I Must Be Going

I have been feeling horrible for weeks. I figured out why I have felt so terrible, and just figuring that out made me feel a little relieved. The reality of my situation hit me, in waves that rolled in one after another, and they didn't really slow or stop until a few days ago. The reason why I felt worse last week and the week before than I did in months was because I had strong buffers preventing all of that pain from getting to me. When I was staying with friends, I felt the need to keep a lid on my pain, make it easier for them to be around me so they didn't feel uncomfortable. I didn't do this because they told me to, I did it because I thought it was the best thing I could do for them. After I moved into my own place and was with a boy all the time for a week and a half, I was distracted by him, and how much he calmed me and flattered me. I didn't think about my ex, or my divorce, or anything other than this guy who was brand-new and far more interesting than all that hurt.
Now that we have decided to put the brakes on, and I am finally away from anyone who needs me to put up a front, the levees have broken. I have just crawled out of two weeks of feeling, once again, like my stomach is full of battery acid and there is sand in my veins. I've taken up running again, just trying to exhaust myself so I can sit still without my hands trembling. People warn you about the depression that will seep into your bones when you go through this, but no one warns you about the anxiety that comes hand-in-hand with it. The sadness is paired up with the icy fear that I might always be this sad, that I'll never get out of this hole. Those two feelings inevitably lead to stasis, a feeling that if I move, if I do anything, I'll break something.
The worst night was the night I told myself that I needed to forget about my new man-friend, just erase his number and never try to contact him again. I had absorbed, on my own accord, all of the pain I perceived in him, all that angry energy over being hurt like he had. This is why it is dangerous to get involved with someone while you are going through a break-up: if it doesn't work out the way you thought it would, the devastation is inflated beyond belief. I became really angry with him, more angry than I have allowed myself to feel toward my ex, for telling me that he likes me in the first place, because at this point, I cannot do a thing with that information besides know that it exists. I wanted to go back to when I knew nothing and there was no pressure, no risk, I was just a girl and he was just a boy. That bell cannot be unrung, and I have no idea why he rang it in the first place. I kept his number in my phone after all, but erased every message we had sent each other so that I wouldn't sit there reading them, trying to crack the code that would make him make sense.
I am ashamed of how quickly I can access my anger toward everyone besides my ex. I'm pissy and short-tempered and have zero patience most of the time. I am still too upset with myself, with my role in my divorce, to feel anger toward him. I also still have too many warm feelings for him and find him too adorable. I miss him, and I know that, and it feels like an infected sore on my heart. I know I have to let go of all of the things that I love about him, and admit that there is nothing there, and shake him out of my system. When the person you married is also your best friend, and the person you love the most and who knows the most about you, it isn't just that it is hard to let them go- it doesn't feel right. It is tantamount to letting go of a vital organ. I was talking to a dear friend the other night, who is amazingly helpful and insightful, and he brought up a point that many have expressed but he put into words more succinctly than I could. "It's real grief, " he said, "It's grieving for someone who is still alive."
I have mourned plenty of people in my life, people I loved very much and who I will definitely never see alive again. I know how to go through that. I was wrong in my estimation of all that grief preparing me for this. This is worse because unlike my mother, or my grandfather, or my friends I have lost, I have to see the person I am mourning walking around and breathing. He is alive, but the man I loved is dead. The person he is now is someone I don't even know. I can't just go up to him and talk to him about a great movie I saw or some music he should check out. We are people who know each other, but don't know each other at the same time. This is the hardest part. This is the part that feels like eating glass. This is the part of the story where the central character realizes the limits of her own ability to heal. This is the part where I don't just bounce back immediately, and where I realize that I am not as strong as I thought.