Rebuilding Rob

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Revisiting 2020 Rob

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As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What are your first thoughts when you see photos of yourself from 5 years ago?

When I see photos of myself from five years ago, my first thought is that I don’t look a whole lot different. Maybe I put on a little bit more weight. I’m sure there’s some more lines on my face. My hair was a little bit shorter than. I think I was sporting a buzz cut at that point.

But the thought that really comes to mind when I see photos of myself five years ago is that, even though I don’t look different, I know that that is a completely different person, starring back at me. It’s hard for me to really describe how much personal growth I’ve gone through in the last five years.

Five years ago at this time, X2 and I were in the death throes of our relationship. We were on -again, off-again before this. and of course, this was all happening under the specter of COVID. My relationship status was changing just as the whole world was about to change.

I really struggled emotionally for a long time after my break up with X2. For many months, if not a couple years, I thought that I was still just hung up on her. And I don’t remember where it all hit me one day, but at some point, I realized that it was an X to the person as much as it was the relationship itself. Haven’t gone through divorce already, I felt that I HAD to make things work with X2. No matter how much I had to compromise, no matter how many proverbial shit-burgers I had to eat I felt like I had to make that relationship work. and I don’t want to say that I was more in love with the idea of the relationship that I was in love with next to herself. We had some good times together. I was wickedly attracted to her. I did love her. But I think somewhere in my mind, my desire to see the relationship work, and my feelings for her got intertwined.

Lot of men, I think I put my own feelings on the proverbial back burner. As men, we tend to make our relationships, and yes, even providing for our families, the defining factor of our lives. I always think back to the Chris Rock bit where he says “only women, children, and dogs are loved unconditionally. Men are loved for what they provide” and it’s absolutely true. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that providing for your families is not important. I am saying that too many men sacrifice other aspects of their lives to just become work-horses.

I think this is why I am as reluctant as I am to get into another exclusive, committed relationship. I would never go as far as to say that I have completely ruled out marrying again, but I am pretty close. 

My one, big regret of that time was that I wasn’t writing much at all, let alone at the rate that I’ve been for the last year and a half. I think that I really dove into my writing then, I would have a lot to say. I think it would’ve been very interesting to explore my emotions and my feelings about the lockdown, social distancing, breaking up with X2, all of that. as much as I never want to see a time in my life like that again, I wish I would’ve explored it more creatively. I’ve heard about a lot of people who started podcasting during the lockdowns; how it took them into a completely different creative direction in their lives.

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The article “Revisiting 2020 Rob” first appeared in Rebuilding Rob.

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