What Healing from Heartache Can Look Like: A Timeline

There was a stretch, immediately after, I found myself seeking a formula,

something to consult and reference for guidance. I asked all my friends and close confidants. 

Of ways to chop through the brush and breathe amid the noxious gas and poison.

I was looking to in-part, survive. To eventually thrive, but also to escape.

It introduced me, in big ways, to the intimate reasons folks use coping mechanisms and self-medication.I have my own ways, sure, but mostly none have impeded an ability to function. But now I understand, and more vividly understood why.

People share shards of knowledge, tried and true phases that feel somewhat infuriating in the moment. Time heals all, things happen for a reason, you're better off, isn't it better?, et al, et al. 

But...they made it. That strong person you know that was once broken into a million bits is standing, still. Look at them. One day that could be you. You'll get through. Just keep swimmin', just keep breathing. You're stronger for not being afraid to feel weaker. You hold your very heart in your hand, wondering how you ever found it a good idea to pass it along to a relative stranger, so unassuming. It's ok, really, it's a testament to the beauty and belief of love. There's little rhyme or reason, it's just a feeling that compels one to charge full-force, without reservation and over analyzation. Only later might you know regret or concern or fear for what you've done, the pieces of yourself you so willingly gave over. The unassuming pain of a love known and lost. It's just gone. And you hold yourself tight and dream of days when you might breathe again. 

Indeed, the first 6 months following the breakup were pure hell fire,

left me gasping and sobbing and burned into nothingness. 

I knew it was happening and hated it mostly all the way, yet embraced it.

Hoped for light on the other side, told myself this was a type of penitence 

and reckoning for traumas and trends never fully examined. 

Not that I deserved it, not more than anyone. But pain is painful.

And women in my line maybe thought they'd deserved it, too. 

A catharsis, in the way that happiness can be, too. 

I scribbled poems that seemed like emo lyrics, I wrote angry and impassioned letters to my ex lover,

ones that I never intended to send. But after realizing I couldn't do it in one letter, I started a notebook. It became a friend, something I held to and consulted when emotions boiled over.

In that time I learned what boundaries could look like, something I had never really practiced. Told him I couldn't text, couldn't talk, couldn't see him. And something I still practice now. Something I aim to do until I am at least indifferent. Indifferent to them and that past and dreams of what I thought I wanted and knew. All of it, gone. 

Made plans for myself, week-by-week and month-by-month. Things I'd been waiting on others to do or never believed myself capable or worthy. Planned more and more, made times just for me.
Haircuts and times of no cuts, just sitting still. Getting nails painted, having new experiences or old fears exonerated. Feeling angry at everything and then at nothing, because you start to see the waves just as they are. Not good or bad, just there. The only thing to do is to ride them. Design your board or piece of drift wood. Create a divot for your head and lasso yourself tightly.

Look to others who have survived and made it out alive. Remind yourself it won't be this way forever. It won't. And turns out, it didn't.

Months 7 through now, I grew sea legs and learned to start walking again.

Realized the time frame is much less noteworthy than what I do with it, what I've done. Kept thinking it meant something if I wasn't visibly healed or different or re-made. So much of this newness and growth is visible just to me, but still others see bits and pieces of the person I've morphed and come to be. The number of smiles I have to share or outfits I wear, the ability to somehow date again. I remember the moment I realized that's what my grief meant. Believed I had to be fully well and whole again to share time with others, but you get back to yourself ever so carefully. It takes months and months and sometimes years, still. It doesn't mean you can't open up to more people still and see yourself a bit in them and learn differently of what care and sometimes recklessness can be. Ah, those nights that fade into mornings. The ones you'll never call again, but are maybe glad to have stumbled upon either way. You're not that person that for so long you were convinced you must be. I would never, I could never. Turns out, sometimes you can and it delights your soul more than you knew. I'm wild and funny and carefree and indifferent and all so many things. Part-adventurer, part-homebody, all-Alexandria. All real. Part that person who might jump out of a plane or dance by myself and another time, got my car towed and cheeseburgers alone at 4am. All of her, all of me. Curious to so much, open to all and each situation, because what are expectations? I'm a Buddhist-inspired, open dating, come-what-may, dating goddess of the future. That's me.

And still, unafraid to be scared. So much so that when I encounter circumstances that feel so good and honest and connected, they are terrifying. But I don't stop. I take my pulse, gauge the emotions, communicate them, evaluate this moment, and keep moving on, feeling just as free. I speak of love and what it could mean, indulge in so many kisses and frantic grasps and longings, and fewer and fewer thoughts of who he was and who I used to be. Because growth isn't linear and the path might be wild, but it's filled with so much fun and moments to feel such freedom. In me. In living that early 20s existence or getting to know un-explored parts of just me.

There's this inconsequential and exceedingly sweet tactic that came to me, in a moment of pure fear and vulnerability and alone-ness. So simple you'd miss it if you were looking at me. I touch my own thigh and remind myself, "I'm right here, I'm never going anywhere. I'm with you and I love you. Always will." Nothing I needed from anyone, nor anything anyone could give me. That silly self-love that is touted and spelled out as a cure-all. Maybe it is real, but surely it looks different for each person, in each time and space. But these moments I have with myself, no matter who I'm with or not, I feel seen. I feel sweet love and joy and serendipity. "I've got you, boo. I'm right here," I say to myself, with a smirk.

And to think, this all came out of the biggest pain and heartbreak and anger and bitter and alone and hopelessness. It grew and got so big that I can no longer separate from who I am. Until you feel it grown in yourself, it feels impossible to ever believe it so. 

But I share this to even for a bit, help others know, it's possible. That feeling of worth and belonging and sense of oneness is there for the taking. Fake it in all the moments you don't think you'll make it. The phoenix teaches us something that usually feels corny to say and there's no exact image that might not feel tainted or sucked of real meaning. From fire and ash and nothingness can grow a new human, a renewed existence, a raging flame. To be, as they say, a wounded healer. To realize that often, on the other side of fear, there is freeeeeedom.

Thank you all for supporting me and seeing me through this chaotic and messy and necessary and self-making journey. In all the moments I felt so alone and impossible and far from reach, you saw and helped me. Thank you. xoxox Alex