Heartbreak

I wish people would stop saying, “Everything happens for a reason. It’s for the best.” It’s categorically not for the best. Eventually time will ease the pain, the failure, but nothing will change the fact that I didn’t want this. I couldn’t imagine this happening. I’m embarrassed, ashamed, devastated…

You know when you’re driving to school or to work or to any place that you’ve been a million times and suddenly out of nowhere you realize that you’ve arrived but can’t remember the drive at all? We’ve all done it. The body goes into autopilot, muscle memory pushing you forward down a very familiar path. The same happened on my trip back to the East Coast.

It was five days of staring straight ahead, the road endlessly stretched out in between markers that seemed more real on a map than when driving through them. Gallup, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis then….home. It was five days of heartbreak, painful acceptance of blame, and regret.

Some people say they have no regrets. I am not one of those people. I have plenty of them but never has something left me this empty because I regret not MY unhappiness but that of the person who I loved. When you do something supremely stupid you feel bad because it hurts your family but their love is eternal and not only will they forgive you but they will try to support you. A relationship (she would want me to call it a domestic partnership) even one filled with love, is far more fragile than that.

My friends like to joke about how I think everything sucks, that I am always miserable, and I can’t have a good time. I wish there was no truth to the gag. Until I know how to make myself happy how can someone possibly be happy with me? I don’t have any answers and right now under a cloud of depression I’m having a hard time focusing on the future, just the sadness.

All of this depressing, desperate whining is the explanation for why this Adele song, which I heard probably 3092 times on the way home, is so powerful to me and came out at exactly the wrong time. Listening to any emotional song during a break-up is a bad idea, but this is striking because rather than an image of clothes strewn about on the ground outside, broken picture frames, and lots of heavy drinking, this song inspires just a deep longing for a return to the status quo. It is rationale anger and true sadness, not of HOW it ended but rather that it ended at all. Anyway, make fun of me if you like but each time this came on the radio the waterworks were soon to follow…