Since you’ve been gone

I spent most of last year dealing with a breakup.  Saying that out loud is equal parts embarrassing and relieving.  Embarrassing because it’s like making plans with a friend a few months in advance and all of a sudden that person is like “I don’t want to do THAT!  I mean I do, but not with you.”  You were excited about the plans.  You told everyone about the plans.  It was going to be a Saturday of all Saturdays!  It’s like buying tickets to a concert.  You requested off of work to go, you have an outfit all picked out, you even paid extra for better seats.  Then in a blink of an eye, the artist cancels, the concert no longer exists and that thing you were looking forward to is now just a blank space on the calendar, mocking you with what could have been.  It’s a relief because it’s over.

Nobody wants to go through a breakup.  Even when a relationship is at a dead end and the thought of that person makes you want to smash your head through an asbestos filled wall…break ups are the worst.  I’d rather drink that colonoscopy cocktail for a month.  There’s a quote that says something like ‘don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened’.  And if you’re talking about front row seats to the Stanley Cup final, I support this quote %100.  If you are talking about an ‘adult, we don’t get black out every night, sometimes we even set the table with cloth napkins, I actually thought about purchasing a white dress’ relationship, I cannot.  First of all, don’t tell me when to cry and when to smile.  If you think I have any control over the emotions that course through this body on a daily basis, you must be outside of your mind.  If that were the case, I would lead a much different life.  Also, just let me cry when I feel like crying or my body starts to stockpile the damn things and then I burst out into tears for what seems like no reason at all and, let’s be honest, people already think I’m fifty shades of squirrel nuts.  Let’s not give them more ammo okay?

Going through a breakup is like listening to the same sad country song on repeat with an empty stomach in the same pajamas you’ve been wearing for weeks.  It’s a very asylum feeling.  You can be in a crowded room and it won’t matter because your mind holds you captive far far away from where your body may be.  Your thoughts betray and consume you.  While you would love to be thinking about anything else, literally ANYTHING, your brain fixates on the one thing you can’t seem to escape.  It’s infuriating.  It’s part of the cycle of grief.  You just gotta get through it.  Habits are hard to break.  The person you originally met is gone.    No one wants to believe that their time has been wasted.  Life is way too short for such thoughts.  So we hold on to what was good, what was beautiful and what made us feel like we could light up a night sky which makes it that much harder to let go and move on.

There are all kinds of breakups.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  Relationships come in all different shapes and sizes.  Sometimes nature takes its course, sometimes your courses divide and other times you realize you’ve been playing different courses the entire time.  Cheating seems to be a fun extracurricular these days.  Such an ugly word but really it’s just people looking for attention and satisfaction outside of their relationship.  It’s a very un-heroic effort to fill voids.  It’s a knee-jerk reaction.  It’s like chewing bubble gum to solve a math equation except with every chew that equation gets longer and even more complicated than it was at the start.  Then you realize that the gum doesn’t really taste so good anymore and you wish you had never put it in your mouth.  But you did.  And now it’s too late and you’ve got yourself an equation of Einstein proportions in your face.  And since there seems to be some confusion, let me just clarify that not all cheating is  physical.  Emotional affairs / cheating are just as bad, if not worse.  If you aren’t sure if you’re having one and are hiding text messages, deleting text messages or secretly texting, ask yourself “Am I planning a surprise party?”  I rest my case.

If any of you have ever been through a break up then you believe in the light at the end of the tunnel.  If you are going through a break up right now, I promise you it gets better.  Time will ease your pain and I only wish I could fast forward it for you.  One day you will wake up and it will hurt a little less.  Your mind will feel a little less assaulted.  Breath will come a little easier.  Certain memories will fade and you’ll find yourself one day closer to feeling free again.  It’s around the corner, I swear.  There were days I felt like a stranger in my own skin,  days when I felt so numb to everything around me I didn’t believe I would ever truly come out of it.  I felt broken in such an irreparable way.  It’s possible you may never get over it but it will get easier.  You’ll get there.  I know this because I did.  You’re almost there.  xx