The moment our worlds collided, time stood still. Everything finally made sense- the heartbreaks, the tears, life. They all led to the person looking back at me.
My intuition warned me not to pursue anything romantically with him. In true fashion, I acted in defiance.
How could I not? This was everything I’ve ever hoped to feel. For the first time in my life, I felt alive. Every cell in my body was awakened with passion.
So I threw caution to the wind, knowing it was going to end in heartbreak. But I didn’t care. I needed to keep feeling what I felt for as long as time would allow.
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It wasn’t long before he broke up with me. About six months.
All of the childhood abuse- physical, psychological, emotional, the violently abusive relationships, the mental illnesses, the sexual assaults, the pain of living- all of that combined, pales in comparison to what I felt from that break up.
It rocked me to my core and changed me on a cellular level. Till this day, I struggle with finding the words to describe it. Because there are none.
I woke up every morning, feeling myself die all over again. It wasn’t just in my heart and mind- my soul was grieving.
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In a way, a breakup feels worse than when someone you love passes away. There’s a finality to death. But with a break up, they become someone you used to know until it becomes a figment of your imagination.
Knowing that the person you wish was waking up next to you is waking up OK without you- it shatters a piece of your heart.
If we’re lucky, we can mend those pieces back together. If we’re broken, we’re left with no choice but to build again.
I fell into the latter. Every night, I drank until I passed out so I didn’t have to feel anything. It was something I had no idea how to process because I had never felt a pain this sharp.
It was so real that I began to question if I was imagining everything.
Because my drinking had been so out of control for the past 11 years, I questioned if anyone could possibly ever love me at my absolute worst. I was broken and needed to be saved. I just didn’t know how to do it myself.
Then a thought occurred, “I need to quit drinking if I want to be in a healthy relationship with a man.”
The second I had that thought, my intuition silently screamed, “You need to quit drinking to have a healthy relationship with yourself.”
That’s when it hit me- my heart centered motivation to quit drinking. It was there all along waiting for me to feel it.
I’d like to say the epiphany was the day I quit drinking. But the truth is, I wasn’t done wallowing yet.
I needed time before I had the strength to build a new me. So I continued drinking for a few more weeks until fate intervened with a date.
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When I reflect on him and our relationship, I look at it with bittersweet fondness. As painful as the ending was and at times, being in the relationship, it was divinely orchestrated to alter the trajectory of my life. As I hope I did for him.
I’ll see you soon…in the meantime, love yourself so much that even a Hallmark Christmas movie would be jealous.
