So....remember last spring? April, May, and the first weeks of June? You do? Good. They were pleasant, all bird songs and warmer days and gamboling lambs, you say? Great. I couldn't be happier for you...or your gamboling lambs. But I was actually referring to last spring in relation to
this blog. Remember? That's right. There were
no lambs, gamboling or otherwise. All I could write about was how horrible I felt after the married man I had loved for two years ditched me and went back to the marriage that he had once claimed made him so miserable and had left him so emotionally and physically bankrupt that he was merely waiting for "the right time" to end it and begin a new life with me. It's all coming back to you now, isn't it? God, I cried so many tears it's a wonder my keyboard didn't float away in the deluge. Not that it would have stopped me from spilling my guts. I was possessed, literally, by a force every bit as overwhelming as the demonic one that made Linda Blair's head turn on her shoulders like an owl's before she vomited all over the movie screen and made it impossible for anyone in the early 1970s to even think of eating pea soup again.
And it didn't end there! When I wasn't writing about my pain, I was talking about it, holding my friends hostage to an endless recounting of the details that had led to my heartache--the broken promises, the self-serving lies, the devastating sense of loss, and, most of all, those cold, terse, final words my faithless lover typed into the email in which he told me good-bye. If I had a dime...hell, if I had a freaking
penny....for every time I uttered the words, "I just feel so
empty inside", I could probably afford to buy every single person reading this post their very own copy of 1,000 Reasons Not To Fall In Love With A Married Man, a book which may or may not actually exist, but if it doesn't, definitely should, and if it did, would almost definitely include "Because After He Dumps You, And You've Driven All Your Friends Crazy With Your Endless Self-Absorbed Ramblings, You'll Have To Relocate Just To Find Someone Willing To Meet Your For Lunch Once You've Finally Regained The Ability To Think Of Something Other Than Him, Your Pain, And Yourself" as one of the top reasons on the list. And as though writing and talking about my anguish weren't enough, there were times when, finding myself alone and too depressed to do anything even remotely industrious or marginally positive, I would while away an hour or so creating hideous self-portraits on my computer, like the one above, and fantasize about what would happen if I sent them to my ex along with a cryptic email that hinted at, but never actually stated that I was close to suicide. Luckily, I never went that far because, just as luckily, I didn't have his new email address. Looking back, I can only thank God for small favors....however ironic those small favors may have been.
So, what's my point in leading you down this dark and still somewhat damp (from all those tears...natch!) stretch of my personal memory lane? Well, it's been five months since I started my heartbreak blog. And as summer starts to whisper hints of the imminent shift of seasons, marking the beginning of the sixth month of my post-"him" life, I can't help being amazed at how far I've come since those awful, unspeakably bleak days of early spring. I mean, I was as emotionally flat as a cartoon coyote lying underneath a cartoon anvil that's been pushed off a cliff by a cartoon roadrunner chortling "Beep, beep!" before speeding off down a dusty desert road leading to the next cliff and
its attendant anvil. I was in spiritual hell, man. No light in sight, no respite from the night, nowhere to flee and no heart to fight. But somehow..
.somehow...I made it from there to here. And it's not just that I managed to survive. The real news is that I'm finally starting to feel like myself again. Not just me without him, but
me...as
myself...as I was
before he showed up and let me hand him my heart on a silver platter with a little note that said, "Fragile. Handle With Care", which he apparently did not see as he proceeded to tear the aforementioned heart to pieces before dropping it on the kitchen floor and squashing it under his spotless white Nikes as he practically bolted out the door on his way back to the wife he had suddenly realized he loved when she discovered our relationship and who he now did not want to keep waiting despite the fact that he had spent the previous two years telling me how little she and he had in common and how he couldn't imagine living his life without me.
But I digress...as usual. Bottom line, I feel like Greta again. Or I'm starting to regain some sense of familiarity at least. The little things are the clue. Last spring, I couldn't bear reading anything about the Rolling Stones, or even listening to their music because
he loves the Stones. We had entire conversations about Keith Richards that began on one side of a lovemaking session and continued on the other side. But long before Keefe talk became our secret aphrodisiac, I loved the Rolling Stones as well, and I still do, and when I heard "Sympathy For The Devil" on the radio the other day...guess what? I forgot to feel sad because a fellow Stones fan with whom I was in love for two years dumped me four weeks after I had cancer surgery and one week before my birthday. I was too busy getting off on the song. That's progress. And so is the fact that I've stopped associating certain times of the day with thoughts of my former dream man and what he might be doing instead of being with me. That's a real step forward for a sentimental sap like yours truly. I even got rid of some of the things he gave me. They weren't special things, not particularly, but I had held on to them because they were from
him, and that made them sacred. But no more. I was cleaning out my closet, they were not things I needed anymore, and so I ditched them...just like that! See what I mean? Little things. But with huge connotations.
I must be honest. There are a few caveats. I still think about him. I still wonder whether he thinks about me, and there are times when I am overcome by a sudden sense of sadness and the accompanying desire to see him again. I miss him even now. I still wish that things had been different between us. But I know the score. I can look back and see the cracks and fissures that ran like a fault line through our love, but which I chose to ignore and even dismiss. I know now that I wasn't a victim. I was a willing aide and abettor in keeping alive a relationship that was never what I wanted to believe it was, and which could never have existed if I hadn't given him permission to take advantage of me. Yes, he lied to me, used me, and when things went belly-up and the situation no longer served his needs, he turned into a jerk of mythic proportions and tossed me away like a wad of used-up Bazooka bubble gum.
But there is such a thing as karma, and it knows his address (and his new email). Hell is for heartbreakers. That's the title of this blog, and I stand by that contention. But those who break hearts have to make their journey to that hell on their own. Those of us whose hearts have been broken have our own road to walk. We might stumble sometimes, maybe trip over the remnants of the chains we're still dragging behind us, but as long as we keep walking....no matter how slowly....we
will reach a new destination. Will it be a better one? The one that we still dare to believe we deserve? Dunno. But what's the option? Standing still? Sorry, my friends. I've done enough of that. I spend any more time standing around contemplating the concept of sadness and how I can incorporate even more of it into my life, I might as well hire myself out as a (tall and busty) garden gnome. And let's be honest. I may have spent the last five months as a world class sad sack, but I draw the line at wearing a little pointed red hat. Not to mention that, when it comes to kitschy garden ornaments, I'm more of a pink plastic flamingo sort of person.
But I digress...again. What I'm trying to say is it all comes down to Motown. How the (insert annoyed-sounding expletive) is that, you feel compelled to ask? Well, it's like this. In one of the greatest Motown songs of all time, Jimmy Ruffin asked (well,
crooned, actually) the musical question "What becomes of the broken-hearted?", but instead of answering it, he simply went on singing about heartache and left us to ponder the possible answers on our own. But I've done my share of pondering, and, if you ask me, the answer is pretty obvious.What becomes of the broken-hearted? We move forward. Simple as that. We just move forward...scar tissue and all...until, one day, without realizing it, we stop being the broken-hearted, and become just...people. People who have been hurt and are wiser for it, who have been disappointed and have learned to be wary, but who, despite those things, are still filled with hope, are still open to the promise of something better, and are still willing to give their love and to believe that they might be even be loved in return.
That's what becomes of the broken-hearted. Sorry, Jimmy. It's still a great song.
And just in case, you're not a Motown fan (if that's even possible), look at it this way. Life hands you lemons, you have a couple of choices. You can, if you are so inclined and happen to own a blender, make lemonade, maybe add a little vodka for some extra
oomph. Or, if the lemons are especially large, so large that they are almost gargantuan and it's impossible to even life them without faltering under their weight much less carry them across the room to the counter where you've set up the blender, you can simply drop them and head off down the road to look for an entirely different kind of fruit, which you haven't even thought of yet, but which will, when you find it, vanquish all thoughts of lemons from your mind forever because, as it turns out, lemons were never really what you needed after all. See what I'm saying? Well, if you don't, no biggie. Just go with the Motown metaphor. Either way, it's about moving on. And so I am...until next post.
See you at the malt shop...
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