On January 17, 2012, I sat on a hotel bed in Melbourne Australia, crying my eyes out. It was the kind of cry that you wish (but don’t wish) was caught on camera because it had serious Academy Award potential. But it wasn’t a performance; it was real, it was guttural, and it was snotty.
This wasn’t how I envisioned spending my New Year’s vacation Down Under. I was staying in a gorgeous, seaside hotel in a beautiful country, surrounded by ridiculously hot Aussie men. But none of that seemed to matter in light of the email notifying me that my yearlong relationship was over. Not even the Australian accents helped ease the pain.
Breakups are brutal and the scars they leave sometimes seem like they’ll never heal or fade. Heart scars are awful and inevitable but I’m beginning to think that maybe they have a purpose. Maybe the pain and vulnerability that we experience when our guts are exposed, when our armor is shattered and our very heart is ripped out and stripped bare — maybe that cut to the core leaves an open space for something. Something good.
It wasn’t easy. You can’t rush heartbreak; sometimes you just have to be in it, like when you’re sitting in gridlock traffic. There’s no way through or out, no Fast Forward button, you just have to be there for a while. For almost a year I wrestled with regrets and “what-ifs.” My ex plagued my daily thoughts. If the brain wipe from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind really existed, I would have shelled out good money for it.
I felt a huge sense of responsibility and guilt. I did everything I could to fight for the relationship. I employed all the cliché “get him back” tactics: long, candid letters delivered personally, thoughtful gifts on the doorstep, crafted baskets and memory boxes filled with mementos and trinkets from our relationship. I tried begging, ignoring, crying, promising, threatening, convincing, apologizing. I even apologized for things that I wasn’t sure merited an apology. Just in case.
When you’re in it — in the pain, in the regret, in the “missing him,” and in the height of your loss — it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s hard to believe that something good, something even better will come your way, but it does. It will. (Spoiler Alert: we all get through whatever our current crisis is. What were you crying over five years ago? Can you even remember?)
Everyone I know, who has been heartbroken at some point in his or her romantic life, eventually moved on. When I look around, I see in-love couples everywhere. What are their stories? What have they been through? Did they get it right the very first time? No doubt, at some point in their lives, they too were sitting in bed, crying over someone they thought they couldn’t live without.
In the midst of it, things will seem hopeless. We think, “I’ll never find someone else like him (or her).” And yes, there’s truth to that. Each of us is unique. You will never find someone like him or her. But what if you find someone BETTER?
I’m in love again, and somehow he’s better, taller, hotter, funnier, smarter, and more perfect-er than the last one. Imagine that! A year ago, I couldn’t have. He is the one who has made me forget about the rest. And oh, what a wonderful feeling that is: to be free again, to be me again, to daydream again… to forget.
They say, “Time heals all wounds,” but I’ve found that time fills the wounds. I’ve been given another chance and I’m re-writing the mistakes from my last go-around. The breaking made me softer. It made me wiser.
For a while I thought my ex-boyfriend was “the one who got away” but now I clearly see he was just the one who went away.
He was a necessary experience, which helped me shed some layers of my armour and ready my heart. Breaking isn’t always bad. Much like a chasm or void, heartbreak has given me depth. It has given me perspective. And it has made even more room in my heart to receive, appreciate, and this time, hopefully, hold love.
Photos by Tiffany J Photography
