It’s been three months since my breakup. That’s twelve weeks, 90 days, and 2,190 hours of heartache and healing.
To mark the occasion, I’ve decided to give you a glimpse inside my post-breakup brain. If you, like me, are prone to should-ing all over yourself - that is to say, you think you should be happier/less snotty/over it by now - then I hope this insight into my own experience goes some way towards solidifying the sentiment you’re probably tired of hearing by now. Healing isn’t linear.
Flip-flopping from misery to gratitude, despair to hope, loneliness to joy all in the space of a single day was and still is par for the course. My breakup has felt about as unruly and unpredictable as a rollercoaster ride though with fewer thrills, lots less fun, and no operator to throw on the brakes when I've had enough. Multiple and conflicting forces coexist and, even when it feels like my body can’t possibly withstand any more Gs, there comes another loop-the-loop. It’s exhausting, to tell you the truth.
But then something funny starts to happen. You realise it’s been a whole hour since you thought of them. Perhaps you let out a laugh or found yourself grinning at a TikTok of a dog wearing a hat. Maybe you even made it through a whole conversation without getting distracted (was that person over there wearing the same brand of aftershave as my ex and ohmygod I miss him so much and maybe I should call him and wait, what was my friend saying? Crap, I better just smile and nod.)