Once upon a time, the smell of strong cinnamon and woody vanilla meant home.
It’s been months since that scent last surrounded me; since the rich, sweet aroma enveloped me in a tight embrace and made me feel safe.
I lost a long-term relationship, all four years of it, to the strain of distance and differences. I thought we were the strongest two people in existence. I thought that after COVID, there was nothing in the world that could stand between us. I thought we were inevitable.
As it happens, I found the world wider than I ever imagined it could be, and suddenly, the wick on my favorite candle burned out, and the smell of cinnamon was as suffocating as it was comforting. College smelled like popcorn and leather and sunshine. Sometimes, the color purple even had a potent scent, dew on the grass smelled like fresh mornings, and game days were surrounded by the wafting smoke of celebratory fireworks. Home became a combination of a lot of things, and safety was relative.
To keep it simple, we called it quits. It was devastating. There’s no way to describe the kind of heartbreak you endure when you lose your first love, especially one that was engrained so deeply within your soul, someone who watched you grow and change during the most tumultuous times of your life. So many of my major memories are with him, so many of my firsts. We talked about getting married, as crazy and immature as that sounds. For a long time, it was impossible to separate me and who I was from him and who we were together. I couldn’t tell you where our experiences ended and mine began. We were inherently interconnected, our thoughts entwined, our lives infinitely dependent on each other.
Every day, I tried to remind myself of the small sense of relief I felt. It was strange to experience relational freedom for the first time in four years. I’d been someone’s girlfriend from ages 15 to 19 and had no real idea what it was like to be an individual adult with unique passions, opinions, and presence. I made efforts to indulge in myself, to search my own inner workings, and one by one untie the knots that tangled us together.
It’s taken almost a full year to feel mostly happy with the changes I’ve made. It took a lot of therapy and a lot of adventuring outside my comfort zone. It took time and intentional steps toward healing.
But sometimes…sometimes I sit down in a classroom, and someone’s cologne matches the deep, sweet scent I loved for so long. Sometimes, it takes everything in me not to inhale it in gulps as if I can somehow stitch the smell to my insides and never go without it again. Sometimes, it’s hard to hold back tears as I remember every moment that smelled like cinnamon.
My first kiss. The time he dressed up as Harry Potter to impress some little kids. The week we spent at the beach together, running barefoot miles in the sand, not a care for the collapsing world around us. The night he asked me to homecoming with a new set of acrylic paints. On our high school graduation day, where despite our different alphabetical placements we managed to secure seats right next to each other, close enough to touch. The day I left for college. Everything in between.
Heartbreak is hard. Enduring the reminders of it can be even harder.
If you take anything from this, remember that it’s okay to struggle. It’s okay to stop and close your eyes so you can breathe deeply and replay the past for a minute or two in your mind. You can indulge for an inhale, maybe a few, but then you need to step forward. You need to experience new things, meet new people, and make new memories.
You can lose someone and be okay.