Post break up heartbreak

So at some point after you accept that the relationship you thought would last forever is gone and you have finished crying yourself to sleep at night for many long months, realising that a stupid financial mistake you made has caused months of turmoil and the relationship has crumbled to nothing under the strain – there is a point where you have to make a decision that nothing you do or say is going to make a difference, you are powerless to change the situation as much as you want to and you must at this point try to start living again.

This time, after you pick yourself up and dust yourself off you have to have a different perspective and a different set of rules for the future. You have to learn from ever tragedy, every broken relationship. So that’s my plan to start with. To work out what I need to learn from the situation and then start to rebuild my life.

The first thing I have learned is that it is important never to get in over your head where you’re feeling for someone else are concerned. Sex is fine, I am sure I will do that again at some point with someone, probably several people again, but don’t ever fall in love. I have only done it the once, and next time I will know better than to share my heart with someone else – its my heart and I will protect it. Nobody will treat your heart with tenderness and kindness the way you expect and hope they will – when the break up occurs, and it inevitably does, if the last few months have taught me anything its that nothing last forever, especially the good stuff (that crap stuff lingers on for much longer) the gloves are off and even if you thought you could rely on that person to treat your heart with care, they won’t. Its not out of selfishness or anything evil, its just that the other person will be interested in themselves and how they feel and protecting themselves – your pain is yours alone.

The second thing I have learned is that when you think it’s too good to be true, it most certainly is. I would regularly spend time during the happiness and bliss of the relationship thinking about how I got so lucky to have fallen in love with someone so wonderful and amazing in every single way, and more shockingly, that they had fallen in love with me too. I would often wake up with a huge smile on my face and think how wonderful the world was to have sent me this person who I simply and shamelessly adored. But just as quick as it’s put in front of you it’s also gone.

The third lesson is that you should never give your time and effort to someone. Anything that you do because you care and want to show the person love and devotion will be forgotten as quick as a flash when those gloves come off. You will not get credit for the time and effort – none. You will just wind up feeling foolish for wasting your time. People only remember the bad parts of you when the relationship is gone, so do what you need to do, but don’t bother trying to impress because nobody will remember.

So with these lessons in mind, and the new rules that have been instituted as a result of these lessons – its time to get on with the business of falling out of love with the person. This is a new area for me because whilst I have enjoyed someone else being around and gained some level of security from having a relationship at various times in my life, this is the first time I have actually been in love, so I am just learning.

I have decided that the first thing to do is to completely cut off any form of communication. Easier said than done really, but its essential. There needs to be a full set of new routines and nothing that resembled my life before with him. Given that I am essentially homeless and my financial situation has been destroyed, I don’t know that this is actually going to be that hard.

It’s important also I think to cut off from any places or faces that are associated with him. So no more shopping in the same places, having any of the same friends or even keeping them on in Facebook. A clean fresh start is what is required otherwise I will just be presented with memories and news of that person and their new found happiness when I still don’t have that yet.

I have started catching only the trains that don’t stop in his suburb, and even though I have to travel through there, I make a point of not staring out the window anymore looking at the places we used to be together, I just keep my head buried in a book until I know it’s safe to look up.

It’s important never to mention the person’s name. They must essentially be dead – a forbidden topic that all people I converse with know better than to ask me about him. Nothing good can come from a discussion that involves them. If you say nice things you get sad, if you say nasty things then you get angry so best just not say anything at all.

The next this is planning to get away, a holiday, a new start somewhere – anywhere. Fortunately I have a few of my favourite places in the world that most other people don’t know about and that I never dared to take him to. These places offer impartial comfort and retain no memories that involve him. They will stay sacred to me forever.

But I also need a holiday. Well, actually if I am honest with myself I need to run away, even if it’s just for a while.

Logically I know full well that going to another country is not going to mean that my heart is mended, I know full well that I will be dragging my broken heart around all over the world and probably get charged extra luggage for all the crap I will be dragging around, but there is always that illogical part of me that is telling me that I must go anyway and that if I can run really fast the pain won’t be able to catch me, even for a blissful day here and there.

The next part of this recovery process is that I need to get rid of every photo and every item that remind me of him. It’s going to be one hell of a stall at the Camberwell Market I can tell you! I have more Tupperware than I know what to do with now that I don’t bother to cook for myself or someone else, not to mention all the stuff I bought for the children we were going to have or the house we were going to buy. It’s all going to go, every single last spec of it. It’s the closest thing to having memories deleted under hypnosis I figure so let the cleansing begin!

The next phase will be the contemplation of future relationship and dealing with the fact that I wanted a family. It was not until I had this relationship that I ever contemplated seriously the notion of having children and now that I am so desperate for them I am going to find this one a little hard to shelve.

I have contemplated freezing my eggs as an insurance policy for the future but then I decided this would be a mistake. I only every wanted to have children within a loving relationship and my commitment never to allow myself to unfold like that again means that this is out of the question. I also contemplated having children on my own but feel like I would be doing that for purely selfish reasons and that actually, with the inherit dysfunction in my family it would probably be a wise choice to stop the cycle and just stick to messing up dogs rather than people.

So future relationship? Well let’s face it; I have never been very successful at relationships in the past, so I guess I expect they will be short and more about physical satisfaction than anything else. But I realise that I have to throw myself out there again at some point and see what the world has to offer me.

At my age and with my history of never meeting anyone in the “regular” way I have decided to give speed dating another bash. If my previous experiences are anything to go by it will be simply a waste of a good night in on my own with a DVD – but it’s worth a shot, whenever I get the courage.

I think doing some travel might present more options. Given that when you are in another country you have more of a reason to talk to strangers because you don’t know anyone, and they tend to want to talk to you because you sound different – I think its more likely that my “getting over someone by getting under someone else” will occur whilst navigating the world with my broken heart.

I also like the concept of knowing that you can never have a relationship when you meet someone overseas, it makes the concept of protecting your heart one that is far easier to stick to – you know that the time spent is fleeting and meaningless.

Having said all of that, I am currently in no state to even contemplate this thought. I hate the idea of being touched by anyone at the moment and expect that it will be quite some time before that is likely to change.

I used to go t bed every night and snuggle in the arms of someone I thought I would be going to bed with for the rest of my life – now to contemplate doing that with someone else is just horrifying – but a reality I am trying to wrap my head around.

I guess the saddest thing of all for me and the thing that still fills me with regret is that I have lost my friend of many years. If only I could go back to that night at The Dirty Swan when this all started, when we made the horrible mistake of taking a friendship to the bedroom – if I could go back to that moment again I would, and I would do it all so differently.