Break

This is a hard post to write.

Today, I’m going to talk about love. It’s funny — I wrote a blog post that is probably painfully similar to this one around this date four years ago. I’m thankful for that period of my life; it’s what started this entire blog in the first place. But to be brutally honest, the pain and exhaustion I had experienced then is a sheer blimp to what I’ve felt in the last few months. 

Today, after finally getting some words down & feeling like I’ve got my footing (slightly) in how I want to express this, I’m going to talk about love, but more so, I’m going to talk about heartbreak. 

I heard once that you have three significant loves in your life: your first love, the one that causes your first heartbreak; your second love, which is the hardest heartbreak, but helps to establish what you’re looking for in a lifelong partner; and your third love, the lifelong partner.

I disagree with this complex intensely because, well, unfortunately, I find that I tend to fall in love with most people. The bad ones, the liars, the immature ones, the ones with a swift inability to take responsibility for their actions, all of them. 

This, I find, is a deep character flaw within myself. I am not proud of this, at least not right now. I think falling in love easily is, in some ways, a little self-indulgent and self-destructive. But I do it, and I do it without fail, without thought, and with the utmost confidence that the love I give will, assuredly, be reciprocated. I do it with the confidence that empathy, understanding, and unconditional love will be cyclical components, because this is what I know to be required of successful partnerships, and is present in every beautiful relationship I’ve observed in my own life.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is not always the case. In fact, sometimes, and call me a cynic here if you’d prefer, I find that it’s actually incredibly rare.

My parents have been married for 42 years and together for 45. I say this to make one point — that point being that my parents have, in my mother’s own words “seen the devil himself,” during their marriage. I can’t think of a better way to describe what I feel a functional relationship should be — walking through life’s deepest challenges together with empathy, understanding, and compassion being at the forefront of that partnership. These challenges include but are not limited to: death, illness, having a family, job loss, identity crisis, separation, infidelity, addiction, financial issues, arguments, long distance, and, the part no one wants to talk about where you probably hate your partner at least a little bit at some point. 

I don’t feel a deep desire to air my dirty laundry about my past relationship via this blog post. Really, I’m just rambling about what I find to be true and untrue regarding partnerships, which is an ever growing list.

I think it’s worth noting that I don’t feel there can ever truly be one party responsible for the total demise of a relationship. Relationships are two way streets. Literally always. 

It takes two to tango, and it takes two to piss it all to hell. 

Amongst the proper pissing away of an entire relationship, perhaps half a decades worth, I think there comes a time for deep introspection... and that introspection is terrifying at best. It prompts questions like “how were you contributing to the problem?” “What was the problem?” “What could you have done to be more understanding, more empathetic?” “How were you toxic to another human being?” “How did your identity crisis contribute to the overall downfall of something that, in theory, was probably not too bad at the beginning?” I’m spitballing here.

Relationships ending don’t just casually come with this time for introspection; it is required should we want to move on and live a normal, healthy life equipped with normal, healthy relationships. It’s required if we want to understand how we can actually formulate a functional partnership with another human being — one free of judgment, hatefulness, resentment, and an unrelenting inability to compromise.

When relationships end, before (hopefully) approaching the phase of intense introspection, there are often periods of ridiculous anger, sadness, confusion, and grief. And in these moments, we, quite obviously, are not always the greatest versions of ourselves. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we never are. In those moments, we’re trying to decipher a lot of challenging information and emotions, and this can be a recipe for acting in a way that isn’t always indicative of who we are at our core. 

I’m terribly guilty of this. I have said things I do not mean, I have been so angry I’ve thrown things across the room and let Twitter be the punching bag at which I threw my transgressions, I have cried and yelled and had moments that have felt like what I imagine pure insanity resembles. I am, in the deepest sense, an imperfect human being with very, very imperfect responses to grief and anger.

But that’s apart of the process, too. You live, you mess up righteously, and you learn (or sometimes you learn after the 87th time) and that’s the nature of this life. Next time I’m heartbroken, maybe I won’t go full Donald Trump on my Twitter. Time will tell.

To wrap this up in the shittiest, Dollar General bow I can find, I want to conclude by stating that I’m not “fixed,” or “healed” by any stretch of the imagination. I am still deeply hurt. I still struggle with my emotions on a daily basis. I’m fortunate because I also happen to have the greatest support team fathomable: I have a great therapist, a wonderful family, supportive friends, amazing coworkers and bosses. I am, in every essence of the word, lucky. 

I’d also like to note that if you, too, are going through a breakup or heartbreak of some kind, survival and giving yourself grace to righteously mess it all up are the names of the game. Because make no mistake — you will survive it. There will be plenty of days where you find you can barely breathe because you’ve cried so much, and there will be days where memories may flood your brain from a “better time,” perhaps when you and your partner were happy. But these are not your reality. Memories are exactly that, and some memories, in my opinion, are meant to fade. And for what it’s worth, a good cry never hurt anybody.

I think, in the grand scheme, the most important thing you can do to heal is to consistently forgive yourself, without fail or hesitation. Forgiveness for another person needs to be on the back burner; I don’t necessarily find that forgiveness of another is a requirement in order to move on and grow in your life. It may be an appropriate act eventually, but in the moments of heartbreak, nothing else is more important than forgiving yourself. 

I hope you find you’re worth that forgiveness. You are. I hope you find what you’re looking for. And most importantly, I hope you find peace.