On Breakdowns, Breakups and Part Four of the Story of My Greatest Heartbreak

September 2001.

Summer was over. The weather was getting chillier, clouds were rolling in. Soon the rains would sweep over the Pacific Northwest and the world would be a bleak grey landscape for months on end.

Things were much the same with my relationship with Marcus. Gone were the blissful sunny afternoons holding hands and talking about our future. Marcus had grown distant with me. It was nothing blatant or malicious, but there was a noticeable difference in the way he interacted with me. I tried not to let the change get the better of me, but as each day passed it became more and more painful.

One gloomy afternoon late in the month, everything finally came to a head.

I don’t recall how the conversation started. Most of the specifics of the episode are lost to me now. I just remember the yelling and the crying and the pain. And I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom holding Marcus in my arms while he quite literally fell apart.

I can still see his face, twisted and wet. He looked so different to me in those terrifying moments. He didn’t look like the man who loved me. He looked scary. He looked scared.

He told me things he had never told another living soul. He told me about his father. He told me how the man had been living his life locked in his bedroom. He treated Marcus’s mother as a slave, demanding she cook and clean for him. The man had not shown a genuine emotion toward his wife and son in years. He was sick and no one knew how to help him.

Marcus told me how he lived with the constant fear that he would end up just like his father. He was so afraid that he would become cruel and inhuman. He didn’t want that, but did not know if he could avoid it. He needed me to help him through it. He needed to push me away in case I became a victim of his illness the way his mother had become a victim of his father’s. He needed love. He needed to be alone.

I listened. I pleaded. I argued. I did everything I could to make him see that he did not need to end up like his father. He was so loving and giving and honest. He had been so much more than a boyfriend to me. Together we would make sure he never became a monster.

He believed me one moment and tore himself away from me the next. He cried and he yelled and he asked me to forgive him. He was slipping away from me and there was nothing I could do.

After what seemed like hours, there was nothing left to say. Marcus had bared his soul to me and we were both exhausted. When he got up to leave, Marcus told me that it would be best if we didn’t see each other any more.

My heart split in half, a fiery pain shooting through me. I couldn’t imagine not seeing him the next day. I couldn’t believe after all we had just gone through that he would just walk away from me. It was my turn to cry. It was my turn to yell. It was my turn to fall apart.

But all of my crying and yelling did no good. Marcus believed that he had to walk away from our relationship. He believed that it was the only right thing to do. Marcus left my apartment that day and I believed I would never see him again.

I was wrong.