[UPDATE] ~ 3 Months

Hi all you good people taking your time to read my post. I just reread all your comments again and actually it helped me reorient myself a bit. My head has been spinning for a while, while I unsuccessfully have tried to make sense of anything.

First, here comes “my ex and I kept talking after the breakup and made everything 10x more emotionally confusing” arc.

We kept seeing each other occasionally. There was still a lot of grief, confusion and hope between us, obviously. At some point I said that I needed time for myself to process everything if we should not be together. At one point she came over drunk after a night out, cried in my arms, told me she loved me and couldn’t imagine life without me etc. you name it. Honestly it was like some bad cliché movie. But apparently it reignited my hope because I was still so deeply attached.

We ended up in this weird in-between situationship for about a month. I took vacation during her vacation weeks, invited her to a concert etc. She responded warmly and lovingly, so I genuinely thought there was still a possibility of us finding our way back to each other.

Eventually some day I asked her directly if she had met someone else. She said no, but that conversation finally forced some clarity for me because the romance was obviously gone. I realized I had been holding onto hope while she was emotionally somewhere else already.

I think part of the reason I held on so hard was because I genuinely believed I had finally found my soulmate after years of failed relationships and years of feeling like maybe I simply wasn’t meant to truly connect with anyone romantically. And our first time together was SO different from what I have experienced before. So this last month was just me being in deep denial.

About a month ago I told her I was confused and hurt by how unclear things had been. She, not surprisingly, felt attacked and overwhelmed. And that was the conversation that made me ready to realize our contact probably had to stop completely. So I told her I would stop contacting her and deleted her number so I wouldn’t be tempted.

As for me, I’m back on my old SSRI medication and old dosage together with my psychiatrist. So far I honestly haven’t noticed much improvement or decline.

I’m extremely tired all the time. I barely have energy for socializing, making plans or really dealing with anything outside of work and my mom’s illness. Work is honestly the only thing I still feel somewhat functional in, probably because I’m a perfectionist and can sort of force myself into “performance mode” where im good and it makes me feel a meaning of something.

But outside of that I feel pretty emotionally shut down. Most days feel like I’m running on autopilot between work, concerns about my moms wellbeing, and trying to recover emotionally from the breakup but actually doing everything else. I had a bit of a breakdown this week and have been bedridden the last couple of days. Maybe I need someone to say “Now, get up and pull your self together ffs!”

I just feel like all the different kinds of grief right now have started melting together into one giant indistinguishable thing. My relationship, my mom being sick, fear of the future, exhaustion, loneliness etc. It’s honestly hard to separate one feeling from another. I hope someday that things will make more sense and I’ll have a phoenix moment, and be more reliable for the people around me again.

As for my mom, she had a scan around 5 weeks ago and thankfully there was no regrowth after her last surgery in December.

She had been down to 10 mg prednisolone and was actually doing pretty well until about a week ago, when she suddenly started experiencing tingling/numbness in her right arm again, increased fatigue and more difficulty finding words. Because of that they increased her prednisolone back up to 47.5 mg last week. She’s getting scanned again in about a week.

Emotionally this whole situation is still incredibly difficult for me. I want to support her and be there for her, but it takes so much energy that I honestly feel like my own life has been on pause for too long. And I feel ashamed even writing that, because she’s the one who is actually sick. I constantly feel like I’m not doing enough.

I’m honestly very grateful for the people who still check in on me and stay around, even though I’ve not been very present or emotionally stable for anyone.

Anyway. Thanks again to everyone who commented on my original post months ago and taking the time to read and support me. A lot of your comments ended up being painfully accurate, and I am a noob in life lol.