Things were good with us (though clearly not, as I'm posting here). He invited me to a family reunion in another state. I knew his close family, but was introduced to grandma, aunts and uncles and cousins. Played with the kids in the yard, looked at photo albums with the aunties. People milling around through the house and the yard, and these are people he didn't see often. So when he would drift out of this room or away from that conversation, it seemed natural. I went to bed early, and he stayed up with his dad and uncles. Next morning he is holding me, and we are dreading having to leave the warm bed. Tells me he loves me. And yet.
It's on this day I start to notice that he keeps walking off... and not coming back. Conspicuously, every time I'm next to him he leaves. ten minutes, twenty minutes. I'm sitting to coffee with his step mom, he vanishes. He needed a smoke. I'm talking with his dad. He wanted a walk. But now it's an observable phenomenon. We pack up and say goodbye to the family. The car ride is completely wordless. In the beginning it's just some music he has on. Then an hour has passed and the silence has somehow become so ominous that I didn't WANT to be the first one to speak. I do though. "So," I get it out there. "You want to tell me about this elephant in the room?" And he tells me he doesn't want to be with me anymore. Out of the effing blue.
My brain refuses to process. We had just planned a trip together in a month. He had purposely invited me to his family reunion in another state. Why? "What was I supposed to do, not invite you?" (Whuhhh yes?)
"Then you lied to me? This didn't just occur to you this morning. Yesterday. You said you loved me just a few hours ago. But... now you don't?" "Well," he explained helpfully, "I didn't lie. I wished that I loved you."
And my brain popped like a balloon. There were three more hours trapped in the car with him as I cried intermittently (I tried to keep my dignity. I wanted to be stoic in the face of insanity but nope). There was no more talking.
On Monday he had heaped all of my belongings into a garbage bag (nice) that he left for me. I had no contact with him. Either it was real or he was going through something. None of it made a damn bit of sense to me.
A month later I tried to get some closure. I asked him what had happened. He scoffed and accused me of trying to trap him with "loaded questions." And that was when I knew that the guy who talked about having kids with me had never had any real feelings for me. I hadn't really meant anything to him, and in the end he couldn't bring himself to break up with me because he didn't want to be the bad guy. Not a good guy. But his problems were his own. Wish it hadn't taken me so long to see it though.