when a heart breaks

January 2015

You start with something good.

Pure.

You move through the minutes, the hours, the days, weeks, months, years... for the most part happiness abounds.

Then the doubts form.  Curiosities race in to cross the game board of your life, and then in a single moment of poor judgement... it's done.

Finished.

I've been here before, you know.  Maybe not all of you know that, but most of you do.  Granted this time is quite different, being just one infidelity and not a series of them laced with emotions that denoted cheating on more than just one level ("one level" being a physical one).  In the end it's apples to apples with a result still reaching the same conclusion; I'm alone again.  Can I tell you something weird though?  Something that surprises no one more than it surprises me?

I'm not even that mad anymore.

Don't get me wrong... I'm feeling every emotion about this, mostly sadness and confusion, but that bigger piece of anger is just sitting at the peripheral.  Those of you that have been around for a while know all about how I handled my breakup with Ken.  I had a tank of napalm at my disposal, furiously kicked it over and spread it across everything I possibly could, and then lit it up in a fit of rage so I could watch him and everything we had built burn to the ground.  You wanna wrong me? I thought, then I'll get you back by airing all of our dirty laundry right on Facebook.  That'll make you sorry.

Only it didn't make Ken sorry... and it didn't make me feel any better.  There was nothing cleansing about that experience.  Now, six years later, when I re-read some of the things I wrote I can't help but cover my eyes and shake my head in embarrassment at how petty it all was.  Not that certain things weren't justified, because I really went through the ringer on that one, but still.

You might be asking why I'm writing this now... if I speak so highly of learning from airing the past in such a negative light.  Fair enough.  I find that I'm writing now because I haven't written for months, simply clamming up and holding it all in instead.  The last few years I've largely shut myself away, and not for self-preservation or anything weird, I just had nothing to say.  I shared it all with Derek, and when you have that, you stop sharing with everyone else because there's no need to.  I used to be quite open in these things and writing it out now is a weird sort of purge for me.  Collect the thoughts, put them down, rearrange them in a manner that makes sense, and then find calm in it.  That's the truth.

There might be a couple of you that know what went down between Derek and I, and you might feel I should do the same here as I did back then.  You might feel I'm letting him off easy, and that's fair.  But it's also not for you to decide.  It's for me to decide.

There are several factors that go into my judgement process this time around, at 31 rather than 25.  It was always easy for me to shout out "if I ever get cheated on again, I'm out the fuckin' door with no thoughts of a second glance back!" The reality is different.  The reality is that 921 days ago when I first said "I love you," we didn't spend a night apart afterward unless one of us was out of town.  In the beginning when we'd go to bed, one of us would say "ask me something," and the other would come up with a random question that would usually get a long and thoughtful answer.  Eventually this stopped, I'm not sure why... maybe because I just took it all for granted.  Maybe I still do.  I think the real reason was that it was because I felt I knew him well enough and that there was nothing else to discover.

I remember standing in the shower with Derek at the end of the day on Christmas.  We had a couple candles lit and the lights out, so it was just a comfy, safe space.  He was talking about his father because it was his first Christmas without him, and he started crying.  I started crying too, because here was this person... this man... that had come into my life so unexpectedly and immediately made a huge mark on me.  After having my shield up for so long against being hurt by any prospective partner, I was suddenly defenseless against him.  That night he was feeling what he needed to feel, and I was lucky enough to share it with him.  It drew us together so quickly, with me being the emotional vampire that latches on to people's feelings and how they convey them.  And I suppose him, looking for someone that would just listen with no ulterior motive.

And that was us.

Some people feel they know me well enough to know what I want and need, and they have been quick to jump in with "you need to kick him out, he has to go.  You won't be able to move on if you don't do that," and it's just not that simple.  I wish it was so simple... that I could turn it off and say "see ya later."  I think that people are weak, inherently.  I know I am, and I of course only can speak for myself, but it is my opinion.  We all have weaknesses, we all make mistakes.  Hell, I make mistakes all the time, I just cover it up well enough so that it looks intentional.  But I've made serious mistakes in my life.  I cheated on Ken when we were together, and that's a mistake I'll always hate myself for.  I don't believe in the "once a cheater always a cheater" thing, because I know first hand it isn't true, but I can never label myself otherwise.  That's my fault.  But one mistake does not define me, and it won't define Derek.  Sadly it may end up being what defines "us" and that's a really shit thing, because there was so much good that came before it.

I'm not religious.  I never have been, I don't ever intend to be.  I feel I operate more on a spiritual, maybe "energy" based belief system, but I do think there are some things in the Christian Bible that carry a lot of weight.  I Googled this passage and found it incredibly accurate:

"Then they reminded Jesus that adultery was punishable by stoning under Mosaic law and challenged him to judge the woman so that they might then accuse him of disobeying the law.  Jesus thought for a moment and then replied, 'He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.'"

What Derek did... he did to me.  Not to any of you.  I know it might feel like he did it to you too, and while you may feel very strongly on my behalf (as you are of course entitled to feel), please don't pursue anger toward him.  Like I said, people make mistakes in life.  Some of them are much bigger than others.  It's not really any of our jobs to judge, it's our job, if we're able, to help people through these situations.  No one died here, no one got permanently sick here.  Trust was broken right along with a heart, and it ended up causing the demise of something that was once pretty great.

I'm the one that has to live with the broken pieces of my heart.

At the end, I'm reminded of the beginning.
   Him: "Did you order a Peppermint Mocha?"
       Me: "Yes...?"
   Him: "Found it!"
Our first date on a Tuesday night in November, sitting in the back room of Fox River House under fluorescent lights and chatting idly over a cider for me and a beer for him.  The night ending in our first kiss, in my car in his mom's driveway.  Watching our first movie together in his living room, Silver Lining's Playbook.  Seeing the Hunger Games in the theater a few days later.  Decorating a Christmas tree together.  Creating inside jokes, chuckling at the idiosyncrasies we each had.  Dinners out, awkward waiters, scowling waitresses.  A move across the country.  A second move across the country.  Tears of happiness and sadness, broken barriers and open discussions.  Disagreements that led to accepting differences.  Never having a single fight.  Never raising voices to each other.  Cooking dinners at home, cooking for friends at home.  Being a united front that at least from the outside, looked perfect.  Because that's what picture's do... they don't show the growing doubt.  They don't show the fear that it's going to end badly, the concern that maybe this isn't the one.  The hope that he is the one.

They show touched up faces, the best selection out of ten photos where both of you have normal looking smiles.  Pictures hide a multitude of thoughts and are taken at face value.

March 2016

I was a voice of reason for Derek.  I was the one to say hang on a second when he got too ahead of himself, the one who would tell him to cool it when I was telling him a story and he'd jump ahead with his assumption.  Unfortunately, he didn't reach out for my voice when he made the ultimate decision.

I could hate him if I wanted to.  Easily.  Curse his name, throw him to the wolves... both literal and figurative.  But I'm not that 25 year old anymore, looking for retribution at the expense of someone else.  I've grown and learned and changed... and right now I'm heartbroken.  It continues to come and go, the realization that it's really over and what that means today, tomorrow, and the day after.  I have a persistent ache in my chest that rages with an intensity I'd forgotten could exist.  I still love him, and I will always love him.  He will always be one of my best friends, because I just don't have it in me right now for him not to be.  Like I said, one act does not define a person, and he isn't a bad person.  He's a lovely person, who is both extraordinarily caring and unfailingly kind.  A person who would drop anything he was doing at any given time to honor a request for me.  I could wake him up at 3am and say I've got a migraine, and he'd go out for painkillers without a single complaint or question asked.  That's how it was from the beginning, right up to the end.  None of that is to excuse what happened... for some things in life there is no excuse.  But in regards to discussing the merit of a person, the proof is in the pudding.

We both lose here.  We both lose a walk down the aisle, the friends on either side of that aisle... we both lose the families we were supposed to share.  We lose parts of the past, the moments of the present, and ultimately a future together.  And that's sad.  It keeps my brain spinning and whirring and trying to find meaning in all of this.

It makes me desperately look at the past and try to discover how I did this before.  How I moved on when I felt like I couldn't, how I kept breathing when I felt like I would suffocate.  But I didn't leave notes for myself, as it were.  I didn't leave a trail of breadcrumbs showing "here you were, Sean, and this is exactly how you got through it."  The healing came in the pain, and eventually the time as well.

Living in a world where you want everything right now, that doesn't help.  When waiting 3 seconds for a webpage to load seems forever so you just click on something else, learning to live without an extension of yourself seems impossible.  I know it's not... I don't need to be told it's not.  I just need to feel this and learn from this, and try to make sense of it in any way I can.  You all know I love learning a lesson, and there is one here waiting to be uncovered.  That's okay.  I have patience.

Because I know the lesson will not be a negative one, and even if it was, I'd do my best to spin it in another direction.  I'd do my best to turn it into something remarkable.

Something good.

Pure.