heartbreak

Three Six Two

I keep thinking about how I’m almost at 365 posts and how bittersweet that is. I’ve posted every single day for a whole year and that feels pretty amazing to me. At the same time, it takes me full circle, back to where this all began, back to me nursing a broken heart in the only way I knew how – through words and tears. I’m not that girl crying in a cafe anymore, but I remember all too well what that was like, those painful memories are still familiar and very much alive when I think of them.

362 days ago I couldn’t have imagined I would be here though – finding love in someone else, having the time of my life with my best friends. So much can change in a year and I didn’t know that, wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me this is how my year would have played out.

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Three Five Zero

I feel sad and anxious about me and O again. I thought I would see him tonight but he’s made no efforts to arrange anything. I had hoped he would suggest something nice to celebrate my birthday. I don’t think it’s good or healthy to keep feeling like this. But I’m scared to talk to him about it because of the fear that he’ll confirm my fears, that the reason he didn’t make any effort is that he doesn’t care – about me or about us. What then? We’ll probably break up if that was the case. I don’t want to be single again. I’m scared of being alone. But what’s the alternative? To stay in a relationship where I’m constantly questioning, constantly anxious about how he feels about me? That doesn’t sound very pleasant either. It doesn’t feel very pleasant right now.

Two Six One

I’ve been doing a lot of remembering lately.

This time last year, I was with J and couldn’t have dreamed that a relationship could be so fulfilling, make me so intensely happy. I live in this past in my memories with the knowledge that the end is also near. We broke up in a week’s time, last year. The happiness I remember in my memory is tainted with the knowing that heartbreak is just around the corner, that that happiness won’t last. The last month I’ve been remembering, living in a tension of then and now, then and now.

It makes me wonder if I would want to know the future, or if that would just ruin the present. I think that I would opt for ignorance. I don’t think we would ever start anything if we knew that it would end, the heartbreak that would ensue.

The sad reality is that everything will eventually end, but we have to live as if it won’t. We all live with a blindness that makes our existence more comfortable.

One Four Zero

I haven’t written about him in a long time. Mostly because I’ve had other things, other people on my mind, because my life has been filled in other ways- not because I haven’t thought about him.

Truth is, I still think about him most days, and not just once or twice. I still wonder what he’s doing, where he is, who he shares his life with now. I thought I wouldn’t anymore, especially now that I have O in my life. But I do. And I want to stop but I don’t know how or when or why I can’t. The thoughts manifest into dreams and I can’t escape him even in my sleep. I like to think that I think about him less as more time passes but honestly, I don’t know that it is. That scares me. How much longer will this failed love haunt me?

I believe that we carry all the tenses of our being, that all the past versions of who we were shape the who we are. Maybe it’s that the past versions of who we were roll into who we are now, that they’re intrinsically woven together. The girl who had her heartbroken is so familiar to me still, it’s hard to differentiate what was then and what is now. I can still draw up the pain of rejection and unrequited love and feel it keenly. Certain songs will instantly knock me back to that place of brokenness and hopelessness.

The one thing that I keep coming back to is knowing that I did all that I could. I said everything I wanted to say and that’s all you can ever do. There will be people who don’t reciprocate the way you feel and that’s life. But I will never have to regret not saying enough. If there’s any regret, it’ll be on him.

Some months ago, I couldn’t fathom a life that didn’t perpetually mourn the loss of him. Now I can recognise that the loss is an event in the past and while my present self can remember what that awful time was like, I’m not currently experiencing that loss at the moment. I’ve been reading The Body Keeps the Score and learning that we need to integrate painful past experiences into our present so that we can live freer futures. So that’s progress right? I’m part of the way there! One day I won’t think of him anymore, in the same way that I don’t think about my first boyfriend. I’m not there yet but I will be, one day.

Ninety Four

I’ve started seeing a new boy. It’s still really early days (we’ve only hung out three times so far) but today, for the first time since J, I thought to myself – yeah, I can do this again.

I’m a little excited, but mostly scared and apprehensive. With heartbreak comes wariness which can almost generate a self-fulfilling prophecy for rejection. I’m afraid of being heartbroken again so I find that I’m more reserved than I normally am, or was. I think that by controlling which parts I hold back, and which parts I slowly release, I can control my emotions and feelings, that I can protect my heart. But I also know that in doing this, I’m not giving O a good chance to know me, which is what I desire in the first place. I want to be known, and I miss being known, but the last guy who knew me, didn’t want me. I’m scared of that happening again.

Ninety

Three months. Three measly months. Sounds like such a short amount of time but it’s been three months since I started this blog. Ninety days since crying publicly in a cafe and wondering how life could be so cruel, wondering if my heart would ever heal.

It has.

I remember writing in an earlier post about how it felt like the gaps between the broken pieces of my heart were filling from the inside out. That’s still how it feels. The broken pieces are still there, and I’m still really connected to the memory of that time when the sadness was crippling, but I feel more held together now, less disjointed by the pain.

I had another counselling session yesterday and afterwards when I was reflecting on our conversation, I realised that I was getting excited about the future again. There was a long time when the future didn’t feel like a friend and I couldn’t imagine or hope for anything beyond numbness. And now, without me realising, hope has snuck up on me and presented a future that I can be friends with again. Isn’t that just amazing?

It wasn’t until I realised this that I also saw how far I had come. Three months is a short amount of time but it’s also been a very long journey. Only in hindsight can I see how far I’ve travelled. This life thing is crazy!

Sixty Five

I had a drink with a guy after work today. It was the first time since J that I felt remotely excited/ nervous leading up to it. We had things in common and he was fast moving which I appreciated (not a fan of having conversations for weeks without any initiation of meeting in real life). Conversation was easy and flowed well but I sensed a reserved-ness about him. Then all was revealed.

He has just come out of a 6.5 year relationship. They were living together and had been for several years when one day she came home from work and told him that she wasn’t feeling it anymore. That was in August this year. It’s November now. So they’ve been broken up for 3 months. 3 months!

The fuck is he doing on Bumble.

I could be more understanding if he had done the breaking up, because it could have been a long time coming for him and in that case he probably had grieved and made his peace with the end of the relationship by the time the actual break up happened. But in this situation, he was the one who was blindsided, thought everything was going well and is probably (very likely) still processing the loss.

Did I mention they were engaged too? Yup – wedding was going to be in a few months time.

I know the pain of heartbreak all too well, and I could see that he did too. 6.5 years is a very long time to do life with someone. There’s so much history, you can’t just turn that off. I remember when J and I first broke up, I went back on Bumble too. I wanted that intimacy that was all of a sudden ripped away, I wanted to forge something new that would distract me from the loss that cut away at me. But the more dates I went on, the more I realised that I didn’t want intimacy if it wasn’t with him, that I needed to confront the loss and just be sad for a while. Maybe that’s the same with M, maybe he’s looking for something to plug the gaping wound when what he probably needs is to air out the wound and let it heal on its own.

Fuck, how awful would it be to lose a relationship of 6 something years. I can’t fathom that at all. But also, is this all who is left?! Boys who have been dumped or are non-committal or are really weird?!

This can’t be it… right?!?!?

Fifteen

everytime i close my eyes

all i see is you and her

her and you

hands held

looking at each other

laughing

talking

do you dream together

the same dreams we had?

do you hope together

the same hopes we had?

are you scared of pain with her?

or only with me?

because what we had was too real

you had to run away

or were you a coward

too scared to tell me how you really felt

if you didn’t want me then you should have just fucking said so.

i’m not that precious

i’m not that fragile

i am me

i have always been me

and i will always be me

without you

my life will keep rolling on

i will find love again

but better this time

with someone who isn’t scared

with someone who is committed to me

with someone who will make me laugh

with someone who will hold me when i cry

with someone who will make me a better person

with someone who will stay

Fourteen

Today I saw him holding hands with another girl. I think he saw me too because they were about to cross the road but then changed directions.

There are no words for it. I feel sad and rejected and inadequate and small and lonely. But those just scratch the surface. My insides feel so contracted and I feel like I need to let it out somehow but I’m just completely paralysed too.

I really thought that if he was coming back here, that he would come back to me. But he hasn’t come back to me.

I feel so stupid and such an idiot for thinking that I was someone different, someone special to him.

But I need to remind myself that even if I was just another number to him, I’m not dispensable.

I am different.

I am special.

Fuck him for being selfish and running away from commitment.

Fuck him for telling me he had a dream about me and then asking to catch up.

Fuck him for being a coward and not being upfront in his communication.

I’ve unfriended him on Facebook and unfollowed him on Instagram, and removed his following on my Instagram. I need to cut him out of my life.

I’m thankful for friends who I can cry with, who will join me in screaming into the wind at the beach, who will remind me that I will have someone better than him in my future. I will. I will. I will.