On Breaking Up

 

 

A couple days ago, my first serious boyfriend broke up with me. We were walking toward his dorm when he stopped me and said we needed to talk. He said we wanted different things. He said I was a nice girl and that he still wanted to be friends. He said our time together hadn’t been a waste, but it was over for him. He said that although we were similar in many ways, we were too different in others. 

 

Last week, I told my best friends that I was falling in love with him.

 

I was completely blindsided by our breakup. To me, the differences between us were inevitable; we are humans after all. But to him, evidently they were signs of trouble. I had seen him a few days earlier and thought everything was fine. We had recently stayed with his family for Easter. We were making plans for surviving a long-distance relationship over the summer. When he made it clear that it wasn’t fine, I was left virtually speechless. I still don’t understand the timing of our split or his reasons, but I’ve come to accept that I won’t ever know exactly what happened.

 

A breakup is not a death, but it is a loss. Although he and I will eventually be friends, I have lost him as a romantic partner, and the difference between a friend and a boyfriend goes beyond the physical. It’s like only half of my brain has registered what happened; the other half is still hoping to see him wherever I go. Body and mind alike have gotten used to having him around. I haven’t just lost our relationship, but it feels like I’ve lost ownership of some things in my life as well.  In other words, there will always be things that I associate with him, at least on some level. The Red Sox, his beautiful home state, Saturday Night Live, pink roses like the ones I got on Valentine’s Day, seeing his favorite shirt of mine hanging in my closet. Today, I cried at a reference to a restaurant where we had gone on one of our first dates together. I know my reactions won’t be so volatile forever, and ultimately a lot of these associations will fall away or be replaced by new ones, but these little reminders have proven to be incredibly heartbreaking. Even my own memories can surprise me, taking my breath away as I walk to class or eat my dinner or lay in bed at night.  

 

I have found myself trying to say that it’s just a breakup or that our relationship wasn’t long enough for me to be so upset over it. But the truth is that I have always been an advocate for allowing myself to feel. I have seen too many people that I care about try to fight their emotions, failing to recognize that they are completely natural. No matter how long my relationship was, I let myself be vulnerable to another person. I stopped saying things like “If we’re together when…” and just started assuming we would be together, because to me, there was no foreseeable reason that we would break up. I abandoned my fears and planned ahead. I shared my successes and my failures with him. He knew the names of my siblings and friends back home. He knew how I felt about him, and I thought he felt the same. To give somebody a piece of your life like that and have them hand it back to you is like a punch to the stomach. Of course I am sad. Of course I am going to cry because he hurt me and cry because I miss him. But these feelings are only natural, and I would never put a limit on them because I thought it was time to move on or it wasn’t important enough.  

 

Why write a blog about my breakup? Well, writing is cathartic. In fact, this piece has been writing itself in my head since the night of the split, as if it needed to be written. Now, why publish a blog about my breakup? To clarify, it is not to make a monster out of my former boyfriend. His decision to end things is confusing and heartbreaking to me, but that doesn’t discount the person he is. He started as just another Fordham crush, but once I got to know him, I learned he was smart, affectionate, and driven. I’m publishing this post in the hopes that anyone who goes through or has gone through the same thing finds some kind of comfort in knowing they are not alone. My mom gave me some of the best advice: treat myself the way I would treat somebody else in this situation. Be kind, loving, and gentle. Even if that means looking in the mirror and telling yourself how beautiful and strong you are (something I’ve done) or asking a friend to sit in their room and do homework so you don’t have to be alone (also something I’ve done).  

 

One night, I wrote down all of the qualities that my boyfriend had used to describe me. They’re still on a post-it on my nightstand: sweet, intelligent, hardworking, thoughtful, and pretty. I have always known that with or without him, I am all of these things. In spite of everything that has happened, I consider myself lucky to have this self-knowledge and even more lucky to have an incredible support system around me. To know that there are so many people in my life who understand my hardship and are willing to drop everything to see me through it is a blessing beyond compare. If there is a silver lining to this situation, it would be that realization. It feels like I have lost so much in the past couple of days, but after experiencing unconditional love from the people around me, how could I feel anything other than thankful?