Tonight one of my best friends broke up with her first and only serious boyfriend of over one year. (And yes, she's 23.)
It's a decision that she's been mulling over for months... She's not been truly happy with him in quite a long time. But she had fallen into the security blanket hole. Where even though she wasn't happy, she figured it was happier than she'd be without him. The "I forgot how to be single" syndrome. The "I'm afraid I won't meet anyone better" fear.
Think back to your first break up. Were you dumped or did you do the dumping? Remember how heartbreaking it was, regardless of what role you played in the break up? Leaving the first love is the hardest thing a person can do. Because that first love ushers you into a whole new identity of yourself. And they become a part of that identity. And to lose them; you fear the loss of identity.
Break ups are incinerators of the soul. They burn through all of you -- regardless of whether you're the one ending it or the one who gets left. There is so much pain. Sadness. Fear. Love. The wish that things could be so different.
But break ups are also the bravest, most honest things you can do for yourself. It takes incredible courage to break up with someone, or to move on from a break up. To step forward with your life and promise to accept nothing less than what is right for you. You recognize that the person you thought you couldn't live without -- you actually can live without them. And most of the time, you realize that the person that you were so in love with wasn't really that great of a match for you. It's empowering when you move on from someone. All the opportunities.
But as hard as it is to decide to break up with someone (I was dumped five times before I ever dumped someone--it's not something easy to decide to do, and let me tell you, it hurt just as bad doing the dumping as it did being the one dumped), it's the post break up that can be even trickier. Navigating the anxieties, the fears, the I wish I could take it back... The loneliness. The boredom.
Kat has a long road ahead of her, but I am so incredibly proud of her for no longer accepting a bad relationship. To watch a friend go through so much in her personal life, and to then have her boyfriend add more negativity to that pile is so heartbreaking. It can be shocking to see how heartless and thoughtless and inconsiderate a person can be to someone they claim to love; and to watch your friend shrivel and shake and cry because she feels like it's all her fault. Because you can't do anything about it. You tell her that it's not right, and she acknowledges it, but she makes excuses for him. You just sit on the sidelines, waiting, encouraging, supporting -- just like any teammate on any sports team would.
But she reached the breaking point.
She will be okay.
Stacey will be okay.
Kelley will be okay.
I will be okay.
It's just getting through and to the okay part that's the struggle...
Or maybe that's just what people say to eachother; to make them feel like there's a greater sense of hope out there. Or when they're just tired of hearing our complaining about being single -- "You'll be okay. You'll meet someone." AKA, shut up about it already! I can't do anything about your situation and you're getting annoying with all your complaining. I hope this isn't the case... I hope that we will all truly be okay. I hope that we will all really meet the right guy. I hope that we will all find happiness, first without him and on our own, then with him.
Until then, I teeter (and Stacey teeters... and Kelley teeters... and now Kat will teeter) between loving being single (freedom) and hating being single (loneliness -- the result of freedom).
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