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November 04, 2014

Hung Up

I have spent my entire time in LA – nearly four years now – hung up on some guy.

I say "some guy" because that's how others would see them – "he's not worth your tears" etc. – but these guys, all three of them, have been pretty great.

But no matter how great they have been, I can't help but think I've wasted a lot of my LA time trying to nurse a broken heart.

When I first landed at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, I'd been crying just nights before over The One That Got Away, kicking myself for leaving New York City when I'd just started dating the most wonderful guy, even though the real reason we stopped dating was because he wasn't ready to be in a relationship, regardless of where I lived. I agonized over his Facebook and Twitter profiles, seeing him actually get into a relationship with some girl. I emailed and txted occasionally to remind him I still existed. I reconnected with him during a visit back home, rekindling the fire within me, and somehow that freaked him out enough that we haven't communicated since.

I've had two broken hearts after Brian, and I find myself still thinking about him.

When I first moved to LA, it had been a couple months since I'd been blown off by the guy I'd been seeing out here during my frequent scouting trips out here, getting prepared to move. I was pretty sure that meant he'd gotten himself a real girlfriend, but now that I was here, it didn't feel right to not be in touch at all. Lucky for this stalker, he was in a band, and I could just show up to one of his gigs to track him down. When I did, we tried to forge a friendship. He welcomed me to LA and embraced me into his circle. We got to know each other better. And it was only then, without being able to kiss him or wake up feeing his eyelashes brushing against my neck, that I fell in love with him.

But, of course, he still had that girlfriend, and he knew he couldn't have us both. He asked me to stay away, and because I loved him, I did. I thought it was temporary.

I was hung up on him for my first 15 months in LA while I was going to see his every gig, and I was hung up on him for the two years I wasn't allowed to see him afterwards, and the two times I unexpectedly and accidentally ran into him.

And, most of all, I was still hung up on him when he married that girlfriend. Maybe worse than ever, because it showed he was the marrying kind. And it proved to me that the separation was permanent. It was over, it was finally over.

But I wasn't relieved. This wasn't my chance to move on, it broke my heart wide open, when I'd been managing to keep it together, waiting for him to come back to me. I had been merely hung up – holding onto hope – and now I was completely romantically shattered.

Soon thereafter I got laid off from a job I so desperately needed, and I worked so hard at. Soon after that, I got into a car accident that really rattled my brain.

And so began one of the worst depressions of my life.

The only thing that made me feel better? The only thing that gave me a break from myself and all the past heartaches, disappointments and abandonments? Falling in love again.

What an idiot.

So here I am, still hung up on a guy back in New York who wants nothing to do with me, still hung up on some guy who married some other girl, and, on top of all that, hung up on some new guy who was supposed to be a rebound – a palate cleanser, an ego boost, a sexual injection – who told me he loved me and wanted to take care of me, and who then disappeared without explanation.

My first inclination of how to get over him was to get under somebody else. But I can't compound this fracture any more. The aggregate stress and heartbreak is becoming too overwhelming. When the same thing keeps happening over and over again, everything just seems so hopeless.

Maybe my time has passed.

Maybe I need to detox, to experience LA through some lens other than romance.

Maybe I need to learn how to not need to love and be loved.

But how do you live without love?

....And if you do, what's the point?

Related Posts:
Moving On
A Sliver of Romance
The Worst That Could Happen
And Then It Happened
Alone on Valentine's Day
Open Letter, For Whom I Linger
All Dressed Up
To Say "I Love You"
Love Is the Drug

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