I grew up the day I turned thirty. This is true. Up until then I had been an overgrown teenager, but I truly became an adult when I turned thirty. This, of course, I hate to admit. This, of course, I would rather not admit, especially since I had always thought of myself as having had a rather grown-up life. I will go even further and say that I was even slightly smug about how grown up my life had been. I had a baby when I was twenty. I decided not to stay with my baby’s father. I did the single mom thing. I got a boyfriend. A few years later I married the boyfriend. I decided I did not want to be married anymore. I left. Despite all this, I was still freakishly optimistic about life and men and relationships. I was still embarrassingly wide-eyed and hopeful. I still believed the world was mine to take and all its possibilities were there for me to discover. Then I got a new boyfriend. Then I turned thirty. All in the same year. And that was the year that I finally grew up.
The reason why I finally grew up was the fact that I suffered my first real heartbreak. Don’t get me wrong, I was never the cool vixen-type woman who wraps men around her fingers and is always in control of her emotions. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was always an emotional hazard, a victim of unrealistic ideals and an overzealous imagination. I was always one to surrender whole-heartedly to relationships. I always entered into one like it would be my last, from the guy who first kissed me to the guy I eventually did vow to make my last. I was always one to love completely, never holding anything back, and things have always struck me to the core. Curiously though, all my relationships naturally ran their course. Some more painfully (or painlessly) than others, but when they ended it was always because their time had run out. Or my time in them had run out. Whichever way, I was always pretty good at closure. At sorting out unfinished business. When things ended, they ended, and once an acceptable amount of time passed and tempers cooled and dust settled, I eagerly moved on. Too eagerly maybe.
My first real heartbreak was devastating. Nothing short of a nuclear disaster of the soul. It erased me off the face of my own planet. It was the first time that I did not get to choose the ending. It was the first time I was not allowed to wait it out. It started and then it was over – just like that. I was in a relationship with the love of my life and then I was not. End of story. And I had no say in it whatsoever.
In the attempt of trying to make sense of this experience which violently shattered my conceptions of love, relationship, and the pursuit of happiness I have decided to write. I decided to write because I need to know that it makes sense. I need to accept that it happened because it had to, because some things need so badly to happen to us that we cannot keep them from coming, even with all the positive thinking and upbeat attitude in the world. I need to believe that I did not cause this. That it wasn’t something I did, even if unconsciously. I need to believe that it was a wake-up call, a slap in the face, or something that I must have needed very very urgently for some reason, even if I don’t entirely understand what that reason is yet.