One Month

Yesterday marked one month since my heart got stomped on by the person I thought I’d be with forever. And yes, I still do feel very much that is what happened. No more isnight as to the break-up itself since SCL has yet to clue me in. But as Cee said in a comment in an earlier post, it doesn’t really matter what the reason was. And as my therapist C said, depending on another person to have resolution means that you may or may not get what you need. So, I guess my next goal is figuring out a way to accept the reality that I may never understand.

One month is not an insignificant amount of time, espeically when dealing with something as shitty as this. Hell, a day is a victory in my mind. But it’s also a weird place. It’s long enough for the shock of it to have worn off, for it to no longer be on my friends’ radars quite as much, but it’s not enough time for me to feel like I’ve had any real distance from it. I don’t feel any more healed than I did a month ago. I do feel painfully more aware of all of the implications of this dissolution, and that’s what is really hurting—not the initial “He’s leaving, What the hell is happening?” but the “I’m not getting engaged to the man I’m supposed to marry, we aren’t going to have a family together, I’m not going to have the life I envisioned, and I may never have the life I hoped for, I have no idea what my life is going to look like” aftershocks. The pain of it is sinks into my shoulders, my back, the space between my eyes. I carry it around with me everyday.

One of the books I’m reading right now, Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth, talks about the common disconnect women feel between themselves and their bodies. We see our bodies as the enemy, something to battle, something to wage war with rather than how it’s intertwined with our sense of self. Bridging that psychological gap is not easy when we’ve been waging diet wars, and other kinds of fights, for as long as we can remember.

In the aftermath of my break-up I’ve been feeling intense things in my body. I’ve felt the heavy sting of tears dammed up behind my eyes, the pressure building up as the tears accumulate until I can no longer hold them at bay. I’ve felt my throat coat over and close up, my chest spastically rise and fall in between gasps and sobs. I’ve felt the embodiment of anger—heard my heart’s racing pulse vibrate in my ears, felt my adrenaline surge as I tore apart some of SCL’s things. And after these bouts of intense emotion, I find myself gradually calming, my breath easing and slowing, my heart rate steadying.

When I remember, I ask myself, “What does this sadness/anger/rage/hope/regret feel like in my body?” And I try to be very specific. It’s challenging. I didn’t realize how disconnected I was from myself until I started trying to do this. I’d read about this kind of mindfulness in Buddhist meditation books, but until I connected the food and God parts, it hadn’t clicked.

In the middle of this heartache, this pain, this fucking disaster that is my life right now, I’m struggling for this connection with myself. Sometimes I believe that if I really truly feel what I’m feeling, I won’t be able to handle it. I’ll crumble—psychologically, physically, possibly both. This is the lie I’ve been telling myself for years. I underestimate my strength, my power, my sense of self. I have forgotten the parts of me that aren’t broken, that are fierce and tender and strong. That part of me can hold the broken pieces. It already is. I just have to trust it--trust me.