On Heartbreak.
““You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” ”
I open the freezer to get some ice for a glass of water and stop. I’m paralyzed. My eyes are suddenly wide, and my breath quickly becomes shallow. I halt, dead in my tracks, as my gaze fixates on the top shelf. I feel my right hand on the handle of the door start to clench, the grip becoming tighter, and my knuckles turning white. A warm, salty tear forms at the corners of my eyes as my throat constricts, and I don’t close the door as I should. “You should close the door, Amanda,” I think to myself. But I can’t. Just like the contents of the freezer that I stand in front of, I’m frozen.
The salmon. It’s on the top shelf.
I bought the salmon on a Wednesday a few weeks prior, so we could cook it over the weekend, together. It went into the freezer on Friday, two days after I bought it. It all happened so fast.
We loved cooking together, you know. We cooked often. Living in Hawaii, fish is a pretty standard staple. We had perfected it, since it so often made its way into the rotation. Salmon, Halibut, Ahi, Ono, Mahi Mahi and the oh so underrated Mung Chong. BBQed. Baked with a ton of citrus and herbs. Ceviche. Oh man, all the ceviche. We went through a serious ceviche phase. Regardless of the fish or choice of cooking it—there was always tons of garlic. He loved garlic. He would eat it raw. “Good for you,” he would say.
It really wasn’t supposed to be frozen, the salmon on the top shelf. It was supposed to be eaten around his big teak table with hungry teenage boys inhaling and barely chewing—alternating between fish and rice like every ravenous, pubescent boy on Kauai does. We would make eye contact and smirk when something funny was said. He’d thank me for all the help and nailing it with the fish, yet again. The salmon would be enjoyed in his lively household of him and those teenage boys, their constant coming and going—an environment I had grown to enjoy.
But now the salmon is frozen.
I bolted for the mainland on Friday night, and I left the salmon to freeze. When I tossed it in the freezer, I hoped I’d forget about it when I returned. In all actuality, I had really wished I could forget about him too. Erase the relationship in its entirety, forget it happened, take the easy way out. The salmon could go in the trash can, along with the connection that slowly unfolded and dismantled before I could blink.
Every time I open the freezer, I can’t look at it after the initial staring contest that stopped me dead in my tracks. It reminds me of why it’s sitting in the freezer to begin with. A frozen piece of ocean flesh glaring at me, a reminder that he’s gone. I can’t just get an ice cube. I get an ice cube and feel the void. The empty space that he occupied, the place where we had integrated and weaved our lives together. Now that container within my days he occupied is just a vast, empty room of nothingness. I feel it, the cold of the freezer, the emptiness-- it moves to the pit of my chest. I can feel my body want to crumble. I can feel the grief. It sends the message, “Be afraid. You’re alone.”
These small reminders, they happen often in the wake of relationships ending. The moving through the hard and heavy part, where our culture encourages women to gorge on pints of Ben and Jerry’s. Isolate. Cry it out. Gather your army of girlfriends you can cry on the phone to. Let the mascara run down your face. Fall apart. The period of time where the wound is fresh, where even the smallest thing or instance can become a reminder of the pain, and in turn the void that lays beneath.
“Do you want me to drop off your bike?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I can’t even handle the idea of looking at it.”
Now it’s the bike. The bike reminds me of him, too. He bought it for me as a birthday present and it made me giddy every time I rode it. We’d ride side by side down the middle of the road, weaving in and out of the lines and looking up to see the sun setting over the horizon. I had felt so lucky to live in a place where even the views of the neighborhood still hold boundless beauty and brilliance that takes my breath away. It had felt even more special to be shared. He would smile over at me, his blue eyes glimmering, cruising with his feet on the handlebars seemingly enamored with my ability to appreciate the smallest things. The moments I wished I could take a snap shot of—I’d be glowing as I soaked it all in. That glow would reverberate onto him, and he’d bask in it. My light, it was his light. Part of me thinks I gave too much of it away; didn’t keep enough for myself. He’d call me sunshine. “Keep shining!” he’d always say. But looking at the bike, the salmon-- brings darkness. I can be dark, too. And frankly, I don’t want to be reminded of someone who throws me into these feelings of darkness.
Heartbreak is no joke.
Colin was my first high school boyfriend. I recall counting the months of our togetherness on my fingers, one, two, three, and by the 3rd month, I knew. “We’re really going to make it.” I’d say to myself. “This is going to last forever.” He’d pick me up on the East Side of Ventura in his ’86 Suburban, and it would rumble down my street where the house I grew up in was planted. The purr of his engine was strong and mighty, and I’d sit and listen in the living room, waiting to hear it as it signaled his arrival. He’d politely knock on my door, say hello to my parents, because they required it of him. A formal gesture my Mom and Dad made clear from the beginning, an exchange telling them, “I got her. She’s presumably safe.”
I’d watch the forced conversation where my Mom would ask “How’s volleyball going?”, and I’d admire his natural charisma shine like light beams through his eyes as he engaged in small talk—and then we’d be off in our own little world of high school love. This bubble-like existence was small and complimented our even narrower view of how relationships functioned. Our hearts hadn’t been through the ringer yet. It was a place that hadn’t been touched by anyone else, no sense of jaded-ness, a blissfully ignorant cocoon we wrapped ourselves in. We’d drive up the windy foothills, up to his house overlooking Ventura on most nights during weekends. His street would be quiet, the dim light of the lampposts gleaming on his steep driveway, and the moon overlooking the ocean in the distance—a sign of our privileged, Ventura normalcy. We’d watch movies and talk of the future and I’d still hold onto my innocence with a tight grip. It was the first time I fell in love. Young love is beautiful, especially the inaugural version that doesn’t have any consequence. As far as I knew, it would be forever. The first time allows a no holds bar, and nothing will keep you from the impending end—and I’ll repeat it-- love hadn’t done its number on me yet.
A few weeks later, the reality sets in, as high school love does. Or at least my versions of it. Our teenage relationship involved a clumsy version of intimacy, where my teetering of desire to grow up was in conflict with wanting to stay a little girl. I was 15. I was a little girl. I wasn’t ready for the big stuff.
And so I held onto my innocence because I didn’t understand that love meant it had to be physical. All I knew was what I felt in my heart. What I felt in my heart was big for a 15 year old girl.
“I think I love you too much,” I said with fear in my voice.
“I think so too.”
Too big. Too much.
At 15 I was blindsided by my own empty optimism, digesting the reality that this idea of forever wasn’t real. I had watched too many chick flicks, devoured all the fairy tales, and ultimately witnessed my brother fall in love and marry his high school sweetheart-- his first. I thought that’s how the story went-- it was programmed for me to believe that the first time could very likely be the only time. This wasn’t the case. My story of romantic love didn’t end here, it was where it began. My path has been worlds apart from my teenage expectations.
The weeks following that first breakup, I’d avoid all the places we would frequent. I got rid of his favorite dress of mine. I’d avoid driving on Foothill. Any and all reminders of him and the relationship, I wanted to delete. Witnessing them was too painful.
It all sounds so familiar.
Avoid the thing that brings the pain, cover the eyes and try not to see the visions the memory is showing. The small things that sideswipe you, and the big ones that leave a dark, mucky residue. Experiencing the memories and the things that trigger them is a hard pill to swallow, because we have a knowing that there aren’t any more in the future. It’s the hardest part of coping with loss. The memory is all that’s left. The times are over before we are ready for them to be. Letting go before we are prepared to is one of the most difficult inevitabilities that life passes onto us. How do we look back on memories without longing for them? How do we look back and not wish the loss never existed, to wish those times of bliss didn’t have an end?
The answers are often the things that I don’t want to accept, the things I don’t want to hear. Whatever is wrong, whatever longing I’ve held, it has one simple answer.
Time.
When he and I first met, I was a little shocked to find out we lived so close together. As in, down the street. We could call each other neighbors if we really wanted to. We joked about getting walkie talkies, for both the apocalypse and nostalgia for our childhoods. The unfortunate thing about the close proximity is how much more difficult it made navigating an already fragile time. I felt claustrophobic when we broke up, but simultaneously grasping to be surrounded; not wanting to see him but desperately wanting to. It was a constant push-pull of my wise mind wanting distance and my wounded mind wishing it could undo the ending. Our cars would pass one another, I ran into him at the grocery store—and each and every time it felt like I was back to square one with healing. It felt like a burden.
I still never stopped running by the entrance to where he lived a few times a week, and each time I’d find myself holding my breath. “If I do this enough,” I’d tell myself, “then one day, it won’t matter.”
Yesterday I laced up my running shoes, walked to the end of the cul-de-sac where I live and started to jog when I hit the main road. I turned the corner, focusing on the music as it began to build and passed his complex, barely thinking about it until I came up on the driveway. I looked to my left and observed the entrace, re-playing all the times in my head I made a 2nd right turn down his street, and it had felt like a million years had passed. If I had turned, it would be as if I was re-living a snippet of a place and time in my life, with him, that now felt foreign. Imagining a simple turn down a quiet street that actually represented something so much greater. It represented a chapter in my story that I have been closing. I kept going straight, and realized I had no desire to go back to that time. A new chapter has really already begun. As I fell into my pace, and my breathing held a steady, elevated rhythm, I thought about how we weave in and out of one another’s life, like a beautiful tapestry of thoughts and memories and how colorful or dark we can make can them. We choose.
I choose to see in the full spectrum of color. Time allowed me to eliminate the greys and blacks. Now all I see is vibrant color.
I thanked him, I thanked Colin, I thanked them all for the memories and times of closeness. It has made my story that much more interesting, more full of wisdom, a deeper knowing of myself and a mentality that refuses to settle. The nooks and crannies, the dark and the light, the highs and lows has ultimately created an immeasurably more vibrant path; all thanks to those I’ve been lucky to have been in relationship with.
How we can go through the entire process-- from grief to neutrality to acceptance to admiration is nothing short of miraculous. How colorful these emotions are, how beautiful they are to be felt. The only way we can do that is through time and compassion for ourselves and another. It takes time to move forward. It takes time to alchemize our pain. It takes time and perspective to move through it. It takes time to appreciate the memories without longing for them.
When you’re in the trenches of heartache, it can quite literally feel like you’re going to die of it. But eventually, the memories and the feelings slowly evolve to detachment. Where you can casually remember something, and marvel at its beauty, appreciate what it did for us in the moment, the joy and then let it go. The absence of joy from one person does not mean that there is no joy left to be felt in the future. Sure, maybe there won’t be joy derived or shared from that particular person, but the space that person left by leaving, will make room for more joys. More love. More relationships. How fruitful the learning can be. How exciting it is to watch our stories unfold.
I finally took the salmon out of the freezer last night. I set it on the cutting board, and frost had formed on the outside. I wiped it off and examined it. I felt indifference--it was just a piece of fish. It was as if I was neutral, not on either side of the spectrum. No gnawing, no longing. I felt the separation, the autonomy looking down at these frozen contents, as bizarre as that sounds. But that’s where I am in my process. I’ll eat the damn salmon.
I took my knife and sliced through the plastic covering, and I thought about those gut-wrenching thoughts that said, “be afraid, you’re alone”. I shook my head. Giggled even. How untrue they really are. While the uncertainty and emptiness I had felt was real, and it still comes to visit-- the being alone is not a thing to be frightened of. It’s where the lessons live, where the colors exist. As author Glennon Doyle said, “First the pain, then the waiting, then the rising.”
The salmon. It tasted better than it would have cooking it for him. It’s all for me. I closed my eyes as I took the first bite, experiencing the rich, fatty ocean flesh as it melted like butter in my mouth and see nothing but color. Bright, bold, pigmented color. The grey is gone and there’s really nothing to be scared of.