A New Beginning
A Break Up Story
The break up came as a shock. It was a similar feeling to when someone you know dies, it just doesn’t feel real. It felt like a bad dream that I was so ready to wake up from. As days went by I began to accept that this was not a dream, but a horrible reality. Whenever I would walk anywhere I’d listen to music, whenever I was by myself I would call someone, I just couldn’t be alone. I knew if I was alone without any distractions I would have to face my feelings and I was scared of how painful that would be. I trudged through mid-terms week, which was difficult because I had made a routine of studying with her, without her there the feelings of sadness and confusion overwhelmed my already distracted brain. I recall the Thursday before break I was walking back to my dorm listening to “single again” by Big Sean when I saw her. She was just a bit ahead of me and did not see me. She was wearing her khaki coat she had gotten from Target, a grey scarf, jeans, black boots, and was looking at her phone. I wanted to catch up to her and tap her, but the realization that that was no longer appropriate was crushing. I walked behind her until she turned into the tunnel leading to Bennys, the food court, that was the last time I saw her. At that point I had only prayed to god twice as I didn’t necessarily believe in any of it. My first prayer in high school was praying that my first serious girlfriend Giselle would like me back (I know horrible use of a prayer, but I had been single for 3 years and needed something). My second was in my sophomore year of college when my best friend Willy got hit by a car, I prayed he would survive. Both prayers had come true. A few days after the break up I prayed once again. I prayed not to get back together with Amanda, but to find happiness and if those two things were one in the same than it would be meant to be.
Midterms were over, I would then go back home to my family. It had been a week since the breakup and we had not communicated at all. I found solace in going to a place called Butter Milk Falls daily with my dog, Auggie. There I could be alone with my thoughts and try to make sense of what had happened. I began looking to the sky and letting my thoughts spill out verbally, I started what I would call a dialogue with a potential higher power. I didn’t know if anyone was up there, but I found comfort and cathartic relief in the potential chance that someone was really up there listening to me. Obviously, I looked like a crazy person and needed a therapist, but with COVID-19 on the rise I don’t think anyone would be interested in hearing me wench about my feelings. I had several one-way conversations with god during my trips to Butter Milk Falls and through many sessions of self-contemplation I began to understand myself and what had happened. I also learned to understand the difference between my heart and my brain and that the hardest choice and the right choice were one in the same.
On my 6th trip to Butter Milk Falls I felt I was ready, along the hiking trail is an old wooden bridge over a creek, it was there that I wrote my letter to her. The letter in short explained my new understanding of myself and the part it had to play in our breakup. I told her I wanted to disconnect off of social media so that I could heal. And lastly, I told her that I love her, I’m sorry, and I don’t regret our relationship. I wanted to remove her from social media for two reasons. For one, every time she would post a selfie or anything I would impulsively look at it and feel upset and secondly, I had genuine fears that she would replace me before my feelings for her had faded and I knew that would kill me. The hardest choice I had to make was not attempting to reenter her life, but the opposite, choosing to fully leave. I knew clinging to her would only give short-term joy and long-term pain, I needed to learn to survive on my own. I felt that my letter was well written, informative, apologetic, appropriately loving, and most of all provided something that I think we had missed, closure. I sent it to her and waited with a rush of inappropriate excitement to hear back from the women I still loved, but could no longer talk to. She responded briefly saying that she agrees with the points and conditions of my letter. Expecting more of a response for my own closure I prompted her to say any last words while she still could. She said she loved me and wanted me to find happiness and that was it. This knocked the wind out of me and stole my breath. It was as if she had nothing else to say, as if the feelings from our year and a half relationship could be summed up in two sentences, as if she had completely washed her hands of me without a second thought, regret, anything. I considered that maybe I had said it all in my letter and given her nothing left to contribute. To this day I don’t know if she had more to say, or whether she cared or not. Every night for weeks I would reread my letter to her and attempt to fabricate the response I never got, her reactions, her feelings, for any type of closure of my own.
