Set a timer -- and other things you need to hear after a breakup
I remember this time in middle school when a group of us were at a co-ed dance party at a local country club. With finger food, glitter eyeliner and ill-fitting jeans abounding, the most memorable part of the evening, sound-tracked by the ’90s pop music blaring in the background, was the tumultuous breakup of one of the school’s longest standing couples.
This couple had become an institution at Kings Mountain Middle School — a relationship of consistency, a union you could count on, until suddenly, you couldn’t. We all spent our night dabbing the corners of our seventh grade eyes over the reality that love can come and go.
So often as adults we think of breakups a lot like that, this melodramatic display of juvenile emotions, like Ty throwing Elton’s photos and mixtape onto the gas logs of Cher’s Beverly Hills mansion in “Clueless”. We avoid things that remind us of the other person, often hanging on and salvaging a friendship just to save ourselves the sting of separation.
Breaking up is hard to do.
What happens when you’ve been together for years, when you’re married, you have kids or your lives are simply so deeply intertwined that you can’t make your way around the city, or even your house, without thinking of what once was and what might have been?
I wrote an article recently about the awful scandal that was Jesse Lacey of Brand New, but before this whole thing came to light, they were one of my absolute favorites. Their UVA show back in 2006 was when my then-boyfriend-and-now-ex-husband and I first held hands in public. (It was a big deal, okay?) It was over their music that we bonded and sang loudly and it was their music, the song “Play Crack the Sky,” specifically, that played on repeat as I lamented my divorce, aka grown-up breakup.
Not long afterward our divorce, they came through town and all my friends were going and pleaded with me to join. “It’ll be great for you!” they said, but I couldn’t do it. I was well aware of my mental and emotional capacity and knew that if I went I would disappear into a puddle on the floor and would be a bigger mess than anyone wanted to clean. I just wasn’t ready.
The memory of other things my ex and I did together would send me over the edge, too. One summer evening, just after our separation, I was working a bartending shift and the sun began to beautifully set, the blues of the day turning into oranges and yellows and I was viscerally reminded of our summer nights as a family catching fireflies on the hill across the street from our house.
If I couldn’t handle a daily occurrence like the sun going down, how the hell was I going to get on with my life?
For a while, I didn’t. I was a mess. I was depressed. I was Britney circa 2007. And through all of it, my life kept moving and so did I.
So, when you break up and you can’t go to that restaurant anymore or listen to that song or celebrate that holiday in that way like the two of you used to, what do you do?
You move on. You have to. You don’t have a choice.
You show up. You boldly take yourself to dinner there and grab a seat at the bar. Alone. You play the song on repeat and feel all your feelings until there is nothing left. You find new traditions and then you realize that you broke up for a reason, whether it was your decision or not.
The world, quite unfortunately, cannot cater to your breakup. Restaurants don’t close their doors. Musicians don’t stop touring. Christmas will be right back at your door every single year.
For my last breakup, for instance, I gave myself a finite amount of time to feel my feelings. I set a timer and told myself to get it all out. And then the timer went off and, in the words of my dad, I “dried it up” and walked right into my office to begin my graduate admissions portfolio. I didn’t deny the fact that I had feelings – I just didn’t let myself stay there and forget that the world outside, with all its possibilities, would continue to spin.
Use your breakup as a springboard into a new life. Set a timer then start something new.
Make some changes. Grow from what went poorly and celebrate what went well. Trust yourself and your journey and believe me, honey, you’re going to be okay.
Photos: Johnny Lail/Flickr
This story was originally published February 11, 2018 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Set a timer -- and other things you need to hear after a breakup."