The best thing about going through a breakup is the learning. This is your opportunity to be unapologetically dedicated to growth. Particularly, for me, this is a chance to be unapologetically dedicated to me, because somewhere along the road I ended up a little too dedicated to someone else and it became my undoing when that someone turned into someone else.
There are a number of things that I've learned in the last seven weeks exactly (since, you know, the only thing I've written about in months), about love in particular. One of those things is summed up best by Lauryn Hill somewhere around age 25 when she said that human rarely get love right - real love, the kind of love that builds confidence and doesn't breed insecurity. We don't know how to do unconditional love. "We don't know love like we should. We always talk about 'I have unconditional love'... 'Unconditional love is'... we don't even know it. Because if a person stops stimulating us, we stop loving them." That's what Lauryn said, and she's right. We humans don't get the unconditional love thing, and I think that's totally okay. We're here to learn the whole love thing - if we knew unconditional love without learning then we'd be God. We're not God, we're human. We know human love.
Human love is selfish, and sometimes angry. Human love lacks patience, understanding, forgiveness, empathy (my favourite word, it would appear lol) and it comes with ten thousand and one different conditions. I love you when you're in a good mood. Condition. I love you when I need affection. Condition. I love you while you satisfy my needs. Condition. All these conditions that our love comes with, and part of the growing from this experience requires that I acknowledge all the conditions that my own love comes with. My love is conditional just like yours was. I loved you on the conditions that you were understanding in the ways that I needed you to be, and gentle and soft and honest. I loved you on the condition that you made me feel safe (in more ways that you could understand, I suppose... I wanted the safety of feeling like you still wanted me, even when new things were shinier). So, no, neither of us knew unconditional love - the kind of love that makes relationships last. We knew human love. The kind of love that makes relationships fall apart once the shimmer wears off and the tarnish starts to show. The kind of love that grows tired. The kind of love that succumbs to arguments, to insecurities, to indifference. The kind of love that disrespects. The kind of love is inconsiderate towards each other. The kind of love that doesn't care who hurts. The kind of love that becomes a competition that someone has to win. The kind of love that knows shades of grey.
And, God, I'm so tired of shades of grey. I'm so tired of making excuses for the shades of grey that someone shows. I'm so tired of being unsure, of being insecure. I'm tired of not knowing. I'm tired of living in shades and tints and never really in black or white. Even now, almost two months after the breakup, I don't know where we are. We're still in shades of grey and I'm still making excuses. There is still a giant question mark where the idea of closure haunts me at night, where I wake up nailed to my cross and I don't understand why. So, I'm committing myself to learning and growing and mastering something closer to unconditional love so that I can attract someone else who has also tried to master something closer to unconditional love, and we can love in black and white.
Part of the growing and the learning also requires reflecting on patience and forgiveness. I'm convinced that these two things - in an environment of love - can fix anything. Bear with me on this one. So long as two people (two, not one) are willing to make the effort to be patient with each other and forgive each other for the ways in which they have hurt each other, two people can patch up the holes in their relationship with the ingredients of unconditional love. The trick, however, is that these things seem really easy... before you add human nature into the equation. The human nature that says I am having a bad day and your tone is aggressive, so this is about to be an argument. That human nature is impatient - it wants better, now. It wants easier, now. It wants satisfaction, now. That human nature is also unforgiving, and knows of injustice and rage and blame and anger. That unforgiving human nature is resentful (so, so, so, so resentful and full of hurt and misplaced anger and doesn't know who to blame and stays up all night crying and trying not to hate you and nailing myself to this cross and crying as I type, even now, and desperate for closure and regretting love you and all these feelings that I have).
The patience and the forgiveness cannot fix what is broken now - we don't speak, closure is impossible and all we have is resentment, regret and ashes. I have given up on slamming myself repeatedly into your concrete walls. I am tired of shouting into the wind. I am so fucking tired of blue ticks. Fuck your blue ticks. I will be patient with myself, I will forgive myself and I will close this myself. I am learning my lesson in unconditional love so I can love someone deserving of love when I am deserving of love. Before that, I will learn my lesson in unconditional love so I can love myself. I forgive myself for settling for excuses for shades of grey. I forgive myself for laying myself bare. I forgive myself for tearing myself open and pouring myself out to compensate. I forgive myself for wasting seven whole weeks grieving (and I will forgive myself for any and all grieving to come, with time - until I grieve no more). I forgive myself for the ways in which I let you hurt me. I forgive myself for trying to mend a relationship you didn't want. I forgive myself for becoming desperate and pathetic and a joke. I forgive myself for becoming insecure about being unwanted. I forgive myself, again and again. I forgive myself, and I am patient with the process.
I have not decided what to do from here, and I feel like I still owe you some consideration and some effort of some sort - even though I have to tell myself over and over again that you neither want nor deserve these things, or any things from me. I have considered politely informing you that I will be deleting your number and changing my SIM card, since you claimed that one time that what you wanted was not to be rudely thrown out of my life - so instead of rudely throwing you out of my life, I will politely inform you that I have determined that there is no way you can remain in my life that is healthy. None of these things matter however - you don't respond to anything, you don't actually give a fuck. You will not be thrown out of my life - you have already made your way out of my life, I'm merely ensuring that you cannot come back, which is also pointless because you have no interest in looking back nor an interest in closure. What I do from here is still undecided, but I do know that I will use the new year as an excuse to do whatever I need to do to learn my lesson and move on, closure or not. It's just that it all seems so pointless, and that what I do matters so very little because I will still have to submit to the feelings until they pass. Changing my number will merely mean that you will not know how to call me or text me, but that's the thing about the past... it will always know how to reach you.
This post wandered very far left from where it started, but that's okay. It's all part of the process, I suppose. I'm very all over the place. I write and cry, but that's also okay. Every time I cry, I remind myself that this is me submitting to the emotion so that it can pass. And this too shall pass. Everything does. I'm learning the lessons as they come so that the pain that teaches said lessons can go. Now, this chapter in my story is weaved with tears, but one day I'll look back at this chapter and the story will not make me cry. Until then, I wait patiently and forgive myself and love myself unconditionally and pray for some kind of peace. That's all.
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