breakups | interstalking

Turn

I wince at this song, because I listened to it on repeat in the weeks leading up to it because I felt it coming… and then during it and a bit after and then I had to stop because I had to stop crying. But Jesus if this shit isn’t true. Here I am – everything has changed.

In the throes of my heart wrenching breakup six weeks ago, I couldn’t visualize this day. (I couldn’t necessarily swallow food or stop crying either.) I’m used to being alone in my apartment again. Just a week or so ago I had to socialize myself to the extreme to get to being okay with it or even maybe wanting it.

Going out doesn’t feel that weird, because I was very independent in my last relationship, as was he. I liked it until the parts when he never hung out with my friends, and I didn’t feel like I really knew his. (See “commitment phobia”, in a million psychology texts.) But, I go out a lot more now, of course. And it’s actually been nice to know I have a lot of friends.

I had my last cigarette on Friday. (Not that I won’t ever buy more.) The journal entries almost stopped. This daily occurrence suddenly disappeared when something about how things had changed and led to our breakup crystallized in my mind and set me free. Yes, I’ve read many times lately, we are wired to move on. It’s chemical, just like falling in love.

This fleeting thought passes by me, “I can’t believe this happened. Again.” Did I dream the relationship I was in and the horrible painful breakup? Before it, I had forgotten how it even felt to love someone. I miss that feeling. But, again, I have survived.

I have been obsessively watching “Sex and the City”, and I’m old enough that the only things on that show that haven’t happened to me are cheating on a boyfriend (I’ll NEVER do that) and getting married. Oh and that lesbian relationship of Samantha’s. Miranda even said something I’ve said in the last few weeks, about Steve when he opened the bar and had a new girlfriend. “I’m just here in the same apartment, with the same job.” I felt that way for weeks.

But. I’m kind of different now. I mean, I’m different compared to me when I last ended a serious relationship. I’m much more capable of letting go, and of not putting energy into wasteful pursuits. It is insane how much time I have, and now that I’m not particularly depressed I am appreciating how much I am getting done with it. Yes, those things I put off when I spent so much time being in love and bending my schedule around it. The things that scared me so much when I realized I was really going to have to do them. Well. Fuck it. I’m doing them now.

I can also do things like manage to cook four separate meals on a Sunday and pack my refrigerator and still go for a run and work for a couple hours at a coffee shop and do a load of laundry all in one day. Single life is back, and it feels right at the moment (especially with the breakup-orexia weight loss silver lining), because I couldn’t, at this point, imagine someone else, and I also couldn’t imagine wasting time on something that didn’t feel like what I had a couple months ago.

Oh and then there is that hurtful part about not really being able to imagine the last one either, because he hurt you so much and you also realized that it needed to end. It’s sort of a romantic purgatory. This has been one of the hardest things for me, the setback of knowing I have to be single for a bit. Because, I have to get over having my heart broken, and then I have to meet someone I actually like.

The hyper evolved me who posted about minimalism and thought she was the one enlightened beast that could make a relationship work with someone almost nine years younger has been taken down a notch. I still love minimalism. But I’ve been forced to make neighbors (not quite friends yet) with reality. Soon I want to stop posting personal bullshit like this on my blog (I hated when people thought I had a dating blog) but – I’m struck by some revelations. And maybe someone who reads will relate.

I’m forced to admit my age. Not because I want to move to the suburbs and push a stroller (though I do want to move to Marfa, TX), but because it does kind of matter. I am not interested in the same things I was eight years ago, or even four years ago. I mean, not as much. I also know, no matter what, things are fine. I never ended up on the street and my career worked out and I figured a lot of other shit out that lets me enjoy my life a lot more with a lot less anxiety than I used to. And I’m actually kind of stoked to not be divorced.

Second, I’m kind of glad that he did it. Because I don’t know if I would have been able to, even when we weren’t having the relationship I wanted. I was so scared of abandoning him that I’ve struggled with that thought even after being rather abruptly broken up with. I loved him so much. Now I don’t have to be available anymore, and it’s not my fault. I couldn’t have done any better for that person. Is it possible that this is actually easier than being the one who does the breaking up?

Yes, I’m changing too, though I’m loathe to admit it. My world is tilting again, and I know the best is yet to come. I don’t ever want to stop loving and exploring and learning. I’ll always seek and I’ll always try to do it with my heart and eyes wide open. But there are a lot of things I’ve done and done to extinction. I’m moving on. Sometimes old patterns don’t serve you anymore. And like old friends you may feel slightly scared to say goodbye to them.

We never stop loving people because love never ends. Timing is fucking everything. I’ve been telling myself frequently, “this moment is for you.”

A friend mentioned Tesla today. I have a vague memory of playing “Love Song” with my guitar teacher at age 15, which means he played it for me. I’m going to get arrested for the flagrant sentimentality of this post.

But why the hell not.

Adrift

Several months ago I wrote about yearning for the untethered existence of my youthful poverty. Having nothing and therefore everything to learn and gain. Missing that freedom.

My fortune at this moment is to have been set afloat emotionally. All my stability feels like a curse, like I was sent backwards a year but I’m missing the bravado I carried with my independence then. Because I’d added someone I became deeply attached to into it, that same life, without that person, feels empty even while full of the same old good things. Nothing else has changed; the one new special thing I had is gone. I feel lost, and it’s not that romantic feeling from when I was twenty three. I’m lost inside this structure that took years to build up. It just feels very lonely.

The lessons of this particular heartbreak won’t be clear to me for a while. All I can think now is I have a ton of work to do that I was scheming in the background when the most important thing to me involved whatever would make my new best friend happy. Somehow that made me feel very happy, and important, though never exactly secure. But also never bored – which is what I feel right now. I’m so bored. And now the idea of all this work I must do… well it just seems dismal.

My life over the last few years has been marked by death. My Dad. My nephew the next year. My Godfather this year. I’ve practiced these forced goodbyes. I’ve proclaimed that life is too short to protect your heart from everything that might hurt it and also bring you joy. I tried so hard. You can’t regret that, because it’s what you have to do, right? Or you’ll never get anywhere, and you’ll never feel anything.

I got to the point of being able to let myself feel such nice, potentially temporary things. I become healthier and more balanced in a relationship, and I continued to grow and evolve individually, a lot, in this last one. I’m so scared of backtracking into pointless bullshit. I have so much time now – I can’t remember when I had this much time. Life for a while was a blur of travel and work and dating. I now have copious moments to play guitar, write, work on personal projects, plan for the future (the thing I’m most anxious about), make and save money, sleep. I know how to do this – including the hangovers that come with a single girl’s social life – I have been amongst the best at it for years. But I’m so over it. None of it seems particularly exciting, or important, and it’s hard to feel motivated about building your future when you just feel kind of sad. Being in love felt important and progressive. Especially sad is the thought of potentially going back to dating guy after guy after guy. I just want someone to force something on me now like the breakup was decided for me. It seems unfair that I have to make this part happen myself.

I have to change my patterns and get off the hamster wheel of meaningless social interactions to fill time and supposedly create opportunities for more significant connections. I had stopped, and I was truly content in myself and my life. But that was before I knew what I was missing. Now that I do, I’m not sure I know how to be me alone anymore unless I rewind to a less evolved self. At least that’s how it feels today, almost a month in, now that my heavy grieving period is over, and I’m recreating my life, and it’s sinking in a lot more that there was someone beside me who’s gone for good. The hardest thing to manage is just being by myself.

Any other break ups, I still had all this growing up to do. I’m always learning, but real maturity has me in a different spot. I know the next lesson is a new kind, something that I can’t expect, maybe harder than anything else, like the emotional work I’ve done because I couldn’t live not doing it anymore. I’ll keep working, and slapping my own wrist when I reach for instantly gratifying noise. I’ll keep looking for healthy ways to make myself feel better. There’s just a space that I’d created, and he’d walked in, and right back out.