“I’m feeling the feelings,” I started as I left him a voice memo. “But I’m able to sit with it ok as a few weeks ago I’m pacing around like a tiger in a cage and don’t know what to do about it.”
Over the last few weeks I’ve been experiencing that cruel, horrible, all-encompassing thing called heartbreak. Three of my friends are also going through it. One is an old coworker and the same age as my son (Gen Z). We bonded over cassette tapes and concert stories. Now we’re bonding over this. We’ve been messaging each other back and forth via text, phone calls, and voice memos as we try to make sense of our own emotions and the actions (or inactions) of the partners that are no longer in our lives.
We both mused on the length of our dual grief. “Six weeks since things went subtly more to an advanced stage of shit” he described.
“I feel like the person I thought he was is not the person he is,” I pondered late one evening. The next day I received a long voice memo with such sage advice that I listened to it three times and jotted down notes. How can this 22-year-old be so wise? It was him giving me more guidance than I’d given him. And I have three decades more experience.
He started explaining his internal struggle. “Two people fighting on the inside and no one’s winning.”
He went on to talk about how it was easier for him to talk to complete strangers than friends. “Someone is looking from the outside of your life– as if looking at your house through a window inside your head. It’s almost easier to open up because they don’t know you. They can look at it entirely objectively. You’ve got nothing to lose by talking to them. They’re not going to think any more or any less of you. I poured my heart out to this dude cooking an omelette at the hotel in Gainesville.”
Funny, I thought. I cried to the guy at Goin’ Postal yesterday.
Breakups are awful. It’s the death of a relationship. It’s your life as you know it changing in an instant. It’s self-deprecating grief and it comes in chaotic waves. One minute you think you’ve got a handle on it (I’m doing ok today!) and then another minute you’re ugly-crying in your car in the parking lot after work listening to Madonna’s “Skin” from Ray of Light:
Do I know you from somewhere? Why do you leave me wanting more? Why do all the things I say sound like the stupid things I’ve said before…
The crying and the talking and the writing it out saves us. You can’t keep it in. “Be willing to get in touch with that vulnerable portion of yourself when writing,” he advised. “Pour your heart out– get it to where you need to be.”
He also spoke of the metamorphosis that occurs when you do have some time and distance from the estranged partner. “You can be entirely different from someone when you’re not forced to spend every moment together. You start to become the person looking out the window at yourself and at someone else and what kind of role they fill in your life. You realize the disconnect of someone being your favorite person in your life to being something more foreign. You almost have the capacity to be a bit more critical when you’re not putting this person on a pedestal.”
Ah, that damned pedestal. Why do we romanticize things so, after things have ended? I need to think of all the crappy stuff to move on. The hurtful words, pompous attitude about things I didn’t understand, the grumpiness, the way he sneezed without covering his mouth.
“Through distance you’re more likely to not look over the flaws noticed in your relationship. You don’t sweep them under the rug. You come back to a different perspective. You gotta play lover and critic– you play the critic out of love because you want people to do better.”
He continued to address my initial voice memo rant from a day ago. “It’s odd seeing people change in front of you– they’re not acting like the person I thought they were.”
We also spoke of self care to get through. He’s been playing guitar with a friend. He refused to grab a beer from the outside fridge. I’ve been redecorating a little bit. I replaced dead plants with lush, green live ones. I changed light bulbs that were too harsh.
“Love thyself,” he reminded me. “Don’t lose your best face for what someone else may or may not think– you’ll never really know what goes on in someone else’s head. You can speculate all you want but at the end of the day, you’re the only head you’re in.”
“For the sake of all we know and been through, find comfort in yourself.”
Amen to that, my friend. I’m trying.
Busted Flip Flops 