Time to Heal

      Shaun and I have remained friends since we broke up a couple of years ago. At first I thought it was going to be hard because he was all I knew. Shaun and I met when I was thirteen and he was sixteen years old; we were introduced through a mutual friend. Right from the start we hit it off because we had so many things in common. I initially clung to him because it provided me with some sort of escape. My parents divorced and pursued other relationships, which left me feeling like a stepchild with ring around the collar. Our relationship blossomed as we face highs and lows over the next eight years. It became sort of a love hate thing between us. It was like that Jimmy Coizer song when he said, “Sometimes I love her, sometimes I love her not…” In my case the she, was a he, and I wasn’t sure what to do with him. And when I discovered that I was pregnant with my son, it only added fuel to the fire. For me it was an all-or-nothing deal, either he stayed to be part of the family or he let us go. But the decision had to be made immediately. He flip-flopped on the choice for a minute but he decided to stay to try to work it out, or so I thought. It wasn’t until I was five months until Shaun started to stunt. He started staying out without calling and he became very cold towards me. We would have fought if he’d bothered to speak to me. If I had a cramp in my legs, which were common during my pregnancy, he wouldn’t help rub it out, he basically ignored me. We finally broke up before Nicholas’s birth. It was then that I felt free from the stress of trying to please him, and knowing that whatever the problem was it wasn’t me. It wasn’t until later on did I find out that there was another woman involved. He had even went so far as to move in with her and her son, but left soon after saying that she was crazy. By then I became comfortable being a single mother of two. I was at peace with our breaking up and enjoyed dating very much. But still the betrayal I felt by him stung like a paper cut, not only because he lied to me, but because he betrayed our friendship. A few months later we toyed with getting back together but deep down inside I just couldn’t trust him with my life again so the best thing for us to do was just be friends.