I promised I’d write again on the one-year-after-the-break-up anniversary, and I am a woman of my word, so here goes.
We’ve officially come full circle. And I mean that in the most literal sense. I started dating my ex on October the 26th in 2017. We broke up October the 26th in 2019. And now I’m celebrating/commemorating the one year mark after our break up. My sister once told me that on average, people need at least half the time of their relationship length to properly process it. And as our relationship lasted exactly 2 years, and we’ve now been broken up for exactly 1 year, I’d say: I’m done. Nah, just kidding. This guy has probably impacted me for the rest of my life. And mostly, I would say, in a positive sense. If I said it once I said it a thousand times: “My first boyfriend taught me what I didn’t want, my second taught me what I did want.”
Today hasn’t felt very different from any other regular day. I did take out my diary and read a few entries in which I wrote about my first dates with my ex. I noticed I fell for him so damn quickly, and I guess you could call that infatuation, but I don’t think it was. There was something about his energy I was just drawn to, and that never stopped. A year went by and I have to admit I thought about him every day. I think I never stopped loving him. Maybe I never will. I think that’s beautiful. I know his psycho ex once (yeah they broke up and made up all the time) broke up with him with the harsh words “I don’t love you anymore”, and if I know him, that’s about the most painful thing you could ever say to him. Loving him is easy, it’s being in a relationship with him that gets difficult.
Over the last few months, I have done a lot of reflecting on myself and all my relationships. I’ve ended friendships, rekindled family bonds and most of all: prioritised the relationship with myself. I have healed. For a long time after the break up, I believed I might have been too much, too intense, too emotional for my ex. But I don’t think that anymore. It’s true he sometimes made me feel like that, but now I understand he hadn’t even begun to process his 5 year relationship with his ex when he met me. He was broken. He didn’t love himself, at least, I think, not as much as I loved him. And I can imagine that being super intense, when you feel a type of love from someone else that you don’t feel for yourself. Maybe it can feel good to immerse yourself in it for a while, but ultimately I believe it creates an imbalance, for both people involved. I just really hope he is learning to love himself like I loved him, or how I love myself now.
Break-ups are one of the hardest periods in life. But because of that, they can also be majorly transformative. People don’t grow from being comfortable, or happy for that matter. People grow because they go through hard shit, and have to show up for themselves and deal with it. After a break-up, only two things help: time and growth. You have to give yourself time. Emotions fade, pain fades, unless you feed it. Time makes things okay that you thought were going to haunt you forever. Even though I still think about my ex so often, I have peace with that. It’s become something I can handle. Which relates back to growth. When you outgrow the person you used to be when you were with them, you also lose the need to go back to them. It would be like trying to change a cake back into the batter. You can’t, and you shouldn’t want to. The ingredients and the heat of the oven served their purpose and look at you now! A beautiful, delicious *insert your favourite flavour*, multi-layered cake. Oh, I’m so good at metaphors.
Sometimes, I still get sad. Sometimes, I wonder how he’s doing. There are some songs I still cannot listen to. And although I didn’t anticipate that, I feel like it’s okay. I’ve concluded that every break-up is different. Being the controlfreak that I am, I thought I could completely map out when I’d start feeling better and caring about him less. But all of the data I collected from the research that was my first break-up, was completely useless in this one. I never made it to a one-year-after-the-break-up anniversary after my first boyfriend, because I had already met my recent ex ten months after that break-up. I was sad for about 6 months, but when he started dating someone else I felt like that door had closed for good. Then 3 months later I felt like I was ready to dip my toes in the dating pool again. And much sooner than I expected, I met my last boyfriend. And I knew I was ready.
And right now, I’m not. I’m not ready to date again. Though this time it has more to do with my commitment to myself than getting back in the saddle on my quest of finding my soulmate. Because I’ve already found her.
“Your happy ending may not be what you expect, but that is what will make it so special.” – Once upon a Time (S5E3)
Tea Time With Amber 