There are two important things you have to do for me while you read this;
- Listen to the song Happy Now by Kygo while reading
- Please don’t judge me.
I wasn’t a believer in the term broken heart because scientifically it isn’t possible for a person to live to tell a story of a broken heart therefore I couldn’t wrap my mind around the phrase.
However, twice in the last two weeks I have gone from having this piecing pain in my chest to curling up on my rug and crying fat ugly tears; the type that sucks the energy out of you and you can’t but sleep right after.
I have learned to never do this type of crying on an empty stomach and to always have a face towel drenched in cold water on hand for the headache that inevitably follows it.
Needless to say, I fully understand the concept of a broken heart now. I know to cherish all experiences and learn to build from them but this isn’t an experience I would like to relive. I am sure I have learned all the lessons I need to learn from it and I have carefully documented them in my journal, written them on post-it notes and stuck them around my room so I never forget.
Here is the thing, I am responsible for my ‘’broken heart’’. I will attempt to explain how I came to be curled up on the floor, having the life sucked out of me.
It started with a promise for a free meal which turned to 10 follow up meals within two months. I enjoyed the conversations and really, who says no to free food?
By the third month, I found out that my hands fit perfectly in his and I should have know to snatch my hands out of his and run, instead I stayed put convincing myself everything was under control.
In the fourth month, we talked about the all the reasons sharing meals was a bad idea but we left the restaurant that night with the date for our next meal picked. I should have known to decline the next meeting invitation but by that point, all of me lived for sharing 12-piece chicken wing with him.
By the sixth month we fell into a routine: of sharing meals, sharing ideas and sharing our lives with each other. Looking back on how things progressed, there are two important lessons I learnt from those first six months;
- When you know the attraction will end in tears, run! Don’t let the warm feeling in the pit of your stomach get the better of you.
- Be brutally honest with yourself about the situation and make the hard decisions.
The sharing, eating meals, meeting family went on for the next few months and by the time I was ready to face reality it was too late for my heart, it had already gone and given itself away.
I found myself dreaming of my future with him in it. We went from ‘’my plans’’ to ‘’our plans’’ and from ‘’you’’ to ‘’we’’. I think what made it hard was we actually work well together, complementing each other’s strengths and weakness, it became difficult to run because it started to feel right.
In the fourteenth month, my uncle staged an intervention. He talked to me about physical compatibility and spiritual compatibility. By this time, there was no point pretending ‘we were just friends’, I listened attentively and when he was done talking, I asked, ‘’So what do I do?’’ He didn’t have a ready answer for me, he told me I was between a rock and a hard place and he understood perfectly the turmoil I was going through.
Two things he said stuck with me.
- Everything good isn’t Holy.
- You need to blend physical attraction and spirituality, one can crowd the other out and blur your vision but for successful long term relationships, there needs to be a blend.
I went into deep reflections asking myself hard questions about my future and all the things I want my life to be filled with. I plotted a timeline for the current course I was on and I didn’t like the places my mind’s eye took me.
My next decision was clear; unlearn back to ‘me’ from ‘us’. It was in the course of unlearning, of detangling, that my heart broke. Its strings had become too attached and weren’t willing to let go, the yanking off that needed to happen broke it into a million pieces.
So, that is how I broke my own heart and spent Christmas tucked safely in bed grieving what was, what could have been and learning to be just me again. I am not quite there yet but the experts of this type of thing say it takes times, I am therefore giving it time.
