Getting Over

Relationships are strange things. Like languages, they operate in similar ways, but the rules of one can never quite be completely applied to another. And just like a language, they are often inaccessible to outsiders. The two of you make your own words, intonation, puns and references, a culture of two. Once that ends, trying to explain it is like describing the colour blue to a blind person. Achingly close to being possible, but a piece will always be missing and all you can do is speak in emotional codes, poetic language that can only draw from far too personal experience to express. It's all a bit too close to the bone.

But at the same time relationships are the single most important thing in the world. Without them we would not continue on this roller coaster we call life. We would be alone and hopeless. If it's true that relationships are at the core of our existence, why do so many of us find them so difficult to talk about. Personally, I would no sooner talk about my past feelings for an ex than I would talk about my sex life.

So getting over a painful break up is a long and lonely process. Yes, there are friends along the way who provide a listening ear, but hearing myself whining on and on all I can think is ho pathetic I sound and how much they must be wishing I'd shut up about it. Of course this is not the case, but nonetheless I realize that emotions are personal and no two people ever feel them in the same way. So how can we expect another person to understand our pain. They can empathize, but never truly understand.

Anyway, what I came on here to say is that I recently got back in touch with an ex, the break up from whom was the most painful thing I've ever been through. A three-month relationship turned into a three-year healing processes. At various points during this time, as I'm sure many have done whilst going through the same thing, I would fantasize about how his life would be in the future, how he would inevitably stay the same and never reach the potential I thought I saw in him. Having had no contact with him for three years, I finally plucked up the courage to send him a message and re-friend him. The information on his Facebook page doesn't give away much about his life at the moment, or how it had been for the last few years, but the revelation comes in the fact that I don't care to know.

Does he have a girlfriend? Did he get his own place? Did he find a job he likes? I don't know, and I honestly do not care. Once a ghost, a ball and chain I would drag around behind me with a sinister mixture of despair and pride, he has faded into the background, a memory of a copy of a photograph. Someone I used to think I knew, and someone I now don't care to know. Like an old school friend you say hello to if you see them in the street, but never care to talk deeper than how's the weather.

And now I've written a blog about it, which betrays a possibility that I clearly am still thinking about him etc etc. But I'm really not. I only wish to let you know, if you're reading this, that if you've had your heart broken, time really does mend all wounds. Be patient with yourself, and one day you will wake up to find that you haven't thought about them for a very long time, and that the person you love most is you.