Another Reflection on Breaking-Up

It’s happening again.  One of my good friends is on the other end of a telephone call, holding back tears as she recounts the details of her recent break-up. She is a strong, fiercely independent woman, who has counseled and coached the rest of us through the emotional train wreck of many collective break-ups. 

Two years ago, she told me, “Maggi, when you end a relationship, you find yourself waking up every morning to a dull heart-ache perched upon your chest and you really, really believe your world is over.”

 You roll yourself out of bed anyway. You make the route cup of coffee.  You stumble into the shower and let the steam swell around you.  If you’re feeling especially lifeless, you drape your hair over your ears, so that the cascade of hot water makes a deep rushing sound, like being swept beneath the sea to a powerfully calm, fetal state of being, where the roar of running water drowns out all the piercing thoughts in your head.  You long to sink into this nothingness, this ocean of warmth.  But the wall clock ticks with impassive meter, telling you about the tasks of the day: papers to write, clients to meet, phone calls and e-mails, and laundry lists galore.  And you wonder:  Why does the mailman insist on coming, on showing up in such a regular way when my world is clearing collapsing? How dare the world keep on turning as if nothing as happened?

This painful awakening continues for some time, until one day, you slip out of bed and feel surprisingly light again.  There is that old-time, childhood spring in your step, rediscovered like buried treasure.  You listen to the hiss and drip of coffee brewing and now, strangely alive to these ordinary sounds, you wonder how and when life began to percolate back into your soul.  You consult your heart for a moment: Dear heart, for how long have you been admitting these new shoots of life?  Wherever did you find the courage to open yourself even a crack?

I remember the first moment I felt myself coming back to life.  It was in a sudden fit of unexpected laughter.  One of my friends told a hilarious joke and I surprised myself with a laugh that shot straight from the core of my being. In fact, I remember thinking, This joy is more real, more original to my sense of self, than anything else.  You see, before Original Sin, there was Original Joy, and I am certain that no matter how tripped up we have become in our minds, our bodies have not forgotten this original joy of being.  It is stored in the secret folds of our flesh and will surge forth in a moment of laughter.

At first, I was startled by the sudden presence of joy.  Hadn’t every other morning been completely engulfed in a dreary, colorless fog?  I’ve often wondered if pregnant women have known a similar revelation.  For the first trimester there is nothing but morning sickness, weight gain, mood swings, and the happy assurance that there is a miracle growing in the center of it all.  Sure she believes the baby is there and developing alongside every ice cream-pickle craving, but this belief is nothing compared to the first kick.  Wham!  It becomes forcefully present.  It is then that a woman must revel in the intimate, physical knowledge that there is a life forming inside her, though it has been there for quite some time.

  I did not know how my heart would ever reach that place of healing, but the fact that this dear friend could so accurately name my morning despair, helped me to believe that the rest could be possible.  There might be some mysterious path out of our heartache, after all.  Maybe it’s not something I need to find, but something that will come and find me.  Father Time, the perennial healer.  So I just kept rolling out of bed, drudging forward and doing my best to reinvest in a world that had tragically lost its color.

My friend was right.  Although, it took an unbearably long time for color to return to my life, it did come back.  I got to join the ranks of my wise friends, who all bore the break-up survival badge. We get to wax all kinds of experienced prosaic about the agonies and the ecstasies of our past relationships.  We poke fun and laugh at our former selves, the desperate things we did to hold our love dynasty together, when it was clearly cracking like china.  All of this we survey as if from a great distance, with steady voices and impeccable self-possession. 

And so this friend of mine entered her latest relationship with the grace and self-knowledge of a young woman who had garnered insight from all her past loves and heart-aches.  She was, in short, a champion in the affairs of the heart. 

The paradox, however, was this:  as a truly enlightened champion of the heart, she knew that in order to be in her new relationship she would actually have to give something of herself once more.  Were she to remain detached and objective about the relationship, she wouldn’t really be vulnerable enough to step inside it.  And so she did what every courageous person does when love beckons: she cast off her robes of experience and waded naked as a child into the exhilarating waters of new intimacy.

Nothing can take away from the beauty of that surrender.  But the currents changed anyway, as they are known to do, and the wisdom that bore her to this relational sea also left her vulnerable to it’s violent tossings.  The relationship ended.

Why after all this personal growth do we find ourselves dragged back, war-torn and disheveled to the same place of mourning? Our wisdom does not grant us immunity from suffering, it just sends us right back through the ringer!  And we are humbled, perhaps even humiliated, to be here, again, nearly immobile on the flat of our backs, staring up at a bedroom ceiling, wondering if the snap and color of life will come back this time.  Yes, it returned before.  But that was then, and this pain has only the urgency of now.  A writhing present you cannot dispel, no matter how much you “know better.”

After flailing about and pushing every limb against these currents, she will eventually exhaust herself.  And in a way, that’s exactly what a girl needs - the permission to thrash about in tears for a while before she is completely spent, and able to give herself over to the enfolding depths. 

Every experienced ocean swimmer or surfer will tell you that the best place to visit in the churning of a violent sea is the ocean floor.  Swim deeper and you will find a place of roaring calm.  Relax and trust that these waters will bear you back up again, to dazzle in the sun, with beads of wisdom still sliding down your back.

You may think that this “friend of mine” is really just a fantastically covert alias for myself.  It’s not, I assure you.  But it might as well be, because if we are really honest with ourselves we must admit to the full tug of our own humanity, of our ability to enter freely into love’s tide, and to be spit ruthlessly back out again.  This could be any of us. None are immune, no matter our age or experience, so long as we possess that great longing to engage and the even greater courage to undress.

 It’s not just that way with lovers; it’s with all things, people and causes in this world that we are so bold to give our hearts to.   And so I say to my dear friend and my own heart: love is our birthright, our dignity and our strength.  It crashes again and again.  And every braking wave performs something essential.  It declares the wild beauty of a heart, which has allowed itself to be lifted up and ruptured by love.

-Maggi Van Dorn, July 2009