Getting over heartbreak; the importance of being alone.

Upon this most momentous of life changes, I consulted the oracles of google to find answers.  So many columns telling you what and what not to do. Of course, there is universal advice that many people agree on. No contact, speaking to friends, getting a hobby etc etc tralala. One piece of advice that comes up on a regular is to keep yourself busy.

Not being a stranger to keeping myself busy, constantly coming up with multiple harebrained schemes, this comes naturally to me. Piece of bitter cake. However upon breaking up with D, what usually comes naturally to me doesn’t anymore. I used to feel like I didn’t have enough hours in the day to do all the things I wanted to do. Now I have a big gaping hole in the shape of D (hehe) that has opened up. I now lie on the bed next to a giant chasm that often sucks me to the depths of it broken and lying at the bottom wailing whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, someone please save me and let that someone be in the shape of the very chasm that opened up.

So of course lying at the bottom of the chasm leaves no space and time for any of the things that usually keep me busy. In fact, the only thing that there is time for is boozing with friends, I invite them to the bottom of my chasm, enticing them in with wine to share and shit to chat. Either that or I climb my sorry way out and join them in their revelry, plastering over the cracks on my face with eyeliner and a smile that says ‘I’m OK even though I have nothing else to live for my life has gone to hell why can’t I be happy like you I miss him why doesn’t he miss me fuck this just give me another glass thank you he would have loved this why don’t I tell him is he sleeping with someone else I better ask him I am going to die alone and I am allergic to cats’.

Keeping busy has it’s downsides if not done with restraint.

The problem for me is that, I have had to be alone a lot since this breakup. The first two weeks were really busy, coming to the end of the school year, leaving drinks and a manic poetry commitment that had me rushing from a lesson with my most stressful Year 11 class to Reading and back to Hackney for a meal with 10 other people. In those weeks I thought, this isn’t that bad, I can do this! Yay!

Then the school holidays stretched out like an even bigger chasm that made the old chasm look like a fun adventure playground. Reality hit me in the face with a massive wall of tears, snot, and emptiness. I was taunted with the future that I now have to look forward to vs the future that was cruelly snatched away. The future I felt I had some agency over had somehow been handed over to Satan, so then I would wallow not only in the loss of D but also in the loss of control I had over my own happiness. My happiness was literally in the hands of the dark lord himself.

I have (thankfully) since realised that this is false, and that is something I could not have learnt without all of this unwelcomed ‘me’ time. I do have control even if it feels shit now. Not today Satan! Ha!

One day when I was sitting in my dressing gown trying for the millionth time to memorise the cardiac cycle (exam imminent), I realised I was OK. I looked around me and nothing was happening. Despite my brain getting the right and left ventricles consistently mixed up, my revision was going semi-successfully. It was pissing it down outside and I was nice and dry inside. I had a nice cup of tea on the go and a kettle full of water should I want more. Life was good.

In order to realise this I had to wade through the swamp of shit and bad smells, to come through the other side wiser and more aware through smelling the shit (or something like that). Old tormenting thoughts have moved on to other, less distressing thoughts. Each wave of sadness feels different from the last. Once I have experienced one I will never experience that one again. Like some sort of dark magic.

Since my first time consciously realising I was OK with being alone (I say consciously because I think I always was, I just hadn’t accepted it yet), I have had more of these moments. To the point recently when I was sitting alone on a park bench in London. This time I sat on the bench and took in what was going on around me, the couple sitting on the grass (that remarkably didn’t make me want to cry or hurl grass at them), the people having a match on the tennis court, dog walkers… I felt the wind on my skin, acknowledged and then enjoyed the feeling. And I felt OK. I am alive. I am healthy. I have ideas and some of them aren’t shit.

I am feeling all the feelings.

Keep calm and look at things.

 

So whilst there is merit in keeping busy when it is something that makes you feel good, I do not believe that being constantly distracted is the best thing to do. One day you will not be distracted and then what, will those feelings have just disappeared?

Being able to process and work through what has happened through being alone, has helped me to move through it and learn from it in the most positive way I can.

So for me, some of the best breakup advice is to allow yourself to be alone and don’t feel guilty or like you are ‘wallowing in it’. Rebuild the relationship with yourself that the breakup has broken, because we all know that being broken up with makes your mind abuse and pick apart your identity piece by piece until you are reduced to a gollum looking creature whom no-one would ever like to be around let alone love.

We need to be OK with being alone, otherwise, how would we ever be OK enough again to deal with whatever else life is going to hit us in our faces with? Because life is a motherfucker with a violent criminal record and a high chance of re-offending. We ready.

 

Getting over a breakup. Or, acceptance is a motherfucker.

I am a month into this most terrible of heartbreaks and have been really going through the motions. From brave-facing it, to boozing it, to slagging him off to make myself feel better, to texting when drunk, to texting to sort out house stuff, to going out with friends, meeting friends, staying with family,  all this whilst intermittently bursting into tears. The grieving stage is real people. I just want the sadness to go awaaaay.

Yesterday was the first day that I didn’t feel truly sad and felt more optimistic about the situation. Today I am back to plain old feeling sorry for myself. This shit could do with being more predictable.

What I have realised is that the whole thing is a process that can’t be wished away. For me the first stage was shock, as this breakup was a completely unexpected oxygen stealing horror. It took me a good week (at least) to process what had happened and the implications of that for my life.  Next was the grieving and missing him stage – which I assume is going to be ongoing.

Now I feel like I have moved on to a newer and more gruesome stage. Acceptance. I think deep down throughout prior stages in the process, I did not want to believe that this was happening so perhaps you could say before acceptance was denial.

Now I feel like I am seeing things less with rose tinted glasses, but more clearly, in full colour.

The grieving process often involves lamentations on what a great relationship it was and what a great person he was etc etc. But the thing that I have realised is, that if it was so great I wouldn’t be sitting here going whyyy meeee. And if he was so great  for me then I wouldn’t be feeling like he has ripped my oesophagus out with his bare hands, leaving me robbed of coherent speaking abilities and a burning feeling in my chest. No one who is ‘great for me’ would participate in such violence. It’s just a fact.

The relationship might have felt great at the time but there was a significant portion of it where he was not being completely truthful to me and was not brave enough to come out and say it.

Accepting the truth for what it is and not telling myself that he was amazing and Iwillneverhaveanythinglikethatagain is the key to moving forward with my life for two main reasons:

1)  Holding on to the memory of us like that is going to make meeting anyone else or even just being alone for a bit feel really shitty. It may even make me want to wait for this magical moment when he realises what he’s done and come back to me. But why would I want that? He has shown himself to be wanting in terms of what I need and deserve.

2) Accepting the truth helps me not to beat myself up and make it about me. The truth is, it wasn’t about me being a bitch about him not cooking dinner, or moaning about living in London, that would be completely ridiculous and if it were true then good riddance. The truth is he didn’t love me enough to compromise. Or was not ready to. Who knows the truth, all I know is he is never coming back. Even if he did we could never be the way we used to be and that it is it. Us as I knew it has gone. So in many ways the whyyyyyyyyy doesn’t matter. In the wise words of the Love Islanders, it is what it is.

And that is the thing to really take home here and in any painful breakup that has you asking why.

The relationship that you are mourning is gone and is never coming back. 

That is the cold, hard truth. And until you accept that, there is no way to move forward.

Now repeat after me……

 

 

Breakup = Breaking up with London?

My first instinct in a breakup situation is to run away. As far as I can go.  To China or something. It makes sense to me. Go to a place that’s streets have not been sprayed with that person’s scent.  A place that is so foreign that the person will surely be wiped from the mind through osmosis, skipping all the pain that comes with turning a corner and going,

that was the place where he rescued my shoe, where we had our first kiss, where we walked down the road, 

or similar.

Right now I am walking (not driving because I can’t) around an island (roundabout to non-Brummies) that has at least 6 different exits.  This was a time of roundabouts for me whether we broke up or not. I have just quit my job without having another one lined up. I am doing a course. I am writing on the side. Potentially applying for Arts Council funding for a new project etc etc (one too many damn etcs).

(Image, Travel Stack Exchange)

I was ready to leave my job but I hadn’t quite comprehended what it meant to me. The breakup happened under 3 weeks before I was leaving work, dealing with the emotions of both was confusing. I put on a brave face until the last week when every day had me in tears at the least opportune moments. At the Year 12 leaving party eating cake, at my desk whenever anybody asked me if I was OK. In the corridors on the way to the printing room. Whenever anybody asked me what I was planning on doing next,  or gave me a sympathetic look. The only thing that didn’t make me tear up was teaching classes, which would be surprising to anybody that has met my Year 11s.  Never forget.

We were still planning on staying in London for the foreseeable and the breakup suddenly pushed my London leaving date forwards, slapping me in the face with, well you were always complaining about the place so fuck off then you ungrateful bitch.

The thing is, when the choice to leave seemed to be made for me, things became apparent that I hadn’t thought of before. Like how many friends I have  made here and the life I built here outside of the relationship (yes there was one). I would often complain that I hadn’t made enough friends here (London is a hard egg to crack) and that I wanted to go home to familiarity and comfort. But since D and I broke up,  I have had to fill my evenings with other things to help me to smash down the walls that we built around us.

It made me appreciate the friendships I have built. Friends that I can call on for a front garden wine and chat. Friends to listen to Beyonce with. Friends who will listen to me ruminate and not tell me to shut the fuck up. Friends that give me sensible advice. Friends that stop me from doing things that I regret. Friends that tell me things that aren’t comfortable to hear.

Writing this now whilst having this big decision looming over me has helped me to realise that my part of London feels a bit like home. And that is not an easy feat to achieve. London is as unfriendly as a motherfucker. Most of my memories in this place do not involve him, some of them do for sure, but I have been in this position before and I managed to unlearn those feelings, so I can unlearn these ones. Even if these ones feel harder wired than those for the previous asshole.

Isn’t she lovely.

So as I write this and wait for the final details of a job offer, I think I have made my decision. Just because we broke up does not mean I have broken up with this broken, lung aching, annoying yet likeable as fuck city. The choice is mine to make and I have made it.

Until tomorrow when I change my mind.

I think the point is that a breakup should not dictate what you decide to do with your life. You are no longer in the relationship, there are no more compromises to be made. It is obviously going to have some influence, as plans you once had have to be remade. But they cannot be remade with the other person in mind. You were OK before you met them and you will be OK after. Even if it doesn’t feel like it now. Even if it feels like the future seems one big dark black hole that is sucking you in and taunting you with you will die aloooone you unloveable freak.

The only thing you can control now are your actions, now is the time to be ‘selfish’ and do what you really want. Listen to Selfish by Lil Simz and carry on.

Now I have to remember to follow my own advice.

How not to get over your ex

Time and time again breakup advice will tell you to keep yourself busy. Distract yourself from that which makes you want to claw out your eyeballs so as to no longer witness this new sad sad reality. It makes sense. Especially if your brain is anything like mine, when any moment alone has it self-destructing over trivial things, like whether I locked the door even though I definitely did better go back and check 3 times anyway. Add to this the rejection of a breakup and you can imagine the turmoil that fucker can inflict. Brain, I thought you were looking out for me?

Living in a busy city like London it would seem natural that keeping busy would be like second nature. The city invented the word. The thing is, when you are alone in the big Busy, you feel more lonely than if you were in the middle of a field with the ants as your only friends. In London, we are the ants. And all the other ants are too busy being busy. But their constant antness taunts you by telling you that you are a lonely lazy ant in this city of busy ants. (Perhaps that only makes sense to me).

Socialising is the order of the day for London ants who work hard sweating on the underground trying to avoid eye contact with each other. This involves making the most of the many bars and pubs the city has to offer drawing you in with their overpriced Gordon’s Gin (Tanqueray if you are lucky).

A side effect of such socialising is a morning-after headache and feeling in the pit of your stomach that your life is shit and you should be doing better with it, like inventing something, whilst simultaneously scrolling Instagram to confirm your suspicions. This is without a breakup. So you can only imagine the possibilities with one.

So that’s where I’ve been going wrong.

Regardless, for much of the last two weeks, I have been a self-medicating socialite ant with a slight alcohol problem.

Leaving drinks, work drinks, friend drinks, drink drinks, belly button shot drinks. There is always a social event you can find yourself slurring your sorry shameful words at. And it is distracting. And sometimes even fun. That is until Cher comes on and the tears flow as she asks if you believe in life after love.

My drunken escapades reached an unhappy climax recently when day drinking turned into evening drinking and I gave in to my urge to angry text and said everything I’d thought of saying but had been using my pride to swallow down. Oh pride now I am swallowing you. The following morning, I woke up feeling sick,  pride heavy in my stomach, with an all too familiar feeling of regret and self-loathing. For once nothing to do with dry-tounged fetid hangover breath. This time the pain in my head was mostly caused by opening the lines of communication to the person I am supposed to be distracting myself from. Doh!

So what I have learned from it is this, if you do want to distract yourself, do it with a book. A wholesome hobby, learn to play the piano, play chess, go to the cinema with friends. Whatever you do don’t get drunk and text your ex. If you are going to get drunk, make sure their number has been removed from your phone beforehand. Call history and all. Or better off, leave the damned thing at home and get a cab the traditional way. Your hangover will thank you for it.

‘It’s Not You It’s Me’- The break-up cliché that just keeps on giving.

A cliché, ‘a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.’ (thank you google search). Perhaps it should have been no surprise that my boyfriend ex  used those most meaningless of words on me. Original thought not being one of his strong points (bitter much?!). I think he thought talk of his quarter life crisis and it being about him and not me would give me some comfort, rather than what it did give me which was nothing but confusion and a carousel of tormenting thoughts.

What does that even mean? If it wasn’t me then why don’t you want to be with me? What have I done? How can I make it better? Is it my hair? Am I fat? Should I have shaved more? Gone for a wax?

So obviously the only thing I could do in this situation is to find all the things wrong with me I could possibly think of, plus all of the times I have been a bad girlfriend/ bitch.

Was it the time that I called him a cunt for going out for pizza with his friends when I got home to find out he was not in fact cooking for us like we agreed?

Or the time I moaned when he went out until 5am when he told me he was coming home in an hour at 11?

Note to self, stop being a bitch so people can unconditionally love you. You are 32 you should have learnt this by now? Right?

He didn’t tell me any of these things contributed the final nail in the coffin that has me buried 6ft under the weight of darkness, self loathing, self-pity and the obvious,  despair.

He said it is him. He doesn’t know he can commit anymore, he can’t imagine this for the rest of his life. He just needs a change. He said that it may be a cliché but clichés are clichés because they are universal truths. Like gravity or something.

The thing is, hearing those words from the mouth of the one you love and thought you were happily moving in with does not offer any comfort at all. More a cocktail mixed with 2 parts sadness, 1 part of why and 1 part of fuckingcuntarseholebollocks. Does he not think I am deserving of a more original excuse than that? Or that the relationship (in which we spent half of it living together) is deserving of more respect than an adage so overused as to no longer carry meaning? Come on, surely he could have thought of something more original. Like the cat ate his feelings or that he has developed an allergic reaction to my presence and so regretfully has to remove himself from my bed for the good of his health. Or he sneezed and his brain fell out of his nose, thus is currently working on reduced capacity so only has time to think of himself right now. Something like that.

After 2 and a half weeks of beating myself up over clichés and trying to find answers, I realised there aren’t any. The fact of the matter is that whatever we had, we don’t anymore. It is gone because he broke it. Not me. Him. And he does not have a fancy excuse like itchy eyeballs and brain leakage, which in many ways makes it worse. The fact of the matter is that it is him. This shitty situation has nothing to do with me. The only thing that does is how to deal with it. And I choose from this moment forward to do what is best for me. I will not let his issues and this breakup break me. Or at least this is what I shall tell myself in the darkest of 6ft under moments. I shall claw my way up back to daylight. Because otherwise I will suffocate. And that fucker should not hold that much power.

So from this day forward it isn’t him, it’s me. Now I have to pick up these broken pieces of wounded aortic tissue and find out who the hell that is again.

 

Solitude in the city- or- the sad bitch chronicles

My boyfriend just dumped me! I hear you cry. Wait. Actually you hear me cry. So here I am, single again in my 30s, dealing with it the only way I know how. Which is not dealing with it. I think. And writing this blog. More for me than anyone else. If you are here you may feel like a sad bitch too. Well come and join the pity party! It’s lonely over here and I could do with some company!

So what’s my story? I have been in and out of relationships since I became relationshiply active. I have also had periods of singledom, a year here, two years there. But I have had a lot of 2-3 year relationships. One too many in fact (waaaaaa). My most recent ex split up with me a week ago. Out of nowhere. Like we were on holiday deep sea diving together, holding hands and gazing lovingly at each other through our goggles. Until  he, with the stealth of a practised professional, yanked off my oxygen mask in one swift motion, whilst evil bubble laughing, swimming off with the grace of a calm motherfucker who has been perfecting his technique for months (all of this without looking back might I add). As his legs dance off gracefully into the distance I splutter and die in the most ugly and undignified way possible, in all my tounge lolling humiliation. I was not expecting that one asshole! But rather than it being a joint deep sea escapade we were enjoying, it was co-habitation and looking for a new flat together. In fact I was about to go for a viewing and potentially bag the ‘place of our dreams’ (as close as you can get to that in London with our money- which is not very) when D admitted to me that he thought we were going in different directions. Well not exactly like that either, more like, before we do this, I know you want to move out of London eventually, well I don’t. Can you deal with that?  Cue the me asking him where this has come from and I am willing to compromise aren’t you conversation, to which the response was no. So the bastard essentially had me do the breaking up for him. Very smart, very, very smart!

 

So here I am a week and a half later in the midst of a relapse day of crying and wanting to run away somewhere, whilst not wanting to leave my bed – even though it is the bed we bought and built together. Oh that annoying paradox of wanting to be anywhere but here whilst simultaneously not wanting to see daylight or remove oneself from the place of ones misery.

Not only did that fucker remove my oxygen mask and run off with his evil bubble laugh, he also left me in a pickle in that I had just quit my job and had planned to move into a new place with him and work freelance whilst I figured out something permanent. Now that he has taken away the rug from my calloused and cracked feet I have no idea what city, country or place I am going to live as I am going to find it difficult to get anyone to rent to me with no permanent contract of employment.

 

So whilst I sit here and try to get my head around how the fuck that happened when we were loved up and sniffing each others feet mere hours before he set my plans on fire, I also have to figure out what the fuck I am going to do with my life. Oh yeah and I’m 32. I was supposed to be married with children and a car by now! Did I mention I also do not know how to drive?!

So this here will be my sad bitch diary of trying to figure out what the fuck whilst trying not to implode and shoot my sorry for itself snot over anybody who dares to talk to me. Let’s see how this goes!

 

Apparently this is good advice.