Struggling to heal and move on

[marshmallow107]

Hi,

I posted about me and my other half broke up a couple of months ago. I guess I’m back here really because I’m struggling to move forward. He was (and is) a genuinely lovely person and the break up was as amicable as it could be, albeit very difficult. Not my decision, not what I wanted, but a case of bad timing in his life. It left me heartbroken though.

I know I have to move on. I have been doing everything I can. I have a wonderfully busy career which I absolutely love and can be all consuming. It’s easy to let this take over though which I am becoming guilty of. I have wonderful friends. Literally the best. I play music. I go to the gym. I have started running more. I have even signed up to a race as I thought it would give me something to focus on!

But...In between the distractions, I cry almost every day. I miss him being a part of my life. Its tough. I still love him. I feel stuck in a place where I’m not ready to move on but I know I have to. Truth be told, I know deep down that I’m still holding out hope that he may realise what he’s lost/change his mind once he sorts the other stuff in his life. But I’m also fully aware that this may not happen too. But I don't know how to let go completely.

My friends have told me to try to redirect my focus rather than worry about ‘moving on’. Which is what I’m trying to do. But I still miss him!

[Wiseman2]

Actually you are doing great. Healing from breakups and heartaches is not a linear progression. More like ups and downs. So the bad news is breakups suck. But the good news is that this is normal and you will do do fine. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, then one day you will be trying to remember his name.

I have a wonderfully busy career which I absolutely love and can be all consuming. It’s easy to let this take over though which I am becoming guilty of. I have wonderful friends. Literally the best. I play music. I go to the gym. I have started running more. I have even signed up to a race as I thought it would give me something to focus on!

But...In between the distractions, I cry almost every day. I miss him being a part of my life.

[bluecastle]

Hey there, internet friend. Sorry you're still hurting. I've got no bandaid, but maybe a few words.

Once, not all that long ago in the scheme of my life story, I was feeling a lot of what you're feeling. And, like you posting here, I was sharing these feelings with a friend through text message. Such a fertile moment in my life that I can recall exactly where I was when sending these texts: outside a magazine stand at the New Orleans airport, bound of some city or another during a stretch where I was flinging myself around the world to "treat" the emotional flailing going down in my head and heart.

Anyhow, exhausted, with myself and the feelings, I texted him something like: "I just feel like I'm stuck in an emotional purgatory!" To which he replied: "Emotional purgatories are GOOD!"

He has a kid, I had a plane to catch, so the conversation ended there. But I liked his sentiment, or at least found some comfort in it. Without quite knowing why, I liked that idea, thought he was onto something in taking something I was internally labeling as "bad" and labeling it "good." Helped me let go of the judgement, or the need to "get out" of that purgatory—or, well, see if I could outrun it by flying to Japan—and instead to just accept that sometimes these purgatories happen.

And they do end, like everything ends. This place you're in right now is not permanent. You're working and seeing friends rather than, I don't know, experimenting with heroin—so, hey, GREAT. Maybe this is all great? Maybe this is just where you are going to be, for a bit, until you're not? You miss him, you love him, you cry—that is okay. I bet you have also laughed, felt pleasure, and so on, right along side those feelings. They can all coexist for a minute. Letting them coexist for a minute, rather than trying to shove them away or judge them as poison, might be a way to grow a few millimeters, spiritually and emotionally.

Does any of that help? Probably not. But until they figure out how to give hugs and ice cream over pixels, it's all I've got.

[marshmallow107]

Those words...have literally brought a tear to my eye! 🥰

I have been through break ups before. I don’t know whether it makes it better or worse knowing what you’re about to go through and the journey of emotions that you’re about to embark upon! It almost seems to get harder the older that I get.

The difference this time is that, in the past I have been treated badly. There I could express anger. And I fuelled that anger into bettering myself and knowing I deserved better. There was a reason.

This time, there is no anger. Just hurt at losing somebody who was honest, kind and genuine. This is a new feeling to me and I keep ruminating, looking for a reason, making up stories in my head that he’s seeing somebody else. When really I know he’s doing exactly what he told me he wanted to. To find himself and have ‘time’ to discover who he is. To work out what he really wants.

I guess I have to find the good in what I’m feeling. And I guess know it’s ok to still love him? And miss him? How do you live with those feelings without just feeling like utter CRAP though?

[bluecastle]

I guess I have to find the good in what I’m feeling. And I guess know it’s ok to still love him? And miss him? How do you live with those feelings without just feeling like utter CRAP though?

I'll answer this how I answer them to myself.

First, I remind myself that these feelings are just part of life. Second, I remind myself of what I at least believe to be true about this thing called romantic love: that it is only real, in the present tense, when it is continuously cultivated and nurtured by two people.

After that it changes shape, dims, and it is the imagination that fuels it, so at a certain point what you are deeming love is more a love of an idea, or a collection of memories, than a person. It is a love of what was and what, in your mind, could have been. For me that is simply not good enough—not a sharp enough hook to hang my heart on. So I honor all that by mourning it, and mourn it so there is room to inhabit the present tense again, and love in the present tense. Speaking only for myself, if my heart is going to be speared I want it speared by a monster of a harpoon, not a needle invented by my own lovelorn brain.

It is, as I also remind myself, a process.

And, yeah, it's a little different every time. Weird, huh? Life has a way of reducing us to angsty teenagers time and again, but we don't deal with it like angsty teenagers every time. In learning how to deal with it we do learn a bit more about ourselves—like, for instance, you have graduated from a phase of needing anger as your rocket fuel, which is lovely, but what is the new fuel? You are discovering it. That discovery is going to astonish you, and those you currently love (I'm thinking of your child) and have yet to love but will.

Discovery is a bit*h. Look at gold miners. Their backs hurt and they are covered in filth. But also? They strike gold.

[marshmallow107]

Again, your words have just brought a tear to my eye Bluecastle.

I just feel so lost. All the distractions - I guess they are just masking how I’m really feeling.

I know it’s all natural and I have to go through the motions. I need some fuel though. But at the moment I don’t know where to find it.

[bluecastle]

I hear you. Wish I had the torch for the cave. I don't, and don't think anyone does.

I'll tell you this: I've broken hearts, had my heart broken. My process for that was often the same: distraction, distraction, distraction. Some of those were "good" distractions. I'm a conventionally successful human by social standards, for instance, and my professional standing, and checking account balances, are certainly in part connected to pouring myself into things to dodge pain. I'm well-read and fit, and can thank pain, and running from it, for that, in part. Ditto far too many adventures to document.

I've also done the "bad" distraction stuff. I've sipped whiskey at 6 in the morning, woken up next to people who really pissed me off for not being the person I wanted to wake up next to. And so on. Most of us have versions of those stories: harmless in the scheme of things, assuming we get hold of the reigns sooner than later.

Anyhow, I swear that my last run through this spin cycle was the one where the distractions had lost their potency. I was over the "bad" stuff, and a lot of the "good" stuff had already become, well, who I was. Couldn't focus on getting in shape, because I was in shape. Couldn't find revelations in yoga, because I've been doing yoga daily for a decade. Couldn't "reconnect" with old friends, because I've got great friends who I'm good to and deeply connected to. Couldn't jump out a plane over the English Chanel or the Nevada desert because, yeah, I'd done those things to distract myself from past heartaches.

Still, habits are habits. I tried. I leaned hard on the distraction of travel, except it didn't work. That's probably why that "emotional purgatory" text resonated with me. I was in the midst of "running" except where in the past the buzz of distraction staved off the pain, I was doing a lot of crying in airports. So I just told myself: okay, BC, no more distractions. Time to run right into this rather than away from it. No, that didn't play out with me sitting stock still for 6 months and chanting in a cave. I moved, played, laughed, cried, sought refuge in the familiar. I ate some kale, sipped some whiskey, did downward dog. But I dropped the expectation that any of that was meant to "heal" me. I'd heal when I healed.

I'm so grateful for that period that (see above) I can already paint it in an almost romantic light. But, no, I was there. It SUCKED. No carving that out with pretty turns of phrase. It really, really, really sucked, as a lot really sucks for you right now. And then, at some point, it stopped sucking. Wish I had the potion for you, but sometimes those bumper stickers that read "Sh*t Happens" are preaching the gospel that must be listened to. Took me right to the doorstep of 40 to really get that, but so it goes.

[marshmallow107]

Couldn’t help but nod all the way through that one Bluecastle!! I know exactly what you mean... about the distractions becoming part of who you are.

I just feel exhausted. Because when I do stop running and distracting myself...I’m not yet at peace enough with the situation to relax.

When I’m around people - I feel happier. That’s a nice feeling. But as soon as I’m on my own again...it’s like I just break down.

[bluecastle]

But you're not breaking down. You're mourning.

Were I to verge, just slightly, into the realm of psychology, I'd say that part of why this is hitting you so hard is that you are mourning more than him, what you had, what you hoped for, but also something he represented to you, if not also some things that predated him. I can't recall all the details here from earlier threads—like was I wrong about you having child?—but I do recall you being pretty invested pretty quickly: in him, in part, but also in the idea of you plus him being it.

That's understandable. We are always kind of telling a story about what a relationship "stands for" even as it's just starting to take off. Best case scenario, whatever story you two build together is so much bigger than that mental story that it kind of shatters it, replacing it with something even more profound. Worst case is when someone "wobbles" and suddenly the once sturdy story becomes thin, hard to read and see. It becomes a thing in your head rather than a thing you were writing together.

Breakups stir deep waters: the waters of past breakups, past losses. The longer we live the deeper those waters get, and so in mourning one thing we are sometimes mourning many. It's dizzying. It's okay. Speaking only for myself, there has been an odd thing where the breakups that made the most sense on paper—someone, say, pivoting from hot to cold pretty early—can be more brutal than those that come at the end of something long, rich, and eventually sour and unsustainable.

Because you are kind of mourning the loss of some kind of potential—the portal into the new chapter becomes a closed door flinging you back to a past chapter. Or something. Regardless, these are waves you kind of just have to ride, if you'll forgive this surfer a surfing metaphor. They feel big right now, because they are. In riding them you get stronger, so while the waves don't change shape you do. Then you get to ride even bigger ones, with more grace and less fear.

[Cherylyn]

I'm sorry for your pain, marshmallow107. Allow a lot of time to heal your wounds. Have alone time to sort your thoughts and eventually venture out and enjoy life again with your friends and family.

It's really hard to experience life's trials and tribulations. It's a roller coaster. As difficult as it is to see this now, your day in the sun will come. Hang in there.