Ok, so twelve days out and I’m doing alright.
I won’t lie, the first week was probably the roughest week of my life. Being heartbroken actually f*cking sucks. In the first three days, I slept no more than four and a half hours… not per night, all together. I couldn’t hold any food down, my appetite was gone; I had to eat at least a little bit but when I ate anything I immediately felt the most intense nausea ever. The city felt cold and quiet, even though it was 60 degrees (in December), it was raining thought, which validated my feeling a little bit.
On top of all of that, it was also finals week. To be honest, that helped a little bit, having something else to pour myself into. I mean, it wasn’t enjoyable bawling while studying, but it was effective; I did pretty well on one of my finals (92% in Intro to International Affairs) and I don’t know the results of the others yet; they weren’t my best work, but I’m not a good test taker, especially when it comes to economics.
I had a lot of anger towards everything: myself, my professors, the weather, the city, my friends, but no one more than him. I tried hard not to be angry but couldn’t help it. One of my close friends told me “At least you can be mad at him, you weren’t so far gone.” And he’s right, but I’ve always been that way. My scapegoat for sadness is anger because it’s an easier emotion to feel. Everyone is angry at something or other, and there are a million things to be angry about that coincide with sadness, but anger on its own just feels like such an easier and less embarrassing emotion to feel openly than sadness. Sadness causes pity. Anger tells people to stay the f*ck away. I don’t deal with sadness well, so it mostly all turns into worthless, blinding, crippling rage.
The hardest part was hiding it, pretending like everything was normal when it was so not. I know I didn’t the best job at that part, most of my friends knew by the end of the first week and everyone was sympathetic. There’s nothing anyone could really have said to make me feel better, it was up to me to stand on my own. Slowly, by the end of the first week, I felt less angry, sadness idled, and eventually went away. I was back to smiling and laughing not because I had to as to throw the scent off my trail, but because I deserved to.
I can confidently say that I am standing on my own. I’ve learned that I fall in and out of love very quickly, and how could I not? There are so many things to love in this world, it’s so easy to find something lovable and I’d-die-for-able in everyone. I recently had a really interesting conversation about love, loss, and life with my friends and it was so cool to see how everyone views the world and the worth of all those things so differently. One of my friends when asked if he’d ever truly been in love said “I’ve definitely told people I’ve loved them before, but I don’t know that I really ever have. Love is just a mixture of chemicals in your brain.” And while that is true scientifically, that’s not all love is. Love is about the way you care for someone, the way that you feel around them, looking into someone’s eyes and seeing more than just irises and pupils, the way a presence can turn something ordinary into something extraordinary. It’s the gravity that pulls you towards someone, not only in moments of joy but also in darkness, when being there means everything. Love is about the courage to choose someone, not because you have to, but because you can’t, and don’t want to, imagine it any other way.
I fall in love quickly. I fall in love would people, with things, with stories, with places, with times, because how could I not?
I also fall out of love quickly. Not because the people, things, stories, places, or times are any less worthy of being loved, but simply because the world doesn’t work that way. If I could love all of those ideas and things equally and exuberantly forever, I totally would. However, Albert Einstein has this theory about energy: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed. When people use energy, it doesn’t disappear, but instead, it changes from one form of energy into another form.” Therefore, Einstein argues that we should conserve energy, because while there is a larger amount of energy in the universe than any human could fathom, it is limited. I feel the same way about love. You have so much love in you, more than you know or could ever know, but you can’t go on loving everything with all of your energy forever. Maybe one or two things you could, but holding onto things with so much vigor is tiring and can sometimes suck more life out of you than it brings to you.
That’s where the different forms of energy come in, and for this specific type of energy (love), there are a million different forms. There’s how you love your parents, how you love a birthday gift someone put a lot of thought into for you, there’s the love of a gift that you really wanted, there’s the love of your dog, there’s the love of education and intellectual curiosity, there’s the love of Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Great Expectations, and stories of the like, there’s the love of music that can vary from genre to genre, artist to artist, song to song. I could go on forever, but the point is, that you love all of these things differently, allocating different types of energy towards each thing.
Then there’s being in love, which is different from loving something. Being in love involves a lot more energy than loving something. I still think you can be in love with something, but not in the same power or energy that you can be in love with someone. Being in love is a tempest. Being in love is being consumed by a force that’s as exhilarating as it is terrifying as if your very being is entwined with theirs in some unbreakable way. I’ve been in love a lot, and I think many of you have too. People talk about being in love all the time because it’s fun and easy to do; you can never find the right words to describe how you’re feeling, but you know people know how you’re feeling because they’ve all been in love too.
Falling out of love is the opposite, kind of. People don’t talk about it as much because it’s difficult and a downer, but the people who do talk about it always come up with the right words, people never know because the feeling is so consuming and personal, you can’t imagine anyone has ever felt, is feeling, or will feel how you do. Ceasing to love someone or something may seem like echoes of the same ache, but they are different. To stop loving something is a gentle fading like watercolor paint being unevenly distributed in its puddle. It’s the way a favorite song loses its fervor after too many listens or the way a place that once felt alive and new grows quiet with familiarity. It’s a storm unraveling, the slow realization that what once electrified your soul now feels distant, hollow, and worst of all: different. I’ve never been one for change as we’ve discussed in my previous entries, but I’ve been doing better at accepting it. It never gets easier when falling out of love. It’s not easy to look at something that once made your head buzz, but now have your mind absent of laughter, quiet, indifferent. But that’s the change, while painful, allows you to move the f*ck on.
It takes a lot of energy, and a little bit of time, and lots of learning, to keep someone or something you were once in love with, and still love them. I’m learning still, and practicing how to do that, and I’m doing well. I know, and I’m going to give it more time, but I’m not angry anymore. I’m not sad, and I’m not waiting. Life is about loving and living as much as you can, and here’s just another photo in my album. I am in love with living life, and I hope that’s something I never fall out of love with because it’s so worth all the energy I put into it.
Peace and love, and healing,
Maddie
P.S. The title of this entry is a reference to a Queen song written by (my husband) Brian May and Tim Staffell for their band, Smile, before Freddie joined. The band consisted of Brian (guitarist), Roger (drummer), and Tim (bassist), so this was pre-John Deacon. It was written for a Smile album but was used for Queen’s debut album, Queen, which was released in 1973. However, this performance appears to be from their Earl’s Court (London) show in 1977 for their Day at the Races (1976) tour, judging by Freddie’s ballet outfit. The song has been on repeat for me for a while, and it’s my mom’s favorite! Enjoy!