TO ALL THE MEN I'VE LOVED BEFORE

Like a lot of us I’ve often been told/heard that you meet people for a season and a reason. During the healing phase of some of my more significant break ups I've optimistically, desperately really, tried to find some truth to this tired phrase. What could I possibly have to learn from these heartbreaks. What lesson could there possibly be in something so sweet turning bitter enough to walk away from I’d ask myself. Quite recently I also got the strange feeling that I was stuck in some kind of karmic loop. That my high school, college and adult sweethearts were the same man and that I had been in the same relationship for 15years. The relationships ended similarly too. Despite still caring and allegedly loving me all 3 men broke up with me. Each break up took years to get passed. Yet I don't think I truly ever got over the feelings that come with an “I love you but I just can’t be with you” type of break up.

Growing up I’d been conditioned to believe that people only broke up because of the following:

1. S/he cheated

2. S/he or they fell out of love

3. S/he was physically abusive

And so for the longest time I couldn’t grasp caring about somebody and walking away for far less "dramatic" reasons. I had an incredibly idealistic view of reality and don’t get me wrong, I still do however I now register a little lower on the scale.

After much speculation I’d go as far as to say it took those 3 men strength & love to leave. 

The kind of strength and love for ones self that I could only dream about and until recently didn’t even know I could tap into. They weren’t happy and they “simply” did what they had to do for themselves.  I thought of all the times I kept berating myself, “why me?” when really it wasn’t entirely about me. And like that another tired phrase finally found some context, “Its not you, its me.” What was actually the hardest thing to get over all 3 x times was how tightly I held on, how much I tried and how much of myself I had to let go of to hang on. I felt entitled to an end result that could justify all my compromises. It was even more heart breaking because I could identify the exact moment much earlier on in each of the relationships where Ishould have called it quits.

But, like the foolishness of any person looking to find love/fulfilment/completion outside themselves, I stayed. I stayed because I was in love, then I stayed because we had gone through too much to leave. Then I stayed because I had stayed and I didn’t know how not to stay.

So imagine my surprise that after over a decade of staying, I walked away. Not because I didn’t care for that person, but only that I cared for myself much, much more.

The single greatest thing that those 3 men taught me was to walk away.

That doesn't mean I would value the next relationship any less only myself more. 

The worst thing to have happened to me has not been to be alone but in the words of Warsan Shire, “My alone feels so good. I’ll only have you if you feel sweeter than my solitude.”

Feast!