Taking in the Mess

Ah, heartache. The one human phenomenon that is so common and widespread, yet unique each time it manifests. Perhaps that’s why it has yet to be exhausted in literature, music, and art; each time a heart is broken, it fractures in different ways and therefore merits its own dedication.

I suppose tonight I am writing for the simple and sad reason that I have no one to talk to. Truly, the one person I want to talk to is the reason for my unhappiness and obviously impossible to reach out to, at this time or perhaps ever. It’s unfortunate, because I have so many questions, all which can only be answered by him. At which point did you decide it wasn’t worth it? The tentative, ephemeral dream we outlined, the little and big moments of happiness, the potential for more of those moments—when did you decide all of those were worth giving up? When did you decide that your fear was greater than your love, that I was worth giving up?

And then, there are the questions that can only be answered by myself, but frustratingly, I can’t seem to dig out the answers from wherever they’re hiding. What do you do, when you search in the nooks and healing cracks in your heart and can’t find a reason for doing the things you do every day? What do you do when you entrusted your heart to another set of hands, only to have it given back, broken and assembled in a different way? How do I relearn these contours and boundaries of myself when I can barely bind the pieces back together? These useless, impossible questions just keep cycling around my mind like a sushi train, except guess what, brain? I’ve had my fill of overthinking, thanks very fucking much. If my thoughts were brain food, I’m ready to lie down in a massive carb coma. And possibly not get up for the next week.

But nooooooo, life doesn’t wait for anyone. And so each day, I get up from the comforts of a bed that’s not mine, make myself a hearty breakfast, and try to sort the pieces of my life and myself back into some semblance of order and familiarity. Before, it was like my beliefs and values were books sitting on a well-loved bookshelf in my room; I could run my hands over each of their spines and just know which ones they were based on their place on the shelf. Perhaps, then, that is what loving another person is. You don’t ask for it, but they come into your life, your personal space, and completely up-end everything until you don’t know where anything is anymore. Sometimes they even leave some of their own shit in there. T-shirts, old CDs, a sock or two. And oh, I don’t know, just a few months worth of shared love and memories. No biggie. And when they leave, you are left with the kind of a mess a person with OCD would faint over. You are left to pick through the mess and remake your bookshelves.

Be your own friend, everyone says these days. I see words like this shoved in my face in almost every Instagram poem I read, and I admit I’m usually an advocate of this independent kind of thinking, but it’s getting more and more difficult each day. It’s hard to be my own friend when the friends I choose are people I like…and right now I do not like myself very much at all. 

All of this maudlin thinking honestly just makes me want to drink a lot of wine and smash some expensive tea cups or something. No one's going to care since I know barely anyone reads these blog posts. I'm not even sure why I keep writing them, but they just spill out of me during difficult times like this. Maybe next time I'll write about hippos and chickadees instead, if only to avoid depressing myself further.