There are many struggles of breaking up or separating from another person. One issue is that there is a new version of yourself in the mirror. You are no longer a piece of a couple. You aren't the future dreams of next summer's vacation, this year's Christmas stockings, or another name on your invitation to weddings. You are still you. You are also not you. You are not the same in the memories of things.
Staring at yourself in the mirror- Did they love me? Did they see the tiny scatter of freckles on my right should and think of the constellations in the Northern sky? Am I still me?
Sometimes we allow the grief to color over the memories and change them. You mourn the life plans you had made together. The ghost kids you named either in your head or together laying in each other's arms are like slips of paper in a white-hot flame- whisped away into the air. They dissolve into nothingness. Your head and heart know they were real. In your head, you had planned how they would have his warm brown eyes and the same weird flat feet of them. You dreamed of the laughter and joy of telling the families and healing some of the sadness you carried around like loose change in your pocket.
Post-breakup some people choose to be more careful and guarded. They lock away their hearts and try to protect the pieces that broke as they repair themselves. They hide from things. They avoid. Other times we are emboldened to be more. I am less edited. I am less diluted. I am more myself. I kept the more honest, more truthful, best parts of myself as calmly as I kept the spice rack and the big skillet. I stopped hiding the realest version of me. My own skin feels safe like the paisley overly worn blanket on the bed. I am no longer the street vendor version of me. I am the authentic. I am the high-end version. You must know someone to get the invite, to even be in the showroom where you can gain access to me.
That's the thing about really fully investing and refusing to hold back who you are in a relationship- even a broken one- you walk away still YOU. You might have some corners that look like the corner of a coffee table owned for thirty years, but it is a coffee table that has withstood the early years and the late. I am a better version post-breakup because I allowed someone to love the real version of me and not the watered-down version I served past relationships. When you give your person access to the unbridled self, someone whose drunk voice honored and praised the same uncanned me as the sober man- you know you were loved.
That's the thing about past breakups- I have had relationships that I regretted. Typically, they were less due to the choices of my former partner and more due to my choices of giving them some cup of milky coffee; less strong and filtered to fit their idea of who I was supposed to be for them. I sugared myself sweeter. I used cream to make me more palatable for them. I tried to be what they wanted instead of the full-strength, full-bodied me. I mourned the loss of my own identity as well as the past relationship after the breakup. I lost who I was in someone who didn't even love me for who I was fully.
I am not the milky, overly syrupy, highly fake seasoned cup of coffee from the chain coffee shops trying to fit the mainstream desire for someone. I am the full-bodied straight out of the carafe so full of who I am the steam smolders the edges of the cup.
It's fine to grieve the future plans and past memories of old relationships. It's fine to have loved people who walked away because they didn't fit your future.
I won't ever be going back to any versions of soy caramel mocha latte versions of me, or love, ever again. I know what real tastes like now, both for love and for myself.
Bring oven mitts.
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