i know the end

you know, for a fixed motherfucker, you’d think i’d use the phrase “in transition” a lot less. turns out that mutability helps out mostly in the acceptance of change. and while most of my current lifestyle changes are of my own accord, some are not, and i have to deal with that too. this is going to be a far less formal essay/newsletter issue/email than my previous ones. simply because i am exhausted. and honestly? i’m drafting and there’s a ton of material, but i’m still processing through a lot of things. so you get this instead. because i need this for myself. feel free to listen to my melodramatic august playlist in the meantime, while reading this.

in many situations, i cling to my anger to shield me from facing my actual emotions— if i don’t straight out avoid the obvious. i often talk about the complexities of being in relation with others, but i don’t often talk about what happens afterwards. when flexibility and compromise aren’t options on the table. or what happens when someone makes the choice to walk away. or shit, this applies to job rejections, non-romantic relationships, and more! fuck, even your mortal enemy and you can have a fraught relationship and when they’re gone, you might miss them too. (toxic, i know, but i had to make a point) considering some of those transitions i’m going through are endings, i’ve been reflecting a lot about my actions in the past and how i’ve been coping with it this time around.

opening yourself up to relationship with others inevitably means opening yourself up to the pain and hurt that comes from complexity and misunderstanding. sometimes it stems from different desires and needs. being in loving relationship with others does not mean put them first, it means communicating and compromising. sometimes that also means accepting that the only choice is to let go.

it’s always painful and bittersweet but boy does it still hurt.

when i devoured david foster wallace in high school, a quote stuck with me. the way he described the process of release encapsulated the way i felt then.

i even wrote an entire post about it on my defunct domain. it was more about easily discarding material items and the difficulty i used to have letting go of the intangible. nowadays, the notion has evolved. the process of letting something go is excruciating and painful. but i have less qualms about holding on. i used to kick, scream and cry on my way out. and then i understood that none of that shit would change the other person’s mind. and in that instance, i was the toxic one in that relationship. my inability to let go had caused me to keep holding onto an idealised fantasy of it, before understanding that despite all the connection I felt… the other party didn’t have to reciprocate. it was selfish of younger me to throw a tantrum about not getting what i wanted, i was emotionally manipulative. it always comes from a place of rejection. as they say: hurt people hurt people. 🤦🏻‍♀️

after my triple direct pass of my Saturn return— i could feel myself reframing everything as my capacity for people, ideas, energy. not even from an emotional standpoint, but a physical one. i have even more limited resourcing than i did as a teenager, and therefore, when i put my ass deep in something, it’s my whole ass (not half.) i care more about my own health and sanity, and recently started a process of refinement and learning. and you know, years of therapy finally clicked.

unlearning and untangling myself from my little sappy, sentimental heart has been the biggest challenge. i think a lot about how media and society teaches children that love conquers all, and if you love something so much… nothing should stop you from getting it. i understand the desire for a happily ever after, but much of this romanticism is why partnerships inevitably fail. nothing is perfect. there is no happily ever after, and real relationships take work. (to be honest, the best ones feel effortless but take a shit ton of work!)

even to our best abilities, they fail. we inevitably end up becoming disappointed and disillusioned. we grow tired and spiteful.

i asked myself about one year into my relationship with my now-fiancé if love could be enough.

at the time, we were dealing with the inevitability of when my graduate school program ended— what came next for us? would our love be able to span time, distance and space so that we could be together? would our relationship, and the love we had for each other be enough?

enough for what? enough to sustain the partnership with two people, despite other circumstances. after almost 30 years of being alive, I’ve witnessed my own relationships grow and change. many fell apart, only a handful coming back together, cobbling itself into a new shape. some passed before i could get a chance to fully appreciate them. some disappeared into the ether, only remnants of them whispering in my ear every so often. i can tell you with confidence that love isn’t enough.

…which makes it inevitably more beautiful to treasure memories when they’re happening, because you don’t know when it’ll end. i deeply wish in every circumstance that love was enough. but sometimes it just isn’t. so i’ll take and cherish the moments we had together, but i can’t ignore why things splintered.

after growing a pair and due to my burgeoning curiosity (and ego,) i ended up having a brutally honest dialogue with an ex. over time, we’ve been able to salvage what love was left into a different shape: friendship. with enough distance from the dissolution, we were able to rationally chat about what went down and soothe any wounds that might have flared back up.

it is strange giving a former lover constructive criticism on your relationship, but it was also one of the most healing things i did for myself. (i would only recommend doing a post-mortem with someone you feel safe with— if it hurts too much, or if it was a toxic situation, please do not do this.) we placed emphasis on our vastly different styles of communication, and the amount of effort placed into our partnership between each person.

because of the barrier of communication and the boundaries i placed on our contact after the break-up, we were left to cope with it in our own ways. i try my best to honour the aftermath of goodbyes, because sometimes you don’t want to say them. my own traumas with abandonment aside, i think we avoid letting go because it’s unpleasant. humans fucking love to avoid shit, but especially uncomfortable stuff! (god knows that i do.)

maybe that’s what foster wallace meant when he said there were claw marks. we avoid so we don’t have to let go. if it wasn’t our decision, we can (to borrow from a young miss taylor swift) ask to remove ourselves from the narrative. if we pretend the circumstances don’t exist, we can live in our own delusion because it’s safer, right?

i wish that’s the way things could happen, but it’s unhealthy. and i wish i had a better answer for you, to address how to cope with such pain in the midst of it. but i don’t. because letting go will lead to grief. and grief is a god damn process.

i don’t have a definitive answer about how to deal with grief effectively. everyone is different. all i know is what works for me is to let my body feel it. i allow the pain to flow through and i accept it. i know that it hurts because i opened myself up to the possibility of it. no one enters something with the seemingly rosy outlook of either never getting hurt, or in contrast, inevitably succumbing to the doom of a broken heart. i think that would be masochistic and unrealistic.

when someone hurts you, it’s okay to ask for boundaries. i don’t think people do it purposefully. i’ve had to learn that it often doesn’t happen on purpose (if it is, that’s a fucking poisonous person, and good fuckin lord, get that person away from you) and often is subject to people’s needs and desires. and it’s okay to cut the other person off for self-preservation. this is where i’m at right now. allowing myself to heal with the help of my loved ones.

my friends tell me, often (and i agree) that it hurts so much because there was and is so much love there. honouring the love that is still there is the most precious thing about the process. it feels so visceral, the ache within my bones. but it’s there. like joni mitchell sang, they’re in my blood, like holy wine. it does taste bitter and sweet, because i was able to drink them in and now i’m (crudely) expelling them because it wasn’t something we could save.

and that’s okay.

the pain is temporary. it’s real and it sucks, but it’s temporary. and it just means that the love that was there was real.

i’ll remember it forever.