A First Hand Lonely
My attempt at the breakup essay.
Also you’re not losing it. If this appeared, disappeared and reappeared in your inbox that’s because I hit a button too quickly!
Time is a prison.
As more of it passes and in turn ages me, I feel assured of it. To be clear, the actual existence of time isn’t up for debate. It’s happening, this isn’t the new flat earth scheme. The purpose and means at which we track the passage of time is where the holding cell lies. Time is political, from the calendar we use (Gregorian named after the Pope who instituted the switch) to the length of the standard work day/week (shaped largely by militant labor organizing) or the existence of daylight savings time (and those who wish to abolish it), how we’re allowed to reconcile with time matters. We tend not to concern ourselves with it’s workings in the macro, our overlords don’t allow us such luxuries so instead, we expose our anxieties about time in the minutiae. The humdrum of our daily lives and who occupies that space with us.
When we partner and/or commune, time becomes infinitely more important than it had been previously. We yearn for more of it with our crushes, we hit snooze with gumption for that precious “five more minutes” in bed with our companion(s), opine with friends over the agonizing question of whether we’ll still love each other a decade from now. Time is a force we yield to the confines of whether we want to or not.
Accepting this challenges the way we cling to days, weeks, months and years that ultimately, pass independent of our need to notate it. Considering it this way makes the standard mm/dd/yy format emotionally obsolete for me. We exist within time because it’s always happening meaning there have to be better ways to punctuate what about it matters to us.
When relationships end we fixate on time with little difficulty, in fact, its the fulcrum of most post-breakup analysis and bereavement.
“I gave her 3 years of my life!”
“Can’t believe I’m getting divorced at forty, he got some of my best years.”
“Best friends since elementary school, now they’re like strangers.”
Capitalism is a greedy bitch. The more leisure time was encroached upon by the establishment, the more we began to hold the remaining time (and who it’s exchanged with), in a strangle. It’s the perfect outcome for capitalism. You make the people work more and more until they believe all time is money and thus introduce productivity and optimization metrics into their leisure time, further enforcing the demands of the system fucking them to begin with. Evil. Genius.
In turn, every year carries a toll like dogearing a book, it can only be smoothed over in hindsight when you can plainly see the damage done.
When asked how long we’d been together, I became more esoteric as I realized I didn’t think about the years often but rather, the times. I watched six years pass next to my ex and depending on the day it only took a fortnight or stuttered along like dog years; sometimes, I was unsure of how much time had passed because I only stored bits and pieces of it. These events and feelings that transpired in an attention seeking way, the easiest to remember. My responses grew more colorful over time.
“He’s gone from a novice to expert in chastity.”
“Innumerable amounts of kisses against walls because I’m too impatient to wait.”
“Tens of pounds of home cooked meals and desserts.”
It’s an acrid yet romantic way to describe 6 1⁄2 years. The edge of my twenties, the earliest of his thirties and countless hours reveling in that very fact. We had the kind of thing that shouldn’t have worked from the beginning, making every day together feel like an accomplishment in itself. One day you’re bouncing along the tightrope and the next, yearning for it as you grasp at air in a catastrophic descent. I couldn’t possible tell you what those years were independently, they existed in hoards scattered across the smudged map of Us.
Years One & Two were the Early Recovery1 days.
Years Three & Four were the Cautiously Optimistic2 days.
Years Five & Six were the Continuous Eulogizing3 days.
Phases, eras if you will that colored birthdays and anniversaries and health problems and the agitation of a shit day that got a little bit better because you like em funny with a constant supply of so bad, it’s good jokes.
For months I’ve longed to write about this, in true artiste (barf) fashion, I expected this ache, one that swells at night between cold sheets only to disappear at dawn’s turn, to motivate poetry out of me. A viral mini-docuseries exploring the science of heartbreak and its solutions. Hell, a trembling mixtape of me covering love songs would suffice. In my younger days, I could recall, dissect and interpret a breakup with the quickness of a computer. The gross and awkwardly large feelings would compel me to action with no extra provocation required. Be it the songs or poems or short stories, my reservoir of emotion demanded release in a way I could channel and shape. I hadn’t known my ability to do so wasn’t bottomless. So much for the perfect heartbreak essay.
My silence about the breakup and by proxy, relationship was solely informed by my inability to say much of anything. I couldn’t describe things I hadn’t felt before and much to my surprise, this breakup was more emotionally vast than most others for so many reasons that I couldn’t list.
For a long time all I could say was simply “I almost married him, we were almost married.”
I wanted to say more, I needed to say more but it became evident that I had limited control over whether that would happen. Once I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror while saying it, eyes too big, carrying the maternal inheritance that is my pout. My animated side profile reminded me of the funhouse mirrors that bounce and contort with movement and it perfectly encapsulated what I was going through.
The rococo language I used to deploy escaped me because for the first time, my feelings were more complicated than the words I had for them. It took me acknowledging this complexity to find words for it, however paltry compared to my usual musings.
“I still love him, probably always will a little.”
“So glad we didn’t live together, it would have made this a nightmare.”
“He was painfully shy about PDA which always tickled me considering how fucking kinky we were.”
“A technophobe in NetSec, I mean our relationship was one of the only reasons he had a smartphone. I refused to text without memes.”
“I loved cooking for us because I could make anything I wanted, he wasn’t a picky eater.”
“I carved a hole inside of me and built us a lush world to exist in together and now I don’t know how to destroy it.”
“I hated arguing with him because he’s nowhere near as mean as me when he’s angry like I was a cunt, he deserved it though!”
“A communist who could fix the wifi, build me things and was a phenomenal group sex partner, when is that coming around again?”
“This was supposed to be my first divorce, I’d be such a hot divorcee. *smacks teeth* Shame.”
I’ve realized over the last seven months that this breakup would serve as a reference for more than itself. Leaving my fiance didn’t change me but rather occurred sometime around other changes I hadn’t yet catalogued consciously. My reconciliation with major life events looks quieter because shouting into the ether isn’t very restorative for me anymore. Making my life look as messy as I felt wasn’t appealing because the mess I realized, was a beacon begging people to see what about it was messy so they’d tell me how to fix it. Fleabag’s confessional was more relatable than I could appreciate younger.
To intellectualize it for a second, one of the reasons I can move through loss this way is because I have no aspirations toward children and marrying for me is more of a pragmatic endeavor (and cheeky indulgence cause I genuinely believe I was born to divorce) than a romantic one. Long ago, I realized that self actualization as an adult revolves entirely around what (capitalism) and who (still capitalism plus cisheteropatriarchy) you own. An adulthood purposefully void of children and spouses who’d demand we live together (I don’t abide by single home cohabitation), is hard to build in a world intent on punishing us for it.
The plight of single adults is well documented, mostly because we complain about how unsustainable singlehood is long term, by design. Across the web you’ll find many a blog4 or forum offering a soapbox to discuss all the ways our lives get fucked because we’re the only taxable laborers the government can count on in our homes. The most troublesome ways singlism appears refuse to go away unless you’re the right kind of partnered (married) and/or have children.
The sociopolitical lack of tolerance for people who imagine a life void of the nuclear family, is in part one of the reasons people cling onto relationships5, it’s expensive when the government hates you. And if you’ve been single for any number of time then you know our mixed circles with married couples and parents, remind us how vacant they view our lives without “the things” so to speak. Breakups are further complicated by the fact that sometimes, it’s a reminder that your friend seem to only see you, like really see you, when you’re partnered. As if this person offers a character reference for the quarterly friendship review.
There’s a real piece in there about the insidiousness of relationship maintenance and formation in a world obsessed with the nuclear family and friends who can’t seem to see or care to repel its shortcomings. That’s not this piece. All I’ll offer is, support I tend to get from my married or parent friends post breakup is reliably the most present they’ll be until there’s someone else I can bring around. The rally in part serves them, the victors of love getting to bestow “wisdom” on the lowly gal who refuses to settle down before bringing home your tale as a cautionary bit of gossip to share with their spouse because when they married, it meant you were forced to forfeit real privacy.
Being the last one standing single means saying goodbye to depth in a large sum of your friendships and saying hello to a depressing amount of solo activities. The post split lonely tends to linger because there’s only you and the four walls shared history weighs down to watch you wallow. At some point, you just resign yourself to feeling it all alone, so I did.
I listened to the greatest breakup albums. I masturbated more. I started and stopped knitting again. I read and wrote and hated and loved it all. I missed him, god I missed him with a depth of feeling that felt like self-betrayal considering I delivered the death blow to our future together. I slept both too much and too little… often. I created despite, in spite maybe. The time passed and still, I moved with it.
It’s over. Our paths have diverged in ways that make sense even on days the lonely tries to convince me it was all a mistake. And as more time passes, I find myself grateful I spent the years that were rolling by anyway with someone who made it’s passing more rich. I’ve never been the kind to regret a relationship because it feels like rejecting all the things that make me want to track time at all. The memories and experiences and unforgettable nights and more importantly, the Nia who relished in them, moved through them with an indulgent spirit, doesn’t deserve my regret.
The version of me that catalogued all of this wasn’t misguided or foolish. She was alive, so devastatingly and beautifully alive trying to make sense of a life we can’t foresee perhaps so we live it as we were meant to.
However we choose to (or not to) track time, the tale goes as follows: we meet, I hate him (typical), we become friends, we date and love each other, we get engaged, a week after getting fired meaning a week and four days after my birthday, I let him go. A sentence worth 6 1⁄2 years, and however more I choose to say about it won’t change that. I finally think that’s a good thing.
He’d never be comfortable with me “feeding his biometrics” to the internet or whatever6 so this pic is the best I could do. He approved it lol.
I felt nearly overwhelmed with love this day and I’m better for it.
Both he and I were in early recovery. I was 1 years sober when we met, he was 3 years sober.
After having succeeded in both maintaining sobriety and a level of transparency most couples are discouraged from, we began to plan long term events (grad school locales, homebuying efforts) with each other in mind. We got engaged and decided where we’d like to live post-grad.
As he found footing in his 30’s, a few priorities and desires changed in a way that threatened our compatibility greatly. In the midst of trying to reconcile with a huge impasse we also mourned the change (and potential loss) of our relationship.
Two of the most informative (and a little silly) ones: https://www.linklaters.com/en-us/insights/blogs/the-diversity-faculty-blog/2023/july/the-single-tax-in-the-workplace & https://www.unmarried.org/featured/structural-singlism-the-blatant-and-insidious-ways-it-undermines-our-lives/
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/financial-dependency-23percent-of-couples-stay-because-of-money.html
The whatever is in reference to the ever present surveillance state and all the ways we train it just existing online. I also happen to take this seriously, it’s just more fun to make fun of him for it. Sue me!
As someone who is constantly pondering about the archiving of time and is very resentful of the various dimensions of the single tax, I appreciate you sharing this fantastic piece so much. Hoping life, joy and peace for you 💗
I teared up reading this. I felt the love you both have for each other. Sending you love for this new passage of time