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As a young girl dreaming about life in my 20s, never had I thought that I would spend majority of my years shattered by heartbreak testing multiple coping mechanisms to ease the pain. I imagined I would be married by now, engaged or at worst seriously dating someone waiting in the wings to be a wife. I had a very warped perception of what a romantic relationship and love was, and erroneously thought heartbreak was something I could avoid. In my mind, I had convinced myself that if I loved someone hard enough and proved myself worthy I could circumvent the heartbreak. This toxic mentality was the catalyst for many situation-ships to come, although the men and their fuckboy tendencies did do their part in exasperating the situation. I allowed myself to get into situation-ships (like a dumbass) that lead nowhere, and each time was left heartbroken and used as someone’s stepping stone to happiness.
One moment in particular that earned itself the presidential penthouse suite in the heartbreak hotel happened in early spring of 2017. I remember it like it was yesterday. My person of interest at the time (let’s call him Trevor) all of sudden was being distant. He and I had been off and on since 2013, but he was someone I cared for deeply. We weren’t official, but somehow, I had convinced myself that if I gave him all of the benefits of a girlfriend he would want to make it official. It never happened. Now looking back, I Thank God every day that it did not.
I Facetimed him after a girls night out checking in wanting answers as it why he’s been so distant lately. We went from multiple dates in a week, mentoring together to just a couple texts every month in a 2 month period. Just as I got to the middle of the crosswalk at 44th and 9th in Manhattan, I saw him take a deep breath and shared he’s been meaning to tell me something and was not sure how to say it, then proceeded to say he was expecting a child and would be a father in just a few months.
I froze.
Cars were approaching, and I couldn’t move, let alone respond. My heart dropped to my knees and I felt the world, my world, crumble. I had put this person on such a pedestal that hearing the news crushed me. I couldn’t move. A second later, I felt something push me forward out of the street onto the sidewalk. I walked past every pedestrian wailing with tears. I cried on the train platform, the train and on the walk home. I opened my apartment door, collapsed to the ground and cried some more. At this point, I had been been crying non-stop for 2 hours. I cried in the shower, I laid in bed and my tears nursed me to sleep. I did not go to work the following day and had tears for breakfast and spent the day in bed, crying of course. I only left the bed once that entire day. My friends called to check on me but I couldn’t find the words to speak. They consoled me with a million “It’ll be okay” “This is his loss” but I felt numb. I couldn’t fully receive their comfort, because I couldn’t make peace with the hurt. I was mourning a loss, a relationship that never was but could’ve been.
As weeks passed, I felt myself slowly healing and making peace with the situation. One day as I sat on the train on my way to work I heard a small baby cry and shortly after I started to cry. You can imagine that moment on a train at 9:00am. It was then that I realized my healing was only at a surface level and to be honest it wasn’t until this year, June of 2019 that I truly felt healed from the heartbreak. Now 2 years post heartbreak I can say that it was one of the most liberating things that’s happened to me. It relieved me from the shackles of toxic situation-ships, and It forced me to be uncomfortable with chaos because for so many years, chaos was my comfort zone. I made a concerted effort to love myself unapologetically. I focused on meaningful relationships in my life and through that I realized there were pockets of love in my life that I had neglected, especially when it came to myself and my self-care.
Healing most definitely isn’t linear and the pain comes in ebbs and flows. There are days where I didn’t want to get out of bed, but those days that I did get out of bed and I didn’t cry, I considered a victory. Little by Little the hurt started to fade away, and before I knew it I was not taking attendance on pain, rather counting the happy moments. I was healing and I didn’t even clock it.
Someone asked me yesterday what the peak and pit of was of my year, and just as I was getting ready to respond I realized this was the first year I avoided Trevor and felt nothing about it. And the feeling that comes with him being an after thought after so many years of prioritizing him is something I never thought I could experience. I’m healed and I am so glad I dodged a bullet.
