Timeline of a Heartbreak

Day 1:

I got drunk last night hoping to forget your name. But even under the influence, it still tastes the same.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. They said that the morning after would feel like the calm after a storm, but baby I think the rain is just starting.

Day 2:

I cried on the way to work today. Maybe it’s because I listened to a Taylor Swift song that I dubbed ours once and realized that I will never get to dance to it with you. I haven’t eaten since Saturday and my body is starting to get used to this weird new normal.

I left work early because I couldn’t stand at the counter and smile at people and ask “how are you doing today?” Because when they said “good, you?” I knew they didn’t care, but I wanted to tell them anyway. “I’m hollow and I always thought I was made of saltwater. I know it’s true now because it hasn’t stopped pouring from my eyes since he told me he didn’t love me anymore.”

Day 3:

Today is a good day. The sun is a little brighter. I dreamed about you again last night, as I have for the last couple, but this time, waking up wasn’t as hard. I hope it stays like this. Bright. New. Exciting. I wrote a song about you, like I told you I would if you ever broke my heart. I dyed my hair brown because you liked it blonde. Is this falling apart or is it coming together? The jury is still out.

Day 4:

The first half of today was good. I danced in the shower to a song I never thought I would relate to. I made and kept down my lunch. But the latter half reminded me that I still care about you and that I wish so desperately that I didn’t. I made the mistake of asking our mutual friends what you have been up to and the answer wasn’t what I wanted. Truth be told, I don’t know what I wanted to hear. I think I just wanted to say your name out loud again.

Day 5:

I am a tsunami today. I have never been so drowned by my own rage. All I can think to say is “how dare you!” over and over and over. Any bitterness you have towards me is misplaced. You are the one who broke my heart. My trust. Wrung every ounce of grace out of my body. You are the one who let me go and I still had to be the one to rip myself away from you in my most vulnerable moment. The one to say “no”. You have no right to shame me. To hate me. To act like I took something from you. I didn’t even want it. But I knew I wanted you and so how, I ask, could I have differentiated between the two when my hands reached for your heart and found only the greasy scraps of your body that you offered? Love and war blinded me. And they both taste like gunpowder now.

Day 6:

I talk about you with anyone who will listen. It’s the only way I can sort out what is real and what is not. You loved me enough to chose me, but not enough to stay. I am still hurting. And I am still lying about it.

Day 7:

A full week has passed since you last spoke my name with love in your voice. I think, the scariest thing about losing you is how slowly it’s happening. I can’t recall how your laugh sounds. It’s kind of just a warbled mess in my head. I only remember the way you said my full name. “Julia Rose...”

I’d change my name if I could. Anything I can do to have it be mine again. Because I write it down so often and it’s always your voice that sings it.

Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia- fuck.

Day 8:

I realized that I still have a Pinterest board dedicated to you. I wonder when the color yellow will stop reminding me of you. Soon I hope, because yellow is in so many of the things I love. When will it feel warm again? When will everything yellow stop looking like caution tape?

Day 9:

I find myself wondering how long I’m going to feel the need to keep track of the days since you last said you loved me.

I made friends with my barista today, and we chatted about nothing in particular. It felt good to have someone know me without you. Without the burden of a heartbreak. To her, I am just a sweet girl with a kind smile and a bright laugh, ordering a latte with soy milk. I wonder when I’ll see myself like that again.

I started thinking about how much you used to love me while I was at work. How you would ask me to keep you accountable with homework. How you’d get so excited to see me. How you’d hug me tightly and bury your face between my neck and my shoulder. I miss the way you smell and I can’t even remember what that is anymore. When the hell am I going to stop missing who you used to be? Who I wish you still were? This feeling comes and goes. I’m so sick of the inconsistency. It’s like being in love with you all over again.

Day 10:

People tell me that you are an asshole. That you weren’t worth my time. They have been spewing the same venom that my bitter heart has: You are a heartbreaker. A liar. A cheater. Distant and cold and worthless. But why? I gave you my heart because I thought you could hold it. Is it my fault that I trusted you? Or is it yours for breaking that trust? Either way, I love and loved you. You aren’t a piece of shit. I wish it were that easy to rip you out of my life, violently and full of hatred. I see you with stars in my eyes, even now. The people who poison your name will only know the pain you caused me. They’ll never see the love you gave. God I wish I could be like them.

Day 11:

Someone is going love me again. Deeply and unconditionally. They’re going to hear love songs and think of me and smile. The notion of holding me forever will bring them a joy known only by few fortunate enough to get to love a wildfire woman like me. I am sorry that you let me go. Not sorry because I lost you, but sorry in fact, because you lost me.

Day 12:

I deleted your Pinterest board. There is freedom in the little things. I am slowly letting go of the person I knew. Both in myself, and in you.

When will you stop visiting me in my dreams and kissing me there like you haven’t already broken my heart enough while I’m conscious?

I saw you today. For maybe fifteen whole seconds but it was enough. Enough to remind me that I am still in love with you.

Shit.

Day 13:

Today is Valentine’s Day. I remember when we broke up, I said to you “oh man. We won’t get to celebrate Valentine’s Day together.” You seemed to actually find some sense of sadness in that. How much of that was acting for my benefit? As much as I wish my absence broke your heart, I don’t think you ever gave it to me completely.

There is a formal dinner at ACC tonight and I can’t help but wonder, if we were still together, would I be there with you now? I don’t like thinking about that. I’m not a necromancer. I can’t bring life back to something that you’ve killed. But I still think about it more often than I’d like.

Day 14:

Two weeks.

What hurts the most about losing you is losing our friendship. We’d always been very close and I miss the comfort of your conversation. I miss the way you used to smile at me when I said something clever. We sat once, awake still after late night turned to early morning hours and shared poetry and music that we’d written. I trusted you with pieces of my heart long before I was in love with you.

Falling in love was such a beautiful thing. Falling out of it is very strange. Both are beyond words. I’m unlearning who I was with you. Demolishing the future we’d made together. I can’t quite explain how I feel through all of this. Melancholic perhaps is the best way to describe it. I’m not sad necessarily. It’s just an odd air of faded memories that don’t even exist yet. Nostalgia for something far off. The breath in my lungs feels heavy. I inhale and I’m gripped by longing and loss. I exhale and all the weight of my fears and anxieties melt away. I repeat this process every few seconds and it’s exhausting.

Day 15:

Today is a new and beautiful day.

We talked on the phone last night for a very long time and I feel good. It started off tough. A challenge to tackle as we both fought with anger we have for one another. But the conversation quickly turned into apologies and sweetness. A familiar goofiness. An air of lightheartedness.

Maybe I am not in love with you after all. Maybe this is how we should have been all along. Love that is simple and holds no expectation. I love you. But maybe, for the first time, I am realizing how to do that in the right way.

I hope that this isn’t a lie that I’m telling myself to keep you close.

Day 17:

I forgot to write about you yesterday. I forgot about YOU yesterday. And for the first time in a long time, the space in my heart where you used to reside feels empty. I don’t know if I like that or not. Maybe I’d rather hold onto loss than have a void. But the realization that you didn’t come to mind, not even once, 16 days after you broke my heart, means that I am healing.

Day 19:

Another day where I didn’t feel the need to chronicle my heartbreak. Don’t get me wrong, it exists and it begs to be felt. But it also begs to be forgotten.

It dawned on me today that I am sorry and I was wrong and maybe you’ll never know that I am, but writing it down for myself might help. I told you that you didn’t love me, not really, if you were able to let me go so easily. But I am just one woman, with my own understanding of what love is. Love is something I’ve tried and tried again to explain. To put down in song. But my understanding of love is not the only one. Love is not methodical. Maybe you did love me, however much you were able to when you could and with whatever capacity you had in you to love. It wasn’t enough, but it was there.

Thank you.

Day 21:

I miss your family. That’s strange to think about, but I loved them like they were my own. I miss being sarcastic and stupid with your brother. I miss getting to know your sister. And I miss spending time with your parents. The familiarity and comfort of the life we could have built together is fading slower than my feelings for you have.

I thought we were fine lately but you seem to have gone cold again. Maybe I’m overthinking things, but maybe I should really just let you go fully. I thought maybe you wanted me in your life. You said you did. Was that another broken promise? Another lie? And truth be told, does it even matter? Why do I care so much?

Day 22:

Some days are better than others. I hope today is one of those. The feeling of missing you comes and goes, like the warm light of a lighthouse. Like the tide of a stormy sea.

Something inside of me has changed, and I’m telling you this because part of me blames you. Part of me thanks you. I am warm and kind and sweet and gentle. I was everything you needed, until you decided that you didn’t want it. Patience without boarders. Love without limits. For most of my life, I have navigated through seas of negative emotions and worked to maintain a tight grip on my anger and my sadness. I learned how to keep it at bay, because I needed to. I am the one who lightens the mood. Who keeps the peace. I am the grounded, level headed and fun young woman who makes everyone laugh and brings healing comfort with my optimistic smile. In our relationship, I took extreme care to keep those negative feelings far, far away from you. I was afraid that your own anger and anxiety and sadness would need extra care and there was no room for me to feel. No room to hold my own anxieties. I was too busy holding yours.

And then you broke my heart. And I was mad at you. And I finally was free of the restraint on my emotions. My hands were free to hold them all. I let the doors swing wide and the fire you set in my heart consumed me. You burned me. Bad. Until I was nothing but ashes and smoke. And that’s when I realized, I am a phoenix. A dragon.

I rose from that destruction with an anger in my blood that I’ve never known before. That I’ve never had the privilege to feel. And I think I like it. I am raging. My emotions feel like they’re under a microscope and I am proud to feel every single one. I used to never cry. But my sadness is deafening now. I weep when I need to, or even when I don’t. I was small and soft, even when I was wronged. But you broke that softness after you abused it time and time again and now I have talons and fangs, ugly and sharp, dripping with malice. Call me a monster if you want, but these scales are my armor now. No one is allowed to mistake my kindness and my softness for vulnerability. Those will always exist in me; I cannot allow myself to grow bitter and mean for the sake of a boy who doesn’t understand. My heart is filled to bursting with love and gentleness and compassion. No one is allowed to take those beautiful gifts from me. No one is allowed to abuse my trust. It is earned and I am going to make people fight for it. Castles have walls for a reason.

No one is allowed to break my heart again.

Day 23:

I almost wrote you a letter today and then I thought “fuck that” and watched The Vampire Diaries for three hours instead.

Day 24:

Here is an incomplete list of things you stole from me:

1. My heart. Granted, I gave that to you freely. I just wish I knew you wouldn’t want it for more than a few months. My body is not a rental. 2. 8am. The early morning hours when my phone would ring and it was you. Always you, waking me up for the day so that we could do our devotions together. Sometimes my body still stirs me awake and I’ll look at my phone. 8am. And I think, “he’s late”. But you don’t call anymore. So I roll back over and fall asleep but that leads me to my next item.

3. My dreams. You visit me there often. I stopped taking melatonin because I must have buried you so far in my subconscious that those drugs can drag you out. You’re kinder to me in my dreams. Can’t you love me less there too?

4. My trust. You said you would love me forever. You told me you wanted to marry me. How am I supposed to believe that again? God save the next man who tries to love me. He will be met with a stone wall wrapped in thorns and set on fire.

5. The color yellow. It’s your favorite and it should remind me of sunshine but instead it looks like lies now.

6. Ponytails. I have to wear my hair up for work but when I look in the mirror all I can hear is your stupid voice in my head. “You should wear your hair up more often. There’s just something about it...” I will. I will. I will. But not for you.

I am going to heal and no one gets to take that from me.

Day 25:

I remember back in April 2019, I wrote you a song. It was called “Since I Met You”. I’m listening to it while I’m at work and feeling nostalgic for the days when things were sweeter.

“I don’t have all the answers. Oh and I know you don’t expect me to. But I know everything is so much sweeter and softer since I met you.”

You aren’t that person anymore. I like to try and remember you that way, but it’s getting harder to. This is good.

Day 27:

I had a panic attack today when I remembered that I am no longer loved by you. I wanted to peel off all of my skin when I thought about how you used to hold me. I felt gross in my own body, remembering the night we broke up. I wanted to disappear. I simply wanted to stop existing. Ptsd is a bitch.

Day 29:

Today is the start of a new month. That means it’s been a full month already since you broke up with me. I am going into March with a fresh perspective. I am a whole person. A fully realized creation. And I am excited for what God has planned for me.

Day 36:

A week has passed since I last felt the need to chronicle my feelings about you and about my heartbreak. It doesn’t mean that I don’t still think about you. You’re on my mind at least once in each day that passes, but in small and infrequent ways.

I watched a video the other day about two toddlers and my first thought was to send it to you. My brain said “send this to him and tell him you hope our kids will be this cute”. I guess it’s taking a while for my heart to catch up to my head.

When I see pictures of you, my heart does this thing I can’t really describe. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s weird. It’s almost like it’s trying to leap out of my throat and back into your hands, as if it so desperately wants to rest there again. She is not as grounded as I am. I have to keep her locked in my rib cage. “Someday, Little Bird,” I sing to her, “you will be free again.”

Day 41:

Dear Former Love of My Life,

I cannot keep loving a ghost. The memory of you does not serve me well and it is more painful than fruitful to try and hold your hand. My heart is broken, even still, over a month since you left me, but I have stopped rubber-banding it together under the false hope of “eventually”. You see, “someday” and “eventually” are toxic to my growth. They are weeds in my garden of healing. The longer I love you, the deeper the roots of those weeds can grow.

I had to first process my sorrows. My rage. You’ve unlocked some unsavory emotions in me and I have had to really dig deep to work through those. I felt betrayed by you for a very long time. As I struggle currently in many aspects of my life, I feel very lost. Very much alone. And I had started to hate you and blame you for that. I sit in this empty apartment, no dresser, no keepsakes on the shelves, living out of a suitcase, half-packed and ready to run, and I want to cry to you at how damaged you left me. I remember laying in the guest bedroom at your parents house as you held me tightly in your arms. And I was weeping. And you were petting my hair and asking me what was wrong. And I told you that I was so tired. I was tired of being lost. Tired of floating. I confessed to you that I have been moving around for years and have had no where to call home for a very long time and I was just so sick of not being able to settle down and relax. And you held me tighter and you said that I would never have to feel that way again. “You have me now. You have my family. You have our home as your home. You will never have to feel like you’re floating again, if you stay here with me.”

But you let me go shortly after making that promise. That betrayal is the thing that has been the hardest to shake because I live every day with the reminder that I am still unsteady. Still floating. Still unable to relax. That reminder comes with a flashing neon sign that says “he is not here anymore”. “He left you”. “They will always leave you”. These are difficult words to be free from.

I am not done growing. I am not done healing. My heart is still in pieces, and I cut my hands a little every day as I hold them in my palms. So I am giving it to someone who is much stronger than I am. My heart is in the hands of the One who loves me the most. My God. My Father. My Jesus. My friend. He alone, has the capability to cradle my heart so tenderly and yet so fiercely. I will lean fully into Him. No more shotty, rubber band and paper clip fastenings. I can’t DIY a clean heart.

So this is my last entry to you. And like I said, this does not mean that I am better. This is a process that is as slow as it is painful. I am not ready to love again. If I felt the need to chronicle every day that I thought of you or that I hurt until the day that I become a woman ready for romance, I would be writing for a very long time. Truthfully, I do not know when that day will come, but it WILL come when God sees fit. I will hear songs that remind me of you. I will see your picture on mutual friends facebooks or snapchats. I will remember inside jokes and walk past places you’ve kissed me. I will wear that sweater you said you liked on me and I will remember, fondly, the days when I was the most beautiful woman in your eyes. You were a part of my life that I loved and I will always be thankful for the lessons I learned in loving you. You know how Marie Kondo says that if it doesn’t spark joy, let it go? She advises us to first look at that thing and thank it for the joy it provided us.

So, my dear, thank you. Thank you for teaching me better ways to stand up for myself. Thank you for holding my hand as I walked a difficult and unsteady road. Thank you for making me laugh until my stomach hurt. Thank you for listening to me weep and comforting me in those moments. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your fears with me. Thank you for kissing me in cars and coffee shops and on couches. Thank you for singing to me and letting me sing to you. I thought you were the love of my life. I expected to marry you someday. But that expectation is gone. And some days, I will still feel that glaring emptiness where you used to be, but they will pass and I will be better every day that is to come.

I love and loved you. Take care of yourself.

Be well.

-Julia Rose.