My Ex Didn’t Wish Me a Happy Birthday

And it hurt more than I was expecting it to. 

It’s been over six months since we last spoke and, for the most part, my desire to reach out and reconnect has settled down over time. 

In the back of my mind, however, I’d been expecting our next point of contact to happen on my birthday. I knew it would take a big reason for him to be the first one to reach out, and I naively thought that this would be it. 

And when it didn’t happen, I was way more crushed than I thought I would feel. The whole thing made me think of the old saying, “Expectations are resentments under construction.” 

Well, maybe more like “disappointments.”

Logically, I know that he was thinking about me and probably wanted to check in, but was trying to be respectful of my space. Thinking that does provide some comfort. But sometimes, we have a hankering for some emotionally reckless behavior, even if it’s not good for us in the long-run.

In retrospect, my first mistake was playing the whole “I don’t want to reach out first” game. My second was holding onto the expectation that he’d be the one to cave. 

I’m trying not to be too hard on myself for caring so much. 

But I have been. Because I do. 

The whole thing is made harder by the fact that I have this “if not now, then when?” nagging feeling that has replaced the hopefulness. In a way, having a date that I thought we’d reconnect on was a comfort to me. That’s been taken away. 

The good news is that my reaction shed light on how much I’d been holding on to seeing him again. 

Maybe I need more time. Or maybe I’ll never be ready.

I don’t know. 

But, what can you do? There’s no controlling others’ behavior. 

So, I gotta just stay the course—keep doing me and prioritizing the people in my life that are showing up to love me fully.