Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
the real break up experience
I noticed he had stopped sending me affectionate messages and kisses about a week and a half ago and being less warm in conversation. So I asked him if he was dating again, and he said he was talking with someone. I had a sense that I had not really let go of him, but now I really understand how true that statement is. I feel totally crushed. Somewhere in my mind, I had been holding onto the idea that maybe in the future we could make it work, whether through continued friendship far into the future, or a change of heart or circumstance. And now I really plainly feel it again in my heart.
We are not a thing, and we’re never going to be.
I’m never going to see him again.
I’m never going to be sexual with him again.
I’m never going to be romantic with him again.
I’m never going to be able to feel the warmth of his embrace or the comfort of his assured leadership.
The possibility that previously accompanied my sense of the relationship is gone.
I’m not even sure I will be able to feel his friendship.
I remember thinking at the very start Maya, when this is all over it’s going to hurt. Knowing that the geographic distance between us, on its own, was enough to make it improbable. I had no idea how large the magnitude of truth in that statement would be.
I recently saw another friend of mine posted the other day on the anniversary of her mother’s death:
Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.
― Jamie Anderson
And that really stuck with me because it struck me as deeply true. This sadness and grief is, in large part, an acknowledgment I can no longer channel my massive, bursting love in this way. Even love for other things in my life, that I had shared with him through text and pictures. I think he doesn’t want that from me anymore.
It’s completely different from any other breakup. More intense somehow, and qualitatively different. Not two people that just got sick of each other or tired of each others’ quirks. Like child ripped from parent. The fear and desire to reattach for my own well-being are impossibly strong. The pain of isolation unimaginable. He wanted to feel needed by a partner. I needed him. I need him. The neediness doesn’t seem to turn itself off simply.
I’m going to have to start over again to find a new Dominant. Someone who can hold me with the same care and acceptance. I imagine all the sifting I will have to do. Of course, the first time I was lucky. After just a couple of weeks of searching, I had found someone genuine and kind when I wasn’t really even looking for a relationship, but to explore. But how long will it take to find it again? I’ve looked in a few other places with limited success. I think of the fear and risk I felt and overcame to make something that felt really beautiful to me. The constant struggle, especially at the start, to fight everything in me trying to hold me back and fighting to let it happen. A relationship that made me want to overcome my fears and want to improve and please. Not in a way that I felt I had to do those things, but in a way that was genuinely rewarding and safe (even though there was obviously a lot of room for improvement).
I don’t want to feel that fear again.
I don’t want to make something new.
I want to be able to be anxious with someone and not be afraid that it will scare them away. From the very first day, he always made me feel like I was safe and ok, even when I said I was anxious about something. I’m so afraid I will never find that again. I don’t want to feel vulnerable again in admitting to someone for the first time that I feel anxious. I want to rest in the comfort of knowing that part is over. I want to keep feeling that we are dancing.
I would give almost anything for it. For what I’ve felt and dreamt about every day for the last several months.
I learned so much, both directly and indirectly, about myself. About the ways that I can engage with sexuality and not hate my body. About ways to play and explore different topics. About what it’s like to trust someone even when you're terrified. To trust in another person’s intuition. I feel that what he gave me was a gift. Something I deeply love with all of my existence. But I also feel a horrible, deep sadness in having to let that go.
Even though I had broken things off a month ago to make them less sexual and less emotional, I really only cut the cord halfway. It was less sexual and less romantic, but I didn’t give up the intimacy that continued daily communication allowed. And through the small connection that held the two ends together, I had fooled myself into feeling that he still wanted to dream about a future together, the way I do. But I was dreaming alone.
It feels so unfair. But I guess there’s no universal fairness. Someone doesn’t feel the same way about you or has to let you go because it isn’t in the cards. There’s nothing you can do. I rarely feel the forces of the world are cruel, but at this moment I feel that very viscerally. How the feeling of love for another can be so strong, you would go through hell to have even a fraction of it in return. And how there’s nothing there making it reciprocal. You can’t stop loving them even if you want to. I guess some people manage it by thinking of the other person as their source of pain. But it’s just not true. The other does not cause pain. Only the attachment to the idea that you don’t want the reality that you’re already living.
Why do I still want this? Even when the pain is so deep. Even when I know I’m attached to the thing I can’t have anymore instead of seeing the thing that’s actually there to have. Even though I know continuing to engage with it is going to cause me emotional harm. Mental harm.
I think a dear friend was very apt to say, somehow this experience cracked something open in me.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
— Anaïs Nin
This is how I feel, that finally, I let my petals feel the warmth of sunlight and gentle blowing breeze. I know the bud cannot be closed again. For now, my flower burns in the knowledge I have to navigate the future alone, still raw with the recency of being exposed for the first time. I want someone who understands. There with me, holding my hand. Keeping me safe. Teaching me things and showing me it’s alright.
But I would never go back and undo it. I’ll say it again. There’s something beautiful about what was created there, however temporary. I guess the problem is: I harbor a force that wants to make that beauty grow. I got so much value and understanding from it. I felt so many things, reveled in the intensity of it. I loved it. Even in the sad moments, there was something so pure about it.
We experience that we are in love, and we say “I am in love with you”. What we’re really saying, another way of saying it is: “You are the key stimulus that is releasing the mechanism in me that allows me to be in love. You’re my connection.”
— Ram Dass
I guess that’s the way our strengths are turned into weaknesses. Persistence and achieving a dream at any cost, without questioning myself. It’s something about me that people constantly comment on. But there isn’t a way to make it stop. When I persist and throw everything at a problem or situation but still feel I have lost, I will completely burn my fire out trying to get the thing that I want.
I don’t feel like I’m carrying a weight as though physically burdened with the sadness and pain that I have to carry around everywhere.
I feel like a hollow shell, free of all the resources I lost in my fight.
Not even feeling the heavy hunger of survival.
