I’m back!

Good lord. This blog’s genesis was a cliché and now its timeline appears to be one as well. It was a new year’s “resolution”, albeit a tacit one, a “project” as I liked to call it, but, you know, that which we call a resolution by any other name would smell as deceptively promising. And of course I didn’t keep it longer than a couple of months, or the cliché wouldn’t have been complete.

Anyway, I’m back now, for however long. It could be just today or it could be longer. As always when my mind is in a blur, I’m writing down my thoughts so as to make them clearer.

Amidst more serious concerns of unpaid bills and summer joblessness, I’ve been thinking about relationships. I know, coming from a twenty-something girl on her holidays, groundbreaking! Oh well, it’s not like anyone reads this blog anyway.

I have thrown myself into one, a couple of months ago, much to my own surprise, as it certainly wasn’t part of my resolutions and maybe even against some of them. And therefore partly because I’m in one, and partly because I’ve just finished a Sex And The City marathon where romance and men were the main focus for 6 seasons and two movies (longer than they deserve, if you ask me), I have been inclined to give the topic my own share of thought.

My view on relationships has always been that in this day and age, they have become unnecessarily difficult. I tend to hold this view most firmly when I’m not in one, funnily enough. “They could be SO EASY”, I would think to myself, overlooking my bias as an outsider and somehow forgetting that human beings are less predictable than I like to think, “People in relationships are constantly overthinking everything.”. And yet, even now, up to a certain extent, I still seem believe the same thing.

Maybe it’s a generalization. Fine, I shall narrow it down and only speak for my gender. Girls in relationships, motivated by magazine articles, movies, TV shows and conversations with their girlfriends, are constantly overthinking theirs. Somehow, and I may be wrong, I doubt this was the case a century or two ago. And yes, I am aware of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, but their worries were real and concrete. The situations those female characters found themselves in had an actual bearing on the course of their lives, whether or not they decided to voice them. Too often, I feel, the problems our mind trick us into thinking we have would have no effect whatsoever on our couple if we didn’t decide to share them with our partners. And while I will defend the power of clear communication in a relationship till my last breath, I do wonder if the traditional male argument that suggests “women overthink too much” could possibly have a point.

If every individual person is different, and every relationship is different, how are we supposed to assess our own ? Are we good enough ? Are we supportive enough ? Do we spend enough time together ? Are we fighting too often ? Are we on the same page ? Are we happy ? Am I happy ? Is he/she happy ? What exactly should we expect ?

Maybe we should simply be, one day at a time. And see where that takes us.

Thoughts

It’s almost 2am over here and  for the better part of this past day, I’ve been feeling…paralyzed . I can’t think of a better word really. I don’t think it was sadness, or any specific emotion for that matter. I was simply…frozen. And I couldn’t really say why. Who am I kidding, I probably could, but would never admit to it. So I turn to blogging, in the (possibly naive) hope that putting down what’s been on my mind will make me feel better.

I think of myself a year ago exactly, and I think of how different things were back then. How promising the future looked in every way. And then I think of today, and of how drastically the tables have turned, and not exactly in my favor, or in anybody else’s, as far as I know. Maybe I should be even sadder after all. Why aren’t I ? Where am I getting this unnatural wave of optimism ? Some may argue that I might be thinking things couldn’t really get much worse, but they can actually. Who knows what the future holds ? I may be diagnosed with some deadly disease tomorrow, to top it all. And I’m well aware of that. The recent string of less than pleasant events that have constituted my life are in no way a guarantee that it will all be well now that I’ve survived them somehow. As one of Notting Hill’s characters let me know last night while I was indulging in a movie date with a pressurized can of whipped cream (and no, that’s not a euphemism for a boyfriend) : “The more I think about things, the more I see no rhyme or reason in life. No one knows why some things work out and some things don’t, why some of us get lucky and some of us…”

So you just make the best of it, and in the unfortunate case that’s still far from being Hurray-material, at least you get to be secure in the knowledge that there’s not much else you can do. Therefore, as they say (whoever they are), “you might as well live”.

I have probably learned and grown a lot this last year. I must have done. Even though I still lack the perspective to appreciate and measure any emotional growth of any shape or form. And I have this gut feeling that whatever I learned won’t be wasted. That it might have brought me its share of wisdom. And maybe, just maybe, if luck will have it, it could even take me a step closer to future happiness. That sounds like something out of the mouth of an inspirational speaker or a life coach. And it might be true.

The question remains however…Is it worth it ?

Given the choice, would you go through unbearable pain to be a little wiser, and possibly happier ?

I’m not sure I have the answer to this one.

Good thing there’s no decision to be made then. You’ll never be given that choice. Life will throw whatever it wants at you, and wisdom will be the last thing on your mind when it does.
And it’s probably all for the better.

Cheers.

Tread softly

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

About dealing with a special kind of heartbreak

If I’m being completely honest, I’d have to say one of the reasons I’m even on this website today, struggling to make my blog look like something people want to look at and maybe even read, is my last relationship coming to an end in a disastrous way. I’ve fallen into that cliché of wanting to try new things after a breakup, and apparently in my case one of these new things is deluding myself into thinking I’m interesting enough to impart wisdom and tell unimpressed strangers on the internet about the endless list of wildly boring events that constitute my life. And writing long, really long sentences.

Anyhow.

Since this breakup is the reason I’m inflicting this sorry excuse for an online diary on your poor souls, I thought I might as well tell you more about it.

It was the kind of twist of fate that you never expect is going to happen to you. My relationship was a very loving one. Yes we had a particularly difficult set of circumstances to face, but I loved him deeply and I honestly had every reason to believe he loved me too. Overall, we were happy. At least I was. And then one day he decided it was over. A couple of hours before, he was giving me his word that he would never ever give up on us. And then, In a matter of hours, for no reason I’m aware of, he changed his mind. You know how men get booed when they break up via text or on the phone ? Well, bless him, to his credit, he did not do that at all (sarcasm). He did not break up at all. He just made sure I wasn’t able to reach him anymore. He gave me a 15-second phone call (sadly this is not an exaggeration meant for dramatic effect, I have visual proof on my phone) during which he muttered something like “I can’t” before hanging up on my distraught and understandably confused self, never to be heard from again. This was a little over two months ago, a few days after my birthday.

In this inaugural article, as I’m walking my very first steps into the world of blogging, I would like to talk about my current state. How I’m doing now. The place I am in as I start to write down my thoughts for the world (or, in my case, the poor soul that accidentally stumbles its way towards my blog one typo at a time) to see. Maybe one day I will elaborate more on how I dealt with that pain in the immediate aftermath. All you should know now is that it was possibly the hardest time I have ever had to go through. The cold-hearted cruelty with which I (felt I) was treated and the deep humiliation that ensued, more than the separation itself, have caused damage I have yet to completely recover from. I think a part of me never will.

Fast forward to today.

I have developed what I call the « blind-eye reflex » when it comes to the story of how it all came to an end. It could almost look like denial, only denial usually precedes a phase of realization, while in my case, I have already been through that (difficult but necessary) phase. I’m not holding onto anything anymore. It is over. But since I know there will be no fathoming this story (because of how utterly inexplicable it remains), all I can really do is forget about it and, when remembering it, only do so superficially. I only think of the « surface », the frame, and never allow myself to dive into the details. I guess that’s the only way to overcome – for lack of a better word – an end with no closure.

Because there was never an explanation, there is no room for rationality.

And no room for rationality means no room for the serenity that comes with understanding why.

In that regard, it’s a bit like dealing with death. Only I could be tempted to say that at least death is seldom a choice, and its unpreventable nature brings its own kind of serenity once one has overcome the first stages of grief.

The rare times I have thoroughly reflected upon the breakup, I am overwhelmed by a mix of fear, anger, pain as well as inexplicable waves of guilt and inadequacy.

Back when the wound was still fresh, my father had told me that there would come a point, eventually, where the pain, without ever disappearing entirely, would vanish and, in a way, detach itself from me. He said it would no longer feel like a pain I was experiencing, but rather a pain I was empathizing with. As if it had fallen down a few steps on my emotional ladder. Like the pain I might feel for a beloved character in a favorite book of mine. Not only does it not feel like my own pain anymore, it also stops feeling entirely real.

I guess I have reached that point, and much sooner than I thought.

So, to anyone who’s going through any kind of emotional pain, all I can say is surround yourself with people you love (I was nothing short of shocked by the number of people who turned up and stood by me through that time), and keep being, keep living, keep breathing, put one foot in front of the other, take it one step at a time. As for the way you should cope, there is no secret formula. So don’t listen to people’s advice. You know, the ones telling you to move on and forget about it already. If you want to hold onto memories or hope for a while, you should. There’s nothing weak or childish about that. Hopefulness (not to be confused with blatant optimism) is one of my favorite qualities in people.

Whatever works.

And now I’m slowly but surely getting back on my feet. Sure enough they still tremble and totter a bit every now and again, but I’m told it’s okay, so I’ll just keep walking and hope for the best. As for my ex-boyfriend, I do not hate or resent him, I have made my peace with the fact that I might never understand what happened. We all have our reasons and sometimes people make mistakes. I wish him well, I guess…

I am genuinely excited about this blog, even if it turns out I’ll be the only one reading it.

Right now (well not right now because right now I have to study for exams or I am in serious trouble), but first thing next semester, I’m taking up a lot of things I’ve always wanted to do. And blogging about them.

And, you know, I’ll be happy or something.