I know a girl going through a breakup. It’s a break, really, but regardless of the official terminology, it clearly hurts like a breakup. Thoughts of never being with that person again are incredibly painful, like someone setting your hair on fire. Or an iron rod being rammed through your skull. Or Keebler elves shaving the inside of your eyelids while singing Richard Marx songs. In falsetto. Yes. Something just like that.
This 30-something checks her phone regularly and asks if “no contact” is really the right move. She wonders what he’s doing at any particular moment, if he’s having more fun than she. In her mind, suddenly he’s not the cowlicked schlep who wore the same socks for days in a row but a man in demand. She’s sure others are catching his eye, maybe prettier girls. “Maybe we’ll get back together?” she asks, and we nod our head in the affirmative. It’s hard to watch. Not because she’s sad or remotely pitiable or solely because we want something more for her. But because we are a narcissistic breed, one that thinks that Oprah and Dr. Phil are really speaking just to us, and the pain of a friend reminds us of breakups past and the desperate efforts we’ve all made to cope.
I know all too well this woman’s attempts at filling every available minute on her schedule. It’s the worst kind of desperation for me, really, the kind that lets me know that I am uncomfortable being by myself. That I need him there, or someone there, because the silence that allows me to think is in fact dreaded. Because in that silence are some awful messages. He didn’t love me enough. There must be something wrong with me. I knew I never should have eaten that third slice of pizza in front of him.
And so after a breakup I get active. No longer am I the cowlicked schlep who prefers the couch, but a hypomanic force against nature, mostly out of a need to survive. After my last two breakups, I was crying half my days away, admittedly, but I was also a weeping woman on the move. To cope with my silence, I joined a softball team, took several cooking classes, took swimming lessons (at age 32, mind you, a considerable feat in and of itself given that my adult group learned to put our faces in the water in the lanes next to the master’s swim team), began checking off more films on AFI’s top 100, joined a bocce league, went to the Bahamas, went to alumni events and every major sporting event on the planet, kissed several men I knew weren’t for the long term, went extra blonde, bought massive amounts of new silver jewelry and even more bottles of wine, and contemplated riding a roller coaster for the first time. (I still haven’t accomplished that last one.) This all in addition to the countless bar crawls and wine and cheese parties and happy hours I scheduled and attended simply to prevent the inevitable: when I went home, I was alone with me.
I don’t know this woman well enough to give her advice, and I know that I certainly never wanted any when I was in her shoes. But I’m guessing I’ll be there again someday, so maybe this will serve as a good reminder to me. So future Kris, while the parties and French classes and football games and beers as big as your head are oh so fun and semi-fulfilling – something like a fat free Twinkie? – everything behind that blur remains exactly the same. And if you’re going to get past it, you can only put off for so long the crying in your car and making voodoo dolls of your ex. Life only begins again when you do. So do get out there and get new clothes and new friends and make out with new boys and, in my case, multiple canisters of Easy Cheese, but remember that few things feel better than being able to sit again in the silence with yourself. No, not even those new boy kisses.
24 Comments
Yeah, I’m still waiting for the “be able to sit alone with myself” moment.
In the meantime, there sure is an endless supply of beer out there!
And Dean Koontz books.
I promise I’ll go on a roller coaster with you and hold your hand and you’ll enjoy it . . . if you’ll let me out of your man pit.
Amen sistah. Regarding sitting silently with yourself, if you’re so inclined, hope you’ll visit me. : )
Yup. And once you get there (I’m still en route), you know you can overcome anything.
Can Future Kris send me the lotto numbers?
Oh, and a beer as big as my head too, please.
In retrospect, breaks are more painful than breakups. That hope, it’s a real killer. But no one really wants to hear that at the time (myself included).
Thank Jehovah for drinking buddies…and random, semi-kissable young men. They may not cure what ails you, but they temporarily help you in forgetting your illness.
I am bookmarking this one.
“Life only begins again when you do.”
SO TRUE.
I hear you! This is a great post!
So well put! And so true!
I bought a house to get away from the memories of having someone to be home with.
YUP. That’s me. “no contact” has saved me. I finally learned my lesson. “contact” meant going back into an unhealthy situation (we break up once FOR A REASON, PEOPLE!) with regrets in going back into it. Of course, to each his/her own.
Yeah, well, to end it, mine told me that he doesn’t care about me and never did.
I have to say, that makes it easier to think that he’s a shithead. But, it doesn’t make the silence here any less oppressive.
You’re not missing anything about roller coasters.
Reading posts like this, I suspect that I’ve never loved anyone as much as other people do because I’ve never been this upset by rejection. This haunts me a lot more than any sense of rejection I’ve felt in the past.
O.K., so I admit that while I regularly shower and change underwear, I have worn pairs of socks longer than a day. Especially when I’m working back-to-back double shifts (sleep is infinitely more important) Does this Really qualify me as a schlep? I think that men (on the whole-NOT the womanizers) are even less able to cope with a break/breakup than women
An Attractive woman gets So much more interest then an Attractive man that Women have a much greater advantage in moving on then men do.
Now can I get out of the man-pit?
so are you saying that you almost have to re-learn being comfortable alone after having grown accustomed to being part of a couple? (obviously assuming you were cool with being alone in the first place, which i always was) if so, that’s interesting. and it makes a ton of sense. because that lonely feeling post-break-up is oh, so unique.
if not, what do you mean?
Gawd I feel every word of that post.
I have nothing to say except for the fact that you have lovely ORBS.
Meh.
Wait! You took up bocce ball?!
If there was a way to get you a bottle of wine I have in my rack to you without divulging your address I would so do it. Sure it is very expensive but it will go very well with your cheese spray. Have the eye scrapping elves join you. I am many a lady’s best male friend. I have this curse where I listen and do not try to solve their problems. Non judgemental. I think we would like each other like that.
Peace
Kris, I don’t know how you do it, but again you’ve managed to capture exactly what it feels like to be that woman, in that position, who is soo terribly afraid to be alone with her thoughts. I want to print this post and tape it to my vanity mirror for my next time. And that is not to say that I am expecting my next time to necessarily implode and leave me sad, blue or alone, but that there will be a next time, and it will be alright.
Um, why did this post make me WANT to be single again? To have a break up can be truely thrilling actually. You can allow yourself to think all those rotten things about the boy you once loved…you can be angry and sad and you are ALLOWED to what you want. Heck your breakup things to keep you busy sound like heaven to me right now!
wow- just when I thought I was done crying
guess not
Kris!
Do you know what you did just there? You totally called me out. That is exactly what I’m doing… All of that? Above? Yeah, hi, currently that’s me. (I saaaay I’m excited about the silence and the just me [especially in the new apartment!], but really I just lay in my bed and try to sleep and maybe try not to cry.)
But it’s part of the process. You say pr-ah-cess, I say pr-oh-cess. Let’s call the whole thing “Merlot.”
well there you go again, hitting the nail right on the head. these posts are (one of) the reaons i love this here blog.
“Or Keebler elves shaving the inside of your eyelids while singing Richard Marx songs. In falsetto”
Haha. Great post.