"Heartbroken" is an understatement |
I always thought the term "heartbroken" referred to some emotional distress people went through when they felt rejected by a person they had romantic feelings for. The way I saw it, the idea of being in love is always described as being abstract, so I figured being heartbroken probably carried with it similar implications.
I perceive what I went through as a "heartbreak," and it was nothing like what I could have ever imagined. I felt pain. I felt physical pain. I never knew it was possible to feel that from a simple emotion. I mean, yeah, I had cried over things in the past, I had felt the adrenaline rush from anger-- but this pain was a feeling so foreign I could not even imagine it existed before feeling it.
The day it happened, I stumbled to my bedroom floor, dropped the phone, and just bawled. The months that followed I experienced emotions that I'm sure have to be related to symptoms of depression-- which is crazy considering I'd always been level-headed and emotionally independent and strong. I cried every single day, multiple times a day. I would cry in the morning as the heartache would be my very first waking thought. I would cry in the shower, on my car ride to work and school; I even cried during work, having to take short bathroom breaks to clear my head. The only things I was interested in doing were activities that would physically exhaust me so I could just go to sleep. I just wanted to be asleep because it was the only time I did not feel so horrible.
It's been almost a year since and I can finally say I'm becoming more content with my progress as the days pass. I finally feel that I'm reaching the end of that chapter in my life--
I finally feel out of love.
I've experienced more changes within myself in the past year than I have ever felt. I've always felt very fortunate with the life I've lived. I've had many advantages in life that others would kill for, and not always because I necessarily earned them, a lot of times it's been simple luck. I have yet to experience the death of a loved one-- the closest thing I've felt to that was the death of my dog a couple of years back. The ending of this relationship that I thought would never come was my first taste at extreme emotional distress.
He had been one of my best friends since I was 11 years old. I met him on a curb outside of my middle school when he approached me and talked to me because he saw I was alone. We became friends instantly. We became extremely close, learned about each other's lives, met each other's families, and just mutually always made sure the other was okay. He had his girlfriends, I had my boyfriends, and it was always kind of known that our friendship was just that. The typical "boy/girl best friends who eventually fall in love" was not something I ever thought we'd identify with.
A text that woke me up at around 12:00AM one night proved me wrong and ended up being quite a bigger deal than I initially thought it'd be. It was the text in which he revealed the feelings he had felt for me during our entire friendship, and I know it sounds stupid to say that I was in absolute shock, but it was a reaction even our closest friends shared.
Long story short, we began dating 3 months later and it lasted for about a year, during which time I fell completely head over heels. I had reached a level of vulnerability that I had never felt, and I was okay with it, because I felt secure in being with someone who had expressed how much they cared for me for 10 years before we were even dating. I felt elated and completely invincible.
I hadn't realized that falling in love means risking feeling your worse for the experience of euphoria.
I am not the same person today that I was 2 years ago, before the beginning of this saga (that is finally coming to an end). The way I view the world is different. I question everything. In a way I have fallen into viewing things from a cynicism standpoint. I question whether people can really care about another person the way I used to think possible. The only thing that gives me hope of this is knowing how I felt for him, and knowing that I really just gave more love than I thought possible to another human being.
Now I'm taking on a new approach to my life-- a completely selfish approach. I figured this is probably the most opportune time to be selfish, so I may as well take advantage. I don't want to worry about anyone but myself. I want to experience living completely alone in a town where I know no one. I think that aside from wanting to be selfish after putting so much strength into loving and caring about another person, it's also in a sense a challenge for myself-- I want to prove to myself that I am the strong person I once was before these overwhelmingly weakening days I experienced. I want to prove to myself that I can be emotionally independent, though I realize its a somewhat unrealistic venture as we all crave that feeling of acceptance and love from others. I just want to go out and feel in control of myself, and emphasize to myself that another person no longer holds that power to emotionally and mentally destroy me.
I guess you could say I'm pretty much terrified of love at this point in my life and I'm building as many walls around me as possible to prevent myself from feeling the way I did a year ago. I've come a long way and focusing on myself is probably the best idea I've had the past year.
I actually heard about an interesting study on the radio the other day. A psychological study was done to see whether people who report having had happy childhoods were more or less likely to get divorced. The surprising results were that they would be more likely to get divorced than would be people who report not having had happy childhoods. I was confused in hearing this initially, until I heard the logic the psychologists attributed to these results. They explained that people with happy childhoods tend to be more confident in themselves and more emotionally independent than people who did not have happy childhoods. Because of this confidence and satisfaction with themselves, these people are strong enough to walk away from relationships they don't find satisfying, and are more able to stand happily alone; they don't require as much emotional support from other people because they love themselves enough.
These findings intrigued me so much because I feel that I am experiencing something similar. I'm making increasing progress toward my career goals and it's really making me feel more and more content with myself. I've always been a confident girl, but after experiencing such an emotional downfall, my recent accomplishments and future plans really boost my morale and give me direction and positive focus. I recently started working as a research assistant in an infant behavior lab at my university, I will be working full time at the learning center (that I love working at) in the summer, I will be taking a course to prepare for the GRE, and I will be taking my last class for my bachelor's degree. With all that on my plate, I don't plan on getting much sleep, but I can't wait. After that, if all goes as planned, I will be going off on a school-program, Literacy Corps, to work with teachers and students with learning disabilities in improving literacy-- and the best part is that this will be taking place in another state and eventually another country. I am so excited with everything that's going to be happening the rest of this year, and though I was already confident before, these things definitely make me realize that I have better things to focus on.
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Sarcasm makes up about 90% of my speech. I was born into a Catholic family and currently identify as none of the above. I've lived a sheltered life that I am currently in the process of de-sheltering. I love helping people, though I don't believe in the existence of altruism.
See my profile
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