Self Help

23

And so it began, and then it unfolded. Jake became my everything, once again, and I was lost in our relationship.

After the last few years, I wanted nothing more to believe in the fairy tales he was providing. I craved his repentance, his apologies, his promises. 

"I'm going to do so much better," he whispered to me gently, listing all the qualities of mine he hadn't found with other girls, all the things that made me special. 

Anyone who has been in a destructive relationship will tell you the same thing - there is nothing more validating than an apology from the person who once put you down. His words meant everything to me. Maybe, just maybe, he could somehow erase all the damage he'd done. I had no idea how I could rationally let him back in to my life, in to my heart, again. But somehow it felt incredibly natural. 

Jake and I were inseperable. I was suffocating being home in my small town that summer, and he was my ticket out. He'd pick me up in his car and we would drive and drive. We still couldn't even agree on what channel to listen to on the radio, but that didn't matter any more. 

The summer was blissful. I pretended we weren't serious, I lied to everyone around me saying it was nothing. This wasn't going anywhere, I swore. Even to myself. But by the time that summer drew to a scorching close, I was head over heels. 

I guess that the sneaking around only intensified my feelings for Jake. Something about it felt so rebellious, I almost felt empowered. Fuck what everyone else thought they knew, I knew better. The reality was that I would never have the power in my relationship with Jake. No matter what I thought, the dynamic would never change. He'd made me feel terribly small once, and he could do it again. I think that deep down I knew that, and we were stuck in a holding pattern, both on our best behaviour.

We were both playing our part. Jake had always been a romantic, and our reconcilliation was his chance to play the perfect role of romantic hero. When we had started talking again while I was with James, he'd sent me a song he wrote about me, a gentle acoustic ballad about a boy who misses a girl and hopes she's alright in the world, all the while accepting that he may never know for sure. I knew better than to fall for this, but I reacted as if we were fourty minutes in to a classic chick flick. Jake had known all along how to win me back, and he took calculated steps in persuing me. 

He spent that summer writing love songs, and when September came, neither of us was ready to say goodbye. Jake had helped me through a lot that summer, surviving my parents, keeping me entertained, and even driving the 5 hours to Ottawa so that I could visit my roommate's sick cat. I thought that everything had changed. So he helped me pack my room and I kissed him goodbye, in the same spot I'd vowed to be smarter just two months ago. 

Our relationship continued long distance over texts, skype conversations and endless phonecalls. It was really hard, especially because we hardly knew anything about each other's lives. Over the summer we hadn't spent much time aquainting one another with our friends so we were at a loss when we returned to our very seperate lifestyles. 

Still, we made it work, seeing each other every three weeks or so. More than once I found Jake on my doorstep after a particularly challenging week, and even once after a fight. His temper was still volatile but I wore the blinders of romance. 

My third year of University was challenging but I found a good rhythm with Jake. Like I had in first year, I excelled in school, thriving with the structure a long distance relationship forced into my life. If I wanted to enjoy Jake's weekend visits, I had to work hard to get things finished, to meet deadlines, and to keep up in my classes. In that sense our relationship was amazingly functional. 

And for a while, that was enough. I was happy with my friends, pleased with my academic performance, and somehow able to overlook a relationship that was falling apart at the seams. 

What I wasn't ready to admit yet was that the Jake I'd known in my past, the one that had hurt me so deeply, had begun to surface. Our honeymoon phase was over, and Jake spent more time reprimanding me for my flaws than he did celebrating those aspects of my personality that he'd apparently missed so much. But I didn't want to be wrong. How could I accept defeat again? Especially after I'd been told so many times that he was bad for me, that I couldn't trust him. 

I hadn't learned yet to trust my gut.