I find myself lingering - staying at work later than I need to, trying to hold a conversation at the bar that much longer. I know when I go home, they'll arrive.
Memories, questions, and confusion will come marching in, hand in hand, demanding my attention.
I haven't known much of love. What I thought I was learning has been cut short, the lesson abruptly ending. Or perhaps truly beginning.
What the heart does, or doesn't do, is often unexplainable. When you want it to stop loving, it won't. When you pray for it not to stop, it will. I'm in the aftermath of the latter. A casualty of another's lost love.
I’m going through my first real break up. I’m not sure what to make of it. At times I think I’m fine, surprising myself with how well I’m handling it all. Then other times, out of nowhere, I’ll begin to cry. Hours of sleep have been lost, replaced with replaying conversations in my head. All I want to do is rest, but my mind won’t slow down.
I want to be angry, but I can’t. It’s hard to stay mad at someone when the reasons you love them come rushing back uninvited. I’m disappointed, sure, and I feel disrespected by how it ended. But I’m not mad. Most of all I feel this is a reminder of how unfair the world is. How unfair love can be.
I’ve never been a fan of the phrase, “It’s better to have lost a love than to have never loved at all.” Now I have a more concrete reason to dislike it.
My boyfriend and I weren’t together very long, only a few months, but we were in love. Perhaps I’m naive, in which case we’ll file this under the “Lesson Learned” category of life. We were in love until we weren’t. Or perhaps put more frankly: We were in love until he wasn’t.
It’s hard to have closure when “the feelings just went away.” I have no tangible reason I can use to console myself. He didn’t leave because something I did or didn’t do. I couldn't have prevented this. His heart changed, even when he didn’t want it to.
I really thought this relationship was the end of the road. We both did. We thought we were made for each other, that God himself designed me for him and him for me. We agreed on this. A couple days after the break up I told him I felt everything he said was a lie. All the reassurance I was getting, the love, the hope for our futures, felt like a lie. He said it wasn’t. It is was “true at the time.”
The last time a boy hurt my heart, I cried out to God. I sat beside my table in a wooden chair and I sobbed, begging God to spare me future heartbreak. “I can’t take it anymore,” I told him, “I just can’t.” When this next boy came along, something was different. I was able to be fully myself and he appreciated every part of me. There was no reason to hide anything, he loved all of me. He encouraged me, he comforted me, he brought me joy. I was his favorite, he said. His best friend.
That’s gone now. The love was gone quicker than it came. It left swiftly, without warning or red flag. At least for one of us.
I want him to be happy. He knows that. I tried to be gracious with my goodbye, telling him not to be too hard on himself. If the tables were turned, and it was my heart changing, I know he would’ve been gracious to me.
I know being mean, conniving, or trying to guilt trip him won’t make me feel better. Saying something spiteful just to hurt him would leave me with regret. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to find something mean to say about him. He’s truly a wonderful guy. I was lucky to have him at all. Yes, I wish he’d have handled the end better, but what’s done is done. Even here at the end, I have nothing but love for him. There’s just nowhere for me to put it now.
I don’t believe in Karma, but I was him once. I let go of a great guy because the feelings just weren’t there. They were all there for a short time, but then they just weren’t.
It’s not like he wanted to fall out of love with me, it just kind of happened. I may not understand how it happened, but I understand it can. It did to me. Now it was happening again and I'm on the other side of heartbreak.
If there’s another guy out there for me, I want to say I’m sorry. It’s not your fault thick walls, talls ones, have been built around my heart. You shouldn’t have to chip away slowly until you can see the love inside. It’s not fair the forelovers before you have been reckless with my love, causing it to retreat like a turtle into its shell.
Those men didn’t want to hurt me, but they did. If you want me, you’ll have to help put the pieces back together. I won’t promise I’m worth it; I’ve learned those can break easily when it comes to love.
Time will heal much of my heartache, and perhaps a new guy will take care of the rest.
Until then, if there’s a then, I’ll rely on God, my own strength, and the friends and family who still love me, whose heart have not changed.