Love is There.

I think most people expected that Valentine's Day would find me looking kind of like this:

 

 

And I don't think anybody would blame me right now for feeling like I want to shield myself from all those raining hearts.

 

But I like love a lot.  That's why I'm so sad that I've had my heart broken.  I don't get to have that kind of love right now. 

 

On V-Day, one of my friends posted this archived blog post to Facebook(http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/archives/2007/02/14/love_is_all_you_need.html), which provided me with some reading to while away the empty hours at work, and also a way to focus on the love I've got instead of what I've been so sorely missing these past few weeks. 

 

Because there is a lot of love in my life.  I have so many great friends who let me cry, who get me drunk, who make me laugh, who hug me, who distract me, who help me feel beautiful, who remind me to breathe, who promise me that one day I'm not going to feel this sad anymore, and remind me that I am actually worth the love I've got and the love that, one day, I'm going to have again. 

 

And actually, it was a pretty good day.

 

Valentine's Day started with a text message from a dear friend with the news that she had given birth to a beautiful and healthy baby girl that morning.  I'm not sure how I could possibly be cranky when my day starts with such great news. 

 

It was important to me that I have a good day and still be able to celebrate love.  When someone tells you he can't be with you any longer and he can't keep trying to make things work, it's really easy to believe that you're not worth the trying, not worth the love that makes you try.  And if it's true that I'm not worth someone else's love, why should I try either? 

 

I should try because deep, in my heart of hearts, I know that there are lots of really great things about me that are worth someone's love, particularly my own.  I'm generous, committed, perseverant, a good listener and honest.  I'm witty, pretty good at helping people see the big picture, and very good at finding the humour in a situation.  I'm a pretty talented musician, singer, writer, actor, and have been known to cut a pretty decent rug from time to time.   I'm a great cook, I'm pretty adventurous with food, and I learned how to roller skate when I was 28.  None of this is to say that I don't have flaws also, but I really think that love is about coping with the flaws because the good stuff is so good.

 

If I try to think about one of the happiest and most awesome times in my life as a single person, I think back to when I wrote this: http://www.hotmisst.blogspot.ca/2010/10/hot-people-unleash-their-secret-weapons.html.  I felt invincible when I wrote that.  I knew I was pretty great, and that sometimes I needed some armour to remind myself.  I lost some of that armour; I disposed of it when I was in the safety of a romantic relationship, thinking the relationship would be armour enough.  I forgot that I should always be my own most steadfast, brave defender.

 

My next project is rebuilding my suit of armour.  And learning to keep that armour safe no matter how safe the arms of another person make me feel. 

Grief is Persistent.

I'm not ok.

And guys, I've been trying.

I'm eating right.  I'm staying active.  I'm maintaining contact with friends.  I'm getting out.  I'm seeking counsel.  I'm staying involved.  I have a to-do list as long as my arm.

These help.  Lots.  But I'm still not ok.

I've been reading a little about the stages of grief lately, for what I think are obvious reasons.  I feel as though they're not really stages for me.  It's not like I'm walking up a set of stairs progressively reaching the upper echelon of acceptance.  My grieving process seems to me to be more of an elaborate spiro-paint picture.

The discussion that initiated our breakup lasted about two hours (or six months, or three years and three months, depending on your vantage point).  In that time, I felt all of the stages of grief.  Even acceptance, when 30 seconds after I left him and drove away, my phone rang.  I was sure it was him calling me to say he'd made a mistake and took it all back.

It was someone else.

The stages of grief continue to spiral.  They feed each other, causing an outbreak.  A vicious circle of crummy emotions.

Denial

The denial is easy.  The last year and a half was mainly long-distance.  I'm used to his not being here.  Most days are totally normal, but for a few phone calls and text messages I'm not getting anymore.  It isn't at all difficult to convince myself for a moment or two that I've just had a bad dream and everything is fine.  Remembering is hard.

Bargaining

I think I've done a decent job of not ACTUALLY bargaining with him since the break-up discussion.  Instead, I'm just making bargains with myself, or God, or the devil, or the great flying spaghetti monster.  IF I just deal with my shit, if I work myself out of my (borderline?) depression into something super happy and chill, if I lose a ton of weight, if I become a completely different and way more awesome person THEN somebody up there or out there will make him see it and he'll change his mind.  Right?

Don't bother setting me straight.  I already know.

Sometimes, though, it's that baseless optimism that gets me through the day.  It's what keeps the depression from swallowing me whole.

Depression

Every time there's a bit of something that I can't deny or bargain my way out of, that's a time that I find myself sobbing in the bathtub or getting teary-eyed while I look for the best deal on paper towel this week.

Once, in my childhood, I crawled to the blind end of my sleeping bag.  Then, someone (probably my brother.  Or my Dad) sat on the open end, trapping me.  It was all a hilarious joke.  I feel suffocated, confined and stuck by the depression part of things.  Problem is, just like thrashing around inside the sleeping bag only made me panic more, fighting the depression doesn't make me any less stuck. 

Acceptance

I'm even trying to work on acceptance, if for no other reason than the possibility that it might hasten the end of the depression.  I try to imagine myself alone.  That alone person imagines herself getting another cat.  This person rethinks her "crazy cat lady" plan.  I try to imagine myself with other people.  Like, BEING with them.  Loving them.  And then I feel guilty because my heart is still with him.  And then we're back to depression.

Anger

I've saved anger for the end.  Not because it's "best for last."  Not because it's going to be the juiciest read.  I've saved it for last because it is the hardest for me to be ok with feeling.  In the way I think of depression swallowing me whole, I think of anger as something chewing me up.  Anger will change me. 

Anger is poisonous.  Being angry at him makes things poisonous between us.  It closes doors on our relationship (whatever that ends up being [there I go...bargaining again]).  It poisons my friendships, because my friends were "our" friends and are still also his friends.  Anger means they have to choose, which they shouldn't have to do, since there's not really a right or a wrong side to this.

But I must admit to some anger.  I'm angry that I couldn't be what he wanted.  I'm angry that I worked so hard at making myself better and that all that work now seems to have been for naught, since I've got another great mountain of sadness and anxiety and self-doubt sitting on my chest after having shoveled the last pile almost all away.  I'm angry at myself for being weak enough to fear that I might never get over him, that I might always be alone, that some part of me is missing without him.

Most of all, I'm angry that this keeps taking so much of my time.  That I can't just man up and move on and start being a happy and fun person again.

But that's what moving on is going to take.  My time.  And I'd better get used to it.  Because I can't run up the stages of grief like a set of stairs, Rocky Balboa-style, much as I would like to.  The spiro-paint will stop when it's finished, and only then will I be ok.

Tears are Pain.

My only goal this week was to make it through a day of work without crying.  It took until Friday, but I made it through Friday's work hours without having to lock myself in the bathroom, unravel all of the work toilet paper, and whisper to myself to keep breathing.  I made it through without running into my office and closing the door when the wrong song came on the piped-in radio.  I managed stifling the lip quiver when one of my clients asked me if I was all settled into the area now, after almost four years, and wasn't I married yet?  Oh well, lots of nice young men out there. 

I made it.

So, I've got work down.  That's about 35 hours of the week.  The other 133 hours are another story.

And I wish they weren't.  Because crying hurts.  Physically.  I spent the weekend with my parents and joked that the reason for my rosy cheeks is that I've been bathing them in warm salt water for the past week.  You know, from my eyes.  And they're burning.  My eyes burn too.  And I have a headache most of the time.  My back aches from those moments when you just can't catch your breath and you start to hyperventilate.  My eyelids are almost purple from being rubbed dry.

Unfortunately, I'm really effing sad.  And I think that's going to be the predominant feeling in my emotional repertoire for some time to come.  Everything makes me cry.

• Remembering - Our relationship had been long distance for the past year and a half.  It's normal to wake up alone.  I forget and think that I might call him later.  And then I remember.
• Showering - Maybe it's about the time of the morning that I start to remember that things are not normal anymore.  Or maybe the privacy of the shower makes me feel comfortable to start sobbing, but I have yet to take a shower without some kind of emotional response.
• Listening to Music - I don't think this is a surprise to anyone.  Between Friday and today I've spent nine hours in the car with my mp3 player.  I've learned that there are many songs I can't listen to right now.  There's the obvious choices - REM's "Everybody Hurts" is a song basically giving you permission to cry it out and sometimes made me tear up anyway.  Neil Young's "Helpless" coming down the hill in North Bay was like someone kicking me in the heart with a steel-toed boot.
• Feeling the Love  - I just need to know that I'm going to be ok.  To be honest, the number of people who have offered kind words, open arms and the space to be really effing sad has been a little bit overwhelming.  At a time when it would be so easy to feel so very lonely, I have never felt so surrounded.  I will still need the reminder (probably quite often), but it's much easier now to believe that I'm going to get through this with more or less all the pieces I started with.
• Silence - Sometimes nothing's happened and I find myself in tears.

Things that don't make me cry include: making a rickety bed with my father at 2 a.m. on a Friday night after a long drive, playing complicated piano music, and sleeping.

The sadness I feel and the accompanying tears are a normal part of the grieving process, I'm told.  I know I can't carry a torch forever, lest I set myself on fire.  Maybe the tears are a safety feature - a built-in fire extinguisher.  But I can't cry forever, no matter how sad I feel.  I'm hoping instead to convert much of my sad energy into handcrafted items for friends, family, and self, feats of athleticism and devastatingly emotionally on point musical performances.  We'll see how this goes. 

When I was driving to my parents' this weekend, there was a tiny section of rainbow over the horizon.  When I was driving back, there was a sliver of new moon smiling at me.  Though I'm currently not particularly devout, I am a Sunday School veteran.  The rainbow was a promise from God that He would never flood the earth again. 

I'm not so naïve as to believe that I'm never going to feel heartbroken again, but I'm going to take it and the smiling moon as a sign from the ether that things are going get better.  Just like everyone keeps saying.