Bex and Breaking Hearts

I've been drafting this post in my head for almost a week now, and I'm finally (fairly) confident that I can type it out without even the slightest hint of tear in my eye. Being in your mid-20s, I guess, is all about taking chances: professional chances, chances on friendships and trust, and chances in love.

I've taken some pretty big leaps in the past two years, starting a new job, captaining my own sports team, meeting new people and learning more about myself along the way. The one area in my life that I constantly feel confused about is love. I have dated and dated and dated. I've dated quiet, work-focused guys, and crazy, outgoing guys, and some guys just because they were really freaking hot. Other than the big ex, none of them (really, none) have affected me the way that Ted did.

When you end a relationship with someone, especially when you don't want it to be over, it is the most helpless feeling in the world. I've had to do it twice in the past year and each time was heartbreaking. I don't think I'm alone in the fact that I think really hard about what I've done wrong, how I could have been better, what I could have given them that would have made them love me more. The absolute worst aspect of the end of my relationship with Ted is that there was nothing I could have done, nothing that I've learned from the breakup. For once, the line "it's not you, it's me," actually applied to a girl. It was him: his issues, his inability to commit, his confusing and ass-backward explanation for everything that had happened between us.

Even knowing that, I'm still searching for reasons why. How can someone be sending you pictures of the sunset from their camera phone and then be breaking up with you three days later, saying that they don't want to put the effort into a relationship with you? How can someone exhibit such contradictory behavior, opening car doors and being a gentleman one minute and ignoring you for his friends whenever the next? And how can someone who so obviously needs help push away the one grounding and steady influence in his life?

More than anything, I'm worried about him. I hate that a breakup means the end of contact with that person. I hate that I have to use Facebook comments as my only connection to analyze whether our breakup helped alleviate the pressure and depression or whether he's gotten worse. I hate that I have absolutely no idea if any of his friends know how unhappy he is, and I hate that I can't tell them to ask him how he's doing, really, without betraying a trust that isn't ours anymore.

And guess what? I'm also worried about myself. My two oldest friends have called me this week to tell me they are getting married and having a baby, respectively. I know, at 27, that I'm not exactly old. I know that it's absolutely wrong to pressure yourself into believing that you've missed your chance to fall in love. But it's devastating to see your friends find what you want so badly, as you make mistake after mistake, and struggle to have even one functional and meaningful relationship.

My hope is that I'll look back on this post sometime in the near future and realize that I shouldn't have worried so much. A part of me still believes that I'll keep meeting people until I meet the right person and just know. But I'm also afraid that, especially given my apparent need to close people out when they care about me, I'll miss that opportunity.