As I sit here, I look at my Spotify playlists and come
across the playlist, one that I made four years ago, my heart recently broken. The
relationship, the break-up, and the aftermath intertwine with each song in that
playlist. Radiohead’s “High and Dry” and “Karma Police” were on repeat for
quite sometime.
“It’s the best thing you that ever had/ the best thing you ever, ever
had/ It’s the best thing you that ever had/ the best thing you ever had has
gone away.”
“I can’t do this anymore. I need to focus on my classes- I’m
basically failing in Chemistry and Lab,” he tells me. We sit in his white Ford
Bronco in the parking lot with his door open and my window down, the strong
breeze seeps through and lands on my skin. He was the first time I had ever
felt love. It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized unconditional love, to
care more for their happiness than your own, even when he flaunted his new
romance one month later. I had transferred colleges, Thank God, and didn’t have to worry about seeing him around with
his new partner.
“For a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself, phew for a minute
there I lost myself”
According
to Brandy Engler, a licensed psychologist
specializing in relationships, “there are a few major factors that can
influence how long it takes to get over a breakup: What you tell yourself about
the breakup, what you tell yourself about the future, and what you tell
yourself about yourself (Glamour).” My life changed, LMU was a
challenge, and life went on. As some consolation I got
involved on campus; he’d be on my mind and I’d wish him well, but I realized
that quite possibly with him by my side I couldn’t have done the things I’d
wanted. I would have put him first.
About a
year ago, his relationship fell through after all those years and he added me
back on all social media. We spoke and reminisced on the old times and how life
had been treating us. I couldn’t believe that after all those years he was back
in my life. I felt like we went back in time to the afternoons when we would
talk on the phone about random things and laugh about them. Strange how life
turns out isn’t it? He asked to go get drinks and hang out and to my
astonishment I said yes, after all this time and everything that went wrong, I
said yes. Things escalated and before I knew it, it was somehow implied that I
just wanted to hook up—someone that met so much to me could be minimized to
just a hook up. An article by David Tao, Sex
with an Ex: Are Post-Relationship Hookups a New Normal?, presented the
results from a study that those on-again, off-again relationships could be to
blame for the common hook-up culture. Tao adds that one particular study done
in Ohio with a sample of 792 between ages 17-24 found that “Around 44 percent of
individuals who had been in a relationship in the
previous two years had broken up and reconciled with at least one ex. More than a quarter of the participants
reported having sex with an ex in the previous two years.”
He was the first mature relationship
I had—so how do these things workout exactly? The aftermath I mean; where they
return but not really. I decided to reach out to a good friend of mine, one who
knows the situation from top to bottom, to which she responded, “Brendaaaaa,
have you not learned from the past? Nothing good can come from this if it’s not
you guys trying to make it work. He meant to so much to you that you’re just
hurting yourself. It’s like you’ll have him but in reality he’s not yours—he’s
not the ‘significant’ other, just… other.” She laughs to lighten the
conversation. “I just want the best for you Brendy and he’s not it.” She’s
right, why do we keep holding onto the past? Because we feel comfortable with
not having to branch out of our comfort zone? Like with all things, we feel
safe with what we know. We’ve become different people, at least I’d like to
think so, and there’s just no reason on letting what was linger. I will always care for him but there comes a point
where it becomes a hindrance on my future. And that I cannot allow.
No comments:
Post a Comment