I am trying to quantify my pain, measure it out and weigh it. I am looking at the numbers, analyzing my data. I don’t know if I’m looking for clues or comfort or neither. Maybe I just want math because it is unfeeling.
It has been fifteen days and ten pounds lost to this grief.
I counted seventy-three blooming tomatoes on my plant before feeling self-conscious about what I was doing.
I made it forty-five days without drinking.
I had the satisfying image of 1155 days without smoking on my little tracker app.
I’m allowed to take these sleeping pills for fourteen days before I’m supposed to give myself a tolerance break, and I have six unopened Facebook messages from people inquiring about the room I’m renting to make up for the rent my best friend and now former-lover will no longer be paying, because he’ll no longer be living with me.
I read it takes an average of eleven weeks for people to get over a breakup, regardless of how long the relationship was.
Nine to go.
I might go through my journals and count the entries where I confessed that I was unhappy, that I felt trapped, that I knew better. I might weigh those against the ones where I wrote that I didn’t care, that I was having fun, that we were swing-dancing around in so much love that could you really blame me for staying?
Ladies and Gentleman of the jury…fine. Lock me up, then.
The other night we cuddled on our – my – couch, and talked about how we were inevitable. He said he knew me from Smith Rock for years before he officially met me, and knew deep in his soul that we would be close someday. He said he knew he didn’t have to rush it. We’ve always gotten a rise out of each other, were always drawn to each other. He reminded me of how we tried not to date, how we tried to stay detached because we knew we could hurt each other. He reminded me that we always knew we were flying too close to the sun. He said that this breakup feels worse than the deaths of his loved ones. He said he loves me so much he can’t fathom life without me.
And he says that he doesn’t want a committed partnership, just like I kinda always knew he didn’t. He says he now wants more peace than my bomb-to-diffuse personality brings into his life. He says that even though we’ve been happy, he knows I want more. Like I always want more.
And the saddest part of it all is that he’s right, and he’s doing what I haven’t been able to do in three years by calling it.
It hit me that his leaving was setting me as free as his loving me did three years ago, and I enjoyed a brief, beautiful night of ecstasy by myself. I realized I was free from trying to manifest a “secure attachment” in a relationship that didn’t quite warrant it. I could finally stop gaslighting myself, blaming my childhood, instead of trusting my intuition. I danced and wept for joy and gratitude; there he goes, doing the hard part for me. Being the one to leave, like I never could. What a beautiful, loving, best friend he’s been.
I wish that bliss was as steady as this dull, hollowed grief we’re both sinking in. I think every milestone is going to be brutal. All I do is ruminate and remember and you’d think there would be no more surprises, but I’m still finding myself caught completely off guard in random moments. Like, I was in yoga the other day holding onto my body in corpse pose trying to breathe love into my bones and had the sudden searing, screaming thought that no one is going to call me Love anymore. And I cried and cried, as if he actually made me Love and not just Jess. I thought I am not ready to not be Love anymore.
And obviously I understand that I can still embody love as I move on, and I have never been more certain of the truth of our love for one another as I’ve been the last fifteen harrowing days. Obviously I know that people break up, and I know I can wrap this whole thing up in a bow and write about it with grace in some future date, and find peace in letting go, and freedom in honoring our love for what it is instead of forcing it to be something we never quite had a hold of. Obviously I am not actually going to wilt any more than I already have.
But come on. I was called love for three years, and I liked it, ok?
Haunted best friend…I guess this is the next phase. We gave it a good go. Turns out we’re just human, after-all. (Who knew?!)
Fifteen days. Ten pounds. Seventy-three tomatoes on the plant he was so excited for me to grow, because he loves tomatoes. 1155 days without a cigarette and the first in three years was nasty. I didn’t even like it. I choked and laughed and didn’t even finish it.
You can’t take every beloved habit with you forever, you know?
Wow, I love this and feel you both so much! Please know you were loved and welcomed and still are!