This heartbreak is different to the last one. Maybe it’s because I’ve experienced this before. Last time, I was 17, overrun with hormones, I was sure my life was ending.
This time, it was slower. It was as though my body waited until it was ready, and then suddenly, without warning, it was there all at once. It’s really quite a beautiful process: my chest constricted, my mind felt heavy, and then, on that Friday night, under a nearly-full moon, there was nothing left to do but cry. And I did cry, endlessly, until I was reduced to silent sobs in the early morning hours. I replayed our magic moments in my head: the day we met, walking along the beach, moving heaven and earth just for too-few hours together. I remembered the night he told me he was falling in love with me, and the moment I realised I felt the same way.
But I stopped trying to force a future out of those memories, and instead let them sit still in the past.
And I asked for silence this time around. That might be one of the the bravest things I’ve ever done. I asked to widen the divide between us because I knew deep down that was what was needed. I know that, otherwise, I would desperately plait every fibre of me into every thread of him until we became a sad knotted tapestry, unfixable. I’d rather create sweet, peaceful space between us, where soft cobwebs might be spun over time.
I can see in this heartbreak how much love I have to give another, more than I’d ever thought possible. So ignore my tear-streaked pillows, and think about how wonderful that is. I can see an awful lot of goodness, even now, in all the ways I am better because I knew him.
Heartbreak is accepting that you are not swept up in the eye of the love-storm anymore. But I understand now that I didn’t fall out of it, abandoned while others dance beautiful and reckless above me. No, I have been moved somewhere else. It’s new, and I’m not sure of my footing yet, but how many times have new, unknown things turned out to be better than you ever could have imagined?
This is as human as we get, and after we heal, we can never truly recall how our grief overwhelmed us once upon a time. So, enjoy these big feelings while you have them. Taste pain on your tongue, hear heartache in every song; a broken love is an art unto itself.
Recommended listening:
Minimum - Charlie Cunningham