Not Okay

Last night I was sitting at the kitchen table eating stew with my roommate when suddenly I couldn't put the spoon in my mouth and take the bite I had so casually scooped up. The tears were flowing too thick and I was choking on all these words that I keep trying to say but never seem to fully express. I'm not okay. At various times you could call it broken, heartbroken, depressed, sad, angry, whatever. But for right now I'll just stick with the fact that I'm not okay. I have this feeling that I might not be okay for awhile. And I'm trying to be alright with that and not make apologies and not get mad at people who are trying to be helpful and supportive or throw blame where it doesn't belong, but I might do all of those right here because it's all mixed in.

It always comes down to relationships, doesn't it? Nothing else matters, or hurts, as much.

I didn't plan on this.

I never thought I would get the miracle of love three times, but I did and each and every time it has changed me. Irrevocably, inexplicably, and forever. That's how I knew it was the real deal- everything shifted, everything changed. I changed. As Gerry in P.S. I Love You said, "Watch out for that signal, when life as you know it ends."

We were friends. Solid good friends. And over the last two years I have been more vulnerable and open and raw with him than anyone else, maybe ever. Even I was surprised when I realized that my feelings for him had bypassed desire, skipped through affection, ran over caring, and were speeding out of control into love. So when I told him that my heart had transferred possession, I did so willingly and openly, as a gift. And he said no thank you. Ok, that's alright. But then I go back to repair any damage done internally and find that I had given away all my pieces to him somehow. Not all at once, but gradually through those 3am conversations and laughter and all the unspoken things transferred in glances and shared smiles. I found I didn't have a reserve for this kind of heartbreak. I thought after loving and being shattered, after loving again and becoming numb, that I was strong enough to love without being destroyed- that I could love as a gift without expectations. Maybe a part of me could and did, but now that part is swept away with the other ashes of my heart. My heart broke and I bled. Literally. For nine days I hemorrhaged blood until I thought I would die from loss of blood, until I wanted to because it seemed like a peaceful way to go. Believe what you will, but I know my body didn't know how else to handle the excruciating pain my heart and soul were/are experiencing.

Loving after love is both harder and easier. Easier because if you can love like that- like gravity depends on you, in a love that soothes the mind and awakens the soul, in a way that makes you both strong and brave- then I believe you are far more likely to be able to love like that again. Differently, but again. But it's also harder. No matter how much you learn and grow and heal from a heartbreak, it becomes part of you, part of the very fabric you now weave your dreams with and the lens through which you see the world. And to consciously choose to bare your soul, to expose all the brokenness you've survived and the times it killed a piece of you, is perhaps the bravest kind of love there is. But brave or not, it's still agony. I know I've been spilling little bits of this pain out in various ways over the last two months, but I have more. More thoughts, more pain, more tears. Somewhere too there is more hope and light and love waiting for their turn on center stage, waiting for me to call for the end of the act, but maybe I can't do that until I can fully verbalize the former ones.

He made me feel so worthless. So incredibly, humiliatingly worthless. Here I am- an independent 25 year old teacher and healer and business owner, who allowed myself to feel utterly worthless because of his feelings or lack thereof. But to give myself the benefit of the doubt, I had just bared my entire soul to this man, revealed all kinds of scars and triumphs, and he didn't even bother to hand back my heart- he threw it out the window while the car was going 70 mph. They say "follow your heart" but if your heart is in a million pieces which piece do you follow?

I want to be fair and tell you that he's a good man. Because he is. He is honest and decent and hard-working and funny and thoughtful. It's true. Just because someone breaks your heart doesn't make them a terrible person, perhaps short-sighted or blind or whatever it is that keeps them from seeing your incredibleness, but not terrible. As good of a man as he is, he broke me so damn much that the cracks in my heart are visible through my eyes.

It's not the kind of sadness where you cry all the time, but more of the sadness that overwhelms your entire body and leaves your heart aching and your stomach empty, making you feel weak and tired and yet you can't even sleep because the sadness is in your dreams too. It's almost a sadness you can't escape.

I have this nagging fear that I'm never going to be able to move on or forget him. The way his brown eyes light up or his silly smile that always made my heart beat ten times faster. And what hurts the most is that he was never mine to begin with. But I fell so hopelessly in love and even now, after everything, I wake up in the middle of the night and I think of him. And it makes me sick to my stomach and I can't breathe because I don't want to love him anymore. I don't want this struggle for air every time I hear his name or when he walks in the room. I'm working on having good moments but before I know it I'm curled up in my bed with tears pouring down my face and my mind screaming at me to forget him.

One day he'll be a story I'll tell my teenage daughter when she's sobbing over the shards of her broken heart. When she can't get out of bed and all she drinks are tears, I'll pull her into my lap and brush him out of her hair. And I'll tell her this story of a man who was my friend, my confidante, and who destroyed me almost beyond recognition. Who hurt me so badly my body detached from the pain and bled, if not from every pore, then at least from almost every orifice. I'll tell her that he broke me on every level and every way possible, that I had to rearrange my body, my mind, and my heart in a twisted jigsaw puzzle game. And how I put up the Great Wall of China up around my heart to keep out any possible future sharpshooters. Then I'll tell her how it got better. How it stopped bleeding and how the pain slowly faded. How I was able to smile again and crawl out of bed. I'll tell her that eventually I could laugh and hope and dream again. But I might wait just a while after before I tell her that even now I wake up from nightmares, and how I'm sometimes seized with a panic when I see someone who looks like him. Sometimes words can describe a journey, but not the painful daily details.

It doesn't just go away- this love that I have for you. Sure it's combined now with pain and the wishing for you to be happy, and I know one day it will shift and not be the blinding terror it is now, but it doesn't go away. It doesn't hurt that you choose her. She's beautiful and sexy, she's smart and kind, she's not broken like me. Her laugh is like your favorite song on the radio, her eyes the depth of the forest you want to get lost in, and her smile is bright like the sun. She's your favorite book and I'm just a footnote in it. She's really the obvious choice. I'm happy for you, honestly. I've seen the way you look at her like she's your reason for breathing and the way you smile at her when she's not paying attention like you're thanking God for allowing you to be near her. I'm glad you found love. No, it doesn't hurt that you choose her, but you want to know what does hurt? Having all this love inside me for you and wanting you to be so happy while I have to sit back and watch her not love you the way you deserve.  It hurts having all this love bottled up inside with seemingly no place to put it. It hurts knowing that I will cry and grieve over your struggles and heartaches for years to come, but that you will forget my name the moment you look in her direction.

Romantic atheism is the easy way out- to just stop believing in love and the power of relationships. But I just don't have that in my chemical makeup. Every cell in me screams to keep hoping, keep wishing, to keep loving as hard and deep and profound as ever. And I will. I promise myself that I will. Just not right now. I may be broken but I won't stay here. I am devastated but I will keep moving. I'm not okay but I pray and hope that one day, someday, I will be.