am i lost now?

so i ran across some information about an ex.

this was a guy i'd been with for about 4 and a half years. we were actually engaged for the last few months of that. since he broke things off over the phone, i still have the ring. he wanted it that way. it's a really fucking beautiful ring made by the wife of an artist friend of his.

i just found out he's an associate professor at Notre Dame. and i'm not sure whether i should bawl or puke or smile. we had a good, then terrible relationship. it was certainly mutual, the pain, the breakup, etc; and had we met at another time, things be different. of course, that's true of everything though. so it means so little. because things aren't and won't be different.

but, in the end, i think we were too different, or at least at different places of experimenting with who we wanted to be. too early in the stages of exploration to have a relationship that makes you forget to breathe with your own lungs.

he was immature. i was immature. i cheated on him. he controlled me.

he was beautiful. he thought i was fat. i rarely initiated sex and that really angered him.

he tried to keep in touch but i couldn't, for my own sanity. and it's a good thing that we didn't, because i was able to move on. but fuck me. a fucking professor!? he's dyslexic and i wrote nearly every damn paper he was assigned in undergrad. i didn't notice any credits to me in his CV. that fuck.

while we were together, when i was seeing clearly, i realized that i just thought i was better than he. and i guess i still think i am. i'm not as self-absorbed, not as diligent to my trade, not as into leather pants and hipster hair. but now all i can see is his physical beauty and his raging success. and this is putting a huge flaw in my theory.

now, two, almost three years later, i feel like i've lost something.