Have
you ever been through something so traumatic that when you look back on it from
a healthier space you almost can’t believe you survived it? That’s how I feel when I re-read the blog
posts I wrote during the end of my engagement; I can see how fine that last
thread I was hanging from was, and how close I came to it snapping every
single day. I can still remember, on a
visceral level, just how painful simply existing was, and I’m genuinely shocked
I didn’t self-harm or try to end myself.
These
days, as I creep up on a date which, in a parallel universe, is my eighth
anniversary with the best man I’ve ever known, and which is now just another
April day on which I don’t even know who I agreed to marry a year ago – these
days I’m mostly better. I’m currently
experiencing a pretty tough downswing in mood, brought on by an ill-advised
trip to Mexico with one of the more intimately loved-up couples I know, so it’s
not all rainbows and moonbeams, but I’m managing so much better than I was in
those first months. Even in my darkest
moments, I take pride in how far I’ve come; I’m still so so sad and angry and
hurt and lonely, and I still feel like half of me is missing, but I’m starting to believe I’ll get through this trauma, and I can even appreciate a
few of the changes it's made to my character. I’m tougher and more skeptical, but I also
feel more grown up, and for once it doesn’t feel like a facade.
When
my ex broke my heart, a dear friend’s awesome girlfriend, who I barely knew,
reached out with the kind of wisdom that floors me from anyone and makes me
feel almost ashamed when I’m older than the source (she is a year younger than
I am, and so much smarter). She said some
phenomenally sage things to me – a person she had no reason to comfort except
simply because she could – in that first email, and then, some time later, she
sent me a list of good breakup songs. I
had no idea how much I needed those songs, how hard they would make me cry or
yell or laugh (bitterly), and how badly I needed those exact reactions, and how
quickly the songs would become essential parts of the soundtrack to my
life. Just to share the wealth a bit,
here are my top three:
- Things Change
- Gravel (this one is so representative of how I feel about him, to this day)
- This Year
Music
has been a surprising healer for me – I've never cared much about
‘discovering new music’, as my brother and my ex and so many of my friends do,
but that list of songs was the start of something for me. When I came back to SF, broken and raw, I
found that listening to the radio was like violently rubbing salt and
vinegar and cayenne pepper into the wounds in my heart. Every song was either a too-on-point bawl-inducing
ballad about the end of a relationship or a sweet (and therefore
bitter-tears-inducing) love song. I
couldn’t trust my usual stations, so I started playing music through my phone
with a tape converter (yeah, yeah, my car is old), and the playlist I made from
my new friend’s suggestions has seen a LOT of action in the past nine
months. And as I’ve changed, so have my
reactions to the songs; one day I’ll be shouting happily along to Ani DiFranco,
the next I’ll sob to Caitlin Rose, and the next The Mountain Goats will have me
singing determinedly about getting through this and out the other side
stronger. Oh, and then there’s this song, to which my best friend from
college videotaped herself dancing ridiculously the second week of my breakup;
that video made me laugh and cry violently at the same time, and the song
became a rapid favorite on the breakup mix.
I
will say one good thing about this miserable period of my life: for the first
time I can remember I don’t want to slow down time. I realized that as I drove up to Napa today,
alone on a route that used to be a favorite hour and a half spent with my
ex. My music ended and, going 70mph on
the freeway, I didn’t have much focus to give to what to play next – I
wound up randomly choosing Continuum, a John Mayer album my brother gave me for
Christmas years ago when I thought I didn’t like John Mayer. I changed my mind with this album, and
listened to it a lot, but never realized until today what a good breakup album
it is. Especially this song, which I
played twice in a row this evening, and this, which is exactly how I feel on a
good day.
But
back to the point: this song
used to make me ache with the knowledge of how fast the ‘best years’ of my life
were flying past (especially my senior year of college, too much of which I
spent mourning the upcoming loss of that life instead of enjoying it while I
was living it). I’ve always been
terrified by how quickly time slips through my fingers, but for once I feel
relieved by the speed with which the months turn over. I am going to make it through this, and every
week that flies by ‘too fast’ is another week I’ve survived, and gets me
another week closer to healing.
I’ve
made it this far, held on tightly to myself through the worst kind of emotional
tornado, and I’m starting to believe I’ll survive the rest – maybe I’ll even be
happy on the other side of this, regardless of whether or not my ex ever makes any amends. Right now it’s nearly impossible to imagine myself in a loving, safe relationship, but my logical brain says I deserve it,
and if the days and weeks and months keep sliding by at this pace, disorienting
though it is, I’d like to think I’ll find out whether it’s right soon enough.
Comments