Everything's Brutal for a Hockey Fan.

 

All throughout the winter I put on hockey with my boyfriend by my side and we root for the team that reps our city. We were together when the Bruins became the fastest team in the NHL to get 50 wins in a season, when they broke the record for most games won with 65 games in the bag, he was there when they got the most points in a season, when David Pastrnak tucked 60 goals, and finally, when the B’s won the Presidents Trophy, solidifying their status as the best team in the NHL. We watched them with such fierce loyalty and determination it felt more like we were looking for something bigger than a goal, something more than a crazy fight to break out. A win is a win is a win, but what I needed was a reason to say that I belong in Boston, and a reason to stay with my boyfriend. If I watch every play in the most legendary season the NHL has ever seen, I could look at the Boston streets leading towards TD Garden and claim them as my own. I could look at my boyfriend when Bergeron scores a sick goal and know that I’m exactly where I need to be, at the exact moment that I need to be there. Hockey is all about timing. So are relationships. 

After an urgent and desperate rush out of Oregon to escape a sociopath I was wrapped up in for five years, I’ve had a hard time building and maintaining relationships, whether they’re friendships or something a little more involved. I love hard, and I love fast, but I seem to miss the mark when it comes to being a partner people want to hold onto. I can have abrupt and aggressive mood swings, trauma flashbacks that seem to last for weeks triggered by a throwaway comment that meant something more to me than it did to whoever I’m trying to communicate with. I try and express my needs, make plays that are urgent and necessary because I have to stay true to myself, but it comes out all wrong. I get nervous, either come across as aggressive or totally out of touch with reality. I thought that my boyfriend would be able to look past all that, something all the guys I’ve been with before weren’t able to do. Simply watching hockey on the couch felt special to me, because I was sharing a passion with a guy who liked the same things I did, felt the same way about me as I did about him. 

I don’t know where it all went wrong. I knew something was off when he started getting closed off around me. He didn’t seem interested in having conversations with me, glaring at his phone or the TV instead of engaging with me. When I was falling asleep in bed at night I thought he was laying there next to me, but I would wake up to him sitting on the couch in the middle of the night laughing, sharing ideas, therapizing someone who isn’t me. I didn’t understand why he was having such a meaningful and special relationship with this girl when I thought I was the one who held that position in his life. When I tried to bring it up to him, he always got defensive, saying she was an important aspect of his life and he wasn’t going to let her go even if I was hurt by what they had. He actually said some really cruel things to me when he knew that I was struggling with the way that he was acting towards me. He said that I was unstable, that I needed to be in therapy, that I take up all of the emotional space in the relationship. I told myself he was just upset about something that didn’t have anything to do with me. I thought everyone says things they don’t really mean when they’re angry. I wish I had listened better and followed my gut: He doesn’t have any space for me because this other girl is the one he’s devoting his attention to. 

He left me last night, in a way that felt so sudden I wasn’t sure whether what had just happened was real or not. He said he wasn’t attracted to me anymore. He doesn’t want to have sex with me anymore. That roadblock was due to a medical issue that is completely outside of my control. He lives with me currently, but I told him that he should move out because if there’s no attraction in a relationship that’s something that can’t be fixed with conversation and empathy. He replied quickly, saying he wants out because my problems go beyond my medical issues I have that affect our sex life, but his reasoning was vague and hard for me to validate. He simply said that he couldn’t handle what was happening in our relationship and that he needed to figure his shit out. I don’t even know what that means, because it doesn’t really mean anything besides he doesn’t respect me the way that he once did. The things he said are not something you say to someone you love. I would never treat him the way that he treated me. 

I was on the couch alone watching what I hoped would be the game that sent the B’s to the next round of the playoffs, bring them one step closer to the Stanley Cup, when I realized this was the end of us. The trust has been broken. I sat there wondering whether he had really loved me at all, or if he just loved the parts of me that were the easiest to look at. I didn’t know which way was up throughout the game. I just knew that I was hoping with everything I had that the Bruins would close out this game for us, get that win on home ice, because that game could be the one that brought me and my boyfriend back to the closeness we once had. Hockey was the only thing that was left between us. 

The Bruins lost in overtime. Brad Marchand couldn’t put away that breakout opportunity he had with just a few seconds left on the clock. My boyfriend didn’t fight for me when I asked him to move out. He gave me lame excuses for why things didn’t work out between us. It was a historic season for the Bruins, but all that talk of them being the best means nothing if they get knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. I needed the B’s to win tonight. I didn’t need to be reminded that in hockey, in life, with people, you can think that you’re part of a team but that doesn’t guarantee a win.