It’s been exactly ten days since my world was turned on its head. A bit over one week of breathless anxiety, of debilitating intangible pain, of soul-searching highs, and lows. One week of denial, of anger, of sadness, of bargaining, each time bringing me a little bit closer to painful acceptance. Acceptance that is both daunting and freeing. One week since my ex-boyfriend (who I lived with for almost three years) and I decided to continue living our lives without each other. It’s been ten days since we opened our eyes to the undeniable truth that we could no longer continue our relationship.
While I debated sharing such a personal post on my blog, I realized that I shouldn’t feel any kind of shame or embarrassment. This is one of those moments where my personal life is intersecting with my growth as a writer, and I think it would be unfair not to explore that. Furthermore, I think that often, society tells us to hide our pain in public places, and we’re conditioned to suffer in silence, in silos. Though I believe in moderation when engaging in self-disclosure, I also think it’s unnatural to ignore the impact our feelings have on our lives, and to live as if they’re shameful. At the same time, it is my hope that through my own healing journey, someone else going through the same thing might be able to find comfort in my honesty, and words.
Immediately after the initial crisis that led us to this decision, I felt physically sick. I spent the entirety of the first night alone in almost three years vomiting and shaking in my bed. It truthfully felt like a flu drenched in panic and anxiety. I learned later that it was my body’s way of processing the extreme stress. After that first night, my body entered fittingly into the of that ‘fight/flight’ adage. As predicted by medical research, a burst of adrenaline flooded my system while I learned to cope to the initial intensity of the crisis, and I have to admit I was surprised with the level of strength I had in that moment. I manically ran around doing everything that I felt could give me an ounce of happiness. I spent money I didn’t have, I cleaned my entire house obsessively (not like me at all), I called my closest friends and family members, disclosed the situation, and declared how fine I really was in between cracks of my voice revealing my true feelings. Looking back on this, it could have almost been perceived as a manic high, but I know that I was in control of my senses. I allowed myself to get lost in this mania because I needed to show myself, my brain, my body and spirit that I was going to be OK, eventually. I needed to show myself that I would cope and that there is such thing as life after love.
It wasn’t until maybe three days of going at such a fast pace that I finally ran out of steam, and I hit a bit of a low. After sharing part of my story with a friend that had a similar story, I instinctively ended the conversation with a “But it’s OK, I’m going to be OK.” That friend looked at me, and said, “It’s OK not to be OK. And that’s perfectly normal.” At that moment I felt a strong pang in my heart that released a strange mix of relief and sadness. Even though I knew I would be sad, and that deep down I was sad, it wasn’t until that healing moment that I realized I was entitled to be sad. I even realized how tired I was of pretending to be OK.
It’s a really tragic thing to lose someone you love. Though it is not death, it is a loss, and the spirit goes into a very similar grieving process. It’s the loss of an ideal, the loss of a vision of the future, the loss of a companion, the loss of love.
Through my roller coaster of a week, I experienced a cocktail of emotions, and many kinds of feelings. I’ve blamed the world for my misfortune, I’ve blamed the other, and I’ve blamed myself. I’ve done all kinds of blaming, and then found it to be a futile exercise. The other night, someone I know was trying to gauge on the reasoning behind the break-up (perhaps out of concern, perhaps out of curiosity or even both). This person kept trying to force a bond with me by putting down men, putting down my ex-partner, without even knowing any part of the story, other than we had broken up and that I was grieving that. As soon as she started the men-bashing, I stopped her in her tracks and I told her politely that while I appreciated her effort to make me feel better, that honestly, I was trying not to focus my healing process on putting him down, but rather in bringing myself up. I was really proud of myself in that moment. This is something I feel very strongly about at this point. After feeling all sorts of anger and sadness, it brought me to a realization that maybe this was fate’s way of deciding what was best for both him and me, and that while I can’t control that, I can control how I react, and how I cope, to a certain extent. This is what I want to focus on.
Very few people in my life know the reason him and I broke up, and I want to keep it that way. That’s our story. And though I am skeptical about whether my ex-partner and I can pursue friendship after love, I have to have faith in life after love, and our lives need to go on, we need to heal and adjust to a new ‘normal’. I can’t do that by holding on to resent. I still love him, and he always will have a special place in my heart. While I’m sure I will have moments where I feel sad and angry at the loss of our relationship, I need to be self-compassionate. Everyone has a right to be happy in whatever way that fits their life. The only hope I have for us at this point is that we always focus on the happiness, and the positive things we learned during our time together.
This is part one of a two part self-reflective post about life after love and moving on. A follow-up post titled “Stronger: How to survive pain in a healthy way” is scheduled for publishing on Feb. 15th. Thank you for your compassion in reading my blog.
A. Citlalli 