Release the ghost

Haunted by heartbreak no more

Downtown Cordova, 35mm film.

I stood in the kitchen one recent morning while waiting for water to boil. I’d been sad all night and didn’t know why. The kettle clicked off and a recognition emerged as the steam caressed chipped blue paint.

[So and so] broke my heart. A relationship years prior from which I thought I had moved on. Yet once encountered, I knew it was true. And I’d never admitted it before, the real thing, the feeling that welled up.

I said it aloud and tears followed. I cried as I poured coffee and got milk from the fridge. I cried as I brought my coffee upstairs. That person had broken my heart. Only now, after all this time, was I giving in.

When we don’t admit we’re hurt, the feeling festers. I’d cast aside simple heartbreak and it lodged next to ancient aches. It sat there unacknowledged and became a new thing. It sprouted resentments and cruelty, masks of anger that covered the ordinary pain.

That person had broken my heart. I’d offered it, confusingly, and it was never fully received. I’d contorted myself, a bit at a time, to try to fit the right shape. I’d pushed aside premonitions and chased the infatuating highs. The highs were high indeed. There are still many things I adore about this person, or at least that attract me. So I was caught, I let myself linger too long, in the tension between self-love and annihilation.

Revisiting text exchanges, I’m not sure if what I sought was ever there. Or it was, but fleetingly. I grasped at straws of connection that were never enough. And, like any repeated strained motion, the grasping caused pain.

Now that I know myself better, I wouldn’t enter the relationship if presented today. Strangely, this thought is painful, too. There were things I loved about it. Things I’m not sure I would want to erase despite the subsequent hurt.

It’s hard to look back and realize I added additional wounds on top of what was there. The first wound was the lack of self-love that caused me to enter this dynamic. The second was the heartbreak and rejection itself. The third, fourth, however many additional wounds were my refusal to acknowledge the relationship’s impact. My belittling it and attempts to quickly move on.

Gosh, the work it takes to unravel these layers. Years of denial and confusion that add flimsy coverings on top of what is true.

I love the clarity of emotions when I allow them. My body knows what to do. It leaks, it shakes, it expels the festering energy. I feel so much better after giving in.

Perhaps this timeline was always correct. It took years to feel comfortable enough to admit the hurt. I didn’t have space for it then, and it’s no use adding shame now.

So I sit, and write, and listen. Truth is the gift. It’s there for us, waiting to be heard. It won’t go away until we accept it—the most challenging and simplest truth of all.

Cordova harbor with its fleet of fishing vessels.

Thanks for reading. As a reminder, this is week two of an eight-week spring series. Last Thursday I wrote about questioning where I belonged while on a fancy ski trip. See you next time.