Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it sure does change your perception of the things that have hurt you in the past.
Ten years ago today, on Valentines Day, I was dumped. By someone I worked with. In the parking lot of our workplace and shortly before we were to head out for our plans that evening which included taking in a play and a dinner. I have recalled this story many times over. It sounds much worse than it is.
A few months after that Valentines Day break-up I had a nervous breakdown and was even hospitalized after a panic attack and an overdose of pain medication. The break-up itself didn’t actually have much influence on the myriad of serious mental health issues I was struggling with. No, it was a life long battle of depression, PTSD, childhood sexual abuse, and emergence of substance abuse as a coping mechanism in adolescence.
Then in my early 20s I experienced a further rough go of it with my troubles of not staying in college, my brother’s suicide, followed by the stroke and eventual death of my grandmother, the pressure of me suddenly having a burgeoning and successful career and having more disposable income and more temptation for self-medicating and taking self-destructive behaviors to their extreme.
I was able to understand very quickly in my recovery (which is still an ongoing process to this very day) that the V-Day break-up was a minor ordeal. I was infatuated with someone who was a bit out of my league. We had fun and brief affair. I started to develop more serious feelings, which she did not reciprocate and there were actually many signs of that being obvious which I ignored.
Moving into the latter half of my 20s my life changed in a lot of ways. I made new friends. Got more reconnected some of my family and hometown area, eventually moving back to get a sense of being grounded and supported. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, but it seemed to be a healthier path for the long term.
At that point I could look back on my dating history from age 18-25 and laugh. Sure I hurt some people along the way and others hurt me, but it was all a learning and growing process. There was nothing from that time period that I was still holding onto. I had never been healthy enough to make anything work before, so I didn’t feel so bad about the mistakes I had made back then.
Of course my love life remained rather stilted through the end of my twenties and as I mentioned before I had surrounded myself with new people, be they new friends, new co-workers, or even new family. On the whole I was certainly healthier in my late 20s but not without flaws by any means and still not able to fully acknowledge and be honest fully when it came to the mental health issues I was still dealing with.
As my search for a meaningful and long-lasting relationship continued I began to feel more and more insecure about my shortcomings and romantic history. I started to embellish the story of being dumped on Valentines Day. Exaggerating the level of passion and intimacy the relationship had. As a writer and a storyteller I knew it had weight. Just needed a few tweaks to be an epic tale of heartbreak and woe. I guess I figured it made me more sympathetic somehow, as if these people in my life now that cared about me didn’t already feel for me and sympathize. As if they wouldn’t understand if I just told them that my nervous breakdown had next to nothing to do with this break-up. That my continued struggles in life and in love were all my own.
Perhaps it was a way for me to channel all of my anger and frustration about the sum of everything I had gone through in my life. A scapegoat. Point it all toward this one hyperbolic story instead of acknowledge that I had then and still do now have a lot of issues that I struggle with daily. And the mental illness is not my fault, nor is it the fault of this poor woman that I once briefly dated who made an ill-advised decision to break-up with me on particular holiday that itself is an exaggeration. She was no villain. In fact she and I had reconciled as friends and she was supportive after I returned to my job. She eventually moved all the way to New Zealand and we lost touch.
I wasn’t even sure what I was going to write about this evening, but I did want to tell this story. The most honest version of this story that I have ever told. It’s been ten years now since that day. The only bad feelings I have about that day is the guilt I feel for how I handled things in the years that followed. And that guilt has nearly subsided now.
It wasn’t on my mind four years ago when I found myself unexpectedly falling in love, not again, but truly falling in love for the first time ever. A love that I still feel now, even two and half months after my divorce was finalized. I have such a long way to go before I can fully understand or move on, if ever. I just know that going forward I will be a slave to honesty. I won’t pretend to be okay for anyone else. I won’t soften or diminish what I am feeling and going through, nor will I exaggerate it for effect as I did in the past. I am going to experience every horrible second of this pain and process it openly and honestly as possible.
I have no idea what the end result will be. I know what I want it to be, but I have no idea how to make it happen and have even less faith that it should happen. Maybe I’ll just be heartbroken for the rest of my life. That does happen to people and I don’t think they are monsters. Maybe I’ll look back on all this with the same lightness that I can now look back on that Valentines Day from a decade ago with.
A few months after that Valentines Day break-up I had a nervous breakdown and was even hospitalized after a panic attack and an overdose of pain medication. The break-up itself didn’t actually have much influence on the myriad of serious mental health issues I was struggling with. No, it was a life long battle of depression, PTSD, childhood sexual abuse, and emergence of substance abuse as a coping mechanism in adolescence.
Then in my early 20s I experienced a further rough go of it with my troubles of not staying in college, my brother’s suicide, followed by the stroke and eventual death of my grandmother, the pressure of me suddenly having a burgeoning and successful career and having more disposable income and more temptation for self-medicating and taking self-destructive behaviors to their extreme.
I was able to understand very quickly in my recovery (which is still an ongoing process to this very day) that the V-Day break-up was a minor ordeal. I was infatuated with someone who was a bit out of my league. We had fun and brief affair. I started to develop more serious feelings, which she did not reciprocate and there were actually many signs of that being obvious which I ignored.
Moving into the latter half of my 20s my life changed in a lot of ways. I made new friends. Got more reconnected some of my family and hometown area, eventually moving back to get a sense of being grounded and supported. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, but it seemed to be a healthier path for the long term.
At that point I could look back on my dating history from age 18-25 and laugh. Sure I hurt some people along the way and others hurt me, but it was all a learning and growing process. There was nothing from that time period that I was still holding onto. I had never been healthy enough to make anything work before, so I didn’t feel so bad about the mistakes I had made back then.
Of course my love life remained rather stilted through the end of my twenties and as I mentioned before I had surrounded myself with new people, be they new friends, new co-workers, or even new family. On the whole I was certainly healthier in my late 20s but not without flaws by any means and still not able to fully acknowledge and be honest fully when it came to the mental health issues I was still dealing with.
As my search for a meaningful and long-lasting relationship continued I began to feel more and more insecure about my shortcomings and romantic history. I started to embellish the story of being dumped on Valentines Day. Exaggerating the level of passion and intimacy the relationship had. As a writer and a storyteller I knew it had weight. Just needed a few tweaks to be an epic tale of heartbreak and woe. I guess I figured it made me more sympathetic somehow, as if these people in my life now that cared about me didn’t already feel for me and sympathize. As if they wouldn’t understand if I just told them that my nervous breakdown had next to nothing to do with this break-up. That my continued struggles in life and in love were all my own.
Perhaps it was a way for me to channel all of my anger and frustration about the sum of everything I had gone through in my life. A scapegoat. Point it all toward this one hyperbolic story instead of acknowledge that I had then and still do now have a lot of issues that I struggle with daily. And the mental illness is not my fault, nor is it the fault of this poor woman that I once briefly dated who made an ill-advised decision to break-up with me on particular holiday that itself is an exaggeration. She was no villain. In fact she and I had reconciled as friends and she was supportive after I returned to my job. She eventually moved all the way to New Zealand and we lost touch.
I wasn’t even sure what I was going to write about this evening, but I did want to tell this story. The most honest version of this story that I have ever told. It’s been ten years now since that day. The only bad feelings I have about that day is the guilt I feel for how I handled things in the years that followed. And that guilt has nearly subsided now.
It wasn’t on my mind four years ago when I found myself unexpectedly falling in love, not again, but truly falling in love for the first time ever. A love that I still feel now, even two and half months after my divorce was finalized. I have such a long way to go before I can fully understand or move on, if ever. I just know that going forward I will be a slave to honesty. I won’t pretend to be okay for anyone else. I won’t soften or diminish what I am feeling and going through, nor will I exaggerate it for effect as I did in the past. I am going to experience every horrible second of this pain and process it openly and honestly as possible.
I have no idea what the end result will be. I know what I want it to be, but I have no idea how to make it happen and have even less faith that it should happen. Maybe I’ll just be heartbroken for the rest of my life. That does happen to people and I don’t think they are monsters. Maybe I’ll look back on all this with the same lightness that I can now look back on that Valentines Day from a decade ago with.
Comments
Post a Comment