Keep Calm and Move On

I’m going through a break up. I have been, for the last little bit, for longer than I should have frankly. I have put off writing about it for a long time, I’m not sure why. Perhaps dedicating a whole article to a break up feels excessively self-indulgent, a declaration of pain, a PSA to the world announcing “Look at me! I am going through something that billions of people have gone through, notice me as if my pain is the first of its kind!”

I don’t pretend to have anything novel to offer you in regard to heartbreak. Of all the songs, poems, movies that the artists of the world have written, I would be naive to be writing under the expectation that I would be contributing anything new. But still, I am afraid to write about heartbreak, my own to be more specific. Firstly, because writing about it means reliving the pain, and intentionally leaning into it. But on a deeper level, I feared that reliving it would mean that it would pass through me, exit my very being, and thus leave me forever changed, or worse, moved on. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to move on, perhaps that was the catch-22 in all of this.

Today I am writing, because maybe I am finally ready to move on. At least I’d like to try. And for me, that means putting pen to paper. Digging my fingers into all the uncomfortable pockets of the abscess, until there is nothing left to drain out. It is only then that the healing can begin.

Stage 1: Denial

The first thing I want to say is that the stages are not linear, nor do they come in order. No one warned me about this in advance, that after being in denial for a while, and then thinking you’re out of denial, you find yourself, months later, standing in the longest river in Egypt once again. All it takes is a well-timed text, a flicker of a milestone memory, and it is enough for you to become your own worst enemy and gaslight yourself into thinking, “maybe this could work out after all”. I am embarrassed to say that despite having broken up over 5 months ago, I have found myself back in the denial phase as recently as a few weeks ago, maybe even a few days ago. It is easy to live in denial, of course it is. You pretend that the thing that causes you pain isn’t real, and if it does not exist then you are free to live your life without acknowledging it, and thus keep the pain at bay just a little while longer. It is like a coil wound up inside me. I try to suppress it most days and things are easy momentarily, until something triggers a deep rooted memory and the coil snaps and I along with it.

Stage 2: Depression

When a person leaves your life, it is only natural to grieve that loss through sadness. I have spent a lot of my time in this stage, both right before the end of the relationship and shortly after. I realized that what creates the most grief is not the past, not the present, but the future, the potential of all that was and all that never will be. If there is anything that destroys you after a failed relationship, it is the meaning you build around it. But it is what we do as humans, we look for patterns, we make up tales and assign value to things that are inherently meaningless. We weave a whole narrative about the blossoming of a relationship, the tragedy of a break up, and the significance behind the pain that follows.

It is the story that ultimately kills you.

Yesterday night, I decided to revisit some of my favourite poems, quotes, videos that I have amassed over the years. I came across a poem that I had discovered probably 10 years ago. It is very obscure, so obscure that the video is 17 years old but only has about 800 views.

The poem is called Glaucoma, it is written and performed by a slam poet called Rives. In the poem, he describes an old couple, who have been together for so long that the woman now has glaucoma, “which steals [her] sight” as Rives so aptly puts it. And the man, sitting with her on their front porch, describes to her what he sees. He is a tad cocky, probably unshaven, rough around the edges, and most of the poem involves them bantering back and forth. But there is a piece of sincerity buried within. He loves her; in an honest, sensible, growing old kind of way. And the line in the middle, is delivered with such candour that it hit me last night at 1AM like a ton of bricks. I want to be loved like this.

Initially, I grieved. I grieved because I thought the person I had loved then lost would be the one to love me like this. I grieved for this future I imagined for us, I grieved for our own imaginary front yard, our own unmowed lawn, our own inside jokes that once existed in this potential limbo, patiently waiting to one day be told, but would now cease to ever exist. I grieved this present version of me, and for the pain a simple poem could cause me. I grieved me grieving myself.

Like I said, it’s the story that kills you.

Stage 3: Anger and Bargaining

This stage usually hits me like lightning, which also means it often short lived. A sudden epiphany, a vow to address the issue that led to the break up — everything a futile attempt to try and ‘fix’ the grief. For a moment, it feels empowering, to tell someone “I deserve more” and work to find a solution. That is, until you realize that you shouldn’t need to bargain when it comes to love, that you should not need to convince someone to love you, especially not after a break up. I for one, did not realize this. Instead, I tempered my grief by trying to be friends after the break up. That was our bargain. We thought we were clever to have come up with this solution, we thought we were mature enough to make it work. It did work at first. Except on really bad days or really good days, he was still the first person I wanted to talk to. But he didn’t owe that to me anymore. I understood this fully, so I attributed my disappointment to having too many expectations. We would still be friends, and I accepted that he would always have other priorities, other commitments he needed to attend to first.

We accept the love we think we deserve. I read this in high school from a book called ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’, and it has lingered with me all these years. Last night, I lay in bed and wondered what it was about me that made me accept that this was the kind of love I deserved. A neither here nor there, no expectations kind of half-love. He too deserved more than this surely. Rather than walking away from something that no longer fulfilled me, I stayed and compromised on what I wanted — commitment, intimacy, connection, in exchange for a morsel of something that once but no longer was mine. I made myself palatable, low maintenance, just like the Crane wife I had written about a year ago. Back then, I had rejected the Crane wife’s self-effacing tendencies, and emphasized the importance of being true to yourself and your needs in a relationship; not fearing a loss of love that comes with authenticity, and understanding that with the right person, you will be loved for it and not in spite of it. All of this now feels like a lifetime ago.

So why did I do it then? Why did I agree to pull away, to lower my expectations, to make myself small and distant? Perhaps, I pulled away in an attempt to draw him closer. Perhaps I was hoping that with distance, he would miss me just enough to change his mind. Perhaps, just as children play hide and seek, I hid because I eventually wanted to be found again.

Stage 4: Acceptance

So where does this leave us now? Am I even at the acceptance stage yet? I don’t know. To answer this question, I guess I have to understand what it is I am trying to accept. That we will never be together? That in the near future, we likely won’t be friends? That feels far too simple to be the conclusion of this essay. I think the lesson here, is more than just about me.

Here is what I know.

Break ups are painful. It is a stab straight to the heart, a never-ending nauseating rollercoaster ride. But it does end. You go through each stage enough times, over and over again, cycle after cycle, and eventually the machine does spit you out. In this way, break ups are easy. You will always survive. What is hard, is the falling in love. And I mean beyond finding the right person, who sees you as you are, who thinks you’re funny, who twirls you in the kitchen, and hugs you when you are sad. Falling in love is hard, just as you are, independent of finding someone to fall in love with.

Love is an intensely vulnerable emotion. It cracks you open, it forces you to expose the parts of you that you feel are hard to love, and then put them on display for a stranger, who may or may not choose to stay. And that is the hard part, to go through this over and over again, and still choose to crack yourself open time after time.

I asked my friend Michael recently, why men hit the gym after a break up. He told me, “so we can become big and strong, and never be hurt ever again”.

I don’t want to leave my first heartbreak with a fear of being hurt. Just as I don’t want to remember my previous relationship with any trace of resentment or bitterness. The truth is, for the last one and a half years, I lived out a wonderful relationship with someone who loved me very much and whom I loved back. We shared many beautiful memories in our time together and eventually we grew then outgrew each other. I loved him wholeheartedly, and I felt loved and loveable in return.

Despite the break up, I want to say that I believe in love. I believe that love can come and go and not lose any of its meaning. That love remains special, despite how or when it ends. And I believe that love will always come back, maybe slightly different this time, maybe with a moustache, or 2 inches shorter, or with lopsided glasses, but love retains the same essence. It remains a privilege, a pleasure, and a joy to experience, and because of this, I will never say no to love. I will allow myself to be gauged open by it, time and time again. And I will feel grateful for each experience, for each story that intertwines with mine, even if it is ever so brief.

And with that note, I have one last confession to make:

Reader, I blocked him.

I wanted to tell him all of this today, have one last conversation about it, but I didn’t get the chance to. The decision was made abruptly with no warning, it had to be, because it was hard to do. I worried initially about being rude. But in the end, it felt like the right choice. I hope he can understand it came from a good place.

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In my final act of love, I am learning to let you go, so that you can one day experience love to the fullest again with someone new. I know that you would want the same for me too.

With lots of love always,

Cindy