FOR ANYONE WHO HAS EVER BROKEN UP WITH ANYONE

 

I am sitting beneath an ancient pine in the Laurentian mountains. My dog is by my side, leaning into me lovingly. Back at the cottage is the person I thought I would be spending my life with who has just said, “I don’t love you anymore,” striking my soul like lightning, a shockwave to my heart like thunder.

Winter has announced its crisp, cold presence and the pain I am feeling is sharp like the pine needles covering the forest floor. I don’t know what to do with it or where to put it.

This has been my longest lasting relationship, the kind that starts as if you knew the person from a past life and without hesitation you dive deep into the spell, the physical and emotional fall into love that makes you feel alive and whole.

A split is never just in two, it ricochets to kids, friends, extended family, dogs and although you do not wish to keep score, there is a winner and a loser, even a single point can make the difference between you being in the game or sitting on the bench.

And when you are the one who ends up alone, the sound of coming home at the end of the day to a place that is not home is so silent, it deafens you.

I have never really learned when to stay and when to go. I tend to sit there in the stillness, the in-between, the nothingness, hoping that gut feeling that keeps returning will somehow dissipate.

The feeling of abandonment and despair never leaves but it presents itself differently over time. It becomes ripples on the surface of the water rather than waves that knock you down and pull you under. You learn to swim so you don’t drown.

Sometimes, I wish I was still there under that tree with my dog by my side. I wish I could go back to before all the good stuff became bad stuff. Just to be there for a few moments in the stillness and the nothingness that is everything.

But that forest floor has been covered in moss and time and it can never be walked upon again. So I find a new path and I walk it alone.