My boyfriend ended things out of the blue. Here's what I learned about heartbreak and how to live
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Loading... - Miriam Schwarz
- 23 Jun 2022
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Whenever anyone tells me they’re going through a breakup, it makes me feel sick,” I told my dad, sitting in his kitchen one weekend, during a trip home to Leeds. “It takes me right back to how much he hurt me, like I’ve got PTSD or something. Do you ever get that?”
He shook his head. “I have to say, I’ve never been heartbroken.” I went to challenge him because, at first, this concept seemed impossible. But then I remembered my mum saying that he was a bit of a player once; that he had always been the one ending things. I thought about what that might mean. No bad haircuts or drunken phone calls. No walking through a world where everything reminds you of them, from the blue of your coffee cup matching their eyes to an advert for Jet2 bringing back memories of them wanting to go. No listening to Taylor Swift songs and finding it impossible to believe that she didn’t write them specifically for you. No thought games where you imagine everything you’d do to get them back: drink a cup of toilet water, cut everyone else out of your life, sit in a room with James Corden for an hour – except you wouldn’t think that, because it’s a joke, and you wouldn’t be making any of those.
I was 25 when my ex-boyfriend ended our five-year relationship. It was a normal evening; we’d just been for a pint with my brother, and as we set off for the tube, my ex pulled me aside and said, “I want to be on my own.” At first I thought he was joking, and then I thought he was telling me he was moving out of our flat. The idea of him actually leaving me felt like an impossibility.
When I saw he was serious, I didn’t know what to say, so I just said what a dumped person might come out with, which was: “You know that means you won’t get to see me any more?” He nodded, and I walked alone to the station, wondering if it might have been better to throw a drink over him the way they do on reality TV. I thought about ringing my parents, but what if he changed his mind and it was awkward the next time he came over for dinner? On the tube, I stared at a snotty-nosed kid opposite and a grey-haired man looking at the property section of a paper. I felt my life had just split into two: before this happened, and after it.
I cried so much I looked as if I had an eye infection. I wandered around the house in pyjamas
There’s no point in trying to describe the pain I felt when reality finally sank in, because even the best writers can’t do that. They begin the story once the characters have had a few weeks to settle, or they leave big gaps in the text that the reader fills in with their imagination. No words can grip on to it, everything slips off, turns pale. All I can tell you is what I did in response to that pain. That I cried so much I looked as if I had an eye infection. That I spent whole days watching things I wasn’t enjoying because the act of lifting my hand up to the keyboard to change the programme felt like too much effort. That I didn’t eat meals but staggered, zombified, to the fridge where I’d eat cold pasta straight from the Tupperware and glug a mouthful of apple juice, before finding another soft surface on which to think about all the things I did wrong. Read More...
