It’s been six years now since the chain of events that led to the collapse of my nine years of coupled bliss. It was an astoundingly difficult period, but I’m largely over it now and I’m pretty danged happy with my life as I’m now living it. I’ve let go of most of the little frustrations and resentments, I don’t hate my ex, and I have some perspective on the while thing, although I’m the first to admit that this perspective is a bit skewed in my own favor. But I’m pretty well past it.
There’s one nagging thing I can’t let go of, though. He ruined the fucking fair for me.
I always loved going to the the fair. It was one of the things I was most excited about when we moved back to North Carolina. The fairs here are in October, which is the only correct time of year for them. It’s cool out, and I always used to go at night, just like my family did when I was a kid. I loved it all, from the Methodist barbecue tent to the giant pumpkins to the midway to the weird booth-size dioramas in the exhibit hall. It was always my night to feel like a kid again.
I haven’t been to the fair since 2010. The ex and I were already confronting some big problems at that point and were trying to negotiate some compromises. Unfortunately, the ex chose “fair night” to do something that made me very sad in general, and also revealed to me that even though I was trying to make some compromises, a few of the lines I’d drawn were going to be crossed whether I liked it or not. It made me feel like my wants and requests were not really being acknowledged at all, which in turn made me suspect for the first time that our relationship was doomed.
This was something that probably needed to happen. I just wish it hadn’t happened at the fair, thus pretty much casting a pall on something I’ve always really kind of loved and making me associate it with one of the saddest nights of my life. It’s like asking your spouse for a divorce on his birthday, or running over his puppy on Christmas morning. It sucks and I’ve never quite been able to forgive him this one thing. The whole night bothered me so much that I even deleted all my photos and videos of it so I wouldn’t run across them by accident…which is something that I just don’t do.
It’s funny the little sad things you hang on to even as you manage to eliminate most of them from your life: a song that reminds you of a failed romance when you were twenty, a note from your dad apologizing for something that both of you still remember vividly though you don’t want to admit it, your last photo of a friend before a fatal argument, etc. That this should be the one heartbreaking thing I take away from a failed long-term relationship is both surprising and completely appropriate. As a couple, we both felt and acted like big kids. This was the night that pretty much ended for me.
