Every once in a while, even though I know I really shouldn't, I poke through some of our chats and emails and an old video card box stuffed away in the back of my closet with her name written on it and her memories inside. I even stumbled on her Instagram account once. It was like looking into the sun during an eclipse: "This'll be worth it and maybe it won't hurt!". You know it won't be worth it. You know it'll hurt. And you do it anyways. You can't not.
It's a weird thing to know that the other person has continued to exist and live their life. Every tidbit of news about them stings, somehow. They got a dog? Started a new hobby? Found a new partner? Each one haunts you for days.
A broken heart is a damn petty one. It's quick to judge and get offended. "How dare she do X or Y without me there! She should be doing absolutely nothing but sitting around and pining for me and feeling bad that things ended!" A breakup makes the head and heart really dumb over the dumbest things. I guess it goes to show just how attached you had become in the first place, and how deep those roots squirm through your soul even if you hoped you were over it.
A buddy once gave me some precious advice: Once a relationship has reached its end, you gotta cut yourself off from the girl.
Completely. 100%. Block her contact, don't reply to texts, definitely don't call. And don't just drop by to see her every once in a while. You remove her presence as completely as possible, so there's not even a drop of her can fall on your consciousness. No temptation, just room for you to fix you and move on.
That was probably the first major piece of relationship advice I'd ever been given, and at the time it was before I had even been in a relationship at all. But it kinda set the tone: in the wastelands of a broken love, you may wander anywhere except for back to ground zero. You stand tall and cold like a stone in the rainy wind, and never, ever turn back towards her.
I should mention that my friend has broken up with his girlfriend 5-6 times now, and always seems to saunter back. It's finally over now, for good, he says. I'll believe it when I see it. But I hope he's right.
It's been about three hundred and sixty-five individual days since it was this time last year. That's when my first, longest, and most significant relationship drew to a close. We had broken up a couple times before, too. Though this last one seems to have stuck.
There's been a good reason why I haven't talked about it much to anyone or explicitly mentioned it here. It's that piece of advice: cut her off. And that doesn't just apply to external contact, but I've somehow taken it to mean that I should cut her off internally as well. Gotta stop thinking about it. If I can make myself stop thinking about it, then it ceases to exist and so does the pain.
But it hasn't quite turned out that way.
You see, we had told each other, "Let's stay friends. If we just stop talking to each other, we'll become bitter." And that was all fine and good until a few days later when we stopped talking to each other. And I became bitter. Maybe she did too.
Just to compound matters, we work in the same building. Without any words between us, we've become silent ghosts drifting through the periphery of each other's lives. It's strange, and completely unsurprising.
You find yourself stuck in a bizarre mindset, where you feel like you're still in a relationship, but there's a void where the other person is supposed to be. It takes a long time to disconnect from that.
Perhaps one of the tallest hurdles was to stop incessantly checking my phone for her messages. Not even turning it on; but just always looking for that stupid, soothing pulse of the notification light.
That void is eerily quiet, though, and it leaves you with the unfortunate opportunity to compulsively think about what transpired. I've carried this weight with me everywhere, along with a bloody club in one hand and a pair of defibrillators in my backpack. After I thought and obsessed and analyzed and beat it to death, I'd inevitably find a way to bring it back to life so I could flog it again. Some days I feel like a monster, bloodied and kneeling in front of an even bloodier corpse.
Each time, I think, I hope, that it comes back to life for shorter and shorter periods. Until one day I'll be able to let it lay motionless and fade away.
A year is a long time to think about things, and I've bisected it from every conceivable angle. I could tell you why it was all my fault. I could tell you why it was all her's. And I could tell you why it was both of ours, equally. I have no idea how to consolidate these different worlds.
I can tell you, though, that I have found so many revelations that explain how and why things are the way they are. I've found precious little closure, though. For a while I was writing all these things down, they seemed like divine revelation from the gods. Reading back through these little epiphanies, it's amazing how the tone ranges from hurt to bitter and angry, remorseful, and apathetic. The stages of grief, and all that crap.
Eventually I stopped writing that stuff down, in an effort to become less obsessed with the matter and move on. I'm slowly thinking about it less and less, but I still come across an illuminescent realization from time to time. But I don't record it anywhere, so it slowly gets buried in the sands of my memory. I don't know what purpose it'd serve to keep recording these kinda things, as important as they feel and how my initial reaction is to clutch to them like papers in the gale.
Being cold and cutting off a person is what you have to be and do to move on. I suppose that if I was the embodiment of that philosophy, I wouldn't be writing all this. Even then, getting to the notion that maybe it's okay to feel and express the pain of a failed relationship... I still feel like writing this is all taboo somehow.
For the record, I was the one that initiated the final break up.
I heard somewhere that it's easy as a guy to break up. All you have to do is proclaim, "She was crazy" and you move on.
But she wasn't. She was a good person and things just didn't quite work out. Maybe I could be colder and pretend it was all no big deal, but that'd be disservice to myself. It's kind of a bitter reminder that, despite all the right or wrong reasons, sometimes you hurt people. And regardless of what they may or may not have done... they hurt. Yeah, do what you gotta do, but this is a simple reminder to be gentle with the hearts of others.
I miss my friend. There are things I stumble across that I instinctively want to share with her or ask her about. I miss her insight and talent and humour, and deep discussions. I really miss talking to her about artistic shenanigans.
But I think that she's cut me out of her life, much the same as what my buddy had counselled me to do. I can respect that. Though some days it hurts to think that a 5-6 year friendship was just cut loose from the pier to roam, get tossed, and be lost to the great Pacific. It sucks to think that the last time we talked will be the last time we talk.
I know to keep my course steady as she goes. No contact. Maybe a little bit of sober introspection and reflection on what once was. I don't know if that's the right or wrong thing to do, but that's what I have to work with right now. Do I want that to change? I just don't know. My perspective seems to be different every day.
So here's to you, Я. Hope you've found your way.
-Cril
Where are we?
What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to form
Crop circles in the carpet
Sinking, feeling
Spin me around again
And rub my eyes
This can't be happening
When busy streets
A mess with people
Would stop to hold their heads heavy
Hide and seek
Trains and sewing machines
All those years
They were here first
Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before
The takeover
The sweeping insensitivity of this
Still life
Hide and seek
Trains and sewing machines
Blood and tears
They were here first
Mm, what'd you say?
Mm, that you only meant well
Well of course you did
Mm, what'd you say?
Mm, that it's all for the best
Of course it is
Mm, what'd you say?
Mm, that it's just what we need
You decided this
Mm, what'd you say?
Mm, what did she say?
Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cutouts
Speak no feeling, no, I don't believe you
You don't care a bit, you don't care a bit
Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cutouts
Speak no feeling, no, I don't believe you
You don't care a bit, you don't care a bit
Oh, no, you don't care a bit
Oh, no, you don't care a bit
Uh-uh, you don't care a bit
You don't care a bit
You don't care a bit
Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
