It’s been a year since my heart broke.
And it didn’t shatter all at once, like a wine
glass crashing on a tile floor, the way I imagined it would.
It crumbled, slowly, over a few months, or maybe longer,
it’s hard to tell.
It started with a crack that crept its way across,
as little bits began to fall away. And as the crack grew and splintered across
my heart, the symptoms of a broken heart began to set in.
My insides turned to liquid. My intestines, large and
small, my stomach, they just turned to liquid. I couldn’t eat, on account of my
insides no longer existing in a solid form. I yo-yoed between thinking I was
going to vomit up my digestive system or shit it out, at any moment.
Eating went out the window and so did sleep. Of
course I’d be exhausted all day, from crying, from lack of nutrition, but then
night would come, but never sleep. It was like I was possessed. The dark
thoughts came with the darkness and that little voice inside your head that
loves to remind you about your flaws, your faults, every inadequacy that you’ve
ever feared is true, that little voice would take over. The voice would tell me
how I wasn’t good enough, that’s why he cheated, how he probably did it more
than once, how he never loved me, and why would he? Of course he had cheated,
of course this happened, why did you think you deserved anything better?
As the broken, possessed record of negative thoughts
ran through my mind, I would search for justifications to prove the voice right.
This turned out to be difficult, pointless, and fruitless, but all that did was
convince me of yet another thing I wasn’t good enough to do right.
The first few days and weeks were the worst, but
once my body adapted to living without food or sleep, I entered a new phase.
This is known as The Drinking and Numbing Yourself Because It’s Easier Than
Being Sad Phase.
Night after night I sat with a bottle of wine and my
laptop, video chatting with my best girlfriends from back home, “processing”
what had happened. Telling the story, hearing the words, reliving the
nightmare, over and over. This was me “moving on”. And if it wasn’t me at home
with a bottle of wine and a friend on screen, it was me at the bar, with a beer
or a vodka soda, numbing, numbing, numbing. Who needs food when you have wine
and Facebook video chat? A vodka soda is basically a salad…..vodka….is like
potatoes which IS a vegetable….and I put a lot of lime……
And when I was alone, no friend to chat with, no bar
to sit at, just in my house, alone, I spent a lot of time on the floor. I
remember going down there on one of the first days after he moved out and I
really thought I’d never get back up. I decided I would simply live on the
floor from that moment on. It was easier than standing up. Plus, if you don’t
eat or sleep anymore, and you are sure you’ll never find love or happiness
again, what’s so bad about living on the floor?
The floor felt good, like I couldn’t possibly get
any lower. And I couldn’t get up, it was just too much work. So there I lay,
skinny, but not in a good way, on the floor, but not because I was stretching
or doing yoga or something healthy, permanently slightly intoxicated because
let’s face it, alcohol was the only thing my liquid intestines could process,
and the only sound I could make was Ugh.
Sometimes it came out just like that, Ugh. Other
times it was much more exaggerated, Uuuuuugggggghhhhhhh, followed by heavy sobs
and crying. Sometimes there were no tears, and I would think, thank god, I’ve
cried them all out. But then they would come again with a force that proved,
without a doubt that we are definitely 70% water.
But life continues and as much as I wanted to stay
on the floor, I began to “heal”.
I would attempt “normal” things, like going grocery
shopping. This proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated and the trips
would be cut short due to uncontrollable sobbing in the chip aisle (because
let’s face it, I’d decided that if I had to eat, I would consume nothing but
Salsa con Queso and Goldfish).
Slowly, I started to feel a bit better and convinced
myself that the “real healing” was beginning.
This phase looked something like this:
-Lay
in bed. Watch episode after episode of Sex In The City because my life relates
more closely to their lives than
anyone that I know in real life.
-Lay
in bed. Watch movies like 500 Days of Summer and The Bridges of Madison County and cry uncontrollably because
that’s how you get it out.
-Manage
to call a girlfriend and go for gelato. Eat gelato and talk about how much
better you’re feeling while
admitting that you’ve watch the entire
Sex In The City series three times and
you’re starting on your forth go round.
-Go
for gelato again. Be greeted as a regular because you’ve been so many times
recently that the gelato man knows what
flavor you want before you open your mouth.
-Decide
that you will now buy ice cream to eat in bed while watching Sex In The City.
This phase went on for months. Throughout it there
were these bursts of self improvement that would involve these manic episodes
of “getting my shit together”. I’d go running every day for 2 weeks, go to
yoga, buy veggies instead of ice cream, do ab work outs of all ungodly things,
only to return to Uuuuggghhhhh, in bed with Carrie and Miranda as my only true
loves. (I will also admit that at times I put on episodes of SATC and got on the floor, listening more so than watching because I had each episode memorized, and the floor was often more "comforting" than my bed.)
Certain songs were completely and utterly OFF
LIMITS. Basically anything by Ed Sheeran, and of course “our songs”. Songs we
had both loved, songs he had loved that I had teased him for, songs that I had
loved that he had teased me for. So many songs became auditory bombs while
other songs became anthems, battle songs that pumped me up, got me going,
convinced me that I wasn’t in this alone, that I was going to make it. Like
Rhianna and Bruno Mars were singing just to me and that was all I needed to put
the pieces of my heart back together, to go out and find new love, and to
become this better, stronger, more resilient person.
And there were distractions, attempts at flirting,
attempts at getting back out there, moving on, and that was the worst. It
didn’t seem like it at the time because it’s just that same numbing, numbing,
numbing, but it was the worst kind of numbing because when it ended, when they left or
stopped talking to me, it broke a little bit more of my heart, which was barely
holding together at this point anyways.
Because I was still sad. Because I still missed him.
Because I didn’t want to be alone. Because you can only numb yourself for so
long.
So a year has passed and I think I finally have
swept up the crumbs, the bits and pieces and they are starting to stick
together. Sure, there’s some dirt and dog hair mixed in there, some sand, some
lint, some toe nail clippings, but all the pieces are there.
I don’t cry at every love song anymore, although a
couple still set me off. I drink a lot more tea than vodka. The manic episodes
of yoga and running have become more stable routines and I’ve limited my gelato
intact drastically. I’ve banned myself from watching Sex In The City (mainly
because my laptop crashed, but I take that as a sign). I still end up crying on
the floor sometimes, but I let it happen, I feel it, I let it in, and then when
it passes, I pick myself up and I carry on, and I find myself on the floor less and less these
days.
And now instead of saying Ugh, on repeat, all day,
every day, I say Aaahhhhh. I sigh out, sometimes in sadness, often times in
joy, sometimes in wonder of where I am in life, in awe of my friends who
brought me ice cream, and wine, and French fries, and beer, and cooked me
dinner, and sat with me while I bawled my eyes out. I sigh Aaaahhh for the
friends who had 5 hour video calls with me and listened to me tell my saga over
and over again as if I was the only one who’d ever had a broken heart. I sigh
Aaahhhh for the great things in my life that I can see again, that I can feel
again.
I sigh Aaaahhhh for myself, for making it through
this, for finding all the pieces, for putting them back together carefully and
slowly, as slowly as they crumbled, for trusting that while it may have some
cracks, and it may be a bit dirtier than it was a year ago, my heart is still
worth loving and it still has love to give.
