1 month ago
20
Long one sorry. If anyone takes the time to read and give feedback it will be really really appreciated.
Near the beginning of my sophomore year of college, on my 20th birthday, my girlfriend of 3 years and I ended our toxic relationship due to me discovering that she had been cheating on me.
And then, just two months later, I started dating a girl that I thought I would be with forever.
The college we went to was a little weird. We would go to a state sponsored community college for 2 years and earn our associates degree, and then we’d be able to move up to our main campus which was a major University that was also in the same state. If we did this program (2 years at the community college and 2 years at the university), then the state would cover most of our tuition.
Needless to say; just after my 20th birthday in October 2021 when my long term girlfriend and I broke up, it was rough living at home and commuting to a community college. More than anything I just wanted to fully immerse myself in the college lifestyle and forget about her, but that lifestyle didn’t exist outside of our “main campus”. I was living at home and driving to school just like I always had, it was a rough time.
But all that changed when I met this girl. We were in a history class together and really hit it off talking after class, she was so cool and funny to talk to, it was the most fun I’d had meeting someone new in such a long time. And she was so unbelievably beautiful, you wouldn’t believe it. The fact that she’d be seen talking to a guy like me was insane to me. I eventually got her number and we started texting a lot. When the semester was coming to and end we started going on study dates to local coffee shops so we could prepare for our finals. These study dates eventually turned into real dates and I was loving every second I spent with her. She officially became my girlfriend shortly after Christmas in 2021.
She was so perfect and everything about our relationship was wonderful, better than anything I could have ever imagined for myself. We went to the city together to go on romantic dates, and could spend cold winter nights just driving around and having deep conversations about life. We painted together a lot (one of her hobbies), and cuddled up at night to watch our horror shows together. We went to the mall together, we went to fancy restaurants together, we took cold walks on the beach together. I spent all my time at her house, which was in the same town as our community college and was also the capital of our state.
For the first time in my life, and after two failed relationships before, I felt like I was truly in love. And I could tell that she was in love with me back. We made a pact to be with each other forever, we called each other our soul mates and we would talk all the time about what our future would look like. She was so nice to me and respected me like no one else ever had. And I loved her more than anything else in the world.
When the spring semester of my sophomore year started, we signed up for a lot of classes together and hung out together all the time. I was also able to score an internship with the state government, which was absolutely perfect because I have always been obsessed with politics and government, it was my major in college and more than anything I want to hold elected office some day and do my best to change things for the better. The office was also 5 minutes from her house and 10 minutes from our campus, so I was in this town all the time. I was over the moon. I had my dream job, my future career prospects seemed great, I was with the love of my life and only falling deeper in love every day, and I was acing all my classes.
Also around this time I decided to take up Shakespearean stage acting, I auditioned for and was cast in a Shakespeare show at a local theater in my home town, which was huge for me because I had never put myself out there like that.
June 2022 eventually came around and my girlfriend and I graduated from community college with our associates degrees. My internship came to a close, and I performed in my play, which sold out every night and went amazingly. Also around this time my girlfriend and I made plans to continue our studies at our university’s main campus. She would be moving into a dorm and I would be moving into a townhouse with my best friends from high school who were already up there. They were about 10 minutes apart.
I spent the summer of 2022 managing the campaign for a state senator who I had met through my internship with the state government. It was a grueling job that took up most of my time and he ended up losing, but he paid me well and I got a lot of valuable experience, definitely saw the hard side of politics that I would have to undertake if it was something I wanted to do.
As my junior year started, my girlfriend and I moved up to our main campus and our relationship grew even stronger. We were no longer living with our families so aside from when we were in class and when she was at work, we spend almost all of our time together going on dates or having sleepovers or just hanging out at each others places. It was so perfect and we felt like we were preparing for our marriage life when we would live together. Every day I kept falling deeper and deeper in love with this girl. We had such a profound connection and we knew everything about each other and were completely vulnerable together all the time. I was certain I had found my soul mate.
It was also so great getting to live with my friends and have people over to our house all the time. Every night if I wasn’t with my girlfriend, me and my friends were all partying at my place after hitting the bars.
On top of this I had always been pretty good at school and had saved a lot of money up, so life was going pretty well for me, I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life.
I even started in another Shakespeare play in spring of 2023, and began to earn some serious props as an actor.
In the summer of 2023, after my junior year,I was offered an internship with my dad’s company as a salesman.His company is a massive manufacturer in the restaurant industry and I would be charged with selling to end users. I did pretty well with it, ended up closing about 200k in business. This caught the attention of an affiliate company (a broker firm that worked closely with my dad’s company) and they offered me a full time job when I graduated with extremely generous pay. Obviously I accepted.
My senior year was essentially a repeat of my junior year. I starred in another Shakespeare production, I was living with my friends acing all my classes, I was with my girlfriend all the time.
But in a way it was even better. I had the security of a job offer after college and my girlfriend took a one year lease on a townhouse that was right next to mine, so I got to see her even more often.
Everything continued to be so perfect, until I graduated college with my bachelors degree.
My girlfriend’s lease ended about a month before mine, so she moved back home immediately. I planned to do the same once my lease was up as I thought it would make more sense to work full time and save up for a house rather than renting.
She changed pretty much immediately after we graduated.
We were a very normal couple, we enjoyed a healthy sex life and occasionally going to the bar together. We made crude jokes and laughed a lot about stupid shit, and we did a lot of stupid shit together.
She spent the last month of our relationship falling deeper and deeper and deeper into a religious rabbit hole until she was essentially a fundamentalist evangelical Christian. She had always been somewhat more religious than me, but not like this.
For context, I’m not a religious person at all.
The last month of our relationship consisted of one ongoing fight. I needed to convert and throw myself as deeply into religion as her and make Jesus the center of our relationship, or we would be done. I tried and tried and tried to compromise with her but ultimately I couldn’t lie about the person I was to appease someone else. We broken up mutually at the end of June, on our 2 and a half year anniversary.
I was completely devastated. But I didn’t have time to heal. I had started working full time just two weeks prior, and two weeks after our breakup I moved back home with family.
I was numb. I was upset about leaving college and moving out of the house I shared with my friends, but most of all I was completely fucking broken over the fact that the relationship I thought would last forever had ended. All I did was work, I threw myself into my job and started working constantly.
And I discovered that I don’t like my job.
I cover the entire metro area of the major city that I live 45 minutes away from. I have accounts all over here and I’m expected to be calling on them all day or doing admin work. It’s a lot of driving, a lot of sales, and a lot of soulless boring fucking work that I don’t enjoy doing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely lucky. I couldn’t get paid this much bag my age anywhere else and I’m very grateful for that. But I don’t want to do sales; I don’t like it. I like government and politics, and that’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was 12.
I have some friends living in my hometown, and I see them as much as I can, but it’s hard to do much more than play video games together or go to a bar together for a few hours at a time when most of us are all working full time.
Furthermore, the girl I thought I would marry started seeing someone else (a youth pastor) right around my 23rd birthday. She meant everything to me and I was fucking replaced in 4 months.
I’m empty. Most days I go to work and come home and don’t do shit. I’ve started working out and I was cast to be in another play, but it’s not helping. I see my friends when I can, but it doesn’t help. I feel completely stuck.
It’s been 5 and a half months of dealing with this new reality. I have lost all hope and optimism I have for the future. I also had a falling out with all of my female friends, so the only people I talk to are my few close friends, my family, and my coworkers. And I only ever even see my coworkers like once every two weeks, I’m alone at work most of the time.
I truly don’t know where to go from here. I know I want to move out of this town as soon as possible, but it feels like all the happiness I once had was gone.
Help me.
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