He didn’t reply. A few days later I texted again to ask if he was okay. No reply. When another week passed with no word from him, I sent him an email saying I wanted to know where we stood. I knew it was over and I wasn’t hoping to get back together, but at dinner he’d seemed keen to stay friends and now I got the impression he didn’t want to hear from me. It was confusing as all hell and I just wanted some clarity.
Two days later I received an email so bizarre that it’s difficult to describe without quoting the whole thing directly. Suffice to say it sounded like a canned response, the likes of which you would expect to receive in reply to a complaint about a faulty refrigerator, not a heartfelt message to your former partner.
There is an unmistakably ‘almost human’ tone to such emails, a sort of faux-empathetic sentiment with a cold, corporate undertone; the uncanny valley of language. It began with a decidedly formal greeting, included something about him ‘appreciating my patience in these difficult circumstances’, and ended with the line, ‘I do hope this correspondence has not caused you any further concern.’
Another mini revelation. Another gap in the clouds. This time I realised two things: one, he lied about wanting to be friends and was continuing to lie because he was too cowardly to just tell me he never wanted to see me again, and two, he did not write that email.
Among the belongings Theo left behind was his old mobile phone. He had only recently upgraded and left the old one in his desk drawer – now my desk drawer – and for weeks I had resisted the urge to turn it on and find out what he’d been saying about me to his friends; that would, of course, be a massive breach of privacy and no good would come of it. But at 4 a.m. on this particular night his right to privacy seemed suddenly unimportant. I had to know who wrote that email. So I charged his phone, switched it on and typed in his PIN number; there had been no secrets between us, after all.
I found a conversation between him and two of his female co-workers, Lesley and Victoria, in which he had sent them my email and asked them to draft a reply. I should mention at this point that I used to work at the same company as Theo – him in the accounting department and me writing press releases – so I had met these two women quite a few times at conferences and Christmas parties and such. We weren’t exactly close friends, but I knew them well enough to be absolutely mortified by this. Not to mention I’d been aware for some time of a flirtation between Theo and Lesley.
There was a lot to take in, but one part that stood out was Victoria suggesting that Theo avoid the phrase ‘I’ve moved on’.
‘It sounds too much like you’re seeing another person,’ she said.
‘Oh really, Vicky?’ he asked. ‘Then how do I make it clear I’m seeing multiple people!?’
He then wrote the word LOL, in all caps, several times.
‘I’m moving in several different directions?’ she suggested.
An excessive number of LOLs followed.
After this they spoke at length about what a crazy bitch I am. He said that I’d been messaging him, acting weird, and that he was ‘terrified’ I would show up at his office unannounced. For the record, I had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but I took some joy in the fact that he was afraid I might. Theo said he needed to send this ASAP to ‘get me off his back’, then they joked about my email to him, and I crumbled.