When you’re no longer with a person that you want to be with, you’ll do anything you can to get them back. You’ll break your own boundaries, maybe do something stupid like move to another country, maybe you’ll write blog posts because you’re too scared to talk to them. And if you can’t do anything, you’ll dream up impossible scenarios that put the two of you back together again. You’ll speak to the moon as if you’re looking at her eyes.
We’ll make entire meals out of breadcrumbs, scrounging for a mere taste of the delicious thing we once had. We know it’s a pointless venture but we’ll try anyway because we all have that one weakness, hope. We hope to reclaim that beautiful period of time that we’ve lost. It’s the period of time that lasted from the moment we fell in love until the last day we spent together. Everything made sense, we had a thing going, there was a future.
Heartbreak sucks, but that’s not the worst part. It’s the aftermath that gets you. Reaching for your phone to text them, knowing you can’t. That’s the true pain; you can’t speak to the one person you want to speak to about it. It’s the same with death in my experience. The day of the funeral is awful, but it’s the next day that tests us. Much like the death of someone you care about, your longing for them soon becomes subdued. You are no longer desperate for their presence. I move on from relationships, and sometimes reminisce about the past, but the nights of dread and days of apathy eventually end. It comes in waves. First, it’s a giant tsunami, everything comes crashing down. Then it’s large waves, hitting you again and again. Then the waves get smaller, and less frequent. Soon there’s nothing but a rogue wave here and there, but with each wave you’re better experienced and better able to power through them. If you can’t make it through the day, make it through the hour. If you can’t get through the hour, get through the next few minutes.
What isn’t helping is that I overthink. What I really need to do is stop. Easier than it sounds, I know. For example, I’ve just gone through this very sad breakup thing. I’m also super busy with work and there’s a myriad of other things demanding my attention. So with all this shit whirring around my head, it can be very loud in there which makes it difficult to exist comfortably. I am beginning to recognise that the answer to a lot of my worries is to merely stop, pause, and exist. Do nothing. Nothing at all. If I quit overthinking then I won’t descend into madness. If I can notice myself taking it too far then hopefully I can pull myself out of the loop before I get trapped.
There’s this feeling I just can’t let go of, it repeats throughout my mind like a broken record and I’m looking for it everywhere. It isn’t in walking my dog, cooking great food, going out with friends, or in the view of the fields on a sunny day. As joyful and extraordinary as these times are, they pale in comparison. This feeling cannot be found anywhere because it existed only for a person who is no longer here. I still cannot comprehend that it is over. It just can’t be, not forever.