Such is what a mentor relayed to me many years ago.
As I begin to envision what life “post-J” will look like, the crying bouts are frequent—short but frequent. A sudden welling up, perhaps a few shoulder-rattling sobs, and then a deep breath and a moving on into the next moment.
It’s Spring Break from school right now, and J is on his annual ski-backpacking trip with some friends. He’ll be back Wednesday night, so I’ve been experiencing a few days of “what it’ll be like when he’s not here.” He’s signed a lease and will begin moving his stuff out when he returns.
He’d taken the end of the week off in anticipation of our mini-vacation to Los Angeles, as we’d planned to take when we were still… making plans.
It’s hard, this breaking up thing. It’s hard as the breaker, because it feels like I have the power to take it back, to make it go away, to “make it right”… but there is no making it right here. And I have to continuously, repeatedly, and painfully remind myself of all the reasons “why not.”
We got into it on Saturday before he left for his trip. He was facing the possibility of having to cancel his trip because of drama at work. A trip that he plans his whole year around, that he cherishes and anticipates, with people he laughs with only this once a year. And they were going to take it from him (or so he lamented).
And I got so mad. I got so angry that he wasn’t more angry. That he wasn’t as fed up and over it as I was — or at least not so much that he’s willing to make a change around his work situation. He is trying, but he’s …
It’s not my business. That’s what I had to keep coming to on Saturday. I have TRIED this. I have tried the convincing, the cheerleading, the obviously-not-so-helpful helping. And it has always led me to leave. To despair, to hurt, to hopelessness, and to leave.
Breaking up has so much balancing and weighing, so many reminiscences of the good, like the pencil from the hotel where we stayed in New York that I fished out of a bag this morning. There is so much good, and there is so much not.
Remembering either is excruciating.
But of anything that I “know for sure” (to quote Oprah), I know this pain is temporary. And I know the woman I must become—to be ready for who I will be, and who I will attract, next.
Owning Voice 