break ups and other viscera

I never thought I’d agree with anything that Neil Sedaka ever voiced in song, but in this one respect he is correct: breaking up is hard, so hard, to do.

Having made that stony blanket statement, now let me backtrack a bit. Breaking up, if you’ve fallen out of love, is not hard to do. Then, actually, it is remarkably easy. It’s like ripping a Band-Aid off a cut that’s healed and on a patch of skin without hair. Breaking up with someone with whom you’re now longer in love is, and forgive the extreme visceral metaphor here—and I warn you, it bears a kind of X-Games intestinal intensity—is like taking the perfect shit. When you no longer love someone, dumping that person has a kind of gliding excretory grace. It’s nearly pleasurable. And when it’s over, you clean yourself up a bit and all you feel is relief.

Not so when you break up with someone whom you still love. Then it’s kind of more like those medieval torture devices where they dragged your intestines out and wound them like yarn upon a spit. It’s a long, slow death, from what I’ve read, and you’re likely to pass out from the pain. As rococo as this image is, it’s also the most apt metaphor for what I’ve been enduring with Donny, my X, since last September when he messily told me that in fact, no, he wasn’t ready to marry me.

The upshot of all of this red, gooey gore is that I’m out here on the beach and I did not invite Donny. Rather, I invited a few other friends and a couple of them are joining me. We three girls will undoubtedly pillow fight vigorously while wearing pastel panties and twee tank tops, until we melt into a heap of tanned limbs and Sapphic intent. Actually, we won’t. But you’re free to let that sugarplum image dance in your collective heads if it pleases you.

And yet, even here on this little island with its sand and its chirruping birds and its crashing of the surf and its sun beaming in a charming, non-fatal way, I am enveloped in the emotional aspic that is the lingering break up. Donny, apparitional, haunts my thoughts, and as much as I want to exorcise him, I like him lingering, kind of like the rank, pink smell of flowers so past their prime that they approach the loam readiness of mulch.

I probably need a lover. I vacillate. I masturbate. Mostly, I masticate. Though I’m currently on a bender of beach waddling/wogging, an endeavor that seems to put a gentle kibosh on my cookie eating. I try to think of myself as incorporeal, which is difficult at the beach. There’s just so much skin-ness here. I’m brown as the proverbial beetle. My feet are so tan they look transplanted. I recognize that part of the process of this compulsive sun exposure (with sunscreen) and beach exercise has buried within it the attempt to reunite me with my own flesh. The break up took a physical toll, you see, and for many months I wanted to pretend I simply had no body, now that I had nobody.

It’s probably a good sign that I want to turn Donny into a ghost, that I want him to thaw, melt and resolve into a dew, because for many months I desperately wanted to be the ghost. This break up has been so very painful that I’ve had fantasies of simply vanishing. I’ve wanted to walk the streets invisible. I’ve pondered the glorious obscurity of the burka. I’ve wished that I could be as alone as a ghost, a solo shade flitting about the Hades of Manhattan. I’ve wanted, frankly, to cease to exist, but not, you know, in a permanent kind of way.

Last night I had a dream that I had succeeded, nearly. I dreamt that I’d taken some obscene overdose of Technicolor pills and that said dose had deposited me on death’s door. I felt this intense desire to just, finally, let go. But I didn’t. In my dream, I was revived, and then in a shocking turn of events that really happens most often only dreams, I was with Dustin Hoffman. I was interviewing him. He was looking at me peculiarly, and I explained what had happened with me the previous night: pills, color, desire, drifting, snapping back to life. He was solicitous.

And then he asked, “So I don’t suppose you would consider something casual, like a fling?” I considered it. I demurred. We continued talking, and Dustin morphed into a forty-ish Robert Redford. A while later I woke up.

What I make of all of this is that I’m fumbling through this break up. It’s not been easy because I loved Donny; I loved him enough to choose him as my husband. I remain hurt that he didn’t choose me, and I remain doubly hurt that it’s taken ten months for me to begin to realize that he isn’t the man I thought he was, that we are not in love any longer, and that I am ready to move on.

But something in my gut is telling me to accept all of that all of that gristly truth. Incredibly I’m almost listening.

Comments

[Jonsi]

Non-mutual breakups are like hell. You are sent there and Satan says welcome, and everyone is standing around knee deep in human excrement, but they are having conversations and sipping coffee and tea and eating cookies so you think, "I can do this. This isn't so bad, it's shitty, but it could be worse." But then after a few minutes a demon comes over with a whip and says "coffee break is over. Back to standing on your heads."

[jen]

It is freeing to be there. Oddly - knowing you only through your public writings - I feel a sense of pride for you.

I hope you are so enjoying your vacation. It sounds healthy and wonderful and cleansing and right where you need to be.

[Pete]

CG,
It sounds like you are moving on with your life and accepting reality.
Pete

[chelsea g]

Thanks,you all. Yeah, the pain. It is abating.

You help.

[Jami]

Big sandy, sunscreen-slippery hugs! Be well. (I want to be at the beach so badly I can't Stand it!)

[DogBreath]

This is a process for which there are no short cuts. There are the steps to self-realization, the taking off of the rose colored glasses, the seeing a truth that you don't want to be true. Congrats for getting on with it. And, I think Jonsi said it perfectly.
Dog

[alphagirl]

Yeah you! I am glad you are moving forward.

I have beach envy but am happy you are feeling more yourself and even a little at peace with it all.

alphagirl

[L&I]

Just read this quote: waves of grief erode sadness. Pretty nice.

[lyla]

It takes forever, but there is nothing to do but wait. To wait for the hubbub of irrationality and i-wish-i-wish to fade and for the acceptance and okay-feeling to tumble along. And waiting is excruciating, but at least you know you'll get there in the end.

Reading about your peculiar dreams and your post break up floundering, and mostly about your eventual strength - it picks me up and puts me back on my feet.

I hope you are enjoying the sunshine and sand between your toes, gorgeous.

lyla
x

[J.J.]

Pretty much what they all said but I have to throw my two cents in.

I'll start this comment by quoting you:

"as much as I want to exorcise him, I like him lingering, kind of like the rank, pink smell of flowers so past their prime that they approach the loam readiness of mulch."

Brilliant phrasing, and I think you nailed it. You've LIKED him lingering for a while now. I'm glad to hear that you've begun to feel ready to let him go at last, though. Like those flowers, if you hang onto it for too long and you aren't careful, a wonderful panopoly of insect life will begin to collect, attracted by the scent of rot and semi-sweet decay. But judging from the rest of your post, you don't need me to tell you that. You've figured it out for yourself.

Those of us currently rooting around in the mess of our own psyches are grateful, I think, to witness your own discovery of a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I hope I find Jennifer Garner at the end of mine, tho.... Dustin Hoffman's a nice enough guy, but he just ain't my type. :-)

They say healing from a long break up takes about a quarter of the time you put in together. It's a rule of thumb...or a fortune cookie message (10 15 23 35 41 55)- that's the full quote!
Another Pete

[G]

Power to ya, sister!

[Jonsi]

The amount of healing it takes depends not on how long you dated, but on the intensity of feelings, where you are at in your life and what else is going on, and what you are doing in life to help you heal. Sometimes people date a month, and it takes a year, when their previous relationship, they dated for a year, and are over it in a month. There is no timeline, but what does matter is whether you are doing healthy behaviors in that time.

[Mrs. Hall]

ya. There have been non mutual breakups that still get my panties in bunch even after I have been married for 7 years. non mutual break ups that occurred 12 years ago.

maybe it is part of that whole, freudian theory of the ego trying to resolve the situation by letting the grief play over and over again in heart and mind. Like, if we just feel or think about it one more time, this time we will get it right, and the engagement ring will magically appear.

And wouldn't be just so easy if we could say, fuck it, i'm outta here, then just be done with it.

But, I suppose, the more the feelings get played, the less intense they will become over time. All records wear out eventually.

Until then, maybe you should engage in some pillow fights.

Just a thought.

Much love,

Mrs. Hall

[nimue]

Sometimes it just feels incredibly unfair when they let go and you aren't ready to, but are forced to. It's no wonder the process feels so awkward. But you're managing, obviously. Well done.

[Tom]

Breaking up is only as difficult as the size of your expectations, many of which are unspoken. :0