How to Go Through the Breakup Madness
For a minute there, I lost myself.
First things first: Unceremoniously cut it all off with a phone call like the coward you undeniably are, when this is something that more than warrants an in-person, inevitably tear-filled discussion that you’d desperately prefer to avoid, inappropriate and extremely dickish and unfeeling as that is. Acknowledge to yourself that jellyfish and 11-year-old kids have more spinal fortitude than you do.
With this single conversation, unwittingly fuck up your life while almost fully believing at the time that you’re doing the exact opposite, making the “right decision,” because cutting things off when they get to this level of seriousness you haven’t encountered before grants you a brief reprieve from the constant anxiety you feel around a true, unbridled and potentially lasting commitment.
Like, blow that shit up in irreconcilable and irredeemable and reprehensible ways, as you are wont to do every year or a few. Ignore the notion that just because you’ve put hours and hours into the contemplation that leads to your decision doesn’t mean you’re doing it in a well-thought-out or cogently comprehensive way. Don’t allow it to occur to you that you might be doing all this out of unfounded fear, and that allowing being afraid to dictate the way you live your life is often going to make things turn for the absolute worst.
Without knowing it, create your own circle of hell where you will take up residence for a while — an undetermined stretch of time that will undoubtedly take more from you than you will take from it. Though it will almost certainly build some sort of character. Sign your name solo on the psychological lease that will grant you the strange privilege to stay alone, move your meager shit in and tell yourself what you’re doing is for the best in the long run even though you have absolutely no idea how long the run is going to be or what it may bring.
Wonder if what you’ve just put yourself through can be considered a loss if it involved you willingly giving something special away.
Hang up the phone and sob a bunch while one of the last sentences she spoke to you, “I wish you could see yourself the way I do,” plays on repeat in your mind. Wonder what that means for a few moments before worrying it’ll completely break you, then do your best to tamp it out.
Wonder who you’ll tell the news to first. Opt for no one because you’re not ready to explain yourself or field questions about your decision and what led to it. Also it is April 1 and for once you don’t want people to think you’re joking about something. God forbid someone call you out for being a complete fool who can’t get out of his own way. But that’s the price you pay for having friends who will shoot it to you straight, who know your faults and hangups and how they influence what you do in ways you’re often blinded to yourself. For the moment, you feel no need to be seen, because that’ll add to the pain that is of course there even though their is a somewhat strange feeling of relief, coupled with what you might even call a burgeoning optimism, that you choose to cling to while you simultaneously don’t appropriately deal with the sadness that comes with something significant (this is an understatement) coming to an abrupt end — the melancholy that reverberates ad nauseam for an amount of time to be determined, depending on how things go or don’t, following the splitting of the sheets.
Wallow in the sadness for a few days. Attempt to digest what has transpired (the end of your most significant relationship of your life to date, probably) and what never will again (sex with this person you cast aside, etc.). But don’t take nearly enough time alone with your own thoughts to come anywhere near fully processing what has happened by your hand, what you have wrought and the void it has left. Instead, do your best to fill that brand-new emptiness with anything that quiets the intrusive thoughts (“Boy, I really fucked that one up, didn’t I?”) and replaces them with a missive that steels your slim resolve (“Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same” or a similar saccharine platitude).
Start telling some friends and family. Deliver the news with what you think is an optimistic bent, but is really just a thinly veiled way for you to reinforce to yourself that you have done the right thing here — a sign that maybe, just maybe, you have done the absolute opposite, though it’s basically impossible at this point to tell one way or the other.
Try to get excited about the uncertainty of your future. Think about this as an opportunity for self-improvement and overall life betterment (strange as that seems, as it’s difficult to argue that she did not make your life better in many ways; it’s just that it didn’t seem like all of that was enough, for some reason you can’t comprehend, though). Lean into it hard.
Start taking long walks in the morning. Eat healthier. Actually spend some time in your own kitchen preparing semi-elaborate and borderline healthy meals instead of inhaling cold cuts and cheese strings while you stand over the sink. Drink less. Toss the marijuana you blame for at least some of your malaise while in the relationship. Finally spend some shekels on that generic Rogaine/Propecia combo that’s supposed to make your hair grow back or at least keep you from losing more of it at the pace it’s making its egress from your scalp. Try out a new haircut, something of a combover, but that somehow works for now..0
Text or even call old friends you lost track of while you were in love. Apologize for doing so and catch up, rekindle the embers. Do your best to keep the conversation centered on them and what’s going on in their lives, partially to show that you care, can still be a semi-selfless confidante and cheerleader, and partially so you don’t have to continue talking about your questionable decision that is difficult to explain to people who are capable of enjoying and embracing lasting commitment, a nut you wonder if you’ll ever crack. Start talking more regularly to some of these people, as a way to find someone, anyone, who will take up the mantle of allowing you to tell them all about your day.
Write a bunch. Write some more. Start a new online publication even though you know it won’t be widely read. Get real dialed in. Begin other multiple projects simultaneously under the guise of achieving fulfilling productivity, when really, unbeknownst to you at the time, you’re trying to fill your mind and all your free time so you can keep avoiding your emotions and psychological well-being. Keep running away until you’re running far beyond empty. Burn the midnight oil then wear the burnout as a badge. Briefly entertain the notion that you’re in some sort of manic state and that when another shoe drops you’re going to lose some semblance of your shit.
Do not text her even though you constantly want to. It was made clear at the end that the end meant just that. Tell yourself the desire to do so is out of habit and instinct, certainly not longing or a desire to attempt to seek some sort of attrition for your actions. There will be no bread-crumbing and you must accept that.
As a salve for loneliness and some strange sense of obligation (to what or whom you have no idea; society at large maybe?) that you should be out there trying again to find a way to not die alone, fire up the dating apps way too early — when you’re still too raw and no longer used to the rejection that comes with any pursuit that involves putting yourself out there. Get way too excited when things seem to go well early on with the first person you meet up with, then take it way too personally and hard when, after date number three, she says she’s not feeling the kind of connection she’s looking for, and is trying to “date with intention.” Mutter something like, “Fuck, I think I already had that connection and totally blew it,” to yourself before telling her thanks for her time and for being honest and then un-matching and deleting all her texts so you can refrain from going into over-analysis mode.
Come to the realization you’re far from ready. Take a step back. Stop swiping with impunity and checking the apps obsessively, but keep the premium Hinge subscription you signed up for just in case someone out there wants to shoot their shot with you. Reallocate some funds to a robust porn site so you can forget, in brief spurts, that you have absolutely no idea when you’ll ever taste lipstick again.
Feel the early optimism start to fade and be overtaken by the frequent and disruptive thought that you have made potentially the hugest mistake of your life to date. Grasp that sometimes there is a delayed reaction to cogently coming to terms with the the implications of what you have done. Wonder incessantly about her. Check her socials more times a day than you care to admit or is reasonable at all. Feel that instant dread when you see a post go live or see their little circular profile icon pop up to show a story is there for your viewing. Lie on the couch and look through all the pictures you have of her, sometimes while sobbing. And yet, still do not text. Tell yourself it’s out of pride when really it’s out of fear you’ll get a supremely negative response or no response at all.
When she soft-launches a new relationship two months after the dissolution of yours, curl into the fetal position on the floor and have a real good cry. The kind that comes with heaving sobs that are somehow cathartic. Somehow this has not all been completely real until it happens to have happened that she’s found something potentially special with someone else. Be so far from proud to admit to yourself that this is true that you relentlessly beat yourself up for days and weeks that, unfortunately, will turn into months and maybe even years. Research the new guy on the world wide web. Try to tell yourself that you are more attractive than he is, though your self-esteem will not enable you to really believe this, and it doesn’t matter anyway if she’s warm for his form and he treats her better than you ever did. Remind yourself that you set something very far from a high bar.
Start to dream about her most nights. Sometimes multiple times in an eight-hour period. Spend most of your time half-involved with whatever it is you’re meant to be doing while your mind plays a loop of memories you could have made more of if only you’d have been willing to try, to really give yourself to someone else.
Write her a long, very long letter that can easily and accurately be read as a Hail Mary. Agonize over the content for a few days. Revise this more than you revise anything you put on the internet. Contemplate whether or not to send it.
Choose to return home for a week and change to spend time with family and friends, get on some Prodigal Son shit like they do in the books and movies, hoping it’ll catalyze some sort of positive mood swing or at least serve as a salve while you try to find some way to live with your impulsive, misguided actions.
But then get drunk at the airport and, in a moment of panicked bravado, hit send on the final version of your rambling letter and spend all your time at home obsessively checking for a response you feel deep down will never come.
For once your feelings are completely accurate.
Return to your adopted city no less a broken man and send her a text acknowledging that it was inappropriate to send such a long-winded message out of the blue after months of being fully incommunicado. (“Regarding my email, I am a fucking idiot.”) Have no breath to hold for a response, which is a good thing, because one does not come.
Fully abandon all hope.
Decide to try again. Meet more women. Fail to not compare them to her. Find someone. See each other casually for three or so months. Get closer and closer until gradually both parties seem to start to lose interest. Fade a bit and when it becomes apparent they’re satisfied with less and less meaningful communication that isn’t more than going through the paces you set and a box you check when you talk with someone on a daily basis for a while but become aware, mutually, that whatever it is, it’s not really there. Let the conversation pepper out until it becomes nonexistent. Never speak again. Accept that she wasn’t her and maybe nobody ever will be again. Have several panic attacks about this.
But it’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Drink. Cry. Shrug.
Take some more time. Try to make peace with what no longer is and never will be again. Accept that while it is not ideal, it’s reality, and remind yourself every chance you get that, honestly, this is all your fault. You fuck up your own life. You make your own bed and then have your night terrors in it.
Start to become somewhat happy for her when it becomes apparent that her relationship with the new dude is probably going to stick. She’s found what she’s looking for, someone you assume has already given her what she wants, and will continue to down the line. Something you didn’t have the acuity, wherewithal, or, frankly, intense desire to do.
Just because you haven’t won that game yet doesn’t make you a loser. Not completely. It’s okay to be alone. Sometimes you have to be to figure out how not to be.
Don’t reach out again, of course, but in your head wish her the best.
Clock on your calendar that it has now been almost a year. Time to move on. Because you have no other option. Not a palatable one, anyway. Not one anyone would really choose, given a choice, and your Stray Dog Freedom presents you with many of those.
Hit the apps again. Keep trying. For what, you no longer even know. Haven’t been able to figure it out.
Maybe one day you will.
