harder than i thought
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Breaking up sucks. I never thought it would hurt as much as it did because when you break up with someone, it’s because you’re not in love anymore, right? Not always.
I was living with the perfect guy. He wasn’t perfect but pretty damn close. He was kind, sweet, funny, a real charmer—essentially, everything that I could have wanted in a guy, right down to a pair of amazing eyes.
And here’s the thing: we meshed so well. For the first couple of months, we were constantly laughing, cuddling, watching movies, and tangling up the sheets. We had a total blast. At first. We had been dating for over 2 years. Until that moment, his faults seemed like perfect imperfections that I found endearing.
I had been planning our future together, both in my head and out in the open. We would move to a bigger apartment, our fingers entwined, looking at apartments together, and talking about how lovely it would be to have one of them to ourselves. It sounds ridiculous, but it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. I guess that’s love, right?
But outside of our little bubble, I saw our relationship in an entirely different light. I found myself having to try harder and harder to connect with him, to be on the same wavelength. I started to become weary and cynical. I kept thinking that it was a phase, a hiccup, or a relationship rut.
One day, it hit me: It wasn’t just a hiccup. We were different. We had always been different. Suddenly, I couldn’t see us ever truly connecting in the real world. There was a distance between us, a chasm that was widening so rapidly that I was afraid I’d be swallowed up forever. I was exhausted from reaching over it, hoping he’d be able to grab my hand to make sure I didn’t fall off the edge.
But there was no point. I wasn’t growing. He wasn’t growing. There was no bridging the gap. I didn’t want to be in the relationship anymore, I thought.
That realization made my heart sink into the depths of my stomach. I had never been in this scenario before. My first relationship totally crashed and burned. There was no chasm—just an explosion. Though it was a miserable affair, it was very obvious what needed to happen. He was a jerk, he treated me badly, we broke up, I moved on, and that was that. But this was different. I still love this guy. I care about him, and he is one of my best friends. But I knew that romantically, we couldn’t be together anymore.
There’s a vast misconception in this world, thanks to the good ol’ romantic comedy industry, that those who do the dumping are cold, heartless, and ready to run around and make out with anything that moves as soon as they kick their SO to the curb. Maybe that’s the case for some. But often—at least, for me—nothing could be farther from the truth.
I had a lot of feelings and thoughts that didn’t seem to make any sense to me whatsoever.
That’s because the hardest part about breaking up with someone you love is convincing yourself that you need to do it first. Sure, you know this decision is for the best, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a cinch. In fact, you feel so many different levels of pain that you won’t know which ones to process first.
You feel like a criminal because it feels like you're stabbing your best friend and partner in the back after months of promises. You feel intense loneliness because you’re losing one of your closest companions, the one to whom you texted “good morning” and “good night” every single day. You feel distraught because you keep being reminded of it all by a song on Spotify, a place where you ate dinner together, or a little note they gave you.
And in the midst of all this, you keep getting the intense urge to text them about it because they were always the ones who would wipe away your tears. It’s like reliving the break-up over and over again.
All of this is gut-wrenching, to the point where you feel crippling doubt on top of it all, because how could the right decision possibly make you feel like you want to lay in bed all day with your head under the covers?
It took everything in me to finally realize that it was totally normal. Sometimes, the right decision is the most difficult. I couldn’t “fix” my feelings. I already fixed what I could simply by ending a broken relationship. It was the best for both of us, even if it didn’t feel like it then. All I could do was let my emotions wash over me and let the healing process start.
And I know it will. Day by day, I know I'll feel better. Thanks to a whole ton of my friends and my writing, I know eventually that I'll start to feel like me again.
Breaking up with someone you love is terrible. It’s scary as hell. But it’s necessary in order to move on to a happier stage of life. You are fabulous and will be even more fabulous when you come out on top of this even stronger than before.
And to you, I hope you'll be okay. I hope and pray that this break-up will do good for you. But for now, let's lift ourselves in our own, separate ways. I really do hope to see you become the person I know you can be.
I love you. Always. Take care ♡
