when something doesn't have a name

Some connections are difficult to explain because there isn't a word that quite captures everything that happened.

It wasn't a relationship, but it wasn't nothing either. Living somewhere in between those two things can be confusing, especially when the other person is holding back.

But we live in a generation now where unlabeled relationships are the norm.

When there's no label, there aren't always clear expectations. You can care deeply about this person without knowing exactly what you mean to them. You can feel close to someone but still constantly wonder where you stand. And at the end of it all, you have no right to actually know, because there is no label or expectations.

For a really long time, I thought the confusion came from not having a label. It wasn't that. It was from not knowing where I stood.

1. when you don't know what you're allowed to feel

One of the strangest parts was questioning what I was allowed to feel when it came to this situation. Was I allowed to even feel as deeply as I did?

There was no official title. Technically, we were nothing. We were not friends, we were not partners. We were nothing.

And that caused me to question myself a lot.

Am I overreacting? Do I have the right to be hurt by something they did? Am I even allowed to be mad at them about this choice they made? Am I even allowed to know how they feel?

But truth is emotions don't require a label. You are allowed to feel hurt by the situation. It's not about being hurt that will cause confusion. It's about if you're allowed to act on that hurt.

2. the danger of filling in the blanks

When you don't know where you stand with someone, you start filling in the blanks. You spend your time analyzing their behavior. You check to see if there's changes in communication. You replay a certain moment in your head over and over again because you're trying to figure out if it means something more.

And when you do this you're not responding to what they told you (and maybe if you're like me, they rarely told you anything). You're responding to what you think they might mean. That's a dangerous place to be because you're not filling the blanks with their way of thinking, you're filling it with yours.

I've learned that uncertainity can make you create answers where there isn't any. It makes you create stories that don't exist.

And truth be told, sometimes the healthiest answer to give yourself is to admit, I don't know. Because when you spend so much time analyzing the other person, you can begin to lose yourself in this something with no name.

3. closeness and clarity aren't the same thing

I spent a lot of time confusing the two. If they were willing to be close, it must mean I understand what's going on between the two of us. Unfortunately, that simply isn't true. A person can be close with you and do everything with you all while thinking something completely different. And in my case, I never really knew and I honestly don't think I ever will. That's something I'm learning to live with.

I've learned that someone can care for you deeply and do everything that means they care for you all without giving you the clarity you need.

You can share meaningful moments and still both have a completely different view on what those moments mean.

Closeness can feel like an answer. But it's not. You cannot confuse someone's closeness for clarity on how they feel about you.

Unfortunately the only person who can give you clarity is the same one who's confusing you.

4. ambiguity can hurt

I always believed that if something didn't have a title, if something was technically nothing, that it couldn't hurt you. I've soon come to learn that it is this nothing that can hurt you the most.

Uncertainty is painful in a way that can't be understood til you experience it yourself. When it ends you're grieving more than just the pain from the ending. You're grieving what might have been. You're grieving all the possibilities that could have been born from this idea of nothing. You're grieving the answers you never got, the conversations that never happened, and the future that existed only in your imagination.

Losing something that you never really defined has a different kind of pain. And it's certainly one I wouldn't wish on anyone.

5. what i learned from failed nothings

I learned that I need clarity. I learned that uncertainty drove me crazy.

I want to be able to ask where I stand and receive an honest answer. Not a I'm not sure how I feel about you. Not a I'm not ready for a relationship but I want to do relationship stuff with you. Not a I care about you and love you but I'm not in love with you.

I want communication instead of guessing. I want to know what expectations exist between the two of us and I want to know that those expectations will be met.

I want to know that my feelings have somewhere safe to exist. I don't want to spend my time trying to decode someone else's feelings while ignoring my own.

And maybe that person truly just didn't know how they felt. And maybe it was my fault for staying in that place for so long. But when you're put in that spot, all you can think is maybe tomorrow will be the day that everything changes. Maybe this next moment will be the moment that they decide.

But you can't live in the maybes forever.

You can care about someone without waiting for them to give you an answer. And I know it hurts. Trust me, I've been there before. I waited months in hopes that one day he would wake up and everything would be different. And in all honestly, I might still be there now waiting if they didn't end things.

But now I get to learn that sometimes the answer isn't getting the clarity from the other person. That's something you might never get. It's deciding what you need and giving yourself the clarity to move forward.

At the end of the day, you cannot thrive in a place of confusion.

You cannot thrive in a place where you are constantly having to question your worth. You cannot thrive in a place where the other person goes back and forth on how they feel. You cannot thrive in a place where your importance is constantly measured by someone's attention.

ending

Maybe I'll never have a perfection explanation for what that connection was. I have my opinions on it and I sure do know that he has his opinions on what it was. I will never have an explanation why he did all the things that he did. I will never understand why he could act like we were in a relationship and do almost everything that people in a relationship do without being in a relationship.

What matters isn't how he sees it. What matters is how I choose to see it.

It was something that mattered to me. It was something that hurt me. It was something that made me happy. It was something that made me mad. It was something that left me more broken that he had found me.

But I still learned a lot from this.

I learned that in confusion you cannot believe your version of the story. I learned that I can't let someone's own confusion affect my own self worth. Their lack of ability to see your worth is their issue, not yours.

Don't let someone else's chaos mess with your peace.