someonespsyche

[someonespsyche]

[someonespsyche]

[someonespsyche]

comet - reflections 3 days after my first breakup

a comet forms from debris in the outer solar system, far from the periphery of earth. but given ample time and guided by fate, they travel from the fringes of space into the canvas of the sky, a brief silver streak in a stargazer's eye.

meeting you was unanticipated, but more so was knowing you. we got close in a matter of hours, talking in that deserted club room until 5am. we sounded like bubbling laughter, unguarded secrets, and hearts poured out in the stale air of the dead of night.

you told me that your life's purpose was to help others, that you didn't care about yourself. but i'm a cynic and a skeptic. it was the first few hours i talked to you and i wasn't the type to believe what i heard. it seemed too good to be true. but after that conversation and the multiple late night conversations following, i realized that you weren't contriving anything at all. your outwards crassness and flippant attitude hid a heart of gold. you worked summer jobs to lighten the burden on your family, spent hours of your time to help others unprompted. when your mom asked me what i liked about you, that was the first thing i thought of: you were kind.

i ended up spending more time with you because i enjoyed your company. i had a small inkling that you wanted me, and a bit of guilt that by letting you tag along i was leading you on. but i couldnt help that i liked being around you, that times with you i was guaranteed to laugh, engross ourselves in deep conversation, or eat the best combination of food we could find.

at the time, i didn't see you in a romantic way, nor was i looking for a relationship. but you managed to convince me to go out with you. within the first two weeks, you made me think that was the best decision of my life. you were not only my dream partner, but my best friend. i have the diary entries from those days and i can honestly say they were some of the happiest days of my life. it was hard to find any faults with you, and even the small issues i saw seemed like scratches on the surface of a gold ingot.

you told me that you admired and respected me, that you thought i was strong. you said you thought i was special because i am the way i am despite my circumstances. you verbalized sentiments that i never thought i deserved to hear in my life, much less from someone i admired so much. but i will never hear those same words again, at least not from you. i wonder if time dulled the initial novelty or if you became disillusioned. i did warn you i was going to disappoint you if you thought of me so highly, but you didn't believe me. i was met with stinging reality that even gold tarnishes over time; it was inevitable you were going to lose your luster for me.

i didn't lose a boyfriend. i lost the one person who could know everything about me, would i knew would listen to everything i said with no judgement. and i'm now tasked with the sisyphean challenge of accepting that you're gone, and that somehow it's for my own good.

though you were everything to me, i wasn't to you. we broke up because you didn't want to fight for me, you just accepted you weren't good enough. whether this is selflessness or giving up, i will never know. i wanted to pull out all the times you said you'd always support me, be by my side if i needed anyone to talk to. but that would be unrealistic to set of anyone. nothing is absolute, and even the steadiest star burns out eventually in the cosmic landscape.

despite everything, i'm glad you happened to me. we weren't written in the stars, but you were a comet that brightened my night sky for a brief instant. and for that, i'm grateful.

(btw this doesn't represent my healed thoughts now!! this is very emotional post breakup 1am me writing. but putting this out there in hopes that someone can relate and they feel less alone. trust, you'll get through it :))

[someonespsyche]

absence - reflections a day after my first breakup

the presence of someone is easy to describe. he made boorish jokes, did things that hurt me, yet inspired me to be a kinder person and was cause to some of the best moments of my life. but now i am left to express the absence. and the way to go about doing so is to describe the matter of everything around him, the markings he left on my life, the memories he created. from negative space of those imprints you can start to discern his silhouette.

today was the day after the breakup. i woke up and in one fell swoop, cancelled my alarm and checked my messages, knowing there were none, not from the person who mattered. i went to our chat history and read the remnants of our separation. though the fires were put out, embers remained of his presence and i combed through one last time, with the hunger of a rabid scavenger, savoring the last bit of warmth i could squeeze from his words.

i showered, using the body wash we shared. wiped my hair with the towel left unwashed from his last visit. i did the laundry, noticing the turtleneck i wore to our valentines lunch in the bottom of the basket. the lunch exactly a week ago from the breakup.

i pulled open my fridge. i saw the groceries we bought together at costco, the celery and carrots in heavy bags he helped carry back to my place. i let the fridge door swing close without retrieving any food. i wasn't hungry.

it was high time i went outside for fresh air. i walked down main mall. to my right was the grass lawn i waited at for him to pick me up, august 31st. we went to kits beach that day, ate corndogs and fried chicken, ending off the day with mango bubble tea. it was such a bright moment in my life. back then, it was crystal clear that his only goal was to make me happy. I went to the gym and tried not to think about it, but ended up crying during chest presses.

in a way, i also became a silhouette of my normal self. i had no urges to eat, no energy to distract myself. the only thing keeping my body moving was my own verbal command, repeated like a mantra. "go to the gym, do the practice exams for your midterms, journal your feelings later." but in midst of practice exams, the familiar pang settled in my chest and the tears started welling. i cried at the library two more times and decided to go somewhere isolated and write this.

i feel like i dwell on things longer than he does. i just spent a few minutes reading through our joint journal. it stung to see how closely he resembled my dream partner during that time. but now he's different and i can't look back.

a few years back i read paper towns. one one quote that stuck with me, by the lovestruck quentin, was "the way I saw time and my life was divided into before and after Margo Roth Spiegelman."

with him, my time seemed to punctuated by our activities: a date, dinner, or uh... depravity (our combined iq seemed to be in the single digits). its embarrassing to admit this co-dependence but i would mentally measure time by our activities together: it wasn't friday 10am, but rather "48 hours before i see him on our skating date". it wasn't January 4th, but "two weeks after we beat the ender dragon together".

i was ruminating a lot about the words left unsaid, the plotlines unexplored. these plans cant help but spring up as i muddle through my quotidian routines, like how we were supposed to buy groceries together this weekend, make lunches together during school days. we were supposed to do a road trip, and after i graduated, move in together. but without a co-author, this story can't be continued any longer. the i's have been dotted, the t's crossed, and the last period of the last sentence placed.

time will pass. his profile in my chat history will sink below conversations with friends and newly added acquaintances. the groceries we bought together will be eaten, the valentines flowers will decompose. the seasons will spin and come back to resemble the summer we met and i'm hopeful that with each cycle, the wound will fade. every memory i make from now on will help me fill that void, until his silhouette becomes less a gash and more a scar, a reminder of healing rather than loss.