Kennedy

It’s only been a month, but it’s felt like much longer. My emotions are constantly churning, memories folding over one another. I frequently get impatient with myself, sighing out of frustration that I’m crying yet again, wanting to just fast forward to a future where I have accepted the end. I oscillate between hoping we get back together and wanting none of it to have ever happened, including meeting him.

The day after the dreaded phone call, I tried to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for the first time. I thought it would be a cathartic watch, knowing generally what the story is about, but I refused to finish it. It all felt too confusing and all over the place for my brain that had just experienced abrupt heartbreak less than 24 hours before. 

And then, I broke my nail. My acrylic snapped off completely as I wrestled with my dog to wipe his paw, and in that action the acrylic lifted up my actual thumb nail. It was bleeding and the pain was awful. I tried really hard to not have a pity party. When I initially got my nails done, it was an appointment that I nearly cancelled. The vacation with my man in just two weeks was no longer gonna take place now that we weren’t together, but I decided to keep the appointment anyway. I asked to change the colors and some elements of the image I originally sent. I was afraid to have the same nails and always be reminded that I should be out of town and in love, but instead I’m at home and frequently falling to my knees in despair :).

I noticed how me and my mom were so delicate in taking care of my thumb. How different that was from when I got broken up with. When he and I hung up, I just stood there. I walked upstairs to my parents door and talked myself out of going inside. When I broke my nail, I quickly walked upstairs, into my parents room, and said “Can somebody help me?” Sometimes it hurts so bad that it keeps me up at night, and other times I temporarily forget it ever happened. I don’t know how long it will take to heal, and what it will look like when it does. I’m not as impatient with my thumb as I am with my heart. Both pains were a possibility, given the external circumstances, but with one I am harsh with myself, often pushing away my friends and family because it’s either too much to explain or I figure they don’t want the burden of hearing it (and maybe I don’t want the burden of having to listen to their responses) and with the other, I allow myself to heal, with the help of a support system. If I accidentally hit my thumb on something and a shock of pain zips up my arm, I take it slower. I assess it every day to see how it’s doing. This pain is something hard to ignore, but it’s easier to accept. When my heart hurts, or my chest feels tight, or I feel sick to my stomach, or I think I might cry, my first reaction is to push through. “If I don’t immediately burst into tears, I have to keep going”, I think. If the emotions aren’t right at the surface, maybe distractions can push it down until I am ready to embrace the pain… Which I almost never am ready. I’m quite scared of just how dark and deep this breakup has taken me. And now I don’t even have a full nail set to enjoy.

Four days after I tried to force feed myself Eternal Sunshine, one of the Youtubers I love, Broey Deschanel, aka Maia Wyman, posted on her Instagram. She had written a book about Eternal Sunshine and how the story compared to her own relationship unraveling. This was almost scarily in sync with me, similar to a bunch of other things that felt like weird coincidences in my life that I have yet to understand– like how one of my friends had a breakup a month before for almost identical reasons (similar to Maia. Her friend had a breakup for identical reasons only a week before her own), or how I was always seeing the Wheel of Fortune tarot card, or how I would say or think words or phrases at the same time that someone else would say them. I absolutely had to get the book.

I just finished it yesterday. It was a good read, with deeply felt moments. I appreciated the spoilers, it helped me understand what I was watching and what I didn’t have the bandwidth to finish. I get how the ending has split meanings depending on where you might be in your own life. I may rewatch it some day but from where I left off. I don’t know if I can strap in from the start again, at least this next time. 

Something that struck me in the book was the “logic dumping” concept that Maia mentioned. It is what it sounds like: breaking up for logical reasons, maybe even using therapy speak, leaving your heart outside of the room and doing “what’s best.” Refusing to give into your heart’s desires, unwilling to take a risk on love— two things that Joel and Clementine had the courage, or stupidity, to do. It makes me sad*. My own breakup was filled with emotions: shock, anger, sobs. It was also very… professional and cold, in a way. Ending the relationship felt like an urgent addition to his to-do list, or something on the list of unfortunate events that were simultaneously occurring in this life, although this one is one that he had total control over. The phone call happened at his office, after hours, where he squeezed me in between whatever he was doing before and waiting for someone to swing by the office in an hour. He ended the conversation with his usual “Do you have any questions for me?” which would usually garner an eye roll from me as I assumed it was something he said to prolong the conversation, but now I felt like it’s best to end the meeting there. The call had already lasted 45 minutes and was mostly silent. I’m sure he needed time to clean up from the crying so he could greet whomever. The last thing he said was an sterile “stay safe,” in a moment where I remember silently pleading him for an “I love you”– any semblance that I meant a great deal to him, that I wasn’t just a phone call at work, where he came to logical conclusions and then went on with his life.

A week later, I ended up texting him an annoyingly long letter. I felt like I didn’t say enough in the moment, and I wanted a redo for myself (the contents were therapist approved. No petty shit included in the making of this letter!). I know reaching out is ill-advised. To me, my heart and her desires could never be detached from me. Logic almost never comes first, for better or for worse. In that way, he and I have different ways to self preserve. I ended my letter with “I love you”, saying the one thing I was hoping he would. He was my first love and my first boyfriend. He was a guy that I wasn’t embarrassed to introduce to my friends. He was a guy I felt confident in when he met my parents. When he was silly, I feigned annoyance. When he laughed, I laughed. When he cried, I cried, instantly, every single time. We were never the male/female versions of each other. We were each unique and still drawn like a magnet, obsessed with the other person. He reassured every insecurity, and I was comfortable enough to come to him about them, which felt very lucky to me. I’m positive that if I fell on emotional/mental hard times, I would melt into him. I think that’s part of why his distance, and subsequent breakup, hurts so bad, because it wasn’t something I could see myself doing. I knew he was struggling, but didn’t know how or what to coax out of him. I didn’t want to make him more sad. I couldn’t find him in the world we were building, and it was worrying me. For most of my life, I would have dreams where I started off with friends and family, and they quickly disappeared or left me behind. I spent the rest of my dream trying to find them. As much as I had wanted his challenging time to be something that I could support him through, something that could make us stronger on the other side, it became a nightmare realized. 

When I tell people me and my boyfriend broke up, versus when I tell them what happened to my thumb, the facial expressions are pretty spot on with each other. The corners of their mouths slide down, brows furrowed, barring their bottom row of teeth (note: this is different from when I told the breakup news to the close friends and family that had met him. They were looking at me just as shocked as I was looking at them). They apologize to me either way. Sometimes they, particularly women, express that they know exactly what that feels like, no matter which pain. It is a comfort to remember that there is never a situation in which I am completely alone.

It feels so weird to be in this reality. I don’t know how to not deem the past two weeks “when I was supposed to be out of town.” I look forward to the start of July as a sort of reset, where even the me in a relationship hadn’t planned that far. I won’t be stuck under the storm cloud of my own hopes and expectations. I’m predicting that I will feel slightly more free than I have felt since the breakup. I made a private video diary a few days ago. It was me at the start of summer talking to me at the end of summer. I’m curious to know what all goes down in these few months, how my heart will feel, how my nail will look. I know only time, and care, will tell… and it’s taking everything in me not to ask Ms. Time to hurry up.

Thanks for reading, and sorry I came back on such sad vibes (i have more coming soon),

Kennedy

*Of course, there are a ton of circumstances where letting your head lead is the healthiest option.